Primary message: Voucher crowd no threat to strong incumbents

By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE

Associate Editor

REP. BILL Cotty survived a well-financed attack campaign to defeat a pro-voucher challenger in the GOP primary, only to have another pro-voucher candidate, who will almost certainly be the beneficiary of the same type of support, mount an independent campaign against him in the general election.

And now he’s worried. Not for himself, but for his colleagues who have not yet faced the onslaught of postcards sent out by the voucher and tax credit lobbying group SCRG and its Upstate clone Conservatives in Action, which refuse to tell anyone where they’re getting their money or even how much they’re spending.

“They’ve petrified my colleagues,” Mr. Cotty told me recently. “When they see $30,000, $40,000 spent — in my race $85,000 to $100,000 — they’re petrified. When you spend that kind of money, they’re hitting their objective, not by how many races they win but by being able to scare people: If you don’t agree with us, we’re gonna back the truck (full of money) up.”

That’s one way of looking at this year’s primaries and, I fear, the way far too many legislators are looking at them.

The other way is to look at just what all that money actually bought.

Seven districts were blanketed with postcards, some containing flat-out lies, that made the targeted legislators look like tax-and-spend liberals, while somehow failing to mention the issue that was driving the attack. The governor himself made pre-recorded phone calls supporting the challengers in at least three of the races. And in case any one missed the point, volunteers stood outside polling places in Mr. Cotty’s district with giant pictures showing Sheri Few shaking hands with Gov. Mark Sanford.

That wasn’t enough to buy Mr. Cotty’s seat. He rolled over Ms. Few with 54 percent of the vote, and if he does lose in November, it’ll be because the voucher crowd’s candidate stole enough votes from the right to hand the victory to Democrat Anton Gunn.

It wasn’t enough to hurt Reps. Bill Whitmire, Gene Pinson or Adam Taylor, who likewise outpolled pro-voucher opponents despite truckloads of misleading attack mail dumped on their districts. (I’m not sure how to characterize Rep. Tom Dantzler, who was hit with the postcard barrage and out-of-state cash but also voted for this year’s voucher bill.)

And here’s the point everybody seems to overlook: Even though voucher/tax credit backers made it clear that they wanted to take out all 21 Republicans who dared to not support their deceptively named “Put Parents in Charge” bill last year, they only managed to recruit candidates in eight districts.

Several of the unopposed legislators say they knew of active efforts to recruit candidates to run against them. House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper told me that a friend of his was promised $300,000 worth of support to run against him; he declined. A friend of Rep. Joan. Brady’s was approached as well, but also declined to run.

Voucher backers did manage to scare House Education Chairman Ronnie Townsend into retiring. But their hand-picked replacement, a prominent property tax foe in his own right, got trounced in the primary — by a candidate who made no bones about his opposition to vouchers and tax credits.

Clearly, the untold amounts of money funneled into attacks on Reps. Ken Clark and Becky Martin made a difference. But it was only one difference. The other was the candidates themselves.

Mr. Clark committed the cardinal legislative sin: He got tangled up in local politics, taking sides against the mayor of one of the small towns that dot his rural district. And both he and Ms. Martin were dogged by money woes — they didn’t have any, so they couldn’t hire professional help for their campaigns. This, of course, is Mr. Cotty’s concern: that having a huge cache of cash is now necessary for Republican legislators who want to support public education.

And there’s no question that private school “choice” was the defining issue in Karen Floyd’s race for the GOP nomination for superintendent of education.

But that race was certainly no upset. The secret to success in elections is to back the strong candidate — and stay out of the race if you don’t like the strong candidate. Bob Staton was hardly a dynamic candidate, whereas Ms. Floyd is attractive, energetic and engaging. That’s why the Republican Party recruited her. That’s why a huge slate of Republican incumbents — some of whom part ways with her on “choice” — broke with tradition and endorsed her before the vote. It was only after she was in that the tax credit/voucher gang made her its poster child.

I don’t want to downplay the strength of the movement. A stealth voucher supporter knocked off Jasper Rep. Thayer Rivers in the Democratic primary, and the secretive groups are targeting retiring Democratic Rep. DeWitt McCraw’s seat, where their candidate won the GOP primary. So they could pick up as many as four seats in the House, where their voucher bill failed on a 59-52 vote this spring.

For public education backers, the message should be that the fight is far from over. But for incumbents, the larger message is that as long as they don’t bring a lot of their own baggage to the race, Republicans can oppose this secretive coalition and still win re-election.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.