SC-7 candidate’s primary opponent says ALEC resignation is “too little, too late” - State Rep. Ted Vick (D-Chesterfield) got a lot of good press last week for publicly resigning from the shadowy special interest group ALEC, which uses corporate money to push right-wing legislation through statehouses across the country, Palmetto Public Record reported on Friday. But Vick’s Democratic opponent in the race for South Carolina’s new congressional seat is asking why it took so long for Vick to leave the group, calling the move “too little, too late.”
House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s PAC doled out big money in campaign donations, contracts - South Carolina’s House speaker is affiliated with a political action committee that has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and private contracts to sitting state lawmakers, according to the Charleston Post & Courier’s Renee Dudley. Bobby Harrell’s Palmetto Leadership Council has channeled about a half-million dollars in the last four years to the S.C. House Republican Caucus, to the state Republican Party and to more than 130 mostly incumbent Republican candidates for legislative office, according to publicly filed data.
Majority in SC doubt ‘American Dream’ - The American Dream is in jeopardy, a majority of South Carolinians say, but they disagree as to why, according to The State’s Gina Smith. Just less than 54 percent of South Carolinians agree “hard work alone is sometimes not enough to become financially successful in America,” according to a new Winthrop University poll released last week.
SC to say if voter ID implementation possible - A federal court has given the state of South Carolina until Monday to clarify whether it would be feasible to implement a statewide voter identification requirement in time for this year’s general elections, according to the Associated Press’ Meg Kinnard. State elections officials have said that, in order to take appropriate steps to use the law for the Nov. 6 general election, the requirement that voters present government-issued photo identification at the polls must go into effect no later than Aug. 1 of this year.
Lawmakers have to make sure they don’t create a new unfunded mandate - If state lawmakers decide to divest themselves of the state’s school bus system, they must do so in a manner that doesn’t place an unfunded mandate on school districts, according to an editorial in the Spartanburg Herald Journal. Gov. Nikki Haley and some lawmakers have been pushing to change that. They want to create a system that allows school districts to operate the buses on their own or hire private companies to operate their buses.
