FITS Exclusive – Scarborough Speaks

Former S.C Rep. Wallace Scarborough is not an island, but he probably felt like one after getting bailed on by the S.C. Republican Party and GOP legislative leaders in his bid to secure a new election in his Lowcountry House race.

“The Democrats locked arms and made it a partisan issue,” Scarborough says. “Based on the evidence, I don’t know why the Republicans didn’t lock arms, too.”

In a wide-ranging interview with FITS yesterday, Scarborough spoke frankly about the election, evidence of voter fraud which he says was never heard, his thoughts on several party officials and key lawmakers who refused to back his appeal, as well as Internet rumors that he recently became engaged to another former legislator.

As you’ll see below, he didn’t hold anything back …

After one of the most contentious local campaigns in S.C. history, on November 4 Scarborough lost the House seat he had held for the last eight years to Democrat Anne Peterson Hutto.

The margin? A mere 221 votes out of 18,000 votes cast.

After identifying over 300 votes that he says were illegally cast, Scarborough filed a formal election protest with the State Election Commission asking them to toss out the results and order a new election.

The commission declined this request, after deliberating for only ten minutes.

“We had rock solid evidence,” says Scarborough. “We proved that these people weren’t qualified to vote.”

Specifically, Scarborough says his team presented the commission with the names of 365 voters who were not eligible to cast ballots in the district based on their drivers’ licenses, property tax addresses and national change-of-address forms.

“We found 365 people who had changed their address on all three forms and who were all living out of the district,” he says. “How do you look at three forms from 365 people in that amount of time? You can’t do that in ten minutes.”

After losing his petition, Scarborough decided a week later to appeal the Commission’s ruling to the S.C. House of Representatives.

That’s when things got interesting … particularly as it relates to the reaction of SCGOP Chairman Katon Dawson as well as Republican leaders within the S.C. House of Representatives itself.

“Katon Dawson was against doing anything because he’s running for national party chairman and he didn’t want any sort of controversy,” Scarborough says. “So that was it, they went completely silent on the whole issue from the beginning while the Democrats locked arms and made all sorts of noise.”

Scarborough says that based on the evidence his team had, he’s surprised Dawson didn’t line up and fight with him.

“My question is this, if Katon Dawson is not willing to go out on a limb in his own state, to help a solid Republican in a case where there was obviously voter fraud, how do we trust him to fight for Republicans at the national level?” he asks.

“I think Katon Dawson’s done a horrible job,” Scarborough adds. “The State Party never helped me, in fact they hurt me. They actually did a push poll against me in my district, basically saying that there was a ‘need for change.’ I called Katon after than and said ‘please, don’t help my anymore,’ I told him if this was his idea of helping, I didn’t need it.”

Dawson’s silence on the issue was accompanied by what Scarborough says was a reluctance on the part of House Republican leaders to take the case.

“The leadership seemed very squishy, they didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to deal with it,” he says. “Their job is to hear the evidence, but they didn’t want to do their jobs. A lot of them bitched and moaned about the politics of it without even looking at the facts.”

Scarborough says several members have told him that the decision to effectively punt the case came straight from House Speaker Bobby Harrell, who was elected to his position in large part due to Democratic support.

“Lots of people said that Bobby was working with the Democrats, basically telling them that he could personally guarantee that my case never saw the light of day,” Scarborough says. “If that’s true, then it’s very disappointing. I can’t prove it, but I’ve had several people call me and tell me that Bobby was working against me.”

Scarborough also denied internet rumors that popped up while his appeal was still pending that he and former State Senator Catherine Ceips were engaged to be married over the Christmas holidays.

“It’s not true,” he says. “But that’s the way the rumor mill goes. Politics is a dirty business, it gets very personal, and I guess that’s just how it is. Catherine and I might one day get engaged, but we’re not engaged right now.”

Now that he’s out of office, Scarborough says he’s going to get back to serving more directly at the local level -specifically in child abuse prevention – although he hasn’t ruled out another run for public office.

He says his only regret throughout the whole appeals process was that it was politics, not the facts of the case, which dictated its outcome.

“Voter fraud clearly took place, and I’m disappointed in the Election Commission and I’m frankly disappointed in the way the House handled it,” he says. “The Election Commission didn’t hear the evidence, they didn’t look at the evidence and now thanks to the way the House handled it, the evidence will never be heard.”

Stay tuned … we have no doubt that Scarborough’s comments will spark a response from those he’s called out.

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