ELECTION 2006

Groups could sway voters

GOP organizations might get more powerful if chosen candidates win

By AARON GOULD SHEININ

asheinin@thestate.com

ELECTION 2006

Tuesday’s primary election amounts to no less than a battle for the soul of the S.C. Republican Party.

Mark Sanford’s name will appear only once on the GOP primary ballot, but the incumbent governor and his philosophies will dominate races across the state.

Less spending, limited government and school choice are barometers being used to measure the credentials of Republican candidates. Three separate groups — although critics say they aren’t separate at all — have emerged as major players this election in selecting and endorsing candidates with whom they agree, and denouncing those with whom they do not.

S.C. Club for Growth, South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives in Action are aiming to elect candidates that buy into their belief system, which so closely mirrors Sanford’s as to have been lifted from his campaign material.

Agree and you are a “true Republican.” Oppose them and you are a “RINO” — a Republican in Name Only, the preferred negative label of the new wave.

The organizations and their causes have nearly as much at stake Tuesday as the candidates: Win, and see your influence soar and your issues gain traction in a recalcitrant state government.

Lose, and be prepared to embrace obscurity.

The three groups have similar platforms and support, and the cross-pollination of their advocacy of certain candidates projects an image of collaboration.

Their connections and methods have raised legal concerns about campaign funding and have sparked one federal lawsuit.

The story of the groups’ rise is partly a coming-of-age tale, as the Republican Party veers toward total domination of the state’s political scene, and partly an early-warning system: Is the party growing so large it risks eating its own?

STRESS FRACTURES

State party chairman Katon Dawson said it’s not to the point where Republicans have to worry about fractures. But cracks are starting to appear.

“What’s happened to us as a party is, once you reach majority status, you quit blocking and tackling,” he said. “You’ve got to start calling the plays.”

Dawson said for generations the Republican Party in South Carolina was focused on growth.

After taking over the House of Representatives in 1994, the focus switched to the Senate, which the GOP grabbed in 2000.

Now, with comfortable leads in both chambers, plus control of seven of nine statewide offices, the party is less focused on growing than it is on leading the state in its preferred directions.

“When you’re in the minority, you really do all get along,” Dawson said. “Why? Because you have to. When you’re in the majority, you don’t have to, and different ideas, different strategies surface and then there’s a debate and sometimes the debate is ugly.”

The challenge has become picking the direction the party goes. And organizations like Club for Growth and the others want that direction to be of their choosing.

“All we’re doing is standing up for the basic ideals of the party,” said Randy Page, president of South Carolinians for Responsible Government.

BEYOND CHOICE

SCRG was created three years ago primarily to fight for school choice in the form of tuition tax credits. Sanford is a supporter of the plan to give tax credits to parents to send their children to private school. The governor introduced the plan shortly after taking office after campaigning in 2002 on a plan to give state-funded private school vouchers to parents.

After seeing its signature proposal fail in the Republican-controlled House the past two years, SCRG has focused on selected primaries where incumbent House Republicans face opposition, as well as in the party’s education superintendent race.

The organization has paid for radio ads and mail pieces critical of the House incumbents, including Rep. Bill Cotty, R-Richland, all of whom have opposed the tax credit plan. It has also sponsored mail pieces critical of Bob Staton, a Republican education superintendent candidate.

Page and his group insist they are nonpartisan, are not “attacking” candidates and are not involved directly in campaigns. That could jeopardize their status as a nonprofit with the Internal Revenue Service.

But the State Ethics Commission has said the organization meets the threshold of state law in that it tries to “influence the outcome of an election,” and is insisting the group file reports disclosing how it spends its money. SCRG has refused and has filed a federal lawsuit, accusing the commission of violating its First Amendment rights. That case is pending.

Page said the group is not trying to attack fellow Republicans.

“When there are differences on policy, I believe it is fair to point those out and to educate the grass-roots citizens about differences on policy,” Page said.

THE CHOSEN ONES

The S.C. Club for Growth has no such qualms about announcing its intentions.

“I would not be surprised if Wednesday morning we wake up to some changes of who is elected and who isn’t,” said Joshua Gross, the groups executive director.

Gross said the Club for Growth is supporting challengers in four different races against Republican House incumbents. The groups are also supporting one incumbent and candidates for five open seats. They have also raised money for Karen Floyd, the choice of all three groups, in her bid for education superintendent.

Gross acknowledges that if the chosen candidates of these organizations do not win Tuesday, the repercussions could be loud.

If they don’t score victories, Gross said, “I might be posting resumes.”

Conservatives in Action has been responsible for some of the most biting anti-incumbency advertising. Of Cotty, one group mailing says the Northeast Richland lawmaker is “spending like he’s got money to burn.”

Another says “Figuring out how Rep. Bill Cotty wasted your tax dollars is as easy as following the footprints ...” and goes on to list a series of projects the group says are frivolous.

Cotty faces Sheri Few on Tuesday. Few supports the tuition tax credit program for which SCRG and the others advocate.

Taft Matney, executive director of Conservatives in Action, said his group is not being overtly negative but is trying to point out differences between candidates.

Cotty’s “philosophies differ with those of his opponent, Sheri Few, in terms of how they would approach votes,” Matney said. “He has never been a friend of really even examining the option of school choice.”

TIES THAT BIND

One major thing separates the Club for Growth from South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives in Action. Gross’ organization is purely political, and proudly so. The other two label themselves educational and lobbying groups focused on issues, not campaigns.

The practical difference is Club for Growth must file reports detailing where its money comes from and how it is spent.

And while the State Ethics Commission believes the others do, too, thus far neither has. They hold fast to the contention the law does not require it.

But there is no denying both are spending big money on the issues and their advertising specifically mentions candidates who disagree with them.

Many of the candidates they support are receiving thousands of dollars in contributions from a group of corporations and individuals around the country who support school choice.

Through corporations set up in New York, Maryland, Texas and Georgia, a New York real estate developer named Howard Rich has contributed nearly $40,000 to Floyd and seven House challengers.

Rich is president of U.S. Term Limits and is a major sponsor of national school choice campaigns. He is also active in the libertarian Cato Institute.

Efforts to reach Rich were unsuccessful.

U.S. Term Limits has the same address as the LEAD Foundation, the nation’s top school choice advocacy group. LEAD also has the same address as Americans for Limited Government, the registered agent of http://www.scrgov.org/, the Web site for SCRG.

Nearly a dozen other individuals with ties to the choice movement have poured thousands more into campaigns.

Randy Page, the SCRG president, said people like Howard Rich have no stake in these races other than a strong belief in the issues the candidates support.

But how does a wealthy New York investor even know someone like Sheri Few is running for office?

“Obviously, when people contact us and ask who are school choice supporters, we don’t hesitate to tell them,” Page said.

BUYING ELECTIONS

There’s something wrong with that, said Terry Sullivan, a political consultant working for Cotty and Bob Staton, Floyd’s top opponent in the education superintendent primary. He said SCRG and Conservatives in Action are “trying to buy elections here and that’s the real problem.”

Sullivan has less of an issue with the Club for Growth, mostly because that organization reports where its money flows.

Among the collective features of the three groups is support for Gov. Sanford. Sanford shares the organizations’ ideas about lower spending, restructured state government and school choice.

“I don’t want to say he’s our poster child, but it’s probably not far from that,” Gross said. “We certainly support him and his agenda. He supports our agenda.”

Another thing they and Sanford share: A healthy disgust with sitting legislators.

That point lends itself again to the larger issue Tuesday. Sanford has toured the state over the past week, making sure to stop in the districts of some incumbents he says block his initiatives.

If those incumbents win Tuesday, and if Floyd falls to Staton, it could be seen as a repudiation of the issues Sanford and the others espouse.

But make no mistake, Page said: Win or lose, the groups are not going away.

“What happens at the ballot box is important,” he said. “But for us, this is a long-term deal. We’re still here. We live here, we work here, and we pay taxes here. And we’re here to stay.”

The in-fighting among Republicans is both a sign of the party’s maturation and a potential problem, said Dawson, the state party chairman.

“It’s very dangerous in politics,” he said. “Especially these intrasquad squabbles we’ve got going on.”

But Dawson is not worried.

“It’s free speech,” he said. “If (the message) resonates strongly in the primary some of these people will lose. We don’t all agree with everything in the Republican Party. We get bigger, we get more diverse.”

Don Fowler, the former national chairman of the Democratic Party and a scholar of political parties, said the current GOP climate reminds him of the Democratic Party of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, “when the real fight for control, policy control of state government, was between Democrats.”

Democratic in-fighting had more to do with personalities, Fowler said. But the current state of the Republican Party reminds him of the 1958 Democratic state convention.

There was a fight over the chairmanship of the party, Fowler said. On one side was Fritz Hollings, then lieutenant governor, and powerful state senator Edgar Brown. On the other was Strom Thurmond, who was in his first term in the U.S. Senate. Hollings and Brown won the fight, and the fight was never healed. Thurmond left the party a few years later.

“What’s going on now in the Republican Party is quite similar,” Fowler said. “The issues are different, but the style is the same.”

If Republicans aren’t careful, he said, some of its elected officials might start considering alternatives, such as the Democratic Party.

Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658.