Pig incident hurts Sanford with agenda

OUR VIEW: Incident deepens divide between GOP leaders

When lawmakers return to Columbia today for a final week of legislative business, the stench will be gone -- but the lingering impact of this past week's budget feud offers anything but the sweet smell of cooperation.

A day after the GOP-dominated House of Representatives overrode 105 of Gov. Mark Sanford's vetoes, the governor decided to put on a show. He personally brought live pigs into the Statehouse to make a point about pork-barrel spending, but, as The Greenville News reported, "ended up with a bipartisan firestorm hot enough for a barbecue."

If the governor wanted to make a point, he did. But it may not be the point he wanted to make -- particularly since one of the pigs promptly defecated on the marble floor of House lobby after Sanford put them down.

Sanford earlier this year raised eyebrows when his executive budget proposed deep and controversial cuts in University of South Carolina regional campuses, the Clemson University Extension Service and nearly every aspect of state government. Some Republicans praised his limited-government vision, particularly in tight times.

But Sanford as yet has not learned how to translate his vision into legislative reality. With a Republican governor and GOP majorities in both houses of the Legislature for the first time in modern times, the prospects for cooperation are supposed to be good.

Yet on Thursday it was GOP legislative leaders joining with Democrats in blasting the governor for his antics and insisting the lawmakers had done a good job with the 2004-05 budget.

For one, the GOP legislative leadership is not happy about being portrayed as pork-barrel spenders. House Speaker David Wilkins was angry.

"Insulting" and "childish," he told his hometown paper, The Greenville News. "This is beneath the dignity of the Governor's Office, and I am embarrassed for him."

Joining in the chorus of criticism, not surprisingly, was Minority Leader James Smith, D-Columbia. "I don't know if (Sanford) has any credibility or reputation left that gives him any ability to lead."

Of course, the governor sees things differently.

He told The Greenville News his effort to inject humor into a serious constitutional issue over an unbalanced budget hadn't backfired, despite legislators' outrage. "I think the average guy out there will get it," he said.

Not really, governor.

While it's easy enough to get a knee-jerk reaction from taxpayers about government and their impressions of its waste, the GOP Legislature being criticized by the governor has not exactly been throwing money at the state's problems. Wilkins and others see themselves as fiscally responsible, having themselves been criticized, for example, by Democrats for refusing to spend pledged dollars on education.

The visit by the governor's porkers is simply going to further muddy the water in relations between GOP leaders in the Legislature and executive branch.

As House Majority Leader Rick Quinn, a Republican who voted to sustain a number of Sanford's vetoes, said, the incident does nothing but make it harder for Sanford to get his agenda passed.

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