There must have been something in the water Tuesday at the Statehouse. That's the only plausible explanation for two dumb public relations moves that day.

First, thin-skinned Gov. Mark Sanford showed up at a press conference by state Democrats as they criticized his truth-telling over possible privatization of Santee Cooper, the state-owned public utility.

Hours later, foot-in-mouth GOP Rep. John Graham Altman of Charleston verbally attacked and insulted a Columbia television reporter asking questions about two bills dealt with by the House Judiciary Committee.

The committee approved a bill to make cockfighting a felony, but tabled action on another bill that would toughen penalties and boost judicial education on criminal domestic violence. (Current law does classify criminal domestic violence a felony if it is of a "high and aggravated nature" that involves a weapon or results in serious bodily injury. The law, however, provides for the lesser misdemeanor ver-sion that is commonly used by law enforcement officials.)

The fact that the committee voted to make cockfighting a felony while putting off action on a tougher measure for batterers prompted WIS-TV reporter Kara Gormley to ask Altman, a member of the committee, about the difference.

Gormley: "Does that show that we are valuing a gamecock's life over a woman's life?"

Altman: "You're really not very bright, and I realize you are not accustomed to this, but I'm accustomed to reporters having a better sense of depth of things and you're asking this question to me would indicate you can't understand the answer. To ask the question is to demonstrate an enormous amount of ignorance. I'm not trying to be rude or hostile, I'm telling you."

Gormley: "It's rude when you tell someone they are not very bright."

Altman: "You're not very bright, and you'll just have to live with that."

It got worse. Here's one of the Neanderthal comments that outraged women across the state:

Altman: "I mean you women want it one way and not another. Women want to punish the men, and I do not understand why women continue to go back around men who abuse them."

Gov. Mark Sanford rightly spoke out against what Altman said to WIS-TV:

"To put the life of a chicken ahead of the life of a woman. That just doesn't make any common sense. And to be insensitive about, certainly there are nuances in any piece of legislation, but to be insensitive about, the importance, the gravity of that issue, I think causes people to have doubts about the legislative process in South Carolina, about certain legislators."

For Sanford, Altman's shenanigans turned the media spotlight away from what may become

longer-term, serious political trouble over what the governor said and didn't say about Santee Cooper.

As the State Democratic Party held a press conference complaining about Sanford's "secret plans" to privatize the state-owned utility, the governor rushed from

his office to attend the conference, reportedly standing just a

few feet from a podium as Democrats spoke.

If it was a move to intimidate Democratic leaders, it didn't work. It made the story even bigger. State Democratic Chairman Joe Erwin thanked the governor for coming because it saved him the price of a stamp. He handed a Freedom of Information request to Sanford about what's going on with the utility.

After the press conference, Sanford denied having a secret plan to sell Santee Cooper, according to The Post and Courier. Instead, he said he commissioned a $100,000 study to assess the utility's capacity to return more money to state

coffers to fund government.

But according to the newspaper, documents obtained under a different FOI request showed that a Sanford staffer "contacted at least four investment banks in the fall, asking them to submit bids for a confidential study on the sale of Santee Cooper."

In his years of public service, people haven't always agreed with Sanford's positions on policy issues, but his veracity has rarely, if ever, been questioned. The governor's locked-jaw zeal, however, over Santee Cooper has given opponents a real political issue that will come back to haunt him in his 2006 re-election campaign.

Sanford needs to drop privatization efforts and tell the whole truth about what's going on. Meanwhile, Altman just needs to drop out of politics for good.