Saturday, May 25, 2013
Roan Garcia-Quintana says criticisms aimed at him are "desperate."
UPDATED 9:20 P.M. Tim Pearson sent Patch the following statement: "Ms. Sosanie, Vince Sheheen, and the Democrat Party weren't concerned about how this country viewed South Carolina when their leader made racial and then misogynist attacks on the governor, nor when he compared her to Hitler's girlfriend. They weren't concerned when their colleague, Phil Bailey, racially slurred her. And they were completely silent when a leading Democrat legislator referred to Nikki Haley, an Indian-American, as someone who wasn't a minority but just 'a conservative with a tan.' Their faux outrage is just that - faux, political, and as uninteresting to South Carolinians as where they want to take our state." -------------------- The controversial volunteer …
Friday, May 24, 2013
Campaign says Dems haven't acted on those who used racial epithets against her.
UPDATED 3:50 p.m: SC Democratic Chair Jamie Harrison has weighed in on the growing controversy around Mauldin resident Roan Garcia-Quintana's involvement with Nikki Haley's re-election team: "Phil Bailey apologized for a joke that was clearly in poor taste. Mr Quintana has been unapologetic about his opposition to "mixing races" and spent his career leading organizations that defended Jim Crow laws and have been identified as white nationalist groups. Nikki Haley appointing an accused white supremacist to her campaign committee is appalling and no joke for the people of South Carolina." ------------------------------------------ Over the past week, several media outlets have reported that one of the volunteers for Gov. Nikki Haley's re-…
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
But Democrats say she's not sincere.
In a Statehouse press conference on Tuesday, Gov. Nikki Haley called on the Senate to pass ethics legislation approved in the House earlier this month. Haley was joined at the press conference by the co-chairs of the Ethics Reform Commission, Travis Medlock and Henry McMaster as well as Attorney General Alan Wilson. “We have the blueprint. We need the eagerness and the will,” Haley said. The governor said that after the budget is approved she is hoping that ethics can be passed. She also is optimistic the Department of Administration legislation she’s been pushing for three years will finally become law. Haley rejected the notion that legislature can’t do more than one big thing per session. “At what point can we do multiple things in a …
Monday, May 20, 2013
Gov. Haley's husband Michael was deployed in January.
Governor Nikki Haley's husband Michael has returned home for two weeks of leave from his deployment in Afghanistan, the governor's office said on Monday. The First Gentleman was deployed on January 10 for a tour of 11 months and his leave was granted by his commanding officers. Two weeks is a customary amount of time for leave for a soldier in Haley's position. As a result of her husband's return, the governor cleared her public schedule for the week, including a scheduled speech in Mount Pleasant on Monday morning.
Latest controversy has legislators split.
Last week the state airplane became a source of controversy yet again. Democrats accused Gov. Nikki Haley of misusing the state plane and the governor's staff provided documentation that she had not. The Democrats countered by saying that even if the governor had not violated the letter of the law, she had violated it in spirit. The state senate then spent much of an afternoon debating whether or not the Budget Control Board should look into simply selling the planes. As has been noted before, just about any part of the state can be reached in a few hours by car and the state could always charter a plane when it was absolutely necessary. Selling the two planes the state owns would probably net the state a significant windfall. The two …
Friday, May 17, 2013
Biggest month-to-month drop in 25 years.
The unemployment rate in South Carolina fell from 8.4 percent in March to 8.0 in April, according to the latest report from the Department of Employment and Workforce. The month-to-month decrease is the largest since May of 1987 and the overall unemployment rate is now the lowest it's been since October 2008. Since April 2012 more than 26,000 jobs have been added to South Carolina's economy. All 46 counties added jobs in the last month and three counties--Charleston, Greenville and Lexington--now have unemployment rates below 6 percent. Four counties saw their rates drop a full point since March--Marion, Horry, Barnwell and York. "This drop in unemployment is yet another piece of great news for South Carolina," said Governor Nikki Haley…
Thursday, May 16, 2013
But Haley said the charges are baseless and use of plane was approved by State Ethics Commission.
UPDATED: 4:45 p.m. The state planes are once again a source of controversy. After Democrats accused Gov. Nikki Haley of using a state plane to transport a videographer for political purposes, the spokesman for the governor said she violated no ethics laws. Rob Godfrey, citing Cathy Hazlewood of the State Ethics Commission in a February email, said, “A videographer is a legitimate expense for the Governor’s office, so it is also a legitimate expense to be paid from her campaign funds pursuant to 8-13-1348(A).” Sen. Joel Lourie (D-Richland) who was one of four Democrats at a Statehouse press conference on Thursday morning, said that though Haley may not be in violation of the letter of the law, she was breaking the spirit of it. Lourie …
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Measure had bi-partisan support.
Rob Godfrey, the spokesman for Gov. Nikki Haley, told Patch on Thursday that she will sign the so-called "Boland Bill" that came out of the legislature. The bill was borne out of an incident at Charleston's Ashley Hall School in February when Alice Boland pointed a gun a school officials. The gun did not go off. It was later learned that Boland had been adjudicated as mentally ill and had threatened to kill George W. Bush. The legislation received bi-partisan support in both chambers. It passed the House 87-0 (with 34 members not voting) and the Senate 35-6. The only six votes against the bill were by Republicans: Lee Bright, Kevin Bryant, Tom Corbin, Larry Grooms, Shane Martin and Danny Verdin. Attorney General Alan Wilson was an early …
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Movement Fund makes first ad buy.
UPDATED: The comments of Tim Pearson were added after initial publication. Even though a potential rematch against Democrat Vincent Sheheen is 18 months away, the first campaign ad of Gov. Nikki Haley's re-election bid is set to hit South Carolina airwaves net week, according to an article in Politico. The ad is paid for by The Movement Fund, a PAC that supports the governor and has raised over $500,000. The ads will appear in Charleston, Greenville and Myrtle Beach television markets at a cost estimated to be $130,000. They arrive before Haley has confirmed she'll seek a second term, although she has set up fundraising teams across the state. Tim Pearson, Haley's Senior Advisor told Patch, "The Movement Fund ads will be asking the public…
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
ACS regional office will employ 10 at outset.
ACS, a Wisconsin-based firm that serves the auto industry, announced Wednesday it plans a regional office in Greenville, creating 10 new jobs. The company serves such industry leaders as Cummins, Caterpillar, Daimler, Harley Davidson, GE, John Deere, Navistar and Tognum, and specializes in the comprehensive design, construction, integration, and commissioning of complex industrial, R&D and manufacturing facilities. Headquartered in Madison, Wis. ACS has offices in China and England, in addition to its presence in South Carolina. The company will locate operations in approximately 4,000 square feet at 55 East Camperdown Way in Greenville, upfitting the space to accommodate its engineering, planning, sales, marketing and administrative …
Ken
10:33 pm on Saturday, May 25, 2013
"Governor Haley appointing and standing by Mr. Garcia-Quintana as a co-chair of her campaign sends a signal to businesses and people in this state and around the country that SC is ok with his kind of hurtful, divisive, racist thinking." This deserved repeating. Nikki Haley is the worst governor in the nation yet without a doubt the fools here will re-elect her. more ›