Governor Sanford’s (R-SC) pigs leave lawmakers squealing

Sandwiched between two squirming, squealing piglets, Gov. Mark Sanford walked up the State House steps to take a light-hearted jab at the Legislature about pork in the state budget.

But, instead, the stunt infuriated lawmakers, who took it as a direct insult and an attempt to embarrass them, further eroding their rocky relationship with the governor.

The move came a day after House members angered Sanford in what has become an ongoing clash over the $5.5 billion state budget.

With cameras rolling and lawmakers and lobbyists gaping, Sanford stood just outside the House chambers, pigs wriggling under his arms, pig feces on his jacket and shoes, and criticized House members for burying pork-barrel projects in the budget.

House members on Wednesday angered Sanford by accepting just one of his 106 vetoes of items in the state budget. Sanford also criticized lawmakers for relying on the sale of property — and not savings — to pay down the last $16 million of a $155 million deficit.

“Pork won and taxpayers lost,” Sanford said. “I find it unbelievable to think there’s not one additional dollar in savings that could go to pay down that unconstitutional $16 million debt.”

House leaders countered quickly, saying Sanford had taken a previously genteel argument over fiscal responsibility to a new low.

“It’s beneath the dignity of the governor to bring pigs in the State House outside the chamber just to get a photo opportunity,” said House Speaker David Wilkins, his jaw set, his eyes down. “This is the people’s House. He defiled it.”

“Sometimes we have to embarrass people to make them understand what they have done,” he said.

Legislators, outraged in general, seized on the fact that the pigs had defecated on the carpet and the marble floor.

The State House reopened about five years ago after a $50 million renovation, and animals other than guide dogs are not allowed in the building. Some noted that if anybody other than the governor had brought an animal into the State House, he would have been arrested.

“It’s the poorest taste I’ve ever seen in 32 years,” said Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greenville. “To bring pigs in here to mess up the carpet, it’s way beneath the dignity of the governor.”

Sanford’s news conference lasted just 10 minutes. At the end, the governor, who said he spent summers growing up on a farm, swiftly scooped up the piglets — dubbed “Pork” and “Barrel” —and marched back to his office.

The governor’s staff — all wearing suits — shoved the animals back into their crate and rushed them out the West Wing exit.

Sanford’s press secretary, Will Folks, and his speech writer, Joel Sawyer, returned with bottles of cleanser and paper towels to clean up the pigs’ droppings while a custodian supervised.

Sanford called the appearance an attempt to have fun with the issue, but lawmakers and the governor have clashed throughout this legislative session. The back-and-forth had turned increasingly shrill this week.

Legislators were irked that Sanford would veto 106 items in the state budget, especially when they based the spending plan on a proposal he sent them in January. Several said they had never worked with a governor who struck more than a few dozen items.

On Wednesday, the House whizzed through Sanford’s vetoes, overriding 105 in just 99 minutes. About mid-afternoon, a frustrated Folks called the House’s actions a “mockery of the legislative process” and “a slap in the face.”

Sanford backed away from those statements hours later, saying he wasn’t taking the overrides personally. The next day, he camped outside the House doors holding piglets and criticizing lawmakers’ approach to the budget.

“There are just natural points we agree on and natural points we disagree on,” Sanford said. “We’ve got to have fun with this process.”

But Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Beaufort, said the relationship between the Legislature and the governor needs to change.

“It’s pretty much to a fever pitch,” he said, “and I think everybody’s sick of it.”

News that pigs were in the State House whirled through the Legislature. Within an hour, it had spread to downtown businesses, where people laughed and shook their heads. Many predicted South Carolina again would look backward on national news.

“That’s just over the edge,” said Blease Graham, a USC political scientist. “It’s reckless; it tarnishes our national image.”

Indeed, video of Sanford and the pigs was the lead item on CNN’s “Inside Edition” political news show.

Others were stunned that Sanford had broken an unspoken code in South Carolina politics: We may disagree, but we avoid directly embarrassing each other.

“This about tears it with the General Assembly,” said Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen, a Republican. “There’s no going back. They don’t like being embarrassed.”

Senators, who took up Sanford’s vetoes Thursday, joked about what the governor would do once they were done deliberating.

“Maybe he was sending us a message,” said Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg. “If we rush through these vetoes, he’ll bring four pigs up here.”

As for the mess the pigs made on the floor, Knotts gave Sanford the benefit of the doubt.

“The governor didn’t mean for the pigs to do what they done. If you pick up a pig and squeeze it, something’s going to come out. I’m sure the governor didn’t know that.”

Why would a Republican controlled House and Senate at the state level have conflict with the governor of the same party?

The answer could lie with an explanation of the Public Choice Theory:

One of the chief underpinnings of public choice theory is the lack of incentives for voters to monitor government effectively. Anthony Downs, in one of the earliest public choice books, An Economic Theory of Democracy, pointed out that the voter is largely ignorant of political issues and that this ignorance is rational. Even though the result of an election may be very important, an individual's vote rarely decides an election. Thus, the direct impact of casting a well-informed vote is almost nil; the voter has virtually no chance to determine the outcome of the election. So spending time following the issues is not personally worthwhile for the voter. Evidence for this claim is found in the fact that public opinion polls consistently find that less than half of all voting-age Americans can name their own congressional representative.

Public choice economists point out that this incentive to be ignorant is rare in the private sector. Someone who buys a car typically wants to be well informed about the car he or she selects. That is because the car buyer's choice is decisive—he or she pays only for the one chosen. If the choice is wise, the buyer will benefit; if it is unwise, the buyer will suffer directly. Voting lacks that kind of direct result. Therefore, most voters are largely ignorant about the positions of the people for whom they vote. Except for a few highly publicized issues, they do not pay a lot of attention to what legislative bodies do, and even when they do pay attention, they have little incentive to gain the background knowledge and analytic skill needed to understand the issues.

Public choice economists also examine the actions of legislators. Although legislators are expected to pursue the "public interest," they make decisions on how to use other people's resources, not their own. Furthermore, these resources must be provided by taxpayers and by those hurt by regulations whether they want to provide them or not. Politicians may intend to spend taxpayer money wisely. Efficient decisions, however, will neither save their own money nor give them any proportion of the wealth they save for citizens. There is no direct reward for fighting powerful interest groups in order to confer benefits on a public that is not even aware of the benefits or of who conferred them. Thus, the incentives for good management in the public interest are weak. In contrast, interest groups are organized by people with very strong gains to be made from governmental action. They provide politicians with campaign funds and campaign workers. In return they receive at least the "ear" of the politician and often gain support for their goals.

In other words, because legislators have the power to tax and to extract resources in other coercive ways, and because voters monitor their behavior poorly, legislators behave in ways that are costly to citizens. One technique analyzed by public choice is log rolling, or vote trading. An urban legislator votes to subsidize a rural water project in order to win another legislator's vote for a city housing subsidy. The two projects may be part of a single spending bill. Through such log rolling both legislators get what they want. And even though neither project uses resources efficiently, local voters know that their representative got something for them. They may not know that they are paying a pro-rata share of a bundle of inefficient projects! And the total expenditures may well be more than individual taxpayers would be willing to authorize if they were fully aware of what is going on.

In addition to voters and politicians, public choice analyzes the role of bureaucrats in government. Their incentives explain why many regulatory agencies appear to be "captured" by special interests. (The "capture" theory was introduced by the late George Stigler, a Nobel Laureate who did not work mainly in the public choice field.) Capture occurs because bureaucrats do not have a profit goal to guide their behavior. Instead, they usually are in government because they have a goal or mission. They rely on Congress for their budgets, and often the people who will benefit from their mission can influence Congress to provide more funds. Thus interest groups—who may be as diverse as lobbyists for regulated industries or leaders of environmental groups—become important to them. Such interrelationships can lead to bureaucrats being captured by interest groups.

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