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COLUMBIA, S.C. (TPS) – A pair of e-mails obtained by The Palmetto Scoop show that Tom Davis, Chief of Staff for Gov. Mark Sanford, may have used state computers while on the clock to solicit money for a partisan special interest group, something that would be a violation of South Carolina ethics rules.
As a state employee, Davis can be involved in campaign work, but he cannot use official resources as part of the effort; and certainly not for fundraising.
The first e-mail was sent by Davis at 9:05 a.m. Wednesday, during taxpayer-funded working hours and possibly using government property, to a select list of high-level donors. The reason for the letter, Davis stated, “involves asking you for money, an unfortunate but necessary evil in the world of politics – especially when you are trying (as the governor now is) to mobilize the people of South Carolina to send Columbia politicians a powerful message.”
That message? Sanford’s rivals in the General Assembly will pay.
But the money collected isn’t for Sanford, it’s for a group responsible for taking out the governor’s adversaries in the next election, the newly-formed Reform SC. In the e-mail, Davis called the group “an entity whose sole purpose is to provide information – through television, direct mailings, radio, etc. – in the belief that if people understand what is truly happening in Columbia, then they will have a greater reason to demand things change.”
Davis elaborated:
And equally important, Reform SC will be a vehicle through which to make that change happen, a statewide, organized grassroots movement that likes of which have never been seen in South Carolina. But to do that Reform SC needs money, and to that end major fundraisers for Reform SC will be held on Tuesday, October 16, 2007.
On that day, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will join Gov. Sanford and other leading conservatives in our state at a breakfast event in Spartanburg, a lunch event in Columbia and an evening cocktail event in Charleston – all for the sole purpose of raising money for Reform SC.
He closed the letter with a list of bullet-points on the necessity of Reform SC.
But roughly 90 minutes later, realizing he had messed up, Davis sent the second e-mail:
Please disregard the previous e-mail that was inadvertently sent to you with the wrong subject heading. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your time.
While Davis didn’t use his official e-mail account, he could still face an ethics violation charge if it is proven that he used government property to send the e-mails. The second e-mail, although vague and ambiguous, is a good indicator that Davis realized he had made a mistake.
Photo: The State
Business as usual in Columbia.
I am not a “High level donor” and I receive both emails. I think that I may have contributed $25 to Sanford’s last campaign. If giving money to Reform SC will be used to beat the GOOD OLE BOYS in the next primary, sign me up! I might even give $50 this time.
Somebody has to die or be a political enimey for the Ethics Commission to accept and act on an item about using work computers and e-mail to do private political work. What do you think the guy was hired to do in the first place? The Good Old Boy System of the Attorney General, the Election Commission, the State Police, and the Representatives only care about themselves. They do not even want to hear about 30 people who voted and did not sign the voting books. The State Police said it is not important unless somebody dies and they do not mean dead people voting.
“may have used”, good work boys!
The media will never ask that question in a serious and absolute manner.
And Sanford would never answer that question in a serious and absolute manner.
So the answer is moot.
I would think the Quinnies would be all about getting rid of a few of the Good Ole Boys especially Jakie Knotts and other Shealy clients.
You need to do a web search on ChangeSCNow, LLC before you deify it. I did when it filed the lawsuit. It was not there, as such. It was mentioned in other websites which provided an address & phone number for the group. I did a reverse phone search and found The Rackes Group, a consulting co. that does work for the legislature, dept. of education and others. Reading the Greenville News, I’ve since learned ChangeSCNow has an upstate attorney. But based there, I don’t know because it is yet another LLC hiding it’s real membership.
Why doesn’t it bother people that an entity that does not have to identify itself can sue government or anybody? This is the antithesis of what should be going on in democracy. Why are these groups so afraid of the sunshine?
How can Mark Sanford fool so many people, especially journalists. I voted for him because Jim Hodges had to go, but I worried that he might be too pathologically rigid to accomplish much. Wow, was I right.
I was working for a cabinet agency 2 years ago when I wrote a letter to Sanford about serious problems there. I could take forever and give you the details of how poorly Sanford’s agency is working, but he did have them initiate an investigation. The agency was to report back to the staff in the department they were investigating at the conclusion. They never did. Nobody in the governor’s office ever responded to me. They problem continues. Who cares? Not Sanford.
Therefore, why should we want “reform” when, obviously, Sanford can’t manage as well as the legislature. He can’t even manage his web site at SC.GOV. Go there and see how the unemployment “roles” have decreased during his administration.
He is grossly incompetent and I cannot figure out why he is considered so brilliant. He has spent the majority of his working life as a maggot-on-the-taxpayer elected official of a government he doesn’t believe in. What does that tell you? I wish someone would do some research on how he performed in the brief time he supposedly spent in the private sector. I bet he was a failure there, too.
One last thing, both ReformSC and ChangeSCNow are going to turn out to be out-of-state funded, Grover Norquist worshipping groups to tell us poor, stupid natives what to do. What can we expect when we elect a carpet bagger?
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