South Carolina: Ex-Governor Advances

By Marcus Mabry, Ben Werschkul, Channon Hodge, Pedro Rafael Rosado and Alyssa KimSanford’s Political Comeback: The Times’s Kim Severson on Mark Sanford’s runoff win and re-entry into politics, three years after he was plagued by political scandal as governor of South Carolina.

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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.

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Political thorns emerge for Democrats in N. Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — CHARLOTTE, N.C. Once a bright spot for President Barack Obama, North Carolina is now more like a political migraine less than four months before Democrats open the party's national convention in Charlotte.

The causes are plenty.

Labor unions, a core Democratic constituency, are up in arms. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue isn't running for re-election; Democrats say she was likely to lose. The state Democratic Party is in disarray over an explosive sexual-harassment scandal. Voters recently approved amending the state Constitution to ban gay marriage, a position that runs counter to Obama's. And unemployment in the state remains persistently high.

"Nobody can sugarcoat the fact that we got problems here," said Gary Pearce, a former Democratic consultant who was an adviser to former Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt. Pearce was referring specifically to state-party woes but could have been talking about any of the troubles here for Democrats.

But, he added, "I think the greatest strength that the party has is President Obama. And he's the thing that people will rally around."

It wasn't supposed to be like this -- at least that was the hope -- when Democrats chose Charlotte to host the national convention, where Obama will formally accept his party's presidential nomination for a second time Sept. 4-6.

When Democrats announced the choice in February 2011, they said selecting the Southern city signaled Obama's intent to fight hard for the conservative-leaning state like he did in 2008. They also highlighted the economic transformation in the state and in Charlotte -- from tobacco, textiles and furniture making to research, energy and banking. Party leaders noted the state's strong political leadership and expressed hope that a Perdue re-election bid would get a boost from the attention that would be lavished on the convention.

Now traditional Democratic Party groups are threatening huge protests, in part because they're deeply uncomfortable that the convention is being held in one of the least union-friendly states. And thousands of Democrats across the country are calling for the convention to be relocated because of the gay-marriage vote.

Democrats say that won't happen.

"Charlotte is going to host a great convention," insisted Mayor Anthony Foxx, who pushed to bring the event to North Carolina's largest city.

Joanne Peters, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, said, "The convention is staying in Charlotte."

Republicans point out the obvious.

"North Carolina is a mess for the Democratic Party and for President Obama," said Matt Connelly, Republican National Committee spokesman.

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North Carolina a Front in Democrats’ Battle for House

“Those are decisions they had to make on a personal level,” said Mr. Kissell, whose district outside Charlotte has gone from being mildly Republican in his first election in 2008 to 12 percentage points in favor of the opposition party now. “I really view this as being a job of serving the public. It’s not a campaign for me; it’s just doing our job. And if we do a good job, the results will go our way.”

Republicans have a different view. They see North Carolina as the state that stands between Democrats and their dreams of retaking the House.

Congressional redistricting, a decennial process that generally allows the party in legislative power in each state to draw new lines, has not created many opportunities for new seats for Republicans, as the party’s leaders once expected. But it has forced multiple House Democrats, viewing their odds in new districts as slim, into retirement. Many of those districts are now either in play or solidly Republican, making the climb for Democrats all that more onerous.

On paper, Democrats need a net gain of 25 seats to take back House control. In reality, the number is closer to 30 or even 35, since the party is likely not only to lose the seats of retiring Democrats in North Carolina, but also to face tougher odds in Arkansas, California, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois and perhaps in Arizona, in the district once served by former Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Over all, 15 Democrats have announced their retirements from the House, compared with 10 Republicans. Seven Democrats and eight Republicans have also opted to run for other offices. Among the lot, Republicans leave far more safe seats behind than their Democratic counterparts.

Of the seats where members are not seeking re-election, just two — one in Illinois and the other in California — have the potential to flip from Republican to Democrat, said David Wasserman, House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, while at least six seats held by Democrats are at risk of falling to Republicans, thanks to new lines. Among those are the North Carolina seats being vacated by Representatives Heath Shuler and Brad Miller.

“Democrats are at a disadvantage because of these retirements,” Mr. Wasserman said. “Those retirements have hamstrung their requirements of picking up the 25 seats they need.”

Between the retirements and new office seekers, members who have already been picked off in primary battles and the addition of new Congressional seats in some states via redistricting, 56 House seats are now left without incumbents, the highest number since 1992, Mr. Wasserman said. This has led both parties to study maps obsessively, looking for new places to eke out victory. Both will find them, but Democrats will find fewer on balance.

“Democrats are feeling the Tar Heel blues in North Carolina and across the country, with Democrats choosing to retire rather than be saddled with the albatross of a failed Obama economic agenda,” said Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “These retirements serve as a cautionary sign of the troubles House Democrats face with Barack Obama on the ballot in November.”

The retirements of Mr. Shuler and Mr. Miller, both veteran lawmakers who won in tricky political terrain, have been a blow to Democrats here in North Carolina, and Mr. Kissell and Representative Mike McIntyre have been pressed into districts with steep Republican advantages.

All the Democrats running for re-election here know they are laboring in a state that Republicans feel is their Illinois — the one state where Democrats had a firm hand on redistricting and used it to cause Republicans potential harm — and often hear discomforting words like “bloodbath” describing their prospects here.

But the party is not going down without a fight. Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Kissell are both well known in their districts, even the newer parts, in a state where voters are sometimes known to vote Republican for president and Democratic for the House. Mr. Obama’s re-election efforts will be in full force here — the Democratic National Convention will be in Charlotte — and all Democrats will benefit from his team’s get-out-the-vote efforts among base voters in a state he carried in 2008.

“I am a firm believer and still have confidence in North Carolina voters,” said Hayden Rogers, the longtime chief of staff to Mr. Shuler who, after failing to persuade his boss to run again, decided to go for the seat himself. “I think they are looking for candidates who are rational, and they are less inclined to vote by political affiliation.”

Finally, Democrats here are used to running uphill.

“I am not going to sugarcoat it,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It is always hard to lose a valued colleague, but we’re not going to concede North Carolina. Our incumbents survived the toughest climate in recent political history: 2010. They know how to win independents, they know how to win Republicans, they are battle tested, they are field ready, they did it before and they’ll do it again.”

Richard Hudson, a former Congressional staff member, smells opportunity. He is running among a handful of others in the Republican primary in the Eighth District, where Republicans hope to pick off Mr. Kissell. “Part of the challenge is name identification,” Mr. Hudson conceded. “My name ID is 10 percent. Larry Kissell’s is 70 percent.”

But, Mr. Hudson said, under redistricting, Mr. Kissell “does not match the district.” For instance, Mr. Hudson said, while Mr. Kissell voted against the health care law, he did not vote for repeal.

As he walks around the district, Mr. Hudson applies the rules he has learned on the trail. Do not step on lawns; use the walkway. Never sneak up on someone mowing the grass. Do not be too pushy.

“I’m aware of your face!” exclaimed one resident of Concord as he slipped into her yard. Mr. Hudson seemed pleased.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Representative Heath Shuler on second reference.

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