OUT OF the blue last fall, I got an op-ed submission from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Harrison extolling the virtues of the so-called Put Parents in Charge bill.

That seemed strange.

Education and tax policy are pretty far outside of Mr. Harrison’s area of expertise, and it’s uncommon for a House committee chairman to be so outspoken on an issue so far afield. It was particularly surprising that the first time he would put himself in the limelight on those topics was to support such a controversial measure.

The tone also seemed out of character for the low-key, well-liked and generally non-confrontational Mr. Harrison. It started like this: “Will Rogers once said, ‘America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.’ If that's really the case, Mr. Rogers should feel right at home in South Carolina.”

The column didn’t appear in The State, because The Post and Courier in Charleston ran it first.

But it didn’t go unnoticed where it mattered most.

This spring, the column, and what it meant, came back to haunt Mr. Harrison. It might well have been the reason he is still chairman of the Judiciary Committee and not speaker-elect of the S.C. House.

There’s no way of knowing for sure, since he dropped out just hours before a vote could be held. But Mr. Harrison has said that he and Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell were within a couple of votes of each other when he dropped his bid. And Rep. Joe Neal told me last week that Mr. Harrison’s support for the legislation was one of the main reasons he and “at least three or four” other legislators — from both political parties — supported Mr. Harrell instead.

Mr. Neal’s refusal to back Mr. Harrison was particularly damaging because they’re both from Richland County. When Mr. Neal and Richland Rep. Leon Howard backed Mr. Harrell, it weakened the geographic base that candidates count on and also raised questions about Mr. Harrison. (Rep. Joe Brown, the other Richland lawmaker who supported Mr. Harrell, didn’t throw his support to him until the last minute.)

“We’ve been charged with tilting the scale because the votes probably would have been close, and people outside of Richland County probably would have voted for him had we come on board,” said Mr. Howard, who told me he was lobbied heavily on Mr. Harrison’s behalf by legislators, business leaders and citizens throughout the county.

Mr. Harrison seemed surprised by Mr. Neal’s comments. “My vote on the bill was the exact same as Bobby Harrell’s vote,” he said, as the House was finishing up its work for the year.

But while they voted the same way when the tax credit bill came to the floor, Mr. Harrell never publicly supported it. Indeed, he was the original author of what eventually became the Education Accountability Act. That act, in stark contrast to Put Parents in Charge, is based on the belief that South Carolina’s public schools can be improved if the state establishes a uniform set of high standards, measures progress against those standards and provides targeted assistance designed to correct problems.

Mr. Harrison acknowledged that it was strange for him to be so out front on Put Parents in Charge, but he said that “sometimes you have to be when it’s something you believe in.”

Put Parents in Charge wasn’t an issue for Mr. Howard, who said he was swayed by the times Mr. Harrell went out of his way to help him with constituent issues; he said he didn’t even realize Mr. Harrison had supported the bill.

Mr. Neal, who serves on the Education Oversight Committee that is implementing Mr. Harrell’s Accountability Act, calls the tax credit bill “the most radical piece of legislation I’d seen related to education.” He was quite aware of Mr. Harrison’s position — and “really disappointed” by it.

“He’s a wonderful person, he’s very articulate, he has a very bright, a really wonderful personality,” Mr. Neal said. “But this position he’s taken on education has just not been helpful for me.”

Mr. Neal said that when he added the tax credit bill to Mr. Harrison’s 2001 reapportionment plan, which put him and fellow Democratic Rep. Jimmy Bales in the same district and created “a kind of political apartheid,” he concluded that Mr. Harrell was more likely to “be fair and to be supportive in the mainstream of issues that affect this state.”

Despite the effect those issues may have had on the speaker’s race, Mr. Harrison has no regrets. He had to look out for the state, and not just his home county, in reapportionment, he said. And while he says he was never sold on the Put Parents in Charge bill as it was written, he remains convinced that some sort of school choice bill, perhaps one targeted at truly poor children in failing schools, is essential.

But for now, that’s a minority view in the House. Mr. Neal apparently speaks for the majority when he says that “we need a speaker who’s going to be firmly committed to public education.” As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Harrell has done more than most Republicans to demonstrate that commitment, and this year he was able to write a budget that funds education at the minimum amount required by law for the first time in five years.

“He made some very tough calls to do that, but he did it,” Mr. Neal said. ”And I understand the political pressures that he faces in having a number of colleagues who are much more non-supportive of public education, and so I see him as kind of having a balancing act within his own party. I give him credit for that.”

Credit. And the speakership.

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