South Carolina Paper Whacks Gov. Nikki Haley Over 14-Year-Old Daughter's Gift-Shop Job

NewsBusters.org ^ | July 28, 2012 | Tim Graham

[Kaslin]

South Carolina’s largest newspaper has a new anti-Republican scoop: “Gov. Nikki Haley’s 14-year-old daughter is working in the State House gift shop, raising questions about nepotism that the governor’s office declines to answer.” The daughter, Rena Haley, is working about 20 hours a week at $8 an hour.

The newspaper called The State (based in Columbia, the state capital) is holding an online poll asking "Is it proper or improper for a governor's child to have a state job?" Three-fourths of respondents said "improper." The paper marched over to the Democrats so they could denounce Haley’s lack of ethics:

The issue is not Haley’s daughter but the Republican governor’s judgment, said Dick Harpootlian, chairman of the S.C. Democratic Party.

“You don’t use your position to get your daughter a job. It’s not about the daughter. It’s about lack of judgment by the governor,” Harpootlian said. “The appearance of impropriety doesn’t seem to bother the governor.”

In South Carolina, with the nation’s fourth-highest unemployment rate and a governor who boasts of cutting state spending, the hiring of Haley’s daughter also raises questions of unfair favoritism.

“Even these minimum-wage jobs in this economy can be pretty tough to find,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Washington, D.C.,-based Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan think tank on government issues, including ethics. “While this is probably a small-potatoes case, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest and strikes me as a politically tone-deaf decision.”

Meredith McGehee spent 15 years at the liberal lobby Common Cause (and before that four years with liberal Congressman Lane Evans), so don't rely too heavily on the "nonpartisan" label. As for Harpootlian, his lack of judgment is shown by his description of proposed voter-ID requirements as "electoral genocide."

Gov. Haley responded to questions with anger: “Y’all are not allowed to talk about my children.” But the newspaper persisted. “The State newspaper ... should be ashamed for printing details of a 14 year old’s life and whereabouts, against the wishes of her parents,” Haley’s spokesman, Rob Godfrey, said in a statement to the newspaper July 17. “We have nothing more to say.” They did later put out the daughter’s hours and wages to a different newspaper, the Charleston Post and Courier.

The State executive editor Mark Lett told readers that “It is not our practice to cover the children of sitting governors.” That’s no longer true. “In this instance, the essential issue is whether it is appropriate for the daughter of the governor to be placed on the state payroll. The child was put in that position by adults in state government and in the Haley family. We have made no attempt to interview the daughter but have asked those adults for comment.”

Lett might also have said "This is only our practice when the Governor is a Republican with a shot at being a vice-presidential contender and it would get us noticed by our liberal colleagues in the national media."

[pack29172]

You have it right, SA. This newspaper has tried non-stop to dig up, create or otherwise manufacture “news” that shows how bad this Governor is. Nothing sticks because there is nothing to begin with. This is it, this is the best they can come up with. In the meantime, Governor Nikki Haley is bringing in thousands and thousands of new jobs to South Carolina. While the nation is still handicapped with Zero doing his best to stop business, South Carolina is adding jobs from the low country of Charleston on the coast though Columbia and Lexington in the Midlands to Greenville in the upstate. Oooops, did I forget to say NON-UNION jobs! Thousands and thousands of them. The State newspaper and their liberal ilk at the university and local government cannot stand this. I am surprised that the local readers ended up pointing out how inept the editor of the paper has proven to be. Guess that even the local libs are finally getting fed up with how non-relevant The State is to The State Of South Carolina. My opinion is, if you read it in The State, something in the story is wrong. You just don’t know what it is at the moment.

[StAnDeliver]

"Lee Hamilton has become one of the closest foreign policy advisers to Barack Obama and the number one adviser regarding Iran, according to David Ignatius, the foreign affairs columnist of the Washington Post. Hamilton vouched for Obama during the campaign, too."

His group is up to their t*ts in House of Saud money, and he's also on Halfbright's Board of Directors for the Albright Stonebridge Group.

[George Varnum]

Moonbats here in Maine got their bloomers all in a twist when our first Conservative Governor in over 40 years hired his Daughter on as his Receptionist, office Assistant and event scheduler... all while the State government was still infested with leftist political hacks and incompetent patronage rumpswabs left over from the Komrade Gov. Baldacci Syndicate.

Governor LePage is not one to be easily intimidated...
and Lauren still works in Augusta while he works to drain the cesspool of waste and corruption that Maine State government had become over the past 35 years or so.

[sopwith]

That was my first thought.

[Vigilanteman]

They are limited to 20 hours per week in most cases. It would depend on the state. In Pennsylvania, there is an additional requirement of a sign-off from their school proving that they are enrolled and making normal academic progress.

I'm not sure about the situation in Columbia, South Carolina, but many state capitols have a fairly congested capitol area and rather expensive parking: not exactly a great recruiting tool for an $8/hour job.

The other brewing scandal is that the young lady probably rides into work with her mother so doesn't even have pay for parking. < / sarcasm >

[Terry Mross]

She’s out of touch over $160 a week? While obama’s daughters get a vacation to Mexico.

[yarddog]

Since it is by no means a choice job, I would guess the girl got it on her own. Why couldn’t she have. She probably is familiar with the place since she would often pass by it.

She decided she would like to work there and applied for the job. I doubt if there was a line of people breaking their door down trying to get such a low paying job.