ON THE FRITZ
Carlson, Tucker
ON THE FRITZ by Tucker Carlson Columbia, S.C. TOWARD THE END OF THEIR most recent televised debate, Democrat Ernest “Fritz” Hollings and Republican Bob Inglis, both of whom are running for...
...Inglis didn’t mention a single federal grant he has secured for his constituents, or for anyone else...
...But the debate was more substantive than most taking place this season...
...Mostly they argued, and then argued some more,” sniffed the Charleston Post and Courier in its coverage the next day...
...The incumbent snorted derisively...
...He’s a goddamned skunk” who, Hollings said, can “kiss my fanny...
...Confident that he could never abide by it, Inglis has pushed Hollings to sign a “Contract for a Courteous Campaign,” a written promise not to engage in negative campaigning...
...Already, Hollings pointed out, his wife “Nancy left him...
...In each case, the state’s black leaders expressed the requisite outrage...
...The hell with everybody...
...I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you’d find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they’d just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva...
...And I’m asking you to apologize...
...Once that budget is passed, you’ll find old Hollings getting his share...
...Instead, he boasted of Republican efforts to balance the budget and enact welfare reform...
...Senile or not, Thurmond is still a hero in South Carolina, and Hollings’s opponent that year, former Republican congressman Tommy Hartnett, tried to use Hollings’s words against him...
...Hollings is expected to get at least 90 percent of their votes this fall...
...The very idea of such a contract sent Hollings into a fury...
...In contrast to the average Senate race, in which look-alike candidates try to find ways to differentiate themselves, this year’s battle for the Senate in South Carolina is being waged between men who actually disagree on the role of government...
...Without his job in Washington, Hollings explained, Thurmond wouldn’t “have a home, a hometown, and would quickly discover he doesn’t have any real friends...
...Man, what you talkin’ about in this body...
...I was talking intentionally, in the spirit of levity that we had on the floor at the time,” he explained...
...Tucker Carlson is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Republicans probably can’t do anything about Hollings’s black support, but they can try to convince the rest of the state’s voters that Hollings is unbalanced...
...On July 22, for example, Hollings sent out releases notifying the public of his $135,000 anti-crime grant for Charleston, his support for IRS reform, and his efforts to “save Social Security from a freespending Congress...
...TOWARD THE END OF THEIR most recent televised debate, Democrat Ernest “Fritz” Hollings and Republican Bob Inglis, both of whom are running for Hollings’s South Carolina Senate seat, were given several minutes to ask each other questions...
...The next day’s releases boasted of another $10 million in various federal grants, a press conference to attack Republicans on Social Security, and Hollings’s nomination of a South Carolina state senator to be secretary of the Air Force...
...Between February and August of this year, Hollings issued no fewer than 155 press releases, most touting his pork-gathering abilities...
...Bob is about bigger issues,” explains Jeff Fedorchak, the Republican’s chief consultant...
...During a Senate debate over school prayer in the early 1980s, Hollings—whose description of Sen...
...At one point, Hollings even bragged about a garbage dump he had built in Greenville in the 1960s...
...I’ve gotten along with all my candidates before and didn’t have to get a contract...
...As recently as his last Senate campaign, in the fall of 1992, Hollings told a newspaper interviewer that Strom Thurmond wouldn’t leave the Senate while still breathing...
...Very long...
...What have you done for six years for this particular district other than whine and complain and holler ‘pork...
...Alcoholic Abuser...
...Outbursts like these have worried Hollings’s friends for years, and his campaign staff does its best to keep the senator away from chance encounters with reporters...
...Alcoholic Abuser as Secretary of Defense...
...Hollings, who at 76 is the state’s junior senator, went first...
...In other words, voters are still greedy for federal money, and, as Hollings himself predicted, it’s going to take more than hollering “pork” to win the race...
...Inglis has chosen to play the courtesy card...
...And I don’t have to do things that are politically correct...
...As Republican as South Carolina has become,” Fedorchak admits, “the place is just dripping with tradition...
...Put in Mr...
...The Inglis campaign is hoping to convince voters that there is something unseemly—or at least dated—about Hollings’s style of politics...
...This man is mentally sick,” observed the head of the South Carolina NAACP after Hollings’s cannibalism interview...
...I’m free at last...
...Not at all,” replied Hollings, totally unrepentant...
...After mocking Inglis and his “principles,” Hollings launched into an accounting of the federal money he has brought to South Carolina over almost 50 years in office: hospitals he has built, roads he has widened, cops he has hired, legislation he once sponsored to help a local grocery-store chain...
...Inglis, a prim thirtyish father of five from upstate South Carolina, is an ideological conservative who seems genuinely committed to reducing federal power...
...Everybody’s rude and he wants to be nice...
...I’ve been elected six times,” he said...
...Or the 1993 newspaper interview in which Hollings veered from a discussion of GATT into observations about international travel: “Everybody likes to go to Geneva...
...In March 1989, Hollings infuriated fellow senators during the John Tower hearings by quoting from a confidential FBI report that described Tower’s alleged drinking problem...
...It used to have enormous upsetting implications in the state...
...He has to have something wrong in his head to keep making these kinds of comments...
...Hollings is a profane old-school Democrat from Charleston, short on philosophy of government and long on pork...
...Hollings had hardly cooled by the time of the Greenville debate, denouncing “all this ying-yow about courtesy” as “nonsense” and “trickery...
...In a southern state, the senator’s criticism of Clinton—“Wag the Dog...
...Inglis, he told reporters, was “an oozing and goozing” “little choirboy...
...To that end, the party has produced an ad that contains footage of Hollings addressing his supporters on what he thought at the time would be his last election night, in 1992: “I don’t have to get elected to a bloomin’ thing,” Hollings yelled to the crowd...
...Lloyd Bentsen as “the senator from Texaco” was already notorious— called Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio “the senator from B’nai B’rith...
...Either way, it’s not clear that Hollings could stop being nasty even if he wanted to...
...At times, the bickering came off as petty...
...Hollings’s televised growling probably doesn’t...
...Hollings is legendary in South Carolina for his almost Tourette’s-like inability to control the nasty comments that flow from his mouth...
...Howard Baker later had the comments removed from the record, but reporters had heard them, and Hollings was forced to apologize...
...There is an ongoing debate in South Carolina over whether Hollings’s personality helps or hurts him...
...In fact, Hollings has never been much of a gentleman campaigner...
...About half of South Carolina’s Democratic voters are black...
...Not that all South Carolinians have come to recognize this...
...Hollings said recently, “Wagging the dog is what got him into trouble”— probably helps...
...Hollings didn’t even consider it...
...An ordinary politician would have risen to the bait, rattled off a list of bridge and highway projects, and moved on...
...Like the time Hollings explained to a Columbia television crew how foreign imports were taking minimumwage jobs away from South Carolina’s “darkies...
...The following day, his office issued seven more statements to the press, announcing, among other things, a $210 million grant to schools, $24 million in additional anti-crime programs, $30 million for Charleston-area “coastal projects,” and millions more in “disaster relief ” for the state from two different federal agencies...
...After all the talk of courtesy, the reporter wanted to know, does Hollings like Inglis personally, as a man...
...South Carolinians don’t benefit any more from a grant here, a demonstration project there...
...You’re full of prunes,” he said...
...He has a wicked sense of humor, brutal,” says Bud Ferillo, a prominent Democratic consultant who has been active in South Carolina politics since the mid-1960s...
...All the pork is within budget,” he said proudly...
...I can tell you that right here and now...
...I believe you owe Senator Thurmond an apology,” Hartnett said during a debate...
...On the other hand, nothing Hollings has said so far seems to have damaged his support among minority groups...
...Among its gimmicks, the contract would require each candidate to give the other rebuttal time at his press conferences...
...Over the loud objections of his colleagues, Hollings repeatedly referred to Tower as “Mr...
...It was a bit of an overstatement...
...Following the debate last week, a reporter from Roll Call approached the incumbent for comment...
...I’d like to know what he has done for the fourth congressional district,” he said, turning to Inglis, who represents the Greenville area in the House...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 8
