South Carolina House Panel to Hear Ethics Complaints Against Governor

Thursday, she faces a State House ethics hearing over whether she blurred the lines between her work as a legislator and her work as a hospital fund-raiser and a business development consultant with an engineering firm.

From the Republican governor’s perspective, the hearing is just more of the same: attacks by Democrats and the Republican Party old guard who resent her Tea Party-style efforts to change government and the fact that she is a woman and a minority in a state that has had relatively few of either in positions of power.

For those who pushed for the hearing — most notably John Rainey, one of the most powerful Republican fund-raisers in South Carolina — it is a step in a long-fought battle to prove that the governor has been less than transparent and improperly mixed her governing duties and her business enterprises.

For many voters in South Carolina, however, the hearing is not much more than another twist in the state’s bare-knuckled brand of politics based on personal grudges and its history of conflict between governors and legislators.

“Unfortunately, it is being perceived as politics as usual,” said Robert W. Oldendick, a professor at the University of South Carolina who is director of the Institute for Public Service and Policy Research. “Unless there’s a smoking gun that hasn’t been revealed, a week from now we’ll say there was a little damage done to the governor.”

The Republican-heavy House Ethics Committee will not call Ms. Haley to testify during the two days it examines the issues, but her lawyer will present her case.

On the committee’s witness list are business executives and lobbyists for companies including the Lexington Medical Center and BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, as well as governmental affairs experts.

They are expected to describe Ms. Haley’s role in two business deals when she was a state representative from Lexington County from 2005 until she became governor.

South Carolina lawmakers serve part-time, and most hold other jobs. One of Ms. Haley’s was to raise money for the medical center’s foundation, at a salary of $110,000 a year. The hospital wanted to open a new heart center and needed governmental approval as part of the process.

Ms. Haley maintains that her legislative efforts to support the heart center were because the hospital, which was in her district, was part of her constituency. Her other efforts to raise money for the foundation did not fall under lobbying rules, her lawyer, Butch Bowers, said.

The other issue centers on part-time consulting Ms. Haley did for Wilbur Smith Associates, an engineering firm in Columbia that paid her a total of $42,000 to help develop business. The firm had worked on a project to create a state farmers’ market.

Ms. Haley would not discuss the hearing directly, but Mr. Bowers and members of her staff have characterized it as a political witch hunt led by a man angry that Ms. Haley did not try to curry his favor to win the governorship.

In her recent memoir, Ms. Haley describes seeking Mr. Rainey’s support when she was planning her campaign. He asked to see her tax records to make sure, she said he told her, that she did not have any connections to terrorists in her background — a comment he said in later interviews that he did not recall, but dismissed as most likely a joke.

Ms. Haley, who is of Indian descent, went on to win without the support of Mr. Rainey, long an important figure in helping to bankroll political candidates in South Carolina.

“This a complaint brought by an old Republican crank who called her a terrorist and the chairman of the Democratic State Party, so it’s pretty clear,” said Tim Pearson, her chief of staff.

That Democratic chairman is Richard A. Harpootlian. He said Ms. Haley was using that explanation to present herself as the victim of political scoundrels who do not want things to change.

The political alliance might seem unlikely, but Mr. Harpootlian said he and Mr. Rainey were united in trying to hold accountable a governor they see as secretive and ethically compromised.

“Both of us have a sense that justice, no matter what the political affiliation, should prevail,” he said. “What’s clear is this governor has avoided answering the questions and has deflected every allegation as politics.”

The men filed a lawsuit last year over the same assertions. In March, a Circuit Court judge dismissed it, saying the court was not the proper venue to examine legislative ethical issues.

If the committee decides the governor did violate ethics, it could issue a reprimand or refer the case to the attorney general for criminal investigation. Most likely, Mr. Oldendick said, the hearing will only underscore what is becoming obvious to many in the state.

“For as good of a job as she did campaigning and getting elected,” he said, “her inability to relate to members of her own party in the General Assembly has been frankly surprising.”

Robbie Brown contributed reporting.

View the original article here