COLUMBIA--Running his aged hand along the railing, Sen. Arthur Ravenel Jr. explains the little gashes, the ancient military brail that punctuates the dark wooden banister in the Statehouse.
Nearly 150 years ago, a Union officer slashed with his saber as he rode his horse up the staircase. Ravenel, a Republican who recently began his last term as state senator, loosens his grip from the banister, frowns, and continues his walk up to the Senate chamber.
Come November, "Cousin Arthur" will take his last trip up this staircase as a senator. The final days of his term not only will mark the end of a colorful and illustrious political career, which began in the early 1950's, but also may signal the end of an era for a political style with deep roots in the South, that disarmingly charming and gentile manner Ravenel employs so well.
"I don't have any regrets," he says. "You do positive things, and you prevent negative things from going through."
This is, of course, the simplified version.
Over the past five decades, the 76-year-old West Ashley native has served as a state representative, a state senator and a U.S. congressman. He has brought ambitious road projects and environmental initiatives to his present district, which extends from East Cooper to the Grand Strand. He is known throughout the state for his charm and humor and for helping to secure funds for the new bridge that will span the Cooper River and bear his name. When complete, it will be the largest of its type in North America.
To many, this is his legacy.
"He is one of the greatest entertainers in the Senate ... and a master politician," said Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston. "He will be remembered as leading one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in the country."
Others, though, regard Ravenel as behind the times. He has consistently supported the flying of the Confederate battle flag on Statehouse grounds, and at a pro-flag rally in 2000 referred to the NAACP as the "National Association for Retarded People," a statement he later characterized as a mental lapse brought on by thoughts of another meeting.
On a landing overlooking the Statehouse grounds, Ravenel tries to put the flag controversy into perspective, at least from his point of view, four years after the fact.
"That's where the battle flag is, and that's where it ought to be," he says, pointing to the banner flapping in the wind. "It's a very emotional symbol with so many South Carolinians. We suffered so much during that war. Sherman burned and bombed the Statehouse."
As he continues his trek up to the Senate chamber, he likens the sentiment many white Southerners have for Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and the Union Army to the way some Irish Catholics feel toward the English.It takes only a few more steps for him to change the subject, though, and he downshifts his demeanor from serious to magnetic and magnanimous.
At the crest of the staircase, he puts his right hand forward. The palm of another official meets it. In the anteroom, just before the Senate chamber, he stops to introduce a reporter to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer.
"This man is here to write my obituary," he says, and both men laugh. Then, Ravenel wags his finger at him and describes what a challenge it would be to defeat Bauer in an election.
"You told me one time, 'To be somebody, you gotta beat somebody,' " says Bauer, drawing some more good-natured chuckles.
A BORN SALESMAN
The first time Ravenel ran for elected office, he lost.
Now, more than five decades later, sitting in the corner office of a state government building in Columbia, he shrugs it off as he has several other electoral defeats that have come during his career.
"The first time I ran, it was '50, the first year I got out of college," says Ravenel, who graduated from the College of Charleston after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. "I got beat, but I came close."
This morning, sunlight bounces off the streetscape watercolors and lithographs of Robert E. Lee that adorn his office wall. Before noon, a lobbyist from The Citadel and a judgeship candidate visit. When his secretary announces the lobbyist's name, Ravenel wants privacy to speak to the man. When the judgeship candidate, a smiling and deferential man, arrives later, the meeting is open and is considerably shorter.
"We've got all these people running for these judgeships," says Ravenel, after the candidate leaves. "They are prohibited by law from seeking commitments, but they make themselves known. ... Some of these people just work for months and months and months. I tell them it's easier to win for state Senate than it is for family court judge."
His secretary, Jenni Farr, walks through the door.
Farr: "Did you call me, sir?"
Ravenel: "No."
Farr: "You just said something that sounded like me."
Ravenel: "I'm just gentle on your mind."
Cousin Arthur, who got the nickname after supporters overheard a cousin calling him that, began to cultivate his charm more than 50 years ago.
In 1952, a 25-year-old Ravenel was working for the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Co., now MeadWestvaco, when a cousin persuaded him to switch jobs. Ravenel had not made his fortune yet and worked as a "broke handler," the person who stands under reams of processed paper to grab anything that falls to the floor below.
"That was the lowest job they had there," he recalls. "Then I got recruited by my cousin to be a door-to-door salesman, and I found out I can sell."
Part of his talent stems from an easy smile and a country manner some mistake as simplicity.
"Arthur's a lot smarter than anyone gives him credit for," says his wife, Jean Rickenbaker Ravenel.
"He really is a country boy, but one doesn't give anyone with as thick an accent as Arthur has enough credit. It's a stereotype that comes through movies and the media."
Perceptions aside, his manner and accent and ability to sell have served him well. Not only did they help make Ravenel a wealthy man, they also kept him in office for more than 25 years.
He and his cousin began humbly. They peddled aluminum awnings and screens, which they fashioned at a barn. As Ravenel tells it, the more they produced, the more they sold, until, later that year, he decided to try for the House of Representatives seat once more.
"I ran again in '52 and got elected," says Ravenel, who was a Democrat at the time. "If you can sell, you don't have to worry about making a living. In politics, you sell yourself."
Relatively, Ravenel didn't serve in the House for long. In 1958, after six years, he left to continue pursuing what would become a lucrative career in real estate. Manufacturing screens and aluminum awnings led to building homes and developing subdivisions.
"We opened a building and real estate business. I was pretty successful in it," he says. "I'm a depression baby. My father went broke farming. It was just awful. I didn't like being poor."
The fear of being broke, which first drove him to be industrious, also prompted Ravenel to get out of the business. In 1977, he says, his bubble almost burst, so he decided to sell off the construction, mortgage and building material businesses and focus his attention on politics.
NEW ORDER
The second and much longer chapter in Ravenel's political career began in the early 1960s. He had switched allegiance to the Republican Party and had begun going from precinct to precinct to set up the infrastructure for the party's rise.
"In the '60s, we were laying the foundation. We were building the organization," he says. "In the '70s, we started running and getting beat."
He and Sen. Glenn McConnell lost repeatedly but weren't swayed. Ravenel remembers taking seminars on how to spread his message. That message expressed the view that an increasingly liberal influence had transformed the Democratic Party.
"There was a small group of us that would run. We called ourselves the incumbent candidates," he recalls. "We knew the chances of winning were very slight."
The breakthrough came in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president. Ravenel was elected to the state Senate. The victory signified not only the end of a dry political period but the beginning of a presence, both in the state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, that has lasted to this day.
Ravenel holds up a stack of mail to illustrate his secret of longevity.
"If you do your constituent work, if you tend to your knitting, chances of re-election are really good," he says. "You can solve most problems with a telephone call. You just need to know who to call."
Some problems, such as how to raise the money to build the new Cooper River bridge, Ravenel solved by helping create the South Carolina Infrastructure Bank, which has helped fund the bridge and over a dozen big budget road projects throughout the state.
Other issues remain unresolved, though, and Ravenel seems to prefer it that way.
When asked about the NAACP gaffe, a remark that prompted the Statehouse's black delegation to consider renaming the bridge, Ravenel is still unrepentant.
"Anytime I get the opportunity to needle the NAACP, I take it," says Ravenel.
"They have the ability to do so much good, but they don't do anything about the high incidence of teen pregnancy among blacks or how low SAT scores are among blacks. The blacks have so many problems, but instead of fighting to fix those problems, they fight to have the Confederate flag off Statehouse grounds."
Soon after making the infamous comment in 2000, Ravenel, who has a son with Down syndrome, apologized to retarded people for lumping them in the same category as the NAACP. Sen. John W. Matthews, D-Dorchester County, a member of the black delegation, says he respects Ravenel for his candor but still feels the remark was inconsiderate.
"History will judge him on that," says Matthews. "The remark was insensitive and he knows that."
Still, Ravenel has managed to maintain what could be described as cordial allegiances within the black delegation.
"If you get him mad, he can raise hell," said Sen. Kay Patterson, D-Richland County, who is black and who shared a government office suite with Ravenel.
Usually Ravenel has used honey rather than vinegar. "There are many times when humor and kindness can get people to go along with you," said Patterson. "I learned that from Arthur."
