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by GIL GATCH
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I don’t have to rely on rumors about what Alan Wilson did, because I was there.
Before last year’s judicial elections, our attorney general personally called dozens of legislators to twist arms for a guy named James Smith. This is not a conservative lawyer or even a Republican. James Smith is the Democratic Party’s 2018 nominee for governor, a twenty-year Democrat in this very House, and a candidate who proudly carried the endorsement of Planned Parenthood.
The request made an uproar in the House among conservative House Members. The vast majority of us believed that under no circumstances should a Planned Parenthood-endorsed Democrat be put on a South Carolina bench, friend of Alan Wilson or not. So we killed that judicial election, and nobody was elected. No amount of pressure was going to change that.
What stunned me the most was who was asking. Attorney general Alan Wilson, a man who campaigns across this state as a conservative champion, was now spending his political capital on the phone, legislator by legislator, for a very woke and very liberal buddy of his.
Don’t take my word for it. Take his campaign’s. When my colleagues and I went public, Wilson’s own spokesperson confirmed to the press that he lobbied for Smith. The defense he offered was that Smith was the lesser of two evils. What he forgot to mention is that James Smith is his close friend and Alan’s lawyer.
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And the story gets stranger. Wilson’s campaign now says he paid Smith $28,000 in legal fees when Smith represented him during the 2015 inquiry into his ties to disgraced lobbyist Richard Quinn. But I have watched Alan Wilson state publicly, on the record, that James Smith represented him for free. So which is it? Did he pay his buddy $28,000 in campaign money, or did a prominent Democrat hand Alan Wilson tens of thousands of dollars in free legal work, and then watch delighted as the Attorney General lobbied the General Assembly to make him a judge? Alan Wilson knows what happens in a court case when the defendant can’t get his story straight — the jury assumes he’s not being honest. Unfortunately for Wilson, either answer he goes with tells the people of South Carolina exactly how this system really works: favors in, favors out, and the public never sees behind the curtain.
That is precisely the cancer I have spent this term trying to cure.
I was the lead House sponsor of judicial reform this year. It passed this chamber by more than a two-thirds majority before stalling in the Senate. And I refused to cast a vote in this year’s judicial elections, because I will not lend my legitimacy to a process that lets the powerful trade the bench like a favor between friends. Alan Wilson publicly held roundtables about judicial reform while privately working the very back channels that reform exists to shut down. That is not a conservative champion. That’s a man who complains about the good ol’ boy system while it’s got him on speed dial.
No one should get a black robe and a seat on the bench because they’re buddies with the attorney general. Judges decide whether you lose your kids, whether you get justice for someone else’s wrongs, whether your neighborhood stays safe, and whether your constitutional rights mean anything when it counts. A judgeship must be earned through merit, fidelity to the Constitution, and respect for the rule of law. It’s not a payoff for knowing the right person in power.
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RELATED | ALL EYES ON RALPH NORMAN
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This is why I support Pamela Evette for governor, and why I’ll be voting for her on June 23.
Pamela is not a creature of the system. She didn’t grow up being groomed for office or spend her career drawing a government paycheck. She built a business from nothing, met a payroll, and answered to customers–not to a club of Columbia insiders. And she backs the reform that ends this circus for good: judicial nominees chosen by the governor, confirmed by the General Assembly, and subject to term limits and real ethics oversight. That’s accountability the public can finally see and believe in.
The contrast could not be more crystal clear. One candidate, by his own campaign’s admission, used his power to push a Planned Parenthood-endorsed Democrat toward the bench, and still can’t keep his story straight about the money. The other wants to tear down the insider-trading machine entirely.
Alan Wilson owes South Carolina answers. But instead, we see him running away from tough questions — literally locking the door behind him. Until he comes clean, I’ll be standing with the candidate who wants to make sure no politician of either party can ever work the good ol’ boy system like that again.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Gil Gatch is an attorney and the lead House sponsor of South Carolina’s judicial selection reform legislation, H. 4755. He resides in Summerville, S.C.
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