As most South Carolinians know by now, North Charleston has been chosen as the site of a new Boeing Aircraft Assembly Plant. The top secret negotiations had apparently been going on for a good many months and were just coming to a head when our reckless wonderboy governor decided to do some extracurricular trolling in Argentinean waters this summer. Well, in any case as the evidence against him began to mount and it became clear that his meanderings were more than just lusty, busty, dusty romantic longings, and in fact, he was guilty of a number of serious impeachable offenses, calls for the Governor’s impeachment began to ring out from every quarter-- except from his arch enemies, the leadership of the State House and Senate who steadfastly refused to entertain the impeachment option. Until this week nobody could understand why. And then the Boeing deal was unveiled and now we know why Sanford was spared.
To recap the governor's impeachable offenses, it seems that he had been manipulating his expense reports to cover up some "unauthorized" expenses (or something like that.) And he had been traveling first class everywhere (which was clearly against the rules.) The Democrats had long been calling for an impeachment panel. Then rank and file Republicans of both houses began to sign on to the impeachment idea themselves, saying that the longer Sanford stayed in office, the more damage he did to their party. Then you had a whole contingent of "friends of Lt. Governor Andre Bauer" who wanted to give their man a leg up in the 2010 Governor’s race by making him an instant incumbent.
So why were Bobby Harrell, the Speaker of the House, who certainly had no fondness for the Governor, and Glen McConnell, President Pro-Tem of the Senate and one of Sanford’s arch enemies in the legislature, and Hugh Leatherman, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and another longtime antagonist of the Governor giving short shrift to the impeachment movement? I asked my friend Robert Ford the Senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee about it and he too was hesitant, saying that the state was confronted with more important issues and could not afford to be consumed by an impeachment proceeding for the next year. None of it sounded exactly right, but that is the way it went down.
Week after week, the National press speculated how long Sanford would survive the debacle. Finally Lindsey Graham said that if Mark could get himself squared away with Jenny he could still be Governor. She left him the next week anyway. But it didn’t matter. Still nobody wanted to move on impeachment.
Now we know why. All along, Sanford had been a critical part of the Boeing negotiation; he had been talking to the Chairman of the Board every week. As it turns out, Mark had been well connected to the Boeing corporate folks by-- guess who-- Jenny Sanford, his wife, whose father and Uncles ran the Skil Saw Corporation and had close Chicago connections to Boeing. (Funny how the worm turns isn't it?) Anyway, when it looked like Sanford might be in trouble, the Boeing people wanted to be reassured that there would not be any shakeups at the top while they were getting their deal done. So they asked for certain assurances from Harrell, McConnell and Leatherman... and they got them. They wouldn’t press for the impeachment.
Now, to be sure, I wasn’t a fly on the wall in those meetings, so I can’t be certain about exactly how this happened, but I’m pretty sure this is essentially what went down and I have some reassurances from a couple of insiders that I’m not too far off the MARK.
I’d like to wind this up with a salute to SC Secretary of Commerce Joe Taylor, my old Wofford College classmate (and Sanford Appointee—giving the devil his due) who did a great job getting this huge plant for our state. We need the jobs bad!
Great job Joe! Now let’s do the same thing with the Film Industry!