GOP aims to keep grip on statewide offices

Web posted October 26, 1998

Associated Press

COLUMBIA -- For the first time since 1976, South Carolina will not have state Comptroller General Earle Morris to vote for on Election Day.

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Mr. Morris, 69, the only Democratic statewide officeholder aside from U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, said in January he would retire.

``I've seen many friends stay on too long, and I don't want to become one of them,'' he said.

Two longtime state senators, Democrat Jim Lander of Newberry and Republican John Courson of Columbia, want the job of supervising and accounting for the expenditure of state funds.

Secretary of State Jim Miles, Attorney General Charlie Condon, Adjutant General Stan Spears and Treasurer Richard Eckstrom all were elected in the Republican landslide of 1994 -- though Mr. Spears was a Democrat then -- and all seek re-election for a second term.

Longtime Agriculture Commissioner Les Tindal won the GOP primary in June and has no opponent on the general election ballot.

When Mr. Morris said he would retire as comptroller general, he mentioned Mr. Courson as a replacement.

Mr. Courson wants a South Carolina Summit on Revenue and Taxation as a way to cut taxes, especially the hated automobile tax. Mr. Lander wants an inspector general's office that he says would increase confidence in state government.

Mr. Miles wanted his office eliminated. ``I think that makes him unqualified,'' said Roy Fairchild, his Democratic opponent.

Legislators turned aside Mr. Miles' plan, so he is running again for the $92,007-a-year job he has held since 1991.

Now that legislators returned charities enforcement, which briefly was under Mr. Condon, to Mr. Miles' office, he has reinstated his annual ``Scrooge list'' of charities that spend little actual money on charity and promises to stiffen enforcement if re-elected.

Mr. Condon has refused to debate Democratic opponent Tom Turnipseed, depending instead on television commercials to get across his message of tougher crime enforcement and victims rights.

He is a death penalty proponent, once suggesting an ``electric couch'' to clean out Death Row. Mr. Condon also drew national attention and criticism for prosecuting pregnant women who took drugs as child abusers. The courts agreed a fetus near birth met the legal definition.

Mr. Turnipseed, a death penalty opponent, civil-rights and environmental activist, and former talk-show host, contends Mr. Condon is ``absolutely terrified to sit down in a live debate to answer questions by me and taxpayers of this state about how he has ripped us off.''

Mr. Turnipseed has lost previously for governor, lieutenant governor and Congress.

Mr. Eckstrom faces the man he beat to become treasurer, Democrat Grady Patterson. Mr. Patterson, who served seven terms, says Mr. Eckstrom made the treasurer's office partisan and defensive and uses it to promote himself.

But Mr. Eckstrom says he's improved the state's financial health and got legislative and voter approval to invest pension funds in the stock market.

South Carolina alone elects an adjutant general, its National Guard commander.

Mr. Spears turned Republican after the 1994 election, so his first Democratic challenger is Robert Burton, who cites as advantages his experience in the Air Force and the Army.