Jeffrey A. Young Jeffrey A. Young Org. Comm. Org. Comm. LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S RACE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S RACE

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S RACE
The Facts
A debate over who voters should elect to look after the state’s seniors devolved into a battle over whether a 30-year-old Democratic state representative or a 67-year-old Republican former state attorney general has the experience and vision needed to lead South Carolina.
In Monday night’s ETV debate, Republican Henry McMaster trouped himself as the experienced candidate with the ruling and development needed to step in for the governor “in case something happens,” to run the state’s $40 million Office on Aging and to preside over the state Senate. “Presiding over the Senate’s 46 members, some powerful, been there a long time? Not easy,” said McMaster of Columbia. “They must have respect for that person to get things done.”
But Bakari Sellers, also an attorney and a state House member since 2007, said he is the only candidate who has “actually created a job for someone other than themselves.” “We have an ‘experience’ discussion, and the irony is, I’m some 30 years the junior, but I think I actually bring more experience to the table.”
Sellers said that as a state representative, he helped bring 2,800 jobs to Bamberg, Barnwell and Orangeburg counties when a manufacturer moved to Denmark, Sellers’ hometown. “I can’t take credit, like the governor does, for all those jobs,” Sellers said. “But I’ve been in that room before, and that’s the irony in this whole discussion about experience.” Sellers also noted he has served in the House for two years longer than Gov. Nikki Haley before the Republican ran for governor, beating McMaster in the GOP primary.
McMaster touted his four years as a U.S. attorney under President Ronald Reagan and his eight years as state attorney general, saying he worked with the Legislature to expand the investigative powers of the state grand jury and prosecuted a high-profile investment fraud case. McMaster said enlisting nonprofits and volunteer organizations to help provide services to seniors is part of his plan if elected.
As attorney general, McMaster said he recruited volunteer attorneys to prosecute criminal domestic violence cases in special courts that he set up for that purpose “at no additional cost to the taxpayers.” “That is the spirit of volunteerism that we can use,” McMaster said. “We can’t look away from that.”
Criticizing McMaster’s plan, Sellers said “volunteers are no solution.” “Hoping that someone comes and maybe picks up the senior to take them to their doctor’s appointment or to church, that’s not a vision,” Sellers said. “Volunteers being caregivers and having to do it out of their own pocket without any support from the state, that’s not a vision.”
Sellers said he wants to build a statewide transportation system for seniors and would push for tax credits for seniors and their caregivers, raise the homestead exemption, and make priorities of preventing fraud against seniors and Alzheimer’s research.
Saying he too would work for tax relief and prevention of fraud against seniors, McMaster said Sellers’ plan to push for the expansion of the state’s Medicaid insurance program for the poor as part of the Affordable Care Act is “expanding government ... a bad, old idea.”
Instead, McMaster said the state "could save a lot of money” with “new computer systems and programs that are coming out, a tele-medicine program, where you can have a doctor come to your house. If you have cellphone, you can look at the doctor and you can show him your hurt arm or show him your hurt eye. ... There are a number of companies out there that are doing that now. Why don't we do something like that?"
Sellers broke in, saying, “We actually did have a pilot program for telepsychiatry in Bamberg County. You know that hospital shut down. We would be able to reopen it if we expanded Medicaid.
“But more importantly, the hypocrisy of that statement, it fills the room; it’s overwhelming,” Sellers said, criticizing McMaster for not wanting to expand Medicaid when he received state health care benefits. “When you get sick, you get to go and give your insurance card to the doctor, but when somebody gets sick in Greenville, or Charleston or Horry County, they’re on the brink of bankruptcy. “Not only that, Henry, but you’ve been receiving so many benefits in government benefits over your career, that there are some welfare queens out there that are probably jealous.”
McMaster said he measures progress by “how many people don’t need Medicaid – that is, how many are working, who have good-paying jobs.”
Throughout the debate, Sellers was quick with rebuttals, using every opportunity to critique McMaster, who has a 20-point lead over Sellers, according to a recent poll.
McMaster did not address Sellers directly, sticking to his talking points touting his experience, career as an attorney and his limited-government philosophy.
Neither candidate said he was running for lieutenant governor as a stepping stone to higher political office.
The Nov. 4 general election will be the last time anyone runs independently for the position. Starting in 2018, the governor and lieutenant governor will have to run as a team.
McMaster emphasized he would team well with Haley, who he supported in 2010 after his primary loss to the Lexington Republican. Asked whether he’s planning a 2018 run for governor, McMaster said four years is “a long way off. ... I'm running because I love South Carolina.”
In closing, Sellers said people tell him he can’t win because he’s a “young, black Democrat,” but he says there is a clear contrast between him and McMaster. “Henry’s gray hair doesn't denote leadership and vision,” Sellers said. “All I’m asking for is a chance.”
“By the way, most of the people who need that help do have gray hair, like I do,” McMaster countered in closing, adding voters are looking for “experience and track record.” “I’m the man with that record and that experience.”
The Opinion

Bakari was much mort comfortable, articulate and definitely more knowledgeable. Now whether his outstanding attributes will translate into votes is the question. Both are great men but with entirely different philosophies. Sellers wants bigger government and McMaster wants smaller government. There is clearly a different philosophy between the two.
I think Bakari is even more so the stonger candidate because upon research I found that he was arrested for DUI while serving as a representative in the SC Legislature and your driver's license was suspended multiple times for failure to pay traffic tickets and failure to appear in court in SC, NC, and Ga. Now don’t misunderstand my reasoning. I believe this makes thim the stronger candidate because it shows him to be not only human but also stands behind why he is so adamant about his positions and points. He is obviously not perfect. He obviously makes and made mistakes which he not only lives up and takes the blame for as a man but he also does what is necessary to reconcile those same mistakes. I personally think you can’t fix a problem until you fully understand that problem. And Sellers has experienced and dealt with the problems he’s trying to fix first hand. He also fully understands the concept of vision. You can’t know where you going unless you are aware of where you have been. And He proved that even in that case some people don’t where they are going because they are too focused on where they have been. What you have done in the past can only account so much for the future. There is even a point in the debate where McMaster says that jobs are the major factor in a lot of the problems for SC today but he isn’t personally creating any jobs to combat that problem or personally helping anyone to get a job.

South Carolina Gubernatorial Debate

The Facts

The five candidates for Governor in South Carolina squared off in the second and final televised debate, televised on My40 from McAlister Auditorium at Furman University. The focus of tonight's debate was education and health care. Incumbent first-term Governor Nikki Haley boosted her lead over her fellow campaigners into double-digits after last week's first debate in Charleston, according to a New York Times/CBS poll. State senator Vincent Sheheen is the Democrat Party candidate, Haley's next closest contender and the man she defeated by nearly five points in 2010 to become governor. He spent much of the evening continuing his strategy from the first debate: trying to attack Haley's record as governor, and draw distinctions between their platforms and vision for the state. “It’s insane for Governor Haley to send our own tax dollars to other states," Sheheen said, referring to Haley's decision not to expand the state's Medicaid program under Obamacare. "I don't care if an idea comes from a Republican or a Democrat. If it helps South Carolina, I'm for it." On the issue of whether domestic violence abusers should have guns, Gov. Haley seemed to deflect the question, saying "Domestic violence is something that really does plague South Carolina. But it's something that we need to go deeper in. It's a cultural issue, it's a generational issue, and we want to get into those communities." Independent Tom Ervin, Libertarian Steve French, and United Citizens candidate Dr. Morgan Bruce Reeves also joined the lively debate, which lasted just under an hour. All three candidates are polling less than five percent. At the end, the back and forth between the two most prominent candidates continued, and sucked up much of the attention in an only halfway-full auditorium crowd.

The Opinion

My opinion on this matter isn’t too much geared toward the topics. It is more geared toward the fact that all focus is being thrown on the Democratic and Republican parties when there are 3 other parties in the run. The two leading candidates are not our only choices. There are three other choices. Yes, I know everyone is dismissing them as having not chance, but it is this thinking that makes them have no chance. If we looked at these other candidates like we look at the leading two, we might find that we agree with them on enough issues to select them and if we gave them the same consideration as the top two, the top two might not be the top two. The two major parties monopolize the media, and in many cases, the funding, which leads to third party candidates to be overlooked, even candidates with clear ideas on how to solve issues and alternative solutions to the "same old, same old" that we get from the Republicans and Democrats. The debates, public forums designed to show the pubic the choices out there, are actually a great forum for all candidates to connect and thus resonate with the public. Also what often happens when only the Republican and Democrat choices are chosen for the debates, is the debates devolve into an hour long set of attack ads with very little policy and real issue getting discussed.