Moving McConnell from Legislative to Executive

The best thing right now to help reform our state government would be to get Sen. Glenn F. McConnell, President pro tempore of the Senate, out of the legislative branch and into the executive branch.

If Gov. Sanford resigns this year, then Lt. Governor Andre Bauer becomes Governor, and Sen. McConnell becomes Lt. Governor. Sen. McConnell often describes our state government as having three co-equal branches, so why would he refuse the promotion from Senator to Lieutenant Governor, as required by the SC Constitution?

According to the Post and Courier (with a hat tip from me to Wes Wolfe): McConnell said he wouldn't want to give up his Senate seat and 28-plus years of seniority, and resigning his President Pro Tem post would leave the Legislature unable to return to session this year should lawmakers have to deal with a budget crisis or another urgent matter. "It would leave the state in the precarious situation where if we have a budget shortfall, there would be no way for the General Assembly to get back," McConnell said. "It starts to become legally entangled." Sen. McConnell's statement is false.

Everyone knows from the 2008 budget crisis that the Governor has the power to reconvene the General Assembly. Here's a quote from SC Politics Today from 30 September 2008:

Gov. Mark Sanford will hold a news conference today where he could call lawmakers back to Columbia to order more cuts to the state's $7 billion budget. ... Lawmakers have said they are willing return to Columbia to make any further cuts to the budget. Sanford can, as governor, order lawmakers back.

This power comes from the SC Constitution, Article IV, Section 19: "The Governor may on extraordinary occasions convene the General Assembly in extra session."

Sen. McConnell has an extremely powerful position in the General Assembly, and he runs unopposed in his legislative district. He has too much power, and he is too entrenched, and he runs the boys club of the Senate from an outdated, Confederate perspective. State government reform will not happen while Sen. McConnell is in charge of the General Assembly.

Sen. Glenn F. McConnell, aka Mr. Confederate, is from the 19th century and stuck in the past. He often dresses up in a Confederate uniform that he wistfully wishes he had worn back when. He won the position of President pro tempore of the Senate in 2001 by defeating the NAACP on the Confederate flag issue. He won by whining on Nightline, "They hurt our feelings." So now he's President pro tempore of the Senate, and he's making false statements to the Post and Courier. There may be a pattern to his behavior. He made a gross misrepresentation to the Greenville News in July of 2008. Sen. McConnell said that taking down the Confederate flag would take two-thirds of the legislature, a number that he described as impossible by saying,"we [the Senators] can barely get two-thirds on when to go to lunch." What Sen. McConnell didn't say is (1) a simple majority can remove the two-thirds requirement and (2) the legislators routinely meet the two-thirds level when they override Gov. Sanford's vetoes. Photo from a post from the old BradWarthens Blog.

As Cindi Ross Scoppe described in her column, "Mark Sanford and the Promised Land," what has happened is that Gov. Sanford has made the General Assembly realign itself so that it seeks two-thirds vote for passage of everything (because they figure that Gov. Sanford will veto everything, and because Gov. Sanford is so uncommunicative about his intentions -- it's easier for the General Assembly to get two-thirds vote for something than it is for them to get productive, reliable input from Gov. Sanford.).

If Gov. Sanford is serious about reform, the best thing he could do for reform in our state government would be to resign, and soon. Also, his resigning would be consistent with his belief in term limits. I'm sure that Gov. Sanford wishes that Sen. McConnell was term-limited!

If Gov. Sanford resigned this year (and better yet, today!), Sen. McConnell would move from the legislative branch, where he's the red-headed rooster of a house full of cocks, to the executive branch, where he'd be the senior in charge of the Office on Aging. And perhaps best of all, we could get Charleston to elect a woman to succeed him. Gov. Sanford, the way to reform is to resign. The sooner the better.