CAMPAIGN 2004

Both nominees in South Carolina’s tight U.S. Senate race have significantly scaled back their activities in the elected offices they already hold to campaign for higher office.

Democratic state education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum cut the number of official scheduled events to 34 from the 132 she attended last year — a 74 percent decrease.

Republican Jim DeMint, a Greenville congressman, had the fourth-worst voting record in the U.S. House this year — missing about 45 percent of the votes cast.

Critics accuse both of ignoring the South Carolinians who elected them.

Two TV ads paid for by the Democratic group Citizens for a Strong Senate say DeMint missed key votes on homeland security, defense and tax relief.

“How can Jim DeMint fight for us when he won’t even show up for work?” the ad’s narrator asks.

Republicans have countered by accusing Tenenbaum of poor attendance at the Department of Education.

“If Inez were a student and she cut school this often, she certainly wouldn’t be promoted to the next grade, much less the U.S. Senate,” said Katon Dawson, state Republican Party chairman.

The candidates say they’ve been busy trying to balance two full-time jobs — their elected offices and their campaigns to succeed retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings.

DeMint has been scurrying to raise money and meet voters. “He never missed a close vote,” spokesman Geoff Embler said.

Tenenbaum said she has had to change the way she works, often doing business at home or in the car by e-mail and cell phone.

Her appointment calendar doesn’t show “the times I’ve been able to get up at 4 a.m. to read e-mails” and do other work, she said.

Tenenbaum said she hasn’t missed important moments, such as a budget meeting with Gov. Mark Sanford or test score releases.

From president to county coroner, any elected official faces the question of how to juggle campaigning and a full-time job.

“The problem is that the people who are in office are the most likely to run for office,” said Ann Pincus, of the Center for Public Integrity, a government watchdog group in Washington.

Pincus doesn’t think all elected officials should resign before running for another office. Tenenbaum will serve two more years as education superintendent if she loses; DeMint’s House term is expiring.

But, Pincus added, voters “should be mindful” of what their representatives are doing.

Some elected officials are better at doing both jobs than others. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Seneca Republican, voted 98 percent of the time in the House in 2002, the year he ran for Senate.

DeMint, who — unlike Graham — faced a competitive primary election in June, has cast 55 percent of House roll call votes, according to John Cranford, national editor of Congressional Quarterly, a Washington magazine that tracks Congress.

DeMint cast 293 of 529 roll call votes this year, Cranford said.

The only House members with worse records were Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., who rarely votes; Billy Tauzin, R-La., who has cancer; and Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., an unsuccessful presidential candidate, Cranford said.

DeMint’s voting record last year was 90 percent — tied for 24th-worst in the 435-member House, Cranford said.

“I would like to describe that as appalling,” said Tenenbaum spokeswoman Kay Packett.

DeMint campaign manager Terry Sullivan said Tenenbaum is throwing stones from glass houses.

“While she stands by her national Democrat friends’ attacks of Jim DeMint’s attendance, she was at her job even less often,” he said in a statement. “True hypocrisy.”

Some critics also say Tenenbaum brought unnecessary fire on the schools when she decided not to resign while running for the Senate.

“The children deserve a full-time superintendent,” said Greg Killian, a former state school board member from Myrtle Beach. “It’s definitely a full-time job.”

Criticism has been heaped on the schools, partly to attack Tenenbaum’s leadership, but Tenenbaum said she made the right decision.

“There wasn’t any reason to resign,” she said. “The president of the United States is running for president the same time he’s running the country. There’s no precedent for it.”

That’s not exactly true. Some candidates do resign. Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, quit the U.S. Senate to run for president.

Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen, a Republican, said voters generally don’t pay much attention when candidates criticize their opponents’ attendance.

“It’s sort of a peripheral issue,” he said. And in this case, where both candidates have a claim, “It’s a wash.”

Reach Talhelm at (803) 771-8339 or jtalhelm@thestate.com