State senator calls SC government ‘dysfunctional’
State Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, announced Wednesday that he will try again to take the Governor’s Mansion.
Sheheen ran against Gov. Nikki Haley in 2010 in a close race that left him 4.4 percent of the vote short taking the office.
The senator officially announced the launch of his campaign in an email to supporters, in which he invoked the hacking of the Department of Revenue and South Carolina’s unemployment rate as evidence of a “failed and dysfunctional” state government.
Sheheen is the first from either party to announce a gubernatorial campaign, and no other Democrats have suggested they may enter the race. Still, the South Carolina Democratic Party has not given Sheheen its full endorsement.
“We’re waiting to see if there are any other challengers that emerge,” said Kristin Sosanie, the party’s communications director. “He certainly is a strong candidate.”
Sosanie echoed Sheheen’s sentiments, saying there have been “incompetence, corruption and problems in [Haley’s] administration,” and that the October hacking incident, in which more than 3 million South Carolinians’ Social Security and credit card information were compromised, was a “prime example.”
Sheheen sponsored a legislative amendment to create a credit card reimbursement fund for those who fell victim to identity theft as a result of the hacking incident, and it was approved by the state Senate Wednesday, hours after Sheheen’s campaign announcement.
Sheheen has spent the nearly three years since his close loss to Haley traveling across South Carolina to learn what issues are most pressing for the state’s residents, Sosanie said.
“It’s not just not how much he’s learned throughout his career, but in the past few years getting around the state talking to people about what’s going wrong,” Sosanie said. “We have so much potential, and we’re not meeting it.”
Sheheen illustrated what he sees as South Carolina’s potential in the email he sent to supporters.
“Together we can create stronger schools for all of our children, help small businesses grow and create jobs and restore honesty to our state’s government,” Sheheen wrote in the email. “We need a governor whose top priority is the people of South Carolina.”
Sheheen is in the very early stages of assembling his campaign team. Sosanie said she had been fielding most of the press’ calls to the campaign since the announcement, and Sheheen had not yet selected a campaign manager or a press secretary.
While it is widely speculated that Haley will run for re-election, she has yet to make a formal announcement. A statement released by South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Chad Connelly implied she would run.
“I have no doubt that South Carolinians will return Nikki Haley to the Governor’s Mansion,” Connelly said.
Requests for comment from the South Carolina Republican Party were not returned.