Wilkins' departure could lessen Upstate's influence

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That leadership train soon could be derailed if House Speaker David Wilkins, as many of his colleagues expect, accepts a President Bush nomination to be U.S. ambassador to Canada.

Without Wilkins, Charleston could emerge as a new power center, with Gov. Mark Sanford, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bobby Harrell who is an expected 2010 gubernatorial contender, and Majority Leader Jim Merrill.

"There does seem to be something of a Charleston ascendancy," Greenville Mayor Knox White said.

"We've been blessed for more than 30 years, and I don't think we're going to have anybody who can match up with those folks" if Wilkins departs, said Warren Mowry, a former Greenville County Republican Party chairman.

For 16 years from January 1979 through January 1995, through Democrat Dick Riley and Republican Carroll Campbell, Greenville was the hometown of South Carolina's governors.

That power and influence have reshaped where and how Upstate residents work and play, from millions of state dollars to help build the Peace Center to Interstate 385's extension to an automotive industry centered in the region.

With the exception of 80-year-old Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greer, who chairs the powerful and wide-ranging Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, Greenville's pipeline to leadership clout in Columbia could run dry in a post-Wilkins era.

To A.V. Huff, retired Furman University historian, "It's just one of those (leadership) deficits that occurs every once in a while."

'Terrible for us'

"It's going to be terrible for us in the Upstate," said Bill Whitney, president of the Urban League of the Upstate.

Absent Wilkins, Greenville faces a state-level leadership void because, in part, "Other parts of the state have worked harder in keeping their people in place," he said.

"There's no one in the pipeline of the stature of David Wilkins, and I don't see any new young leader" emerging soon, said Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political scientist. Greenville, for whatever reason, "doesn't have the farm system it once had," he said.

Former Greenville Mayor Bill Workman takes a somewhat contrarian view.

"It's hard to identify any specific benefits" to the region, he said, categorizing Riley and Campbell as men who worked studiously to be "governors of the entire state."

"We got a lot of good stuff because a lot of people worked hard to make it happen," Workman said.

But, he said, the contraction of textiles and a merging banking industry moving first to Columbia, then to Charlotte, took its toll in various forms. "Everybody had to get very lean and you no longer had an extra set of bright, young comers you could turn to" for local leadership roles, he said.

"A lot of the decision-making went elsewhere," Workman said. And with them, emerging leaders.

Whitney and others agreed that Greenville doesn't lack for leadership.

Local leadership

"But they're local leaders," Whitney said. "We need folks who have the respect of the entire state We're very concerned. Verne Smith is one of the last serious people we have down there."

There are plenty of reasons for it, according to interviews with Upstate business, political and academic figures.

The causes include the internal, a now dominant, maturing Republican Party no longer dependent on its Upstate heartland, and the external forces that have altered the traditional sources of new leadership.

The latter encompasses a shrinking textile industry, local banks now controlled from Charlotte and Winston-Salem, and an influx of international companies whose visions are more worldly than parochial.

What Greenville has had is rivaled only by Charleston in much earlier times.

Greenville lawyer Rex Carter was speaker of the House, the most powerful position in the Legislature and one that some argue is more influential than governor, from 1973 until 1980.

Then Riley and Campbell took the lead as governors.

From 1987 until 1995, Greenville could even boast having the governor and, in Nick Theodore as lieutenant governor, the state Senate's presiding officer. Theodore lost the 1994 governor's race — by fewer than 24,000 votes.

Ties helped region

Riley, through his ties to President Jimmy Carter, helped win funding for the extension of I-385 from I-85 to I-26 at Clinton. Campbell successfully fought for $6 million in state funding to bring the Peace Center to fruition and doggedly wooed BMW, changing the face of the regional economy. He became a key player in national Republican politics.

Wilkins has used his power to oversee Upstate interests and played a crucial role in wooing Bush into the presidential race and securing his nomination.

By the time the string played out on homegrown governors, Republicans had seized control of the state House and when 1995 dawned, Wilkins had moved from chairing the Judiciary Committee to speaker.

The departure of Wilkins would leave Smith as the Upstate's senior go-to guy.

Smith said he hopes "to be here and do what I can, but I'm not in the class of influence that David Wilkins is."

Leadership influence isn't the exclusive preserve of elected officials.

White said that even with Wilkins in Canada, "There is more of a collection of business clout here because this is such a commercial center."

In addition, some business interests here look more to the huge private sectors in Charlotte and Atlanta than to government in Columbia, he added.

"But we will pay something of a price in the loss of someone who looks out for our interests" if Wilkins departs, White said.

Within the business community, leaders without personal political ambitions but with state and national clout to get things done for the region are in short supply, Huff said.

"We've seen that kind of shift, when the old generation passed off the scene," Huff said.

"We have capable leaders, but they're not people who have heavyweight strength" like that of the late Buck Mickel, he said of the retired Fluor Corp. president who died in 1998.

"Now we have a coalition of younger, less powerful people, which is not so bad (long-term), but I just don't know if any of those people would make strong candidates to represent Greenville," Huff said.

'There's a void'

Mack Whittle, president and chief executive officer of The Southern Financial Group, is among those concerned over leadership.

"The source of generating that legislative leadership has gotten to where there's a void, at least in the younger ones out there. We've got to find somebody to step in and step up, but I draw a blank initially thinking of who that might be," he said.

The decline of the textile industry, mergers, leaner operating practices and non-local management are critical factors, Whittle said.

"There's something to be said for home offices and corporate headquarters, from leadership to cash," he said.

Riley sees Greenville entering a "transitional period" after Wilkins, while retaining as strong a business leadership of any community he knows, "a place where leaders develop and support the community."

As for statewide influence after Wilkins, "Right now, I don't see where that is. I don't know what the future will hold."

His role in industrial development showed that companies are "very much interested in state leadership in their locale," Riley said. "That's a big source of stability and comfort" for them, he said, particularly when it relates to economic development and education improvement.

Changing business practices and organization have impacted leadership development, said Steve Navarro, president of The Furman Co.

As local companies merged with regional companies that were absorbed by national corporations, plus the addition of international business, decision-makers are now located out of state, he said.

"It's impossible to pollinate leaders that way," Navarro said. "It's those types of leaders that foster political and public service as well and if we don't have that mindset, there's less opportunity."

Whitney's take is that Greenville has "become a transient community (where) people come in, stay awhile and move on."

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