South Carolina Statehouse Blog

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Senator Vincent Sheheen about his gubernatorial bid. Since the Democratic Primary is still over a year away (June 2010), the questions covered were fairly basic and steered away from specific policy questions. The following is based off this interview.

The first topic covered had to deal with Senator Sheheen’s basic policy platform.

Senator Sheheen has three major things that he wants to run on. First, he wants to focus on job creation in the state. To do this, Sheheen would take a more active role in courting businesses to come to South Carolina. This means that he would strive to meet face-to-face with company representatives all over the country and try to get them to come to South Carolina.

The second issue Senator Sheheen would focus on is public education. As governor, he would like to raise teachers’ pay so that it is at the top of the southeast average and eventually get it to the national average. He would also work to reduce class sizes in the state and ensure equity in school funding.

The third major issue Senator Sheheen wants to focus on is environmental conservation in the state.

“[We need] to preserve what we have and also make it an economic engine for the state, especially in our rural areas.”

He elaborated by stating that while South Carolina does well with beach tourism, the state can also benefit by focusing on rural farms and markets as well as rural tourism that will help the state’s economy.

In addition to the three major platform issues listed above, Senator Sheheen also plans to improve healthcare, particularly by raising the cigarette tax to expand healthcare coverage in the state as well as addressing the issue of law enforcement wages.

“We unfortunately pay our state law enforcement such low wages that they often have to work second jobs because they can’t sustain their families,” Senator Sheheen explained, “and that is not a fair way for us to treat our law enforcement officials.”

The next topic discussed was how Senator Sheheen, if he won the Democratic primary, planned on winning a general election in a state that has only had one Democratic governor in the past 25 years.

While many would see this an obstacle to be overcome, Senator Sheheen actually sees it as an advantage.

“I think that it is an advantage to be able to say, ‘Hey, if you want to change the direction of the state, why don’t we try something we haven’t tried in the past.”

Sheheen continued by stating that the poor performance of the current government is like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“If you believe the government can’t do anything right, you get a government that can’t get anything right, and that is what we have right now.”

One current issue addressed during the interview was the stimulus money debate. Senator Sheheen explained that he didn’t agree with how Governor Sanford was dealing with the stimulus money and would have taken a much different approach.

“Once the federal government decided to spend these dollars, which they have, I would have made it my priority to return as many of South Carolina’s tax dollars to the state as possible.”

Senator Sheheen also touched on three things he has learned in the legislature that can be applied if elected governor. Sheheen believes that working in the legislature has taught him how to work with people, how to accomplish goals when there are numerous opinions, and that some progress is better than no progress at all.

One of the last things discussed had to do with some campaign logistics. With regards to how his campaign will be run, Senator Sheheen hopes to be able to adapt some of Obama’s campaign strategies like focusing on young voters and getting grassroots involvement in his campaign.

Additionally, Senator Sheheen believes that he can continue his fundraising momentum of raising $257k in two months by continually widening his base of support all the way through the primary and on into the general election.

Lastly, I asked Senator Sheheen if he could state in a couple sentences why he thought voters in South Carolina should vote for him in the primary.

“I think we need a new generation of leadership in the state,” Senator Sheheen stated. “I think that we need someone who has enough experience about state government to understand what’s not working and has ideas about how to change that. I also think that we need someone with a track record of pushing change in the state.”

UPDATE  5/1/09 (6:15pm EST): Changed “hasn’t had a Democratic governor for the past 25 years” to “has only had one Democratic governor in the past 25 years.” Sorry for the mistake. When I went back to the interview recording, I discovered that I did use the latter phrase. Seems like I just copied it down wrong for the article.