Date Published: July 5, 2006   

Verne Smith resigns from Upstate Senate seat

By JIM DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer

State Sen. Verne Smith has resigned his seat after an illness kept him from Columbia the whole session this year.

"It doesn't look like I'm going to get better," the Greer Republican said Wednesday. "I thought it was my duty to resign so somebody could get out and get around" to represent the district.

Smith, 81, had gall bladder surgery last year and has struggled to fully recover.

Smith was the second-oldest member of the Senate. He held his seat since 1973 and ranked second in Senate seniority.

Smith has a unique spot in South Carolina politics.

After the 2000 elections, the Senate was evenly split with 23 Democrats and 23 Republicans. Smith, with the urging of President Bush, bolted from the Democratic Party and gave Republicans control of the Senate and the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. Republicans already had controlled the House since 1994.

"His party switch sealed the Republican takeover of the Senate," said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

Senate Minority Leader John Land, D-Sumter, recalls the switch, too. "I'd rather look at the good side" of Smith's service, he said.

Smith also was chairman of the Senate's Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, a panel that handles much of the upper chamber's business-related legislation.

Smith also had a reputation for being an advocate for the poor, the elderly and children. During the past few years, Smith championed plans to raise the state's cigarette tax as a way of putting $83 million annually into Medicaid and other health programs.

"He fought for the children who couldn't afford medical care. And people in the nursing homes, he fought for them," Land said.

But Smith also had a knack for not mincing words.

"He was plain spoken - I mean plain spoken," McConnell said. "The words he said left no doubt about what he had communicated."

Smith also complained that Senate rules keeping senators from doing what was best for the state.

"I've never known this Senate to get so tangled up in its own rules that we can't function," Smith said. He wanted senators to be able to "act like senators instead of acting like eunuchs."

The election to fill the balance of Smith's term will likely take place during the general election Nov. 7, Land said.

House members have a history of moving up to Senate seats when they come open. House Labor Commerce and Industry Committee Chairman Harry Cato, R-Travelers Rest, and retiring House Operations and Management Committee Chairman Lewis Vaughn, R-Greer, live in the district.

"I have no interest in moving to the Senate," Cato said. "I think it would be foolish on my part to give up a chairmanship in the House and start out on the back row in the Senate."

"I have some interest in it," Vaughn said. "I'm going to look at it very seriously. If I had to make a decision today, I'd say 'yes.'"

But Land is optimistic a Democrat can win the seat. Voters elected Smith as a Democrat every election except for after he switched parties in 2004.

"I'm sure there will be some good Democratic candidates that will come out up there," Land said.