BY DAVE MUNDAY
Of The Post and Courier staff
State Democratic Party leaders have again attacked Rep. George Bailey's resume.
Bailey's resume in the S.C. Legislative Manual says he graduated high school from Richmond Academy, a military school in Augusta. State Democratic Party Chairman Joe Erwin said there's no indication Bailey went there.
"First we found out that George Bailey lied about being a college graduate," Erwin said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Then we found out he wasn't a Marine veteran. Now we find out the high school he's claimed to have attended has never heard of him. It seems to me that three strikes and you're out."
Richmond Academy Records Supervisor Ernestine Howard said Thursday that although she could find no record of Bailey attending the school, he still might have. Former students are tracked by birth date, and not all students were properly recorded when they enrolled, she said. "If they put the birth date wrong on the record, it wouldn't show up. I've seen it before. It happens all the time, especially back then."
Bailey, a nine-term veteran of the House district that includes St. George, is running against Lachlan McIntosh, a former aide to Gov. Jim Hodges. Bailey dismissed the latest attack as more "sour grapes" because he recently switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party.
Bailey said he graduated from Richmond Academy when his family was living in Augusta, and he was in the ROTC program. He said he doesn't have a copy of his diploma and wouldn't want to bother producing it if he did. "I don't care to answer any more questions from the Democratic Party," Bailey said. "Next thing you know, they'll be questioning my marriage."
After Democrats challenged Bailey's claim of having graduated from Washington and Lee University, Bailey acknowledged that he attended Lee Institute School of Real Estate in Brookline, Mass. Bailey's resume also says he's a Marine veteran, and Bailey has clarified that he was in the Marine Reserve. Democrats have said reserve duty in high school with no boot camp doesn't make somebody a Marine reservist.
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