Free Republic

Our friends over at Yahoo News have an interesting post up this week in which columnist Anne Stjern (who?) poses five pretty substantive questions to S.C. Gov.-elect Nikki Haley. Apparently it’s part of a nationwide effort in which Yahoo contributors seek to get their state’s politicians to go on the record responding to specific inquiries (something Haley has been reluctant to do in the past). To read Stjern’s questions (snip) click here. We thought this was a worthwhile idea … not only because we’ve got five questions (at least) that we’d like to ask Haley, but we suspect that you...

Hopefully, most people will select their next governor on the basis of something other than his or her ability to tell the truth or not regarding extramarital sex. Seriously … lying about a little indiscreet boot-knockin’ doesn’t impede one’s abilities to raise grocery taxes, abandon children trapped in failing schools or give up on holding lawmakers accountable when it comes to the state budget, does it? Of course not … and we hope that in picking their poison next month (i.e. liberal Obamaphile Vincent Sheheen or transparently hypocritical Republican Nikki Haley) South Carolina voters will make a decision that they...

Update October 16: Remember Larry Marchant who also said he had an affair with Nikki Haley? Well he's opened himself up to perjury charges too (if he's lying) as he's signed an affidavit saying, among other things that he and Haley, "went back to her room where we had sexual intercourse and I spent the remainder of the evening." There's a short Associated Press report on the matter you can read here and read the one-page affidavit here. Update October 15: WSPA 7 in the Upstate has a story on the matter and got Haley to respond. She says she...

Vincent Sheheen’s opening words on his first TV ad, “South Carolina is at a crossroads,” are one intersection over from our state’s political realities. In the governor’s race, it is the state Republican Party that finds itself uncomfortably driven to the crossroads. With a 55 percent win in the last gubernatorial election and seven of eight constitutional offices, Republican, conservative and tea party voters together hold mathematical strength to elect our next governor. In a nation led by Barack Obama and a state led by Mark Sanford, this decision has never been more critical or more complicated. Since the June...

She’s met privately with backers of the University of South Carolina’s failed “Innovista” boondoggle … a RINO legislative operative who weeks ago worked feverishly to destroy her political career is now suddenly praising her “outreach” efforts … she wants to cut corporate taxes (which account for just 1.3 percent of the state budget) but not individual and small business taxes (which account for 14.1 percent of the state budget). Oh, and she wants to bring back the tax on groceries … one of several “revenue enhancements” proposed recently by a legislatively-created tax commission. Seriously … who is this woman running...

First it was the blogger, then it was the lobbyist … could a South Carolina lawmaker be the next Palmetto politico accused of amorous activity with GOP gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley? That’s the story numerous lobbyists are relating to FITS – a narrative that includes allegations of at least one specific encounter between Haley and S.C. Rep. Thad Viers (R-Myrtle Beach) at a 2006 legislative conference in San Francisco, California. Both Viers and Haley attended the conference – which was sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – and both were married at the time. Haley is still married,...

Charleston, South Carolina (CNN) – The engineering executive who hired Nikki Haley for consulting work while she served in the South Carolina legislature said Friday that Haley's political and business connections helped his company get ahead. Haley, now the frontrunner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, was paid $2,000 in 2008 by the engineering firm, Wilbur Smith Associates. The income was disclosed Thursday after Haley made her 2009 tax records available to reporters. Her 2008 paycheck did not clear until 2009, she said. Her opponent in the June 22 runoff election, Rep. Gresham Barrett, had previously revealed his income and tax...

Prominent South Carolina blogger Will Folks is endorsing Republican Nikki Haley for governor -- even as he stands by his claim he had an affair with the married candidate. Haley will face off against Rep. Gresham Barrett in a runoff next week for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. In a primary earlier this month that included two other candidates, Haley was the clear frontrunner, and she is expected to win next week despite of multiple allegations that she had extramarital affairs. Folks blogged last month that he had an "inappropriate physical relationship" with Haley several years ago, when she was married...

Contrary to numerous personal cheap-shots and rumors floated by supporters of Nikki Haley's gubernatorial candidacy, the Blogland isn't out to get her. In fact, the Blogland has stuck up for her plenty in the past, nor did we jump on the scandal bandwagon. But when she's misleading voters about her record, burying the issues in shop-worn allegations of some sort of "Columbia establishment" being out to get her, it's time for the truth to be told. There's a lot of difference between what Haley says, and what she's done, and the Blogland looks forward to presenting the evidence to support...

COLUMBIA - Lt. Gov Andre Bauer has taken a polygraph exam to refute accusations made against him last week by opponent Nikki Haley. “I’m not willing to have that kind of false accusation go unchallenged,” Bauer said. “She made a false accusation about me, and I wanted to prove that I was telling the truth.” In a debate last week, Haley accused Bauer of being responsible for charges of marital infidelity against her. Bauer denied the accusation, and challenged Haley to take side-by-side lie detector tests to prove who’s telling the truth. Haley refused to take a lie detector test,...

Republican gubernatorial front-runner Nikki Haley and FITS founding editor Will Folks texted each other nearly 200 times over the past ten months according to records provided by Verizon Wireless – not a particularly high volume of communication when compared to the voluminous phone records that Folks released last week, but enough to raise some eyebrows. One exchange – initiated by Folks – took place on January 3, 2010 while the blogger was in Birmingham, Alabama attending a college football bowl game. That particular 22-message thread began at 12:03 a.m. and ended at 1:05 a.m. Two nights earlier, Haley texted Folks...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina lobbyist resigned from a rival political campaign on Wednesday and then became the second man to claim he had a tryst with a Republican lawmaker trying to become the state's first female governor.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is speaking out against claims that Republican candidate for governor, Nikki Haley, had an affair with blogger Will Folks. Word of the alleged affair came out near the end of May, when Haley’s alleged man-stress, Will Folks, blabbed about it on his FITSnews blog. (More about the original allegations, and my take on the scandal, can be found here.) Sanford does not believe that Haley cheated on her husband with Mr. Folks.

Gubernatorial hopeful Nikki Haley on Friday stuck by her denial of an affair between her and blogger Will Folks, and she continued to emphasize the political nature of his claim. In her first public appearance in the Lowcountry since Folks' statement Monday that they had an "inappropriate physical relationship," Haley said once polls showed her leading the four-way GOP gubernatorial race, she expected her opponents to react. "The unfortunate part was I wish they had just focused on policy, but I think they thought there was no way of stopping the train, so they decided to do this," she said...

Let’s backtrack. Yesterday, at 2:50 p.m., the siren goes up and Erick Erickson announces that “We know who paid Will Folks to push this story out there.” Last night, at 9:16 p.m., Erickson scoffs at Folks’s denial: “Will Folks is denying he got paid. Hahahahaha.” This morning, at 9:00 a.m., Erickson mocks Folks’s third-person writing style and declares, “Sources tell Erick Erickson that yes, despite Folks’s denial, money was paid to procure the story and guarantee it hit at the most opportune time — right before the primary.” And now, the chips fall: I have no clue if anyone is...