That's particularly true as Sen. Harvey Peeler takes over as chairman of the Republican's Senate Majority Caucus and Bobby Harrell is set to become House speaker.
"I think we already have a taxpayer caucus in the Senate and that's called the Republican Caucus," Peeler said.
Peeler, who lives in Gaffney, hasn't been a Sanford fan. In 2002, his brother, former Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler, lost one of the state's most bitter GOP primary runoff contests to Sanford.
The governor also has repeatedly quarreled with Harrell, the Charleston Republican and current House budget-writing committee chairman, over spending priorities.
Harrell says he has worked to reduce spending since he took over the budget writing process five years ago. And he notes he led efforts to give homeowners $300 million in property tax breaks. "I'll put my record of accomplishment up against the governor's any time," he said recently.
The flare-ups have come despite Harrell's fairly consistent support of key Sanford agenda items.
Peeler and Harrell both say they will mend fences in the months ahead.
Peeler said he met with Sanford since after he won the majority leader's job May 26. "I'm going to try to bridge that gap between the legislative and executive branch," Peeler said.
"I'm telling you I'm open to any idea ... that will help calm these waters," Peeler said. "Throwing these grenades doesn't help."
Harrell notes the House has passed a large portion of Sanford's agenda the past two years. "I don't see any reason for that to change. I hope we can open up the communication lines perhaps a little better," Harrell said.
But that sounds a lot like the post-legislative session, forgive-and-move-on talk heard last year - a week or so after Sanford carted two pigs to the House door to complain about pork-barrel spending.
And Peeler's gap-bridging strategy may chafe Sanford. "If you can't beat them, lead them," Peeler said. "I'm going to try my best to do that."
To a large degree, next year's fights won't look a lot different from this year. Sanford says he'll keep pushing a plan to lower the state's top individual income tax rate in an effort to attract wealthy executives and retirees.
But Peeler and Harrell see more need for tax relief in a different place.
"Property tax. That's the one I hear when I go back home. That's the tax that people are most angry about," Peeler said.
Sanford also is pushing a flavor of fiscal restraint that Legislators don't like. It has shown up in budget vetoes and is at the heart of change Sanford wants in the state Constitution.
The governor wants voters to decide in November 2006 on an amendment requiring the state spend no more than a limit set by a combination of population and inflation.
If that had been in place since 1997, the state would have weathered the 2001 recession and its slow recovery with no layoffs or raids on reserve accounts while having $2.5 billion to return to taxpayers, Sanford said.
A large sign of people sharing Sanford's fiscal views sits outside his Statehouse office. It honors "Taxpayer Heroes" - 15 House members and five senators who supported him more frequently than others last month to uphold budget vetoes.
Harrell and Peeler are nowhere on that list.
The lawmakers honored show "this emergence of what I would call a taxpayer's caucus, a reformer's caucus," Sanford said.
Sanford says he wants to "expand that taxpayer caucus next year."
The heroes in that caucus mostly lost. They won just 10 of 149 votes to override vetoes - and those were at Harrell's urging.
By veto time next year, Sanford will been in full sales mode on his income tax reduction and a new proposal to cap state spending for months as well as the spending amendment.
Along the way to a far-from-certain two-thirds vote to get the cap on the budget, Sanford is "welcome to work with the Republican taxpayer caucus. We already have one," Peeler said.