I remember Joel S. talking you up BIG TIME around then. Must have been an exciting time.

Someone I think would be a good choice is Joe Taylor at the Department of Commerce. A good mix of a Carroll Campbell in industry recruitment and a fiscal conservative like Sanford.

In the legislature, the best candidates for Governor are rookies. Tom Davis and Mick Mulvaney come to mind.

I don’t believe any of the “trifecta” will make it in the end. Especially in these times.

Damn, dude. Thanks for the softball down the middle of the plate.

Let’s see … Lerner “ran the campaign?”

Well, he “ran the campaign” in that everything he wrote for Sanford had to not only be completely rewritten, but completely re-conceptualized.

Sort of like the “clinking glasses” kitchen ad that featured two women having the following conversation:

Woman 1: Have you heard of that Mark Sanford? I hear he received the Number One ranking from Citizens Against Government Waste!

Woman 2: Tee hee! Tee hee!

Never heard that one before? Perhaps that’s because it never ran anywhere except in a beat-up boom box in Sanford’s basement.

Basically, every time Lerner wrote anything Mark would come downstairs to ask one of the “college kids in the basement” to start from scratch. As it turns out, one of them could actually write, too.

Of course, Lerner will claim to have been the key strategist, which ignores the fact that Sanford completely ignored his repeated advice to join Peeler and Condon on the lunatic religious fringe.

It also conveniently ignores what happened at the most vital point of the campaign – when Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler went hard negative in a desperate attempt to make the runoff against Sanford competitive.

That’s when Lerner proposed (and actually cut) a vicious counterattack ad that he and the future First Lady told Sanford he had “no choice” but to run.

Of course, two of those “college kids in the basement” (and a current State Senator from Beaufort County) told Sanford to stick to his positive message, and one of them even wrote an “I love our state” ad to that effect. Which Sanford ended up going with.

The result? A 20-point mega-landslide and perhaps the most compelling rebuke of negative politics in South Carolina history.

Additionally, Peeler’s campaign manager later admitted they were deliberately trying to bait Sanford.

Look, dude. If you weren’t there, STFU.

Of course the real reason Mark Sanford won the Governor’s Mansion in 2002 was that he worked his ass off raising money, he looked damn good smiling with that cute family on television.

That, and Jenny Sanford flat-out willed it.

-FITS

P.S. – In fairness, Lerner does produce great polling data (he’s a true wizard at crosstabs, incidentally). Just don’t ask him to formulate a theory or try and articulate a message based on any of them.

That program now has ballooned to the tune of 2-3 TRILLION dollars when it was supposed to only cost $400B.

Will, there are plenty of other votes that have mattered. You say that vote was the only one that mattered, but the bill passed overwhelmingly, Barrett could have thrown his vote away like you say and voted no to keep his record on track, but he did what he thought was right for the people and the businesses of our state and nation. Report the FACTS or you will end up just like print media in our state, IRRELEVANT.