Proud to Be Cheap
DICARLO, RACHEL
Proud to Be Cheap South Carolina's governor hones his small-government credentials. BY RACHEL DICARLO Columbia, South Carolina PERHAPS the most overused political tag these days is "budget...
...The lawmakers overrode 105 of them...
...As might be expected, Sanford's small-government conservatism has sparked presidential-race buzz...
...Yet the budget grew by 9.1 percent...
...When the budget landed on his desk, the general assembly had allowed only $117 million for the trust funds...
...He doesn't schmooze them or invite them to the governor's mansion for a drink or take them out to lunch...
...He often delivers stump speeches at places like Wal-Mart...
...The aide describes a recent staff retreat at Sanford's 3,000-acre farm near Beaufort...
...Since he entered the state-house in 2003, Sanford's approval ratings have risen from the mid-50s to 70 percent...
...In the meantime, he must also prep for his reelection bid in 2006...
...Halfway across the plank, the aide fell into the mud below...
...He campaigned on gradually phasing out the state income tax, but hasn't been able to move that through the legislature...
...Politics should be more like musical chairs—as many people as possible should have a turn...
...I told them to blame it on me," Sanford says...
...It's going to be very, very hard to work with him after this," another Republican, Bob Leach, added...
...Sanford says he'll publicly recognize the best idea at the end of the year...
...I'll live with that...
...I'll be the bad guy...
...A true believer in "citizen-legislators," Sanford went home for good in 2000, when his self-imposed three-term limit was up...
...Last year in South Carolina, the combined increase in population growth and inflation was only around 4 percent...
...Sanford may face a primary challenge from Republican Oscar Lovelace, a doctor who has never held public office...
...He recently introduced the Taxpayer Empowerment Amendment, which would make it illegal for the government to spend more than yearly population growth plus inflation...
...Some of his biggest critics, surprisingly, are fellow South Carolina Republicans...
...So Sanford issued another 163 line-item vetoes, worth $95.9 million...
...Ideology has nothing to do with it...
...Rather than relocate their family to a publicly funded rental home, Sanford and his wife moved with their four sons (ages 13, 11, 9, and 6) into the mansion's one-room pool house for six weeks...
...There's already a "Draft Mark Sanford for President in 2008" petition pinging around the Internet...
...The pig stunt enraged both parties in the legislature...
...He often bucked the GOP leadership with his friend Tom Coburn, the former Oklahoma congressman-turned-senator...
...The governor is as cheap as everyone says he is," says his former press secretary...
...Despite the past overrides, Sanford says he has talked to members in both houses and thinks it has a good chance of passing...
...He couldn't understand why anyone would throw away perfectly good clothing...
...One man wanted to have a beer with Sanford and the governor happily obliged...
...Meanwhile, his wife cut the staff at the governor's mansion by 40 percent...
...When our party didn't stand with us, we didn't stand with them," Coburn says...
...The governor does not like to wheel and deal," Bandy says...
...He figured his white pants were ruined, so he tossed them in the trash...
...There are a lot of RINOs [Republicans in name only] here who want to please everybody," Sanford says...
...True to form, the frugal Sanford slept on a futon in his office and traveled back to his district as often as possible...
...Then there is a budget hawk like Mark San-ford, South Carolina's GOP governor, whose thrifty ways infect his politics as much as they do his personal life...
...He won a House seat in 1994, representing South Carolina's first district...
...The hostility reached a peak last year, when the general assembly wrote money into the budget that was supposed to come from a tougher tax enforcement program...
...Republican (and former Democrat) Verne Smith, a 33-year veteran of the state senate, told the News that San-ford's vetoes were "mean-spirited...
...Rank and file folks I talk to don't want the government to grow faster than they can pay for it...
...The American Conservative Union calls him "serious, courageous, and committed...
...Sanford's unique style has won over South Carolina voters...
...Sanford has been to Washington before...
...It's embraced by Democrats who want to balance bloated budgets by raising taxes and by Republicans who want to cut taxes but have little appetite for spending cuts...
...The governor needs to take his medication," Jim Harrison, a GOP representative from Columbia, told the Greenville News...
...They control both chambers of the legislature and have joined Democrats in blocking Sanford from moving much of his agenda—mainly spending cuts...
...San-ford says he's "flattered," but "just trying to survive this week...
...When Rachel DiCarlo is an assistant editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...He also tried to reform property taxes, but the legislature passed a bill that wasn't comprehensive enough and would have actually raised taxes on some people...
...If Sanford can convince two-thirds of the legislature to vote for the amendment, it will show up on the ballot next November...
...Lovelace complains that Sanford hasn't provided leadership on education and health care issues...
...As for a potential White House bid in the future...
...Since the money wasn't certain to materialize, and state trust funds had already been depleted by overspending, Sanford issued 106 line-item vetoes on that budget...
...He's just in that mindset, kind of a libertarian mindset," he continued...
...Sanford points to another factor: A handful of South Carolina Republicans used to be Democrats...
...As his wife Jenny Sanford puts it, "Mark and I would rather lose an election than do something that compromised our principles...
...he first got into office he downsized his security detail and eschewed a black tie inaugural ball for a barbecue open to the public...
...A millionaire former businessman, he has never accepted any PAC money...
...At least six sitting GOP legislators switched parties in the past decade to stay in the good graces of South Carolina's growing conservative electorate...
...There are also stories that endear Sanford to South Carolina taxpayers, such as when mold was discovered in the governor's mansion, which had to be decontaminated...
...And he enjoys meeting with his constituents: Sanford holds monthly "Open Door After Four" sessions when constituents can talk for five minutes each, make suggestions, or complain...
...This year, after $707 million in new revenue came in, Sanford set his sights on restoring $500 million to those reserve funds...
...BY RACHEL DICARLO Columbia, South Carolina PERHAPS the most overused political tag these days is "budget hawk...
...Asked why other politicians have such a hard time leaving Washington, he explains: "Everybody needs to be needed...
...Sanford already has over $3 million in the bank...
...Lee Bandy, a staff writer for South Carolina's State newspaper, says that at least some of the bad feelings are a result of Sanford's making the legislators feel unimportant...
...The next morning at breakfast, San-ford announced that he had found the pants, removed them from the garbage, rinsed them, and hung them up to dry...
...His wife manages his campaigns...
...Sanford is an aberration among politicians in many ways...
...Then what...
...I don't know if anything else will be accomplished at all...
...To protest, Sanford showed up to the next session at the statehouse with two piglets—nicknamed Pork and Barrel—under his arms...
...But once they rejected the vetoes I had to find a colorful way of representing what the voters already know—that there's too much pork...
...The CATO Institute named him one of the top governors in the country and the Club for Growth gave him a spot on their "Four for the Future" list...
...He makes it clear which legislators are on his side by posting a list of "Taxpayer Heroes" outside his office in the statehouse...
...He can raise money like you wouldn't believe," Bandy says...
...You can't do that...
...He'll have no trouble getting reelected...
...Sanford vetoed it...
...It's the ultimate mean-spiritedness to allow government to grow faster than peoples' paychecks...
...They see their names in the paper and begin to think of themselves as irreplaceable...
...The doctor faces an uphill battle...
...It's not part of his image...
...He loves it," the former aide says...
...He doesn't require an aide to sit in the room when he talks to the press (and he lets aides tell embarrassing stories...
...For fun, the governor used an excavator to dig a hole in the ground, filled it with water, and dared everyone to walk across a 20-foot beam that spanned it...
...I know I'm going to try and override every dad-jim one of [his vetoes] because I don't have any spirit for him...
...He has also launched "Waste Watch," an email newsletter that urges supporters to vote for the amendment and asks for their suggestions on how to eliminate waste and inefficiency...
...Sanford still has big plans for reform...
...I'm acting in a way that's consistent with the promises I made voters," he says...
...Conservative groups love him...
...In Congress, Sanford (surprise, surprise) voted against nearly every spending bill...
...In 2002, he beat Democratic incumbent Jim Hodges by six points...
...Sanford brushes such criticism aside...
Vol. 10 • August 2005 • No. 44
