Telling it like it is: elected as a firebrand, Patterson retires as a statesman

After 34 years in the S.C. Legislature - all but 10 as a state senator - Columbia’s Kay Patterson is retiring from an institution that, he says, no longer fits him.

“It’s uncomfortable - for me,” said Patterson, who was swept into office in 1975.

Patterson was one of 13 black lawmakers seated in the House of Representatives that year, a record-setting number for modern times.

“When I started … working up here was very pleasant and you could get things done, and I enjoyed it,” said Patterson, who was among only the second class of black lawmakers since Reconstruction elected to the Legislature.

But times have changed, Patterson says.

“You have little boys coming up here now, don’t hardly know where the restroom or the outhouse is, (and they) chair a committee,” the outspoken lawmaker said with a degree of indignation. “Here I am a hundred years old.”

Not quite, though Patterson is 77.

Patterson, a Democrat, said the General Assembly - the House much more so than the Senate - has become too partisan.

“Since (the Republicans) took over,” Patterson said, dignity, senatorial courtesy and respect in the General Assembly have given way to meanness, ill-tempered tones of voice and disrespect among members.

“I said now, ‘I don’t have to put up with this. I’ve had enough of this.’”

‘FIREBRAND … EVOLVED INTO A STATESMAN’

Patterson’s departure will leave an elocutionary void in the sausage-making drill that is S.C. politics, friends and colleagues say.

Over the years, Patterson’s use of black dialect, often laced with well-placed invectives, has helped him to make his point and needle his opponents.

“They would call that ebonics in this day and age,’ Patterson said. “But we didn’t have that terminology back in those days.”

Those who know Patterson and agree with his politics - such as his seatmate of 34 years, state Sen. John Matthews, D-Orangeburg - say Patterson’s departure will leave “the little man” voiceless in what they say are the increasingly hostile halls of the General Assembly.

“I think what Senator Patterson will probably be known for, as he departs the Senate, he’s clearly been the conscience and the voice of the unelected, the unsophisticated and those who did not have a voice,” said Matthews, who was elected alongside Patterson.

“That has been his primary role, to make sure their concerns were taken into consideration as we debated education, economic development, health care or whatever the issue.”

You won’t find a stack of legislation Patterson has sponsored over the decades. But “his impact on the legislative process was probably the greatest of any African-American I know,” Matthews said.

That’s because Patterson was so keen on picking out and stopping legislation he thought could have a negative impact on African-Americans and the poor, Matthew said.

Patterson and Matthews, the two most senior African-American lawmakers in the General Assembly, are the last of the so-called “Famous 13″ black state lawmakers elected in 1975.

Not all of Patterson’s peers in the Legislature agree with his politics or his view of the General Assembly.

“We’re both Marines. We’re both Episcopalians. That’s about where our similarities end,” said Republican state Sen. John Courson, who also represents Richland County.

But Courson added, “We have developed a good relationship and friendship together over the years. I have tremendous respect for him, and I’ll miss him.”

Courson says he sees a different Patterson nowadays.

“Sen. Patterson came to the Legislature as sort of a firebrand and sort of evolved into a statesman. He doesn’t speak (on the Senate floor) that often, but when he does, people listen.”

‘I OUGHT TO BE PRESIDENT!’

A former social studies teacher at W.A. Perry Middle School, Patterson came into the Legislature like a gangbuster.

Thirteen of the General Assembly’s 170 lawmakers were African-American that year, all of them House members elected as the result of passage of the Voting Rights Act 10 years earlier. That historic piece of legislation led to single-member districts in the state for the first time since Reconstruction.

“I never really thought of being in the Legislature,” Patterson said, recalling he taught eighth-grade social studies at Perry to Columbia attorney I.S. Leevy Johnson, elected to the Legislature in 1970.

“I said, ‘Damn, I taught I.S. If I.S. can get elected to the House of Representatives, I ought to be president of the United States!’

“That’s what got me in the Legislature,” Patterson said, laughing.

Patterson went on to be a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and the first African-American on USC’s board of trustees.

His House seat barely warm, Patterson introduced a measure in 1977 to remove the Confederate flag from several positions at the State House - outside, atop the dome; inside, in the front of the Senate and House chambers; and in the first-floor lobby.

Along with fellow members of the Black Caucus, Patterson called on then-State House committee chairman Rep. Rembert Dennis, D-Berkeley, to take the flag down and took his argument to the House floor.

“Your admiration for y’all’s flag is not shared by us descendants of that peculiar institution of slavery, which is the epitome of man’s inhumanity to man and all the evils appertaining thereto,” Patterson said in April 1977, according to a press report.

Patterson kept up the drumbeat, introducing a bill to have the flags moved nearly every year afterward.

They were, nearly a quarter of a century later, in 2000.

Patterson is thought to be first lawmaker to take on the Confederate flag.

“I don’t think (Patterson) gets the credit he deserves on that subject,” said U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-Columbia.

Clyburn, then on the State Human Affairs Commission, said he joined Patterson in his call to remove the flag.

“I got some real nasty letters. I got some real threats,” said Clyburn, who, in a book he is writing, ranks the fight over the Confederate flag as the third-most defining moment of his political career.

Clyburn thinks it may have been worse for Patterson. The deaths threats against Patterson led to an arrest, Clyburn recalls.

Ironically, Patterson and Clyburn were blackballed by the state NAACP in 2001 for criticizing a tourism boycott that group organized after the flag was moved to its current location on the State House grounds.

“All of this was before the NAACP ever opened their mouths about the Confederate flag,” Clyburn said, “and … they ended up black-balling me and Kay, which is just crazy stuff. We were out there and not a peep from them. Then, all of a sudden, they became holier than anybody else.”

RACISM IN BLACK AND WHITE

Over his career, Patterson has been an equal opportunity offender and defender.

He has been criticized by opponents as a racist and a poor role model for black children for his “plantation-style” of talk.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Patterson penned a newspaper column in the local black press called “Spressin’ Myself.”

Characterized by crude language and sensationalism for effect, Patterson routinely used the column to attack the white establishment and politicians - black and white - for positions on issues with which Patterson disagreed.

Patterson won his way into the S.C. Senate by defeating Democrat-turned-Republican Frank Washington in a 1985 special election, brought on by the resignation of the late Rev. I. DeQuincey Newman, the first African-American elected to the S.C. Senate in the 20th century.

Washington, who was president of the Columbia branch of the NAACP, accused Patterson of abusing whites in his newspaper column and of being unable to represent whites.

For his part, Patterson called Washington “the Republican Party’s newfound pet Negro.”

A year earlier, Patterson had taken political heat from the Columbia NAACP for supporting the re-election bid of a white Senate colleague over a black candidate in a newly drawn majority-black Senate district.

Patterson said he supported the late Sen. Isadore Lourie’s 1984 re-election bid over former state Rep. Mary Miles because Lourie had been one of the few friends of African-Americans in the state Senate.

In 1990, Patterson joined some white Democrats to endorse the U.S. Senate re-election bid of Republican Strom Thurmond. “It was the right thing to do,” he said at the time.

When Thurmond died in 2002, his family asked Courson to ask Patterson to eulogize the iconic Thurmond during funeral services in Columbia.

“He did an outstanding job,” Courson said.

Patterson also was known to point out what he perceived as racism.

Patterson pushed for a Senate rule in 1987 that barred the Senate from accepting official invitations to clubs or organizations that discriminated based on race.

After the late Gov. Carroll Campbell had been in office for only eight months, Patterson took him on for his appointments to state boards and commissions. Patterson accused the Republican governor of removing African-Americans from meaningful boards “with all deliberate speed.”

“Black Republicans appointed thus far, without exception, have been appointed to those commissions and boards that can be categorized as ‘nothing burgers’ — e.g. no salary, only per diem (expenses) if that, and all the coffee you can drink, with ‘Honorable’ in front of your name!” Patterson said.

“Only in America! I just wonder when the black Republicans will wake the hell up and smell the coffee!”

‘THERE’S A DEPTH’

Once he exits politics, Patterson - who says his health is good after a battle with cancer five years ago - plans to spend time traveling Interstate 95 to visit his children and grandchildren up north.

Matthews said he doubts Patterson can be replaced.

Clyburn wonders if Patterson’s detractors ever have stopped long enough to take his true measure.

“There’s a depth to Kay Patterson that a lot of people miss,” said Clyburn, a longtime Patterson political friend, fraternity brother and neighbor. “They get hung up on the rhetoric.

“They never get to the reasoning.”

Legislation to change the state constitution must be passed by a 2/3rds vote of the Senate and House of Representatives in order to put the amendment on the general election ballot for public vote in November, 2010. Please sign up today and let everyone know we value South Carolina public schools!

For anyone doubting that opportunity still exists in America, there is the story of Jaime Harrison.

Harrison is a top aide to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a job that ranks among the most influential in Congress. He has an office at the dead center of the Capitol building — a place senators would envy — offering a perfectly aligned view of the Washington Monument. On the walls hang photos of him schmoozing with celebrities, politicians and celebrity politicians, from Dave Chappelle and Bono to Bill Richardson and Barack Obama. Most days, he works on the floor of the House of Representatives, directing Clyburn’s floor staff and conferring with members of Congress to make sure Democrats have enough votes to pass key legislation.

Consider that life experience, filled with the luminaries of politics and entertainment, and then contemplate the one into which Harrison was born in Orangeburg, S.C., a poor, majority-African-American town of 13,000. Orangeburg is the place where, in 1968, three civil rights protesters were killed and 27 were wounded when police fired into a crowd gathered at South Carolina State University in what became known as the Orangeburg massacre.

Harrison, now 32, was born almost exactly eight years after the massacre to a 15-year-old mother and her high school boyfriend. It was an inauspicious start, both in geography and circumstances, and no harbinger of what was to come.

Growing up, Harrison worked as a bingo hall caller, operating the ball machine and yelling the numbers out over the bowed heads of the players, the air smoky with the smell of hot dog grease.

“The boss always wanted me to go faster so he could get more games in,” he said. “I would speed it up, and then someone would say, ‘Boy, slow your ass down!’”

With his father gone and his mother often in Atlanta, Harrison was raised by his grandparents. His grandmother, who was 38 when he was born, had unfulfilled dreams of being a nurse. She had an eighth-grade education. His grandfather had finished the fourth grade and then worked in construction, building up Hilton Head Island. The family moved several times when he was young, from a house to a trailer home, then, after a foreclosure, to his great aunt’s house, and finally to a rental home.

When the foreclosure happened — he said it was the result of fraud — Harrison made a promise to himself that if he ever made any money, he would buy his grandparents a house. He never wanted them to relive the embarrassment of the foreclosure.

Despite the frequent moves, Harrison described a near-idyllic childhood filled with loving relatives, good food and comic books.

“People tell me, ‘Man, Jaime, you were dirt poor,’” he said. “Yeah, but I loved it.”

He ate his grandmother’s sumptuous food, savoring a favorite dish of lima beans and ham hocks. He honed his reading skills, diving into Spider-Man, X-Men and his grandparents’ bills. He scored well on standardized tests, impressing teachers who had already given him good grades.

As he got older, college brochures began to arrive. Although he hadn’t heard of the Ivy League, he did know that places like Harvard and Yale were prestigious. So when Yale held an admissions session in nearby Columbia, he borrowed his grandfather’s 1978 Ford LTD and headed off. An admissions video and an a cappella performance later, he was ready to apply.

The following spring was a time of high anxiety. Each day, Harrison walked expectantly down the dirt path from his grandparents’ rented duplex to the mailbox to look for the proverbial thick envelope.

He remembers the date even today, sitting in his Capitol office in a chair he had reupholstered to his liking. “April 2, 1994,” the day he fished out a meaty envelope and tore it open, his eyes flying over the page. Accepted. With a full scholarship.

“I got in! I got in!” he hollered, leaping into the air at the curb.

His grandmother rushed out to the porch. “Boy, why you screaming?”

“I got into Yale!” He ran back up the path and described to her what the letter said.

“She knew it was something that was really important to me,” he recalled. “I don’t know if she grasped how big it was.”

He phoned his mother, Patricia Stewart, to tell her the news.

“When he called me, it was like he just won the lottery,” Stewart said. “We all [were] excited.”

Harrison isn’t the only one in Washington with an Orangeburg connection. Nearly a decade before the massacre, Harrison’s boss, Clyburn, was a leader in the burgeoning civil rights movement at South Carolina State, organizing the first sit-ins in the state.

By the time Harrison applied to Yale in the ’90s, many of the battles Clyburn’s generation had waged against the indignities of discrimination had been won. Clyburn and his contemporaries had unlocked the doors that Harrison, 30 years later, would burst through.

“That’s as it should be,” Clyburn said. “His success is what we were sacrificing for. … Jaime Harrison may be standing on my shoulders. I’m standing on someone’s shoulders, too. He’ll provide some shoulders for other people to stand on.”

Harrison’s opening weeks at Yale were rocky, filled with doubts about whether he could compete with kids from the best high schools in the country.

His freshman-year roommate, a Catholic kid from Long Island who was the son of a lawyer and a nurse, asked Harrison to read over an essay he had written.

“I read it and thought, ‘This reads like a textbook.’ It was so good. I went back and read mine and thought, ‘Oh, God, I don’t think I should be here.’” Harrison went from getting straight A’s in high school to B’s and even a C+ his first semester in college. “It shook me hard.”

He sought help from the school’s writing coaches, worked diligently and slowly watched his grades pick up. On the social front, he excelled, transcending boundaries of race and background to cultivate friends in all areas of the university. He was elected treasurer of the Yale senior class.

“He’s something very unique,” said Harvey Goldblatt, who led Harrison’s residential college at Yale. “There’s an essential decency about him — very warm, very loyal, easily able to pick up on someone’s worth as a human being. … He’s one of my great stories.”

Harrison calls Goldblatt, a Jewish professor of Medieval Slavic literature originally from Canada, his “Yale dad,” one of several men who have served as stand-ins for an absent father.

When Harrison graduated, Goldblatt presented him with an award for the student whose story was most emblematic of the Yale experience. It was pouring rain and Goldblatt took to the podium to announce the winner.

“‘Gee, I wonder who this is going to be,’” he recalled joking to the crowd. “I’ve never said that before.” Harrison was the obvious winner.

After college, Harrison returned to Orangeburg to teach at his old high school for a year, where he lavished special attention on promising young black men grasping for role models. He then moved to Washington to work with a nonprofit educational group and later enrolled in law school at Georgetown before getting the job in Clyburn’s office.

In 2004, with a law degree in hand and a solid job, he went back to Orangeburg to make good on a promise.

“When he took my mom and dad to the house, they just cried like babies,” said Stewart, Harrison’s mom. “My dad, he couldn’t stop thanking him for what he did.”

He bought his grandparents a house in a good neighborhood with enough room for his grandfather, then a diabetic amputee, to maneuver his wheelchair.

“It was like they moved from the ‘hood to Beverly Hills,” Stewart said. “It wasn’t really Beverly Hills, but it felt like it.”

At work, Harrison manages Clyburn’s floor staff, devising strategies for passing important bills. Last spring, just after Democrats took control of Congress, Harrison faced his first major test when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) moved a bill that would have curbed military operations in Iraq.

“It was a tough vote. People on the left were saying it wasn’t tough enough. People on the right were saying it was too ambitious,” he said. “I remember going into an early meeting. That first whip count was ugly.”

Passing the bill also had personal meaning for Harrison. One of the students he had taught back in Orangeburg, a young African-American named Vorn Mack, died while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2003.

“He was a good kid,” Harrison recalled.

Harrison was prepared for the legislative battle, arming himself with a diagram of the House floor, showing where each member of the whip team would be deployed to track Democratic votes.

When the vote began, Harrison watched the tally board above the House chamber. As the vote count crested 218, he began to tear up. It had passed.

“It was such an emotional thing for me,” he said. His diagram had been a success, he made his boss look good, and maybe he had done something for the other Vorn Macks in Iraq, he thought.

Had Harrison been born in a different era, he might have used his smarts and likability to become the greatest mechanic Orangeburg had ever seen or the most heroic school bus driver or the most efficient factory floor manager. Instead, he plans to run for elective office someday.

“I’ve talked to people. I’ve thought about things,” he said. “Eventually it will happen.

“I’d love to serve in Congress, but I’d also love to help change South Carolina.”

Sometimes it’s fun just to sit at your desk and await the “ping” alerting you to an e-mail. Especially during a super-charged election year.

Well the South Carolina Democratic Party wants you to know their people want to be in church on Sunday morning – not sitting around some office waiting for stragglers to file for office.

All kidding aside, I think the Democrats have a point. After all, this is South Carolina, buckle of the Bible Belt. But we have state laws that set the filing period for candidates running for a bunch of offices. By statute, the candidates file between noon on March 16 and noon on March 30. Well, this year, those dates come on Sundays.

And, I’m not good enough to do the math, but it’s got to be possible for the closing of the filing period to come on Easter Sunday. The opening fell on Palm Sunday this year.

So a short while ago, I get an e-mail from the South Carolina Democratic Party that was really addressed to state Attorney General Henry McMaster. Now, I hadn’t realized that his office had rendered an opinion that to me (if the quote is correct) is pretty unintelligible. It says, according to the Dems release: “I am unaware of any prohibitions to the various committees with whom the statements of intention of candidacy are to be filed receiving such on a Sunday in order to comply with such provision.”

Now, the Dems pretended they understood that sentence, so much so that they fired back, “Unfortunately, this opinion runs counter to South Carolina’s principles, and fails to consider that, when the ‘various committees’ accept filing, actual people have to be present regardless of their preference to be in church.” Now that I can understand. It means lots of people in South Carolina go to church on Sunday, and they’d prefer not having to worry about candidates needing to file for office.

As Carol Fowler wrote on behalf of the S.C. Democratic Party, “Having candidates file for office between 8 a.m. and noon on a Sunday may not be illegal, but it goes against the values of our state, which for a great many of us include Sunday morning worship services. I am disappointed that these values weren’t taken into consideration when you rendered your opinion.”

So, how about this: Change the silly state laws so the filing period doesn’t open and end on a Sunday.

Don’t you think this would be a good idea?

SENECA — West-Oak High School sophomore Hannah Brooks of Seneca has won a $500 savings bond for writing an essay on recycling.

Brooks was the big winner of the “Talking Trash” Recycling Essay Contest sponsored by the Oconee County Democratic Party. The contest was open to all public high school students in Oconee County.

“Let’s Talk Recycling!” focused on what is involved in the process of recycling newspapers, steel and aluminum cans. Her complete essay accompanies this story.

“I chose to do the three listed items because I remembered learning about them when going on a field trip in elementary school to a recycling center. And I recalled them telling us some of the items used in the recycling process,” Brooks said when asked why she selected those items.

The Oconee County Democratic Party sponsored the contest to give students an opportunity to enhance their research and writing skills, and through such efforts to enhance their own and their community’s awareness of the environmental benefits of recycling.

“It is especially pleasing to have a student voluntarily sign up for an academic challenge,” said Charlotte Holmes, contest coordinator. “The Democratic Party is proud to recognize Hannah, a busy student, for taking up the challenge and for reaching beyond what is just enough to get by in school.”

Students were instructed to pretend to be investigative reporters. From among a long list of items that Oconee County recycles at each of its 11 convenience centers, students were to choose three items and write about what happens to them after being deposited at a recycling center.

Following is Brooks’ winning essay:

Let’s talk recycling!

Newspaper Recycling: Ever wonder where your newspaper goes when you take it to the dump or leave it on the curb in your recycling bin? The paper collector sells it to a recycler, who then starts the recycling process.

At a paper mill, a chemical washing takes place to delete all the ink off. The paper is turned into pulp so contaminants are taken off such as tape and dirt. It is poured onto a wire to drain out and turns solid near the end of the wire. The paper is then flattened into continuous sheets of paper. The paper machine finishes a printed newspaper at a rate of 3,000 ft. per minute!

And guess what? Tomorrow when you pick up your newspaper, it will be the same newspaper previously read the week before. There are 900 tons of paper processed each day, which is equivalent to nine and a half miles high of newspaper.

Recycling Steel Cans: Removing the top, removing the bottom and flattening cans prepares steel cans to be ready for recycling. Usually called tin cans, they are actually made of very little tin and mostly steel. By flattening the cans, they take up less space, making them economical to ship.

The tin is removed from the cans through a chemical dipping process. The distilled tin cans are drained, rinsed and ready for shipping. They are now sold to dealers of steel mills to be made into new products.

Next, the tin taken off the original can is to be cleaned of paper and garbage. After being rinsed and drained, it is molded by the use of electricity. It is then used in chemical and pharmaceutical industries. It can also be alloyed to make bronze products.

So next time you decide to throw your everyday cans in the garbage… Think Recycling!

Your Aluminum: Aluminum is created in many forms to make many products. It is used in the making of drink cans, dinner trays and even door frames. It is also rolled to make “foil.” It all has the ability to be recycled.

In some states, you can exchange the cans at the store for money, but it still takes the same route from there. It is picked up at your curbside to be taken to the recycling depot.

Aluminum gets in the hands of many people: users, buyers and scrap metal dealers. It all eventually reaches a “smelter,” who then melts or shreds it into tiny pieces. They are made into ingots by the use of electricity.

Then they are sent to manufacturing plants and rolled out into sheets of aluminum where they are used in the making of many things such as aluminum cans all the way to car parts.

“What demonstrates true American values more than volunteering?  What better way to give back to our country and community than engage in service work? When our cities and our towns are in crisis, how do we rebuild them and get our neighbors back on their feet?  With volunteers-people giving their time, their care, their resources to make our neighborhoods and our nation a better place.  I am truly confounded as to why my colleagues would divide on partisan lines and defeat a bill that strengthens and provides for our national service organizations.

“This bill was approved unanimously by the Education and Labor Committee
44 to 0.  It authorizes extremely successful and effective organizations such as AmeriCorps, VISTA, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, Foster Grandparent Program, and Senior Companion Program. It also creates a new service-learning program called Summer of Service, which engages youth in service through summer volunteer opportunities.

“What do my Republican colleagues have against volunteerism?”

“It’s been said that behind every great man, there’s a great woman. Tunky Riley was definitely a great woman. As the first lady of our state, and in the Rileys’ years of public service since then, Tunky exemplified a wonderful combination of grace, warmth, and political savvy. She was as genuinely friendly toward neighborhood activists as she was toward Cabinet members and Presidents,” said Fowler. “South Carolina Democrats have always felt a great deal of affection for her, and we will miss her.”

To view the transcript, click here.

“My service in the Congress is about improving the lives of people, and especially children, in the Sixth Congressional District,” Congressman Clyburn said. “Many of the initiatives included in the Children’s Defense Fund scorecard were on the Congressional agenda because of our new leadership team’s focus on strengthening our families in meaningful ways.”

“I applaud Congressman Clyburn for his commitment to improving the lives of children in South Carolina,” said CDFAC President Marian Wright Edelman. “With 9.4 million uninsured children in America and nearly 13 million living in poverty, it is critical that we have Representatives committed to making children a priority. Congressman Clyburn is a dedicated advocate for children and has truly earned the distinction of being one of the best Representatives for children.”

The Children’s Defense Fund Action Council educates the nation about the needs of children and encourages preventative investment before they get sick or into trouble, drop out of school, or suffer family breakdown. The CDF Action Council began in 1969 and is a private, non-profit organization that has never taken government funds.

“Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a fiscally responsible and environmentally conscious energy bill that seeks to reduce our country’s dependence on foreign oil and aid those Americans struggling to pay high gas costs. H.R. 5351 comprehensively invests resources into our wind, solar, and geothermal energy systems.  Furthermore, this legislation extends tax credits to producers of cleaner burning bio-diesel and cellulosic alcohol based fuels.     

“Since President Bush took office, gas prices are up 109%, and home heating prices are up 222%.  Over the same time period, oil company profits are up 313%.  With record oil prices and surging gasoline fees limiting the mobility of our nation’s travelers, now is the time to move our nation’s energy policies in a New Direction. 

“The Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act will invest in home-grown, American-owned energy supplies, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, make America less dependent on foreign oil, and reduce global warming.  I call on President Bush to end his veto threat of this vital legislation and to join the Congress in supporting an energy bill for today and future generations.”

To view the transcript, click here.

On the Democratic side, most polls show Sen. Hillary Clinton with a comfortable lead in South Carolina, but some also show her support slipping in Iowa, giving fresh hope to Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, her main rivals.

On the Republican side, what many considered a four-way race between former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson now shapes up as a five-way contest, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee joining the party.

Huckabee dropped by North Charleston

on Friday as part of a swing through South Carolina.

He came to bask in his rising support and to accept endorsements from Charleston County Council Chairman Tim Scott and from Maurice Washington, chairman of the board of trustees of South Carolina State University.

Huckabee also discussed his nine-point plan for immigration reform, which calls for building a fence along the Mexican border by 2010, hiring more Border Patrol agents, imposing fines on employers who hire illegal immigrants, promoting immigration-law training for local police and modernizing the process of legal immigration.

He said his proposal doesn’t include amnesty and would give those here illegally 120 days to leave the country and apply to return through legal means. Those who don’t leave would be deported and have to wait 10 years to legally return. “It’s not to be harsh but rather it’s to be fair to all,” he said.

Supporters of the Fair Tax, a plan to replace the national income tax with a national sales tax, made up a good-sized chunk of the 100-plus people who crammed into a North Charleston hotel conference room to hear Huckabee.

Charleston County GOP Chairwoman Lin Bennett, a Thompson supporter, noted that Huckabee’s position as the only front-runner who has endorsed the tax gives him a built-in base here. “These Fair Tax people, wherever you go, there are gazillions of them.”

Meanwhile, other candidates are sending spouses here to solidify their support.

Former President Bill Clinton will appear here today, while Thompson’s wife Jeri plans to meet with supporters at 5:15 p.m. Monday at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant.

Huckabee said he believes his poll numbers have risen recently for several reasons, including his debate performances and a few extended televised interviews. He said martial arts star Chuck Norris’ endorsement helped, noting that almost every television network ran Norris’ endorsement spot for free as a news item, and it was the most watched video on YouTube for two days.

He also joked about another big-time endorser coming to South Carolina: Multimedia star Oprah Winfrey will appear Sunday at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia with Obama.

“I respect very much that Senator Obama has Oprah, but in a smackdown, Chuck wins every time,” he said.

While a few polls show Huckabee in the lead in South Carolina, others show a virtual dead heat among several candidates.

“There are a lot of unknowns this year, a lot of new territory,” said College of Charleston political science professor Bill Moore.

“On the Democratic side, the race pits a woman candidate and an African-American candidate,” he said. “On the Republican side, you simply don’t have any one candidate who has captured the imagination of the Republicans. On top of that, everything is front-loaded this year, so it’s just unchartered territory.”

Despite what South Carolina polls show this month, the numbers here likely will change as Iowans hold their caucus Jan. 3, followed by the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8. The GOP primary in South Carolina will be Jan. 19, and the Democratic primary will be Jan. 26.

“What’s going to impact most in South Carolina is what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Moore said. “If Hillary starts to falter, then South Carolina becomes a different ball game.”

Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and has been the top fundraiser among Democrats here, said during a Charleston visit Thursday that he’s not worried about his poll numbers here.

“I’m doing better than I was four years ago at this point, and I won the state four years ago,” he said. “If people in South Carolina know that I come from here, that I will fight for them, that I will stand up for the working, middle-class families that need a chance, we’ll do fine in South Carolina.”

Those early states present even higher stakes for the GOP hopefuls.

“I could see Fred Thompson out of it, or maybe John McCain, by the time they get to South Carolina,” Moore said. “To me, one of the questions that should be asked on every poll is who is your second choice. That can be important as you have people drop out.”
By Robert Behre for The Post and Courier

It should be no surprise that we artistic folk are generally cynical. How cynical can we be? I decided to go to the group of people I knew could demonstrate this best: my own tight-knit circle of friends.

Cory Roche, 26, put it bluntly. “I don’t trust anyone who seeks power. Power oftentimes attracts the corruptible. Democracies are inherently misguided because the majority is not always right.”

Roche is an amateur musician who composes industrial and progressive metal music. You would probably never hear his music on a S.C. public radio station, but his natural talent is undeniable. He also dabbles in photography.

Brittany Bingham, 22, an amateur writer and photographer, elaborated on Roche’s ideas. “I don’t feel like politics are what they should be,” she lamented.

“To me, it’s more about business than government. It’s supposed to be ‘for the people, by the people,’ but it’s more about the numbers: Who has the most money? Who has the dirt on whom?”

I completely agree with Bingham and Roche. America is far from the country of the free that it was once meant to be. For instance, modern Americans barely have freedom of religion, and even though I’m allowed to say I’m not Christian, I usually don’t so that I won’t be discriminated against (I hope saying it here doesn’t ruin my future career!).

So which 2008 presidential candidate offers the most hope to alternative youths with innately suspicious views on modern American society?

It’s definitely hard to choose a candidate when you feel that the state of the nation is in almost irreversible decay. As of Dec. 7, the war in Iraq has caused 3,886 tragedies in families across America, according to http://icasualties.org/oif/ (which gets its tally from the Department of Defense). The deaths of those American soldiers might seem almost irrelevant now because citizens have gotten used to their loss. The troops aren’t the only ones dying, either. According to http://www.iraqbodycount.org, roughly 78,071-85,055 civilians, including innocent women and children, have been killed. Some of these deaths were even caused by the American troops who are supposed to protect them.

And, because of this war, according to nationalpriorities.org, the nation has added over $475 billion to the national debt (already over $9 trillion, according to treasurydirect.gov).

Roche is “neither Democratic nor Republican.” He agrees “more with the Democratic positions” on the issues, though. Bingham strives to “vote for the person whose stance on the issues is most like” hers, but she “would probably vote Democratic.”

I also spoke to John Dunn, a 25-year-old amateur sketch and tattoo artist who has voted in the past two presidential elections. Dunn said that he used to ignore politics because he was skeptical of his ability to create change, but as he has grown, he has become adamant about participating in political elections. To Dunn, none of the candidates is perfect, so the election has become a choice between “the lesser of two evils” for skeptics like him. I agree, because for me, choosing a candidate to vote for is not about who has the best policies on the issues. It’s about who has the least detrimental policies.

“The Republicans thrive on trickery,” Dunn explained. “We’ve had nothing but white males in the White House, and we need diversity.” Dunn goes on to say that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is the best candidate choice for people who are liberal-minded. Dunn is “going for Hillary” because she played a major role behind Bill Clinton’s successful presidency. Dunn believes Clinton’s was one of the “finest presidential eras” due to the booming economy and low government deficit.

To Dunn and many other American skeptics, no other candidate seems as confident in his policy as Clinton is in hers. Because she has already been in the White House, Dunn feels that Clinton is more prepared to deal professionally with stressors of the presidency, especially with the support of her former-president husband.

Bingham, however, sees Clinton differently. Bingham agrees that Clinton is a strong woman and a good candidate for president, but Clinton’s tough exterior makes Bingham wary.

“If she is so strong in her beliefs, she may not be willing to admit a mistake or take other Americans’ opinions into consideration,” Bingham clarifies. “The ability to change one’s mind is a forward-thinking effort that might move this country ahead. Just look at President Bush. He has done a lot during his term without the support of the majority. I don’t want to be stuck with that for yet another four years.” Bingham therefore places her early confidence in U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, whom she considers more willing to accept and support the majority opinion on issues, even if it differs from his own.

For creative, cynical Americans (and not surprising to me), the trend seems to be to vote Democratic. Republicans are too conservative for our open minds and liberal ideas on personal issues such as abortion and gay marriage. But each candidate has a different appeal to different people based on his or her actual stances on the issues. That fact just mimics the nationwide trend.

I concur with Bingham’s comment, “Having two candidates, such as Obama, an African-American, and Clinton, a woman, leads us to the possibility of taking this country in a different direction,” (which, in my opinion, we desperately need). Bingham goes on to say, “Hopefully, if either is elected, he or she will put the choice in the issues back into the hands of the American people.”

After all, “What the government does directly affects the country’s citizens,” Bingham concludes. I truly hope that the American public is smart enough to agree with us and choose a president with the courage and ideals needed to pull us out of our diminishing societal situation.

By MARESA WHITEHEAD

The Aiken Standard

U.S. Sen. John McCain was at a luncheon yesterday at the Trinity restaurant in Hilton Head, SC. to celebrate Veterans Day and campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. But in a meeting with supporters, the U.S. Navy veteran and former prisoner of war was not an “officer and a gentleman.”

A woman asked McCain, “How do we beat the b—-?”

McCain, standing in front of a larger-than-life photo of himself in military aviator gear, laughed. (more…)

The South Carolina Democratic Party will host the 2007 Federal Delegation Reception Tuesday, Nov. 27 at the Law Offices of Nelson Mullins located on the 17th Floor of the Meridian Building at1329 Main Street in Columbia, SC. US Congressmen James E. Clyburn and John Spratt will be the honored guests for this event, which begins with a Hosts’ Reception at 5:30 p.m.

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler will host this event along with co-hosts Steve Benjamin, Mayor Bob Coble, Ell Close, Joe Erwin, Don Fowler, Dick Harpootlian, Governor Jim Hodges, Bill Nettles, Marva Smalls and Inez and Samuel Tenenbaum.

Ready to party? Well, for more information on joining the Federal Delegation Host Committee or to purchase tickets, please contact Ashley Medbery at 1.800.841.1817 or amedbery@scdp.org.

To purchase tickets online, visit: http://www.scdp.org/events/2007/11/27/delegationreception/register/

Highlights from Clyburn’s speech:

“Not one dime of this request will go to any civilian facility in South Carolina or anywhere else in the United States of America.

“Every single dime of this is to be spent on defense facilities to the benefit of those children whose mothers and fathers are off defending our way of life, so that their children can have the same kind of opportunities that our children have.

“And I find it a little bit insulting that we said we were going to reserve this kind of activity for the elite and not make it available to the children of the men and women who are preserving our way of life. We know who is fighting this war. Rural, low-income families are carrying the burden of this war.”

Eggs and Bacon with Edwards and Clyburn will be held at Mac’s on Main, located at
1710 Main Street in Columbia. Doors open 9:30 a.m. There is a suggested donation of $25 to help Bill Clyburn win Senate District 25.

Co-Hosts: Steve Benjamin, Mike Evatt, Fayrell Furr, Representative Chris Hart, Representative Lonnie Hosey, Chairman Leon Howard, John and Jill Moylan, Tally Parham, Matthew and Beth Richardson, Representative Bakari Sellers and Pete Strom

Do you have a question or two that you’ve been wanting to ask the South Carolina Democratic Party Chair? Well, you won’t have to wait much longer.

The South Carolina Democratic Party will host a Yellow Dog Online Chat with Carol Fowler Nov. 28 from 6 to 7 p.m. Stay tuned for more details.

This bill was designed to protect 10.6 million children whose families cannot afford private insurance, whereas the current program protects only 6.6 million.

The cost of the bill for one year would approximately equal the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for one month, but President Bush claims that is far too much money for the U.S. government to spend on children’s health care.

Even more appalling is the fact that our four S.C. Republican congressmen and our two senators voted against this bill, agreeing with President Bush not to add 70,000 S.C. minors to the 61,000 currently insured under SCHIP.

Pressure must be put on our Republican congressmen, urging them to support this legislation when it comes up for a veto override vote. They need to learn that they are not representing their constituencies by denying health insurance to our children.

We have the power now to put pressure on our congressmen.

I urge everyone to exercise their power through calls, letters, e-mails and, just as important, their vote.

OPAL BROWN