FITSNews Exclusive – Bobby’s Out

HARRELL WILL NOT RUN FOR GOVERNOR, SOURCES SAY

FITSNews – April 8, 2008 – It hasn’t been a good week for S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell …

After he was played like a fiddle on the state budget by fellow big spender Hugh Leatherman (who for once actually came in below somebody else’s numbers), Harrell’s “Republican” House of Representatives enraged conservatives today by passing a backdoor pay increase for state legislators … the day after South Carolina’s revenue estimates were slashed by $90 million for the coming fiscal year.

We’ll be addressing the monetary and procedural atrocities of this vote in a future post, but something about Harrell’s twin fiscal fiascos signaled to us that a much bigger story was on the horizon.  

Well, it turns out a much bigger story is on the horizon … the unceremonious end to a gubernatorial bid that Harrell has spent all of his political capital on for the better part of the past two years.

That’s right, folks - Bobby Harrell is not running for governor of South Carolina. At least not in 2010, anyway, sources close to the Speaker tell FITSNews.

“He told me Sunday he’s not running,” one Harrell confidant told us on the condition of anonymity. “And he told me (former House Speaker David) Wilkins isn’t running either.”

The news that Wilkins is out of the race doesn’t come as much of a surprise to us.

In fact, we predicted he wouldn’t run last summer, when rumors started swirling around Columbia that the former Speaker and U.S. Ambassador to Canada was feeling homesick for the Palmetto State.

But Harrell?

Seriously, all this guy has been doing for the past two years is positioning himself for a statewide campaign, and his decision to opt out is nothing short of a seismic event – for the other 2010 wanna-bes and one powerful State House politician who covets Harrell’s current job.

The most immediate beneficiary of Harrell’s decision is S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, who was widely rumored to be sacrificing his own gubernatorial ambitions in deference to the Speaker. 

Not anymore … if Harrell’s out, McMaster’s in – and probably the 2010 frontrunner at this early, speculative stage.

Also benefitting is U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, whose stellar Congressional record on issues important to both fiscal and social conservatives translates into unlimited potential with both pocketbook-minded moderates and the religious fanatics of the Republican base.

In fact, Barrett’s fiscal conservatism was seen as a major threat to a Harrell candidacy given the GOP spending spree that’s gone on in Columbia under the Speaker’s watch.

Other beneficiaries include ideological allies of Gov. Mark Sanford, who loathe Harrell’s free spending ways and his cozy relationships with the educrats currently running our state’s worst-in-the-nation public school system.

So who are the biggest losers in all of this?

Well, aside from the Speaker, that list begins and ends with State Rep. Harry Cato, who politically-speaking bet all of his chips on the notion that Harrell was running for governor.

Cato – who engineered the election of a black Democrat to the State Supreme Court in an effort to nail down Black Caucus support for his bid to become Speaker - will now have to sit in the thankless Speaker Pro Tempore chair a lot longer than he originally anticipated.

Stay tuned … the ripple effects from this story are only beginning …

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