First Judicial Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe, a candidate for Attorney General running as a Republican, addressed the Greenville County Republican Party this past Monday at their quarterly business meeting.
Pascoe, a long-time Democrat, announced his change of allegiance to the Republican Party in April of last year, in time to run for the seat being vacated by Alan Wilson, who is himself a candidate for governor.
Savvy politicians know that it is a long shot to run for statewide office in South Carolina as a Democrat. In fact, the last time a Democrat was elected Attorney General in the Palmetto State was Thomas T. Medlock in 1990. The last Democrat to be elected to any statewide office in the state was Jim Rex, who was elected as Secretary of Education in 2006.
Some Republicans are not convinced as to the sincerity of this ideological change. In fact, in January 2020, Pascoe gave a glowing endorsement of Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee for president. In his endorsement he said, in part, “Joe has been a role model of mine for many years ... I am all in for Joe because he can bring us together right away.”
Monday night's appearance was the third time that he has been invited to address the Greenville County Republican Party during the last four years, during the tenure of Jeff Davis as chairman and state executive committeeman. His first two appearances before local Republicans was as a Democrat. Davis and Pascoe have known each other for years and were students together at the Citadel.
Pascoe's main emphasis in his campaign to be the state's top lawyer is corruption in the statehouse. In fact, he has developed a dozen different slide show presentations on that subject.
“I'm going to go up to the statehouse and I'm going to huff and puff and I'm going to take a bulldozer to that house until we end the culture of corruption.”
“Government must serve the people and not political insiders,” said Pascoe, adding, “If you don't agree with that theme, then you need to get out of here.”
Pascoe said that the voters have the opportunity to elect “protectors of the old guard and the establishment” who are interested in making money for themselves and their friends, or people who want to end the corruption in Columbia.
Pascoe said that exposing procurement of public funds for friends is in the public interest. “When are the favors for political insiders going to end in South Carolina?” he asked.
“When I'm attorney general my friends are not making money off of the attorney general's office, because I've only got about three friends (laughter from the audience).”
“This is my pledge – I am going to make it impossible for public officials and their friends to make money off of government funds and off of their positions, I promise you that.”
“The leading swamp monsters are the lawyer legislators,” he said, adding that most of them are good people. About a dozen of them are corrupt, he said 'They put themselves in positions to make money for themselves and their friends because that's their main priority. And that's what needs to stop.” The sin of the good ones is that they tolerate it, he said.
Pascoe said that he plans to institute a public corruption unit if elected. “We are going to be the most proactive, anti-corruption attorney general's office the state has ever had.”
Pascoe promised that he won't run for any other office, i. e., to use the office of attorney general as a stepping stone for a later run for governor..
“Without a doubt, the most challenging days of my prosecutorial career,” he reminisced, “was when I was your special prosecutor during the statehouse corruption probe. And it was challenging because the judges that I had to bring those corrupt legislators in front of, they were elected by those corrupt legislators.”
Pascoe added, “It was challenging because some of the most powerful people in the state of South Carolina tried to stop me in this corruption probe when I was your special prosecutor.”
Pascoe's statewide grand jury report outlined the corruption and “our weak ethics laws and our ethics laws are weak for a reason. They're designed to be weak to protect the people they protect, which are the legislators and the lobbyists that do it the wrong way.” He added that the corruption trickled down to almost every county council and municipality.
“Despite the challenges, we also got convictions,” said Pascoe. “I convicted and removed from office the chairman of the House for treating his campaign account like a piggy bank. “I convicted and removed from office the president pro-tem of the Senate and two former majority leaders. I sent the former chairman of the judiciary to prison.”
“The same lies and smears that they used nine years ago to try to get me off the corruption probe are the exact same lies and smears that they're doing with dark money today to try to get me defeated as attorney general,” he said. “It didn't work nine years ago and it's not going to work today.”
“The business community in South Carolina supports me because I am not bought and paid for by the trial lawyers, like my opponent,” said Pascoe.
The first speaker of the almost three-hour meeting was Mike Burkhold, who is running for Comptroller General. The current holder of that office is Brian J. Gaines, a Democrat whom Republican Governor Henry McMaster appointed in May 2023 after the resignation of Republican Richard Eckstrom.
“I think in four years I can fundamentally transform the way everybody in the state looks at money,” said Burkhold. “I can democratize the data. I can make everything available so anybody in this room can go look at our state budget and see how we're doing.”
Burkhold said that the state does not currently have accountability in its financials. “If you have a question about money in South Carolina and you need a definitive answer, who do you go to? Nobody,” he asked and answered.
“The people that have control of this state's budget full time is the bureaucracy,” he said. “You have state employees running the budget.”
“It's my job to get up there and put the financials in front of our legislators so they can see the truth of the way the bureaucracy's working. Right now they do not have that.” Currently, legislators have to send FOIA's to get information, he said.
Burkhold wants to put the books online and set up AI so that a citizen can ask any question about the state's finances and get an answer. “That's going to drive accountability in these departments,” he said.
If the books were put online then everyone would have access to the state's financial information.
“We're going to start having real discussions about where our money's spent,” said Burkhold. He said that currently a lot of misspending is going on. He said that putting the books online is the only way to clean up the books in Columbia.
“If we can have good stewardship of our books and our economy grows we can start doing things like lowering the income tax or the property tax,” he said.
“Moving forward we're going to have accountability and were going to be spending our money in the right places, and we're going to be accounting for everything. We're not going to have any mistakes, we're going to fix the culture in that office so that you guys know that your money's well taken care of,” said Burkhold, adding, “I can believe South Carolina can be the freest, most financially run state in the country.”
