|
Date Published: October 22, 2004
Leventis vs. Jones
State Senate candidates go head-to-head at Nettles
|
| 
Keith Gedamke / The Item
Incumbent State Sen. Phil Leventis, left, and GOP
challenger Dickie Jones discuss issues during the League
of Women Voters’ debate Thursday night at the University
of South Carolina Sumter.
| |
By LESLIE CANTU
Item Staff Writer
lesliec@theitem.com
The 150 or so on hand at the University of South Carolina
Sumter's Nettles Building listened intently throughout the entire
Senate District 35 debate Thursday night, but during the very last
minute of exchanges, couldn't help but let a quiet chuckle
escape.
Phil Leventis, a Democrat who has served in the
Senate for 24 years, turned the accusations of Republican challenger
Dickie Jones against him and asked where Jones had been for the last
24 years, saying he had asked Jones for help 15 years ago to close
the hazardous waste landfill near Lake Marion, and Jones had said he
thought those decisions should be made in Columbia.
"Not
true," Jones mouthed to the crowd as he stepped out from behind his
podium, shaking his head.
"It's absolutely true," Leventis
interrupted himself to retort, marking the end to an hour of
back-and-forth rhetoric over who did what, when they did it and what
they'll do in the future.
Jones continued to pound his
message, that Leventis has been in the Statehouse through five
different governors, from both parties, yet failed to produce for
Sumter and Lee. He painted Leventis as a legislator following the
lead of interest groups instead of the needs of his hometown
constituents.
Leventis accused Jones of producing simplistic
answers to complex problems that require careful thought and
compromise. He chided Jones for negative campaigning and distorting
the record and said in all his time working in the community he has
never bumped into Jones.
|
| 
| At the end of
the debate, Laurel Suggs, the president of the League of Women
Voters of South Carolina and the moderator, invited voters to go to
http://www.dnet.org/ for more information about
state and federal level candidates.
During the debate,
Leventis and Jones answered 12 questions, some submitted by audience
members, and gave both opening and closing statements.
On
the issue of making changes to ensure affordable childcare that
prepares youths for school, Jones said that every $1 spent on early
childhood education saves between $4 and $9 later on. There's an
important place for childcare in institutions like churches, he
said, which do more than simply impart "sterile
academics."
The two agreed on the importance of funding early
childhood education, Leventis said, with the difference being that
the current Republican administration is actually cutting early
childhood programs like First Steps and CHIPS, the Children's Health
Insurance Program.
"Our leadership in Columbia doesn't want
to fund the CHIPS program," Leventis said. "Healthy children learn.
Unhealthy children don't learn."
Jones repeated that Leventis
has served in Columbia through five administrations and asserted he
has never introduced meaningful education legislation.
The
two sharply differed on whether the state needs a mandatory seat
belt law.
Leventis said he opposed the mandatory law,
preferring to fully staff the state Highway Patrol. Underfunding the
Highway Patrol and the highways are more of a problem than adding an
extra law for those understaffed troopers to enforce, he said. He
said he also advocated requiring driver education in high
school.
A mandatory seat belt law would save 100 lives a
year, Jones said, as well as 1,100 injuries and $149 million in
costs, and would actually bring the state $11 million in federal
funding.
"The Highway Patrol says we need to have it," Jones
said. "We have one of the worst death rates in the United States on
our highways."
Although money popped up in nearly every
answer, neither candidate said he would sign a pledge promising not
to raise taxes.
"I really typically do not sign a pledge,"
Jones said. He refuses to allow himself to become handcuffed before
he even takes office, he said, but added that every tax dollar
collected represents a little piece of the taxpayers' freedom being
taken away.
"When people invest in their communities with the
dollars not taken from them by government, the whole pie gets
bigger," Jones said.
The economy became vibrant, he said,
because the government didn't tax people when it had a
deficit.
"If the focus is on Sumter and Lee county and you
think Sumter's economy is vibrant, then you must be out of touch,"
Leventis said, turning around two of Jones' themes. "You can't
discuss taxes without discussing services."
Jones struck
back, latching onto a story Leventis told about a local employer he
had helped.
"You can't take credit for saving 50 jobs, but
at the same time say our economy isn't vibrant," Jones said.
The two didn't stop at attacking each other, though. Jones
dragged Patty Wilson, the director of the Sumter Community Vision,
into the debate, saying she hasn't had proactive leadership from
Leventis and encouraged people to ask her about that after the
debate.
Leventis agreed that people should ask Wilson her
opinion, saying he's been involved with the Visioning process from
the beginning and his company, Dixie Beverage Co., has donated money
to the cause.
"I'm working on it each and every day. Simple
words don't change that. Simple, negative words don't change that,"
Leventis said.
After the debate, Wilson diplomatically said
that both men have been involved.
"I think what both of them
are saying is absolutely correct," she said.
Jones saved one
of his sharpest attacks for a question about protecting South
Carolina's natural resources.
Leventis promoted the
Conservation Bank Act he helped pass, a program through which the
state purchases easements on property, allowing the owners to
continue living there but ensuring the land will not be developed.
"I have been strongly in favor of planning but not
state-directed planning," Leventis said.
Jones asserted that
in previous sessions Leventis has supported state planning and said
he did not believe the government should tell people what to do with
their land.
Jones also used this question to slip in a barb
on the recent recommendation by the Legislative Delegation to reject
the move to new electronic voting machines. The delegation asked the
Sumter County Election Commission to stay with the current voting
system because of concerns over whether local workers could be fully
trained before the Nov. 2 election. The board heeded the
recommendation, costing taxpayers $185,000 in federal funding that
would have paid for the machines. Leventis, the chairman of the
delegation, said there were also concerns about the accuracy of the
new machines.Jones said Leventis had essentially said, "We, the
smart people in Columbia, will decide for you, the dumb people in
Sumter, who can't even use voting machines, how you will use your
property."
Jones said he doesn't believe in Columbia telling
people how to use property but does support the right-to-farm bill,
a bill that would allow the state Department of Health and
Environmental Control to set uniform standards for where poultry
farms could locate. Leventis countered that he is the one who
supports local planning.
On the issue of tort reform, Jones,
an attorney, said he supports changes in the laws, saying doctors
and businesspeople have cried out for years for help because they
live in fear of a ruinous lawsuit.
Leventis scoffed at such a
simplistic answer and suggested lawsuits might not be the
problem.
"Some physicians I've talked to say it's not a tort
problem they have; it's a reimbursement problem they have," Leventis
said. The final answer to this thorny problem won't be simple,
Leventis said.
Nonsense, Jones replied, saying he couldn't
even discern a clear answer in Leventis' reply to the
question.
"I'm in favor of tort reform," Jones
said.
"I don't pander to you and say 'yes' and let you go
home thinking all is well," Leventis said.
The two will next
meet at a forum at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the South Hope Center, along
with the candidates for mayor of Sumter, sheriff and clerk of court
of Sumter County and Sumter County Council District 7.
The
next debate at the Nettles Building auditorium on the campus of the
University of South Carolina Sumter will be at 7 p.m. Monday,
between the mayoral candidates, Mayor Joe McElveen and Whit
Whitaker.
E-mail
to a friend Previous
Page |
October 22, 2004 
