First-year legislative success crucial, ex-governors say

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For new governors, it's a little longer, a potentially golden first legislative session where their campaign visions have the best, and sometimes only, shot at political immortality.

"That honeymoon is when you take on the tough issues," said former Gov. Dick Riley of Greenville. "Then, you have the reaction from that.

There's no time like that first year."

Other former governors agreed in interviews with The Greenville News.

Unlike South Carolina's new governor, Mark Sanford, they emerged from the Legislature and knew the ground, where the mines were buried, who you could turn your back on, who you couldn't. Sanford says necessity forces him to take a more deliberate tack.

To Jim Hodges, the 1999-2003 governor, "You never have more political capital than in those first six months. That's when you get your signature pieces of legislation done. Everyone has that warm and fuzzy feeling about the new governor and the Legislature and the overall leadership of the state are much more willing to work with you when you're new."

John West, who was governor from 1971-75, cited "a honeymoon period where you can tell the people you've got a mandate, so the first session is really critical."

"Historically, people tend to allow a new governor to put forward an agenda as a sounding board and try to support him as much as they can," said Sen. John Matthews, D-Bowman, who has served under six governors over 28 years. "Once you see if that agenda is workable or not, then you start making the hard decisions.

"You're always more willing to give the new guy a chance than the one who's been there awhile," Matthews said, citing often conflicting personal political goals.

Then it's downhill

No, it doesn't get better after the first session.

There are reasons for this, built into South Carolina's political system and culture.

A governor takes office with goodwill and a mandate of varying strength, depending on margin of victory and the power of his legislative allies — and opponents.

That's the first year.

The second year, all 170 members of the General Assembly are on the ballot. Distracted by their own campaigns and cautious because of them, they are less likely to cast votes that could boomerang in the June primaries or November.

"Next, you're running or on your way out," Riley said. "That's why you have to get it while you can."

By the third year, opponents of the governor are beginning to stir, and in the fourth year, the governor is in full-blown re-election mode.

"That says it very well," West said.

Incoming governors tend to understand the dynamics because most have been creatures of the Legislature.

Since World War II, only two governors, James F. Byrnes and Donald Russell, did not emerge from the General Assembly, but each had stellar careers on the national stage and deep insight into South Carolina and the functioning of its dominant Legislature.

The state's new governor breaks the pattern.

Sanford, a Lowcountry developer, spent three terms in the U.S. House but entered the 2002 campaign as a neophyte in state politics and government. He prides himself on being a political outsider.

Early criticism

ù Critics, including some fellow Republicans, have lamented what they said was inattention to a legislative agenda, a lack of direction.

Sanford has been slower to aggressively push a first-year agenda from the wide-ranging shopping list outlined in his campaign and initial State of the State address on Jan. 22.

But recently, he has shown new assertiveness with the Legislature.

Sanford is now steering through a deeply divided GOP-held Legislature a 53-cent-a pack cigarette tax hike, combined with a future reduction of the state income tax rate's top bracket to 5 percent from 7. The tobacco levy would create a stable funding source for Medicaid, the budget's fastest-growing item, and the income tax reduction — a core campaign issue — is part of his plan to build wealth in South Carolina.

Within days, his other signature issue will hit the Statehouse: restructuring state government through streamlining, including eliminating all elected statewide offices except governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

A successful legislative agenda "is important, obviously, in politics and in governance," he said.

It's not an inviolable rule.

To Sanford it still remains a more gradual process of "getting your feet wet."

Citing a slow legislative start by Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell, 1987-95, Sanford noted that Campbell's handling of the recovery from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 provided renewed clout "and moved to a different level." Campbell, who had to deal with a Democratic Legislature, went on to win a major overhaul of the state's decentralized government, a process that Sanford aims to complete.

New obstacles

On a personal level, Sanford said he must deal with an economy at a 50-year low, making "everything incredibly different" whether or not it deals with funding.

Second, "I'm a new face in Columbia, and that has advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are that you don't know where the potholes are in the road because you haven't been down it before, you don't know all the personalities.

In his case, Sanford said he first had to get his people in place on staff and in the agencies and, in the process, get to know the legislative players: "A new administration without institutional ties to the Legislature has to do that."

Sanford sees his administration gaining strength as his agenda emerges, even though the legislative session is more than half over.

His efforts now are directing as bridging "a disconnect" between what he views as support from the public and "where the Legislature is."

Acknowledging that as part of the system, Sanford said, "My ability to match that disconnect and pull the right levers, know that right folks, push the right buttons, is something that will take time for me because I've got to get to know the cast of characters."

House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, isn't sold on a jackrabbit start as essential to a governor securing a favorable place in history.

"It's important to remember that governors are elected for four years, so if people are too harsh after the first year and say, 'You didn't get this or that done,' you've got to remember" there are three more years.

"I do know that (Republican Gov.) David Beasley came out of the gate very fast and got welfare reform and other issues passed, so he gained a lot of momentum the first year. That would be why you'd like to see it, but it's not absolutely critical," Wilkins said.

Fast starts

For West, his fast start was a management review study, scoffed at by some lawmakers, that saved $100 million over four years and became a model for the future Grace Commission that sought to pare down waste in the federal government.

Riley sought and won a grab-bag of education programs, from kindergarten expansion to a program for poor 4-year-olds.

It was his effort to shift Public Service Commission members to merit selection from being elected by the General Assembly that set off "a real fight, taking on the longtime leadership, especially in the Senate, to eliminate powerful legislators from being involved in lawsuits there." Riley won.

His successes set the stage for winning approval of a constitutional amendment allowing governors to seek a second term.

Campbell pushed insurance reform and economic development incentives. His successor Beasley won a major property tax rollback. Hodges, a Democrat, scored early with a state lottery and First Steps, an early childhood health-education program.

Similarly, Byrnes, the former U.S. senator and top World War II aide to President Roosevelt, quickly pushed for legislation against the Ku Klux Klan, a 3 percent sales tax to fund a $75 million bond issue to build new schools, a consolidation of the state's hundreds of school districts.

"Pretty important stuff," said Walter Edgar, University of South Carolina author-historian, "and Byrnes got what he asked for."

Governors have to go against the grain in some cases.

West said, "Many of these legislators think they're as smart or smarter than the governor, so they're going to look on his programs with some skepticism, so they need pushes, they need a little personal attention." The latter can include the type of politics Sanford has said he eschews, such as giving a legislator an appointment for a supporter in exchange for his vote.

"It is horse-trading, but it's also compromise," West said.

Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.