Your SC politics briefing
Welcome to your weekly South Carolina politics briefing, a newsletter curated by The State’s politics and government team.
The holiday-shortened week started with South Carolina’s senior U.S. senator being ordered to answer questions about his phone calls with the Georgia secretary of state after the 2020 election.
While U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham was on an overseas trip, which included visits to Iraq and Ukraine, he found out a grand jury in Georgia wanted to hear from him.
Graham was subpoenaed to testify in front of a Fulton County grand jury investigating potential criminal influence in Georgia’s 2020 election.
Graham’s lawyers, Bart Daniel and Matt Austin from the high-profile South Carolina firm Nelson Mullins, said the senior senator would challenge the subpoena, which ordered Graham to testify on July 12.
Daniel and Austin also pointed out Graham is neither a subject nor target of the investigation. He’s just a witness.
The subpoena says Graham twice called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election to ask about mail-in ballots and if there was a way to get a more favorable result for former President Donald Trump.
Graham has denied doing anything wrong, and his lawyers called the subpoena “all politics.” They said it was part of a “fishing expedition” and that any information would be turned over to the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Ultimately, if Graham testifies, the grand jury will want his take on the phone calls he had with Raffensperger.
Trump advisors Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason, also were subpoenaed to testify.
Post-Roe abortion debate begins in House
Lawmakers are expected to enact further restrictions on abortion in South Carolina. But before that, members of the public had their opportunity to weigh in on whether to ban all abortions in the state.
The House ad hoc committee crafting abortion legislation had their first hearing on Thursday. The committee expects to hold at least one more hearing before finalizing legislation for the House to debate. Thursday’s hearing involved nearly seven hours of testimony and was preceded by protests by abortion rights and anti-abortion demonstrators outside of the Blatt building.
Some of those who attended gave emotional testimony.
“I appeal to you that women of South Carolina do not need an abortion. I am a woman and I simply needed a chance to live,” one Greenville resident, who was born premature, said.
Aaron Cameron Popkin, of Spartanburg, defended the need for abortion access.
“That procedure is not a flippant decision,” he said. “It’s a life-saving procedure.”
Advocates speak for ‘Dreamers’
South Carolina advocates for immigration reform called on the state’s two Republican U.S. senators to continue their support for immigrants brought as children to the U.S. in response to a pending 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The Obama-era program commonly referred to as DACA prevents deportation for thousands of immigrants brought into the U.S. as children. Currently 8,785 DACA-eligible residents live in South Carolina.
Advocates say they fear the end of DACA will uproot families.
DACA recipients already face restrictions in South Carolina, such as being ineligible for many occupational licenses and state-sponsored college scholarships. South Carolina lawmakers at the state and federal levels — state Rep. Neal Collins, R-Pickens, and Graham — have unsuccessfully attempted to pass immigration reform legislation several times in the past.
Columbia Convention Center money
Last year, lawmakers allocated $9 million to the City of Columbia to help pay for an expansion of the convention center. That project hasn’t moved forward so lawmakers this year reallocated that money.
Lawmakers split it up, sending $4 million for improvements in the area of Bluff and Atlas roads, $3 million to address flooding issues in the Belvedere neighborhood, and $2 million for community enhancements along Beltline Boulevard. They made the move through an amendment proposed by state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland.
During the House debate, no one asked questions about the projects Rutherford proposed.
Specifically, the Bluff and Atlas roads improvements would help start a farmers market in the area, which is considered a food desert, returning a farmers market to Columbia after the state market was moved to Lexington County in 2007.
The projects were not listed in the budget as earmarks, and as a result, the governor’s office did not review the projects before Gov. Henry McMaster signed off on most of the budget.
“In every situation with the budget when you’re spending state taxpayer dollars, more transparency rather than less is always going to be the governor’s preference,” said Brian Symmes, spokesman for McMaster’s office, adding that the governor’s office is not against the farmers market.
Rutherford said he would have provided information if he had been asked.
“I would have said it’s for a farmers market to go at the corner of Bluff and Atlas to replace the one that was stolen by Lexington County all those years ago,” Rutherford said.
Buzz Bites
▪ Sen. Lindsey Graham was overseas this week making visits to Iraq and Ukraine, where he called Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
▪ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will be the keynote speaker at the South Carolina Republican Party’s Silver Elephant Gala on July 29.
▪ Faith Rivers James, an assistant provost at The Citadel and a Harvard law graduate, was named executive director of the S.C. Coastal Conservation League.
▪ The S.C. GOP prevented the Greenville County from throwing out primary election results for the Greenville County Council.
▪ Ellen Weaver cruised to the GOP nomination for state superintendent. Here’s a look at how she won the runoff over Kathy Maness.
▪ McMaster told the family that donated a Beaufort County barrier island to the University of South Carolina that the university would live up to its commitment to use it for scientific, educational, charitable and general public purposes.
Mark your calendar
July 10
Quarterly campaign fundraising reporting deadline
July 29
S.C. GOP Silver Elephant Gala
July 30
South Carolina Republican Party Convention in Columbia
August 1
Deadline for gubernatorial candidates to notify parties of their lieutenant governor running mate.
Before we adjourn
We’ve written a lot about lawmaker earmarks and whether there’s enough transparency with them. But another aspect of the earmark process is how that money gets delivered to recipients who carry out the local projects.
Previously lawmakers were given checks they could hand deliver to earmark recipients. It provided an opportunity for the lawmaker to get some credit for securing money for the project and allowed for one of those cliche’ check-passing photos.
It also meant lawmakers could hang on to checks for months before delivering them, as what happened with state Sen. Karl Allen, D-Greenville.
However, McMaster in a recent executive order told state agencies to begin sending checks directly to earmark recipients, bypassing lawmakers.
If you think about it, this doesn’t take away the ability of lawmakers to have a check presentation ceremony. They can use oversize novelty checks like lottery winners sometimes receive or when someone makes a large donation to a charity.
Plus novelty checks look better in a photo.
Who pulled together this week’s newsletter?
This week it was Joseph Bustos, reporter on The State’s politics and state government team. You can keep up with him on Twitter and send him tips on Twitter at @JoeBReporter or by email jbustos@thestate.com.
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