Sanford: Beaufort voters are sick of 'political shenanigans'
jhsieh@beaufortgazette.com
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Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday's Senate District 46 Republican primary, in which his friend and former chief of staff Tom Davis ousted incumbent Sen. Catherine Ceips, showed that voters rejected "cheap political shenanigans" in a press release Wednesday.
Sanford began his comments generally, speaking of legislative races statewide before singling out the Davis-Ceips contest.
"Some have called the amount of incumbent turnover in this race remarkable, because challengers defeating incumbents in party primaries is exceedingly rare in the world of politics. We believe that many of those races were all about voters wanting to put people in office who are going to walk the walk with regard to slowing spending, cutting taxes and restructuring government.
"In particular to the race down in Beaufort, I think what we saw as well was a repudiation of a campaign filled with the kind of cheap political shenanigans that voters are sick and tired of. I think it should serve as a reminder to all candidates who are heading into a runoff in two weeks that voters ultimately care most about issues and ideas, which are what politics should always be about -- a contest of ideas."
Sanford, reached in Beaufort on Wednesday before an unrelated press conference, said the statement was not intended to stoke political fires in Beaufort, but said personal attacks were "distracting."
"It's primary infighting, it's in the family. There was some degree of personal (attacks)," Sanford said. "It should be only about ideas."
Ceips' gloves came off Thursday during a candidate forum when she hurled accusations of Davis' connections to a "pornographic" Web site, a fraudulent securities trader and political groups a black state Supreme Court justice characterized as "the new face of the Klan."
The connections, which were repeated in television spots that led up to the primary, mischaracterized Davis' role as the registered agent for the securities trader and the Web site's umbrella company.
As for the turnover of incumbents, "That says there's something going on. ... It's palpable. ... There's an appetite for change," Sanford said.
Sanford has injected himself into Ceips' elections in the past. He endorsed a Ceips opponent last year in the special election that sent her to the Senate. He endorsed Davis this year, and then in May his office singled Ceips out for abstaining from a committee vote related to a government restructuring bill. In that critique, he threw in a jab referencing her early departure from a Lady's Island campaign event. His office denied any campaign motivations in that instance.
"Absolutely not, this is about restructuring," governor's spokesman Joel Sawyer said at the time.
No definitive record exists of the vote in question, but Ceips said she voted for the bill as the governor wanted and that he incorrectly said she abstained. She described the jab as "good ole boy politics" and a sign of support for Davis.
From the beginning of Davis' candidacy, he said he would challenge Ceips on policy issues, though Ceips characterized his policy attacks as dishonest, "negative, nasty mudslinging."
After the unofficial election results came in Tuesday, Ceips' only comment was, "It appears Mr. Davis has won. I will be calling him later tonight. It appears the out-of-state money won."
Even that comment appeared unfounded, as Ceips' campaign had taken much more money from out-of-district and out-of-state sources than Davis', according to campaign finance reports.
In his victory speech, Davis reiterated a pledge to stick to issues and run honorably in the Nov. 4 general election. He will face Bluffton Democrat Kent Fletcher, a Marine and Iraq veteran who introduced Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama when he spoke at Battery Creek High School in January.
Most of the district's population is south of the Broad River. Of 12,955 votes in the unofficial results for the Senate primary, 8,206 came from precincts south of the Broad River and 4,749 came from the north, a nearly 2-1 ratio.
Ceips and Davis both live in Beaufort. Davis carried the north by 14 points and the south by 11.
North-south divisions were very apparent in the four-way Republican primary last year before the special election that landed Ceips in the Senate.
Among northern Beaufort County voters, then-Rep. Ceips had more than three times the votes of her closest opponent, Beaufort County Council Chairman Weston Newton of Bluffton. Rep. Richard Chalk and former Beaufort County Council Chairman Tom Taylor -- both of Hilton Head Island -- and Newton split 84.3 percent of the south-of-the-Broad votes. Ceips received only 15.7 percent.
Ceips won the primary runoff against Newton with a six point lead.