Pay-To-Play: Just What is Going on in South Carolina?

One would think that recent revelations concerning South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s personal, and very public, humiliation would encourage other elected officials to stick to the straight-and-narrow path of honesty, integrity and looking out for the Peoples’ business, rather than their own.  Not so.

Last week The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed stating that Attorney General Henry McMaster has entered into no-bid contingency fee arrangements to reward private attorneys for suing Eli Lilly and has . . . wait for it . . . received campaign contributions from these lawyers of more than $60,000. Put aside the fact that a 1991 state statute prohibits any person with a no-bid state contract from making a donation to a state official empowered to act on that contract, the issue remains—how does an elected official give to others that which he could not receive for himself?

Both the U.S. and South Carolina constitutions make clear that the state and it's lawyers must be guided by justice and the public interest, not monetary gain. South Carolinians would be outraged if Mr. McMaster won a personal financial cut of any case he won as Attorney General. How is it better that his lawyers get it instead?

It is pretty clear that AG McMaster could not receive a share of any damages received from a defendant to a civil suit. Why then, as the WSJ asks, is it right for that same official to allow others to receive a share of any damages or settlement? Does this promote justice, or the campaign contribution machine? Perhaps General McMaster, like the governor of his state, has found his “soul mate”- political campaign contributions.