Gov. Nikki Haley is reportedly considering Chad Walldorf, owner of the barbecue chain Sticky Fingers, to fill the Senate seat being vacated by tea party leader Jim DeMint, according to the Washington, DC blog Talking Points Memo.
TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santorio reports that Gov. Haley is considering appointing Walldorf to DeMint’s seat as a placeholder, who will serve as senator until the 2014 special election. The news prompted The Atlantic’s Molly Ball to quip, “‘Sen. Sticky Fingers’ has a heck of a ring to it.”
Walldorf was appointed chairman of the state Board of Economic Advisors when Gov. Haley took office, after donating $7,000 to Haley’s 2010 campaign. Since then, campaign finance records show Walldorf has given another $1,000 to the governor’s campaign. Walldorf’s wife, Jena, has also given $5,500 to the Haley campaign since 2010 — for a grand total of $13,500.
In fact, that’s just a quarter of what Walldorf and Sticky Fingers paid for a portrait of Comedy Central satirist and South Carolina native Stephen Colbert! Walldorf and Colbert talked about the purchase on a 2006 episode of the Colbert Report:
Other possible choices for the newly-open Senate seat include U.S. Rep. Tim Scott (DeMint’s preferred successor), former Attorney General Henry McMaster, and even Gov. Haley herself. Someone has started a @ColbertForSC Twitter account pushing Colbert for the Senate seat! In addition, The State’s Adam Beam started a #FakeHaleyAppointments hashtag — the best of which have been included below:
Good luck to Mr. Walldorf, but Tim Scott would kill him in the special election. It pretty clears the loons on the right have drawn Her Highness into a corner on this. If she doesn’t appoint a tea partier they will be upset and with her dismal approval ratings shes going to need to get the vote from every Birch Society member, tea partier, flat-earther, oathkeeper, and latent fascist to win reelection.
I think those who quit their elected post, necessitating a partisan app’t and requiring the cost of a special election in two years, should forfeit any and all benefits acquired from the position they’re abandoning.