Bauer talks about state, national issues

State's second-in-command says jobs will be top concern for next governor

Keith Gedamke / The Item

By JOE PERRY
Item Staff Writer
jperry@theitem.com

In a swing through Sumter on Wednesday to honor Beverly Stevens for her volunteer work with the Santee Lynches Regional Council of Governments' Area Agency on Aging, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer sat down to talk for about 45 minutes on several topics facing the next governor, President Obama and what he thinks South Carolina needs to do to grow its job base.

He also spoke about his successes and failures during his time in elected office — from 1996 to 99 in the House of Representatives, 1999 to 2003 in the Senate, and 2003 until present as lieutenant governor — and why he thinks he could be an effective governor. He is currently pushing legislation (introduced to the Senate in late May) he says is designed to make the Office of Aging — under the auspice of his office since 2004 — what he calls a "one-stop shop" for seniors and the disabled, which he said could save taxpayers $50 million.

Bauer, 40, is perhaps best known for surviving a hairy plane crash three years ago and some well publicized run-ins with law enforcement regarding past tendencies to drive at a high rate of speed. He also made headlines when he narrowly defeated Mike Campbell — son of the the late Carroll Campbell, who served as governor from 1987 to 1995 — to re-take his post as the state's second-in-command and president of the Senate.

Jobs are going to be the No. 1 issue for the next governor, he said.

"Who can go out and sell the world to South Carolina?" he asked.

Bauer said he doesn't claim to have all the answers and is a "business guy" that looks for good ideas from other people. He wants to surround himself with experts to get the best advice, and one of the first ideas on which he expounded was green energy. He wants to the see the state become a hotbed of research and development in that field, as he thinks it will have a huge impact on the country's future.

"I would like to see South Carolina become known as the green capital of the world," he said. "I would take one county in South Carolina and make it a green county — any business would be tax exempt at the corporate level," while still paying property, sales and employee withholding taxes.

"If we really want to put South Carolina on the map — under (Gov. David) Beasley and (Gov. Carroll) Campbell, we were number one in the country in job creation. Not only is this creating jobs, but it is creating very high paying jobs, and it is bringing the corporate headquarters here. It is bringing the big boys here. What you want is fair and equitable tax — you want to be able to spread it over as many people as you can," he said.

If research into alternative forms of energy — bio-diesel and solar, for example — was done here, not only could it create "a whole different image of South Carolina" as a more progressive state, it could act as a catalyst to create spin-offs that create more jobs.

"There will be people that either steal my ideas or there'll be people that criticize it, but what you get by people running for governor hopefully is a bunch of new ideas," he said.

ARE YOU LOOKING AT THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE? THINKING ABOUT IT?
"Mmm hmmm. I have said I am not going to run for lieutenant governor again. At the end of this term it will be 14 years (in elected office).

When I (first) ran, I never intended to serve but just a couple years in the House of Representatives. I've been running my business every day, which I think is an unusual thing for a guy running for governor. Most people that are in elected office are full time, especially at the state level. I've balanced being president of the Senate, being lieutenant governor and being the head of the Office on Aging. ... I've been able to manage my time very effectively, so I think it brings a different perspective. I don't think we've ever had a person run for governor that has legislative experience, executive (branch) experience and cabinet level experience. ... I've had to deal with these agency heads, I've led delegations — I just led a delegation a couple months ago to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Of course I paid for it out of my pocket, I want to reference."

HOW WOULD YOU RATE PRESIDENT OBAMA THUS FAR?
"It's hard for me ..."

BEING FROM A DIFFERENT PARTY?.
"Not party, but philosophy. It's hard for me to be fair to him because my philosophy is so vastly different. I'm not one that wants to go quickly and criticize him. He's got an enormous amount of decisions to make that weigh heavily on so many people's lives. Outside of fighting wars, and dealing with energy issues, he's got an economy right now that's struggling, and so I don't want to over-criticize him. I have zero interest in being president, but I don't like seeing our country go in a direction that I think is adamantly against what made this country the greatest country in the world. And this country was founded on number one, Judeo-Christian values; number two, people came here from all over the world, and they came here because they knew if they really applied themselves and took calculated risks, they had the opportunity to achieve great things. We have a system whereby now, we want to continually penalize people or put more and more restrictions and expenses on them for the ones that make the money. And so we're continually discouraging innovation and job creation and more and more of these people are looking for other places to do their business. They're looking at — where can I take my business to another country to get around paying some of these egregious taxes? And so that discourages new business, new jobs, small businesses opening. And all that has a trickle down effect. I don't like the fact that government is becoming more and more the cure-all for every problem. I like faith-based organizations, families, friends, communities, neighbors and charities handling a lot of stuff that the government is getting involved in."

Bauer then delved into how he thinks the state is not allocating enough money to make sure our roads and bridges are safe.

BACK TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — DO YOU SEE IT DRIFTING TOWARD SOCIALISM?
"I do. And maybe it's just a move right now — and I don't blame it just on the president. I see it through the media..."

THE MOOD OF THE COUNTRY?
"I see it through the mood of the people. And one of the biggest problems is, people are conditioned to think ... government is there to solve all their problems and so many people that quite frankly can't support themselves continue to have more children. And so more and more people are jumping in the wagon and less are pushing it. And so I hope that the pendulum will swing back. You know, it swings both ways. A two party system is really good in this country — a three party system would probably (be) even be better. But it needs to be close, and right now the numbers aren't close. And when the numbers aren't close — and I've served in the majority and the minority — and what I saw was, when you had the numbers close, debate really kicked in and compromise really kicked in and both parties had to work together. ... It was the healthiest system for the people. Right now, because you've got a super-majority in Washington (D.C.), it's not healthy... The Republican party is who I fault, because of lack of leadership in trying to have a really defined message about what their party was about."

WHO DO YOU SEE AS THE NEXT LEADER, NATIONALLY, IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? IS THERE ONE?
"I don't see a clear leader currently."

NO?
"There's nobody that I really see is the clear leader."

ROMNEY, GIULIANI...GINGRICH? PALIN?
"I have a really close relationship — I say really close; I have a close relationship with (2008 presidential contender and former Arkansas Gov. Mike) Huckabee. But I don't see anybody that's broken away from the pack. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. ... I don't see the Republican party with a clear, delineated message of who we are and what we're about and why people should be Republicans over Democrats."

WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE AS THE NEXT (LEADER) ON A NATIONAL LEVEL?
"I don't want it to be the person that Andre wants it to be. I want it to be the somebody that comes up..."

UNIFIES THE PARTY?
"... with a refreshing — I don't want them to unify the party. I want them to unify people. I want them to appeal to people that don't consider themselves Republicans. ... I think too often people that are running for office cater too much to appeal to their own party. I ran in all Democrat district for the Senate. They didn't have an elected Republican in Newberry County when I ran. And so I've tried to do things a little different — and some of them I'd like to go back and do over — but I have tried to make people realize I'm just an average person who tries to look at what other people are doing, what other states are doing, what other governments are doing and try to come up with good ideas. Some are my own, and some I get from other people to make government run more efficiently and more productively. But I don't have all the answers. I don't claim to have all the answers."

HOW ABOUT THE (FEDERAL) STIMULUS DOLLARS? THAT, OF COURSE GAVE GOV. SANFORD A LOT OF ATTENTION. HIS ARGUMENT WAS TO PAY DOWN THE DEBT. ... DID YOU SUPPORT THAT? WERE YOU UPSET THE (STATE SUPREME) COURT SAID WE HAD TO TAKE IT? HOW'D YOU SEE THAT WHOLE BATT
"Depends on what the question you're asking me is."

DID YOU SUPPORT HIS STANCE?
"Well, my stance was that debate had really already been decided. You know, the debate about whether you have the money or not — the stimulus debate wasn't up to us. I was against the stimulus money. I think this country is going into a serious recession. The dollar is being devalued, and we're all going to pay the ultimate price. We're already seeing inflation go up. Not only that, but you see interest rates going up. And here we've got a situation now where nobody is buying houses. You can't get a loan, and if you can get a loan, the interest rate just went up again more than a point and a half. If you can't change the housing market, it's going to be hard to change the economy because it directly affects so many people. ... To continue to spend billions and billions of dollars and devalue the dollar and now other countries are saying 'No, we don't want to buy any more bonds' — it's a scary time. ... Once that debate was over, to say we ought to give that money to a different state, I disagree with. I would say I'm a little bit of the Strom Thurmond philosophy. ... He railed against federal government spending. However, when it came down to that argument being over, he was going to get all he could for the poor, rural state of South Carolina."

IN YOUR POLITICAL CAREER — TWO PART QUESTION: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR BIGGEST MISTAKE, AND WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT?
"I'll take the second one first. The biggest achievement by far was (The Office on) Aging and the successes we've had, and it really hasn't been my success. I was very fortunate to get some good people in Aging. ... The Legislature has been wonderful to the seniors of South Carolina, which has made me look good. The biggest failures are the fact that I let — that personal issues in my personal life have somewhat (pauses) been part of what I'll have as a legacy. Or (what) people will think about me."

AS OPPOSED TO WHAT YOU DID IN...
"Yeah, well the problem is I've run (for office) 11 times. And any time you run 11 times, you're going to pick up people that when they run, they don't want to talk issues, they want to run (on) negatives. And that's what's happened in that last few elections ..."

TALKING ABOUT SPEEDING TICKETS AND ALL THAT?
"When you look at a young person from 26 (years old) to 40 and put them under a magnifying glass... Surely you're going to make mistakes. I'm no different. But it's disheartening that you get pulled for a ticket — if it should have been news, and it probably should have been that I got pulled — it should have been (news) then. It shouldn't be a situation where ..."

IT KEPT GETTING BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION, DO YOU THINK?
"It shouldn't be a situation, you happen to know, because of who you (are), you happen to have the inside skinny — you get a copy of the tapes then you hold them for eight months until the week of filing deadline. Purely used politically. I'm guilty as charged, I made a bad decision and it probably won't be the last bad decision I make in my life. You know, we all would love to be able to go back and change things. The sad thing to me is, no matter what I do, that will always be part of what I've done in elected office, so that bothers me personally. It's nobody's fault but my own. And I hate that, because I want people to remember that I had a real passion, not only to improve the lives of seniors, but that I was really up here to try to change the duties and responsibilities and effectiveness of government. And when people have called me for constituent problems, I have worked as diligently as I possibly knew to solve people's problems so that they had a different opinion of government and people that worked for the government."

WHEN YOU SPOKE EARLIER OVER AT THE COG (SANTEE-LYNCHES REGIONAL COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS), AND YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THE REMAINDER OF TIME YOU HAVE IN OFFICE — IS THIS (THE OFFICE OF AGING) GOING TO BE FOCUS FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE? WHAT WOULD YOU L
"I would like to leave (the Office on) Aging passing a comprehensive piece of legislation that made it really a one stop shop for the people of South Carolina. That'll be a big piece of legislation, and there'll be probably heavy debate over it, but I would love to see it pass. It doesn't exactly have to be in that form, but I would like to leave Aging in a great state so that whoever the next lieutenant governor is, can take it to an even greater level."



Contact Staff Writer Joe Perry at jperry@theitem.com or (803) 774-1272.