Governor, Senator Need To Hug It Out

AND SINCE WHEN DID THE S.C. SUPREME COURT BECOME AN EXPERT ON “APPROPRIATENESS,” PEOPLE?

FITSNews – January 10, 2008 – Well the jokers have only been in town for three days and already sparks are flying between Gov. Mark Sanford and his GOP legislative antagonists. Specifically, State Sen. Jake Knotts is giving Sanford the business over two issues that he says constitute “abuses of power.” From La Socialista:

A state senator fired double-barreled charges of impropriety at Gov. Mark Sanford on Wednesday, saying the governor had inappropriately called a judge about a pending court case and unnecessarily dismissed a political appointee who disagreed with him.

Interestingly enough, La Socialista somehow saw fit to ask S.C. Chief Justice Jean Toal whether or not she thought the governor’s conduct was appropriate, which is sort of like asking Britney Spears if she thinks somebody else is insane.

Anyway, the whole thing is based on two separate incidents – one which broke here on FITSNews earlier this week when Sanford finally dismissed Columbia insider Tumpy Campbell from the state’s pseudo-socialist Ports Authority Board.

We’re totally with the governor on that decision. Our port system is getting its ass kicked by our competitors, and he should’ve fired Tumpy years ago for his gross incompetance on that front. Of course it seems like Sanford’s tendency to tiptoe around important decisions instead of making them decisively has come back to bite him in the ass once again, as La Socialista reported that he tried to back-channel Campbell out of the job instead of making the self-evident case that our ports are a mess and new leadership is sorely needed if we’re going to maximize the value of this amazing competitive asset for South Carolina.

As for the governor calling a judge concerning a pending court case, we’re gonna have to side with Sen. Knotts on this one. Even if the case had already been decided, which Sanford’s office vigorously argued yesterday, it still looks bad for a sitting governor to do anything that creates the impression of trying to exert improper influence.

Sanford should have known better than to do that – particularly given the recently-demonstrated ethical flexibility of our state’s judicial branch of government.

As for the bigger picture, the storyline as it relates to the SCGOP continues to be the infamous Rodney King-ism, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Sanford and lawmakers have been bickering back and forth from day one, and while the governor’s proposals are generally right on ideologically, his implementation skills have been severely lacking. 

Obviously, the root cause of the relationship strain is the fact that Sanford generally wants to cut taxes and reduce spending, while most GOP lawmakers want to swap taxes and dramatically increase spending. But there are personality issues at play, too, and sadly those are the ones that the mainstream media always tends to focus on at the expense of the real issues.

Again, our scorecard on this one is “Sanford 1 – Knotts 1,” but our hope is that one day we’ll move beyond having to keep score in the first place …

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