American voters often think in two flavors: Republican and Democrat. But about a fifth of the candidates running Nov. 4 in South Carolina for state or federal offices are third-party candidates.

Columbia College is offering a forum for third-party candidates on Monday, Sept. 29, in the Breed Leadership Center. Beginning at 7 p.m. in Breed 201-202, third-party candidates will speak, each for five minutes, on their and their parties’ platforms. A brief moderated panel will follow, during which representatives of the third parties will discuss the effect on elections with representatives of the SC Progressive Network.

Afterward, time will be provided to personally meet candidates. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

Those attending and the offices they are running for include:

• For the Libertarians: Victor Kocher, Libertarian chairman and candidate for the U.S. Senate; Travis McCurry, S.C. House of Representatives, District 26; and Curtis McLaughlin, 4th Congressional District.
• For the American Party of South Carolina: Jim Rex, American Party chairman and co-founder; Jill Bossie, U.S. Senate; Ed Murray, state superintendent of education; and Donna McGreevy, S.C. House of Representatives, District 74.
• For the United Citizens Party: Morgan Bruce Reeves, governor.
• To discuss the election effects: Brett Bursey, director, and Marjorie Hammock, co-chair, SC Progressive Network.

Why do some S.C. candidates and voters gravitate to third parties? The candidates themselves will answer the question on Sept. 29, as may voters attending.

Rex, of the American Party of South Carolina, says that his party’s appeal lies in the “emphasis on problem-solving and not on ideological absolutes or extremes,” as well as candidates’ vows to abide by “mandated term limits, transparency and unprecedented accountability.”

Kocher, a Libertarian, says, “Libertarian candidates trust people with the freedom to make the best choices for themselves while the Democratic and Republican parties trust the state with the power to make choices for the people.”

The event is sponsored by the Writing for Print and Digital Media program, a major that provides students academic and professional experience in digital and print journalism, public relations, social media and creative writing.

Breed Leadership Center is located at 1301 Columbia College Drive, which is between Colonial Drive and North Main Street. Parking is available in Lots A and B at the corner of Colonial and Columbia College drives. For a map of the campus, go here.

For more information on the event, contact Claudia Smith Brinson at Columbia College, csbrinson@columbiasc.edu or 803-786-3153.

John Crangle
Director, Common Cause South Carolina

The State’s readers were treated recently to the musings of a pair of rookie legislators, Rep. Kirkman Finlay and Sen. Thomas McElveen, joined by JoAnne Day of the League of Women Voters, a newcomer to ethics reform, who praised House bill 3945 and ridiculed legislators who opposed the purported ethics-reform bill as “perfectionists,” “concerned” or “unwilling” ( “We must move forward on ethics,” Aug. 14).

It is not surprising, perhaps, that three people so recently acquainted with State House politics should fall for a fake reform bill like H.3945.

In particular, Rep. Finlay’s brief tenure in the House would not encourage much confidence in his actual interest in reform. He was one of the chief sponsors of two looney bills designed to rescue House Speaker Bobby Harrell from the criminal probe by the attorney general into his use of some $300,000 of campaign funds for pay for his personal airplane. Finlay joined with allies to fix a bill to remove Wilson as prosecutor in the Harrell case and empower Harrell himself and the president pro tempore of the Senate to appoint a special prosecutor to take Wilson’s place; they even proposed a constitutional amendment to strip Wilson of his prosecutorial authority.

Common Cause of South Carolina opposed H.3945 when it came to a vote in the Senate at the end of this past session; it was defeated by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives.

No honest analysis of H.3945 could conclude that it was a serious reform proposal. It failed to address the most critical ethics problems that have plagued South Carolina in recent years. It failed to clean up the chronic problem of the misuse of campaign funds for non-campaign purpose. Just in the past few years, a number of officials have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar: Gov. Mark Sanford used campaign money to go on a hunting trip in Ireland; Lt. Gov. Ken Ard was thrown out of office after he bought clothes; Rep. Harold Mitchell was fined more than $20,000 for misuses; and Sen. Robert Ford was referred to the attorney general for buying sex novelties.

Not only did H.3945 not stop the misuse of campaign money for non-campaign purposes; it even proposed to allow candidates to use such funds to pay for family members to go on trips.

The bill did nothing to stop legislative ethics committees from pretending to police their own members. The failure of the House Ethics Committee to do anything about Bobby Harrell’s out-of-control spending of campaign money on his private airplane clearly shows how conflicted and frightened the panel was.

Of course, H.3945 had no whistle-blower measure to protect government employees who report embezzlement, bribery and corruption, even though South Carolina is plagued by such crimes. It had no public integrity unit of the sort proposed by the attorney general to attack public corruption.

As bad as 3945 was, there were many legislators who wanted it to pass so they could say for the next generation that they has passed a wonderful ethics reform bill while they continued to misbehave for the rest of their careers.

In the end, Gov. Nikki Haley declared H.3945 an income-disclosure bill that didn’t address ethics, and Sen. Vincent Sheheen walked away from it, as both candidates for governor clearly saw that the bill fell far below their minimum standards for ethics reform.

The next two years will be a better time for passing a real ethics reform bill, as the 2016 elections will have both the House and Senate facing the voters. By then, perhaps another scandal will further demonstrate the need for a real ethics-reform law.

John Crangle is executive director of Common Cause of South Carolina, a longtime member of the SC Progressive Network.

Our political leaders must think so. How else can you explain their refusal to expand Medicaid?

Please watch and share this video about the SC Progressive Network’s grassroots campaign to educate and mobilize voters on health care before the Nov. 4 elections. Then join our Healthy Democracy Road Show. Details here.