By FITSNews || The S.C. Democratic Party is pressuring GOP gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley to fulfill a campaign promise and release six years worth of her income tax records.
Haley – who has made government transparency a central theme of her campaign – has previously refused to release ten years worth of tax records (calling such disclosure “excessive”). She later told The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper that she would provide the records for the past six years, though – which corresponds to her 2004 election to the S.C. House of Representatives.
Nine days later, however, that still hasn’t happened – and Democrats have started a countdown website to remind the public of Haley’s failure to follow through. Called “Haley in Hiding,” the website features a picture of the GOP candidate on the back of a milk carton.
Haley’s Democratic opponent, Vincent Sheheen, has already released ten years worth of his income tax records (read our report on what was in them here).
Haley’s financial disclosures became the subject of controversy when she revealed ( just hours before the 2010 GOP runoff election) that she had received more than $40,000 in unreported income from a company with business before the state.
Wilbur Smith Associates claims it hired Haley because she had “good contacts,” not because she was a lawmaker.
Previously during the campaign, Haley cited a legislative exemption from the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an effort to keep her legislative correspondence hidden from public view. Haley’s correspondence was sought by numerous media outlets after our website’s founding editor, Will Folks, acknowledged under duress having had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with Haley during the spring of 2007.
WEB EXTRA
Haley In Hiding
By south mauldin July 30, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I want to know why the hospital thought giving her $100,000 a year would help them. Oh yeah, access and such. Bullshit. And to hell with all of the Haley supporters on this site. That includes you Will, who I will never forgive for foisting the piece of shit that is currently our governor on us.
By yarrrr July 30, 2010 at 4:59 pm
They came out with that on Wednesday… and nobody paid any attention to it… it wasn’t really even spread on their social networks…
You’d think that if there was anything bad in those tax records she would release them about right now…
By Liberaltarian July 30, 2010 at 5:02 pm
crazy eyes.
By Why Chance It July 30, 2010 at 5:09 pm
If she had any intentions of releasing her tax records, she would have done so by now. It just like the phone records and emails, she’ll not take that risk and who can blame her, there is more at stake by releasing than not.
By James the Foot Soldier July 30, 2010 at 5:14 pm
yawwwwwwn…..slow news day…..
By Cancerman July 30, 2010 at 5:15 pm
She will never release her records becuase the Sanfrauds told her she didnt have to take that you dumb poor redneck south carolina voters Ha!!
Her family has made to much miney off of land sales due to her postion and they dont want that made public do they? Free Times Article
Republican state Rep. Nikki Haley won her party’s nomination for governor largely by pointing the dual barrels of transparency and accountability directly at her adversaries and firing away. But as she’s entered the general election against Democratic Sen. Vincent Sheheen, the Lexington Republican now appears to have found herself knocked off balance by the recoil.
The narrative beginning to stick to her campaign: Does Haley walk the walk?
Last week, Sheheen released a decade’s worth of income tax returns to reporters that showed how much he and his wife had earned in the past 10 years and how much they’d given to charity. He challenged Haley to do the same.
It wasn’t the first time Haley had been asked for them.
In a June interview with The State newspaper, Haley called releasing that much information “excessive.” She ended up releasing some tax records later that month, but only hours before voters were to go to the polls for her June 22 runoff against Congressman Gresham Barrett.
In those documents, reporters found she’d been paid more than $40,000 by the engineering firm Wilbur Smith Associates. The firm later told CNN it hired Haley because of her “connections” and “access” to influential people.
It seemed exactly the kind of thing Haley had railed against on the stump.
When asked to clarify her position on transparency in April, Haley campaign manager Tim Pearson said it was important to note that being a legislator is a part-time job, with compensation to match, and so legislators have to have other forms of income.
“Therefore, the state needs income disclosures to ensure it is public who else is paying them,” he said.
The natural question, then, is why did she wait until the day before the vote to release her own sources of income?
Haley was also recently challenged for having a rubber ruler when it comes to how she measures transparency. A strongly worded July 11 editorial in The State accused her of hiding behind a legislative loophole that exempts legislators from having to release their State House emails under the state’s open records laws.
The married mother of two refused to release her emails in the wake of accusations by a blogger that the two had been romantically involved, calling it a distraction to her campaign.
Sid Bedingfield, a USC broadcasting and telecommunications professor and the former head of CNN’s U.S. network, recalled a similar issue involving Haley that he expected would have been brought up more in her primary campaign. While Haley often said she’d voted against accepting federal stimulus dollars, she had actually voted twice for accepting the money before voting against it.
Bedingfield says the recent branding of her campaign by her critics is something Haley had better deal with quickly and decisively or else it could turn into a larger problem.
“You sort of put that with the stimulus vote, with the Wilbur Smith money, and it all begins to build a potential case, a narrative that suggests that maybe she doesn’t do what she says,” Bedingfield says. “If that narrative really begins to take hold — the idea that she says one thing and does the other — that could be really damaging to her.”
For her part, Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey responded to criticism of the campaign with a swipe at Sheheen.
“Until he is willing to release a full client list naming all those who have paid him for his work as a trial lawyer, Mr. Sheheen will continue to keep the public in the dark regarding the most important aspect of his income — where it comes from,” Godfrey says.
But Sheheen campaign manager Trav Robertson shot back.
“Obviously, Ms. Haley’s campaign needs a refresher course on ethics laws, which prevents the release of client information,” he said. “Haley is the candidate who did not disclose that she received a secret payment of $40,000 from a company that profited from her role as legislator … it is another glaring example of Ms. Haley’s hypocrisy — she says one thing and does another.”
By Florida Watching July 30, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Nikki – How goes that transparency platform??? I’m not sure what is going to sink your ship first………….
Screwing all those guys……
Lying about screwing all those guys…..
The total lack of transparency which follows your every move……
Cheers!!!
By Old Bike Dude July 30, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Can you spell “influence peddling”?
By south mauldin July 30, 2010 at 7:18 pm
OBD,
As usual, you are right on the mark.
By eggaday July 30, 2010 at 9:01 pm
i’ll say it again, sanfraud in a skirt
By Alvin August 9, 2010 at 2:10 pm
The news of Haley’s inability to file income taxes on time coupled with her acceptance of $40,000 “consulting fees” from the engineering firm have caused me to change my mind on her. I will vote for Sheheen, who is a moderate and unencumbered with all these skeletons.
I encourage Haley to release the complete ten years of tax returns to show us how “transparent” she actually is. I believe that doing so will reveal more tax penalties and interest.
And I thought she was such as breath of fresh air…