One of the most bizarre moments in this week’s South Carolina “Republican” gubernatorial debate was when incumbent governor Henry McMaster claimed that he turned down challenger Catherine Templeton for the position of lieutenant governor.
Is that true?
“She had come to me and asked to be my running mate, to be lieutenant governor,” McMaster said. “I said I couldn’t do that. So then we tried to get her something in the White House, something in the administration, somewhere, but that didn’t work out, so here we are today.”
Ostensibly in support of this claim, McMaster’s campaign produced a text message exchange from November 2016 in which Templeton requested a meeting with then-lieutenant governor McMaster.
The exchange took place in November of 2016, a little over two weeks after U.S. president Donald Trump’s upset victory – which paved the way for McMaster to become governor of the Palmetto State the following January.
Here, again, is that thread …
(Click to view)
(Via: Provided)
As we noted in our original coverage of the debate, the thread does not indicate what Templeton and McMaster discussed at their meeting.
Also, Templeton has denied McMaster’s claim.
“When I got to Henry’s office, I asked him if he was going to run for governor,” she told reporter Meg Kinnard of The Associated Press. “He told me he was running for governor. I said, OK then, that I wouldn’t ask for his support when I ran against him. And he said, fair enough.”
The day after the debate, Templeton paid a visit to Greenville, S.C. where she sought to exploit the decision by McMaster’s campaign to release year-and-a-half old messages. Specifically, Templeton called on McMaster to “release more of his text messages” – specifically those involving his former political strategist Richard Quinn and his son, ex-state representative Rick Quinn.
The Quinns’ political empire has been the whipping boy of the 2018 election cycle owning to its proximity to the ongoing #ProbeGate investigation into corruption in state government.
“We saw that governor McMaster holds on to his personal text messages,” Templeton said. “So what I’d like him to do is release his personal text messages to Rick Quinn and Richard Quinn, his corrupt political consultants who have been indicted. I’d ask for him to release his emails as well … except I understand that might be a problem for him since his lieutenant governor emails have been deleted.”
[timed-content-server show=’2018-Jan-17 00:00:00′ hide=’2018-Jun-18 00:00:00′]SPONSORED CONTENT – ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
[/timed-content-server]That’s correct …
Reporter Jamie Lovegrove of The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier exclusively reported last October that McMaster’s emails were “auto-deleted by a government agency without being shared with state archivers,” a move that violated the state’s ethics law.
Lovegrove surmised that “McMaster’s missing emails from his two years in the lieutenant governor’s office are just one sign of widespread problems with public officials and agencies struggling to keep up with changes in technology.”
Okay … that’s a pretty charitable assessment of the situation if you ask us, but … whatever.
Most politicians don’t write anything incriminating on their government emails anyway.
“Most …”
Texts, though? That could be a different story …
Anyway, will McMaster take Templeton up on her challenge? Don’t hold your breath …
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