Bedlam broke out in South Carolina over news that scandalized Dick Harpootlian, the leading candidate for Chair of the Democratic Party.
News broke that a researcher named Jamie Sanderson had discovered umpteen thousands of dollars in contributions to Republicans from none other than: Dick Harpootlian.
Late in the day, Phil Noble who is Harpootlian's strongest challenger issued an eloquent statement calling on his opponent to withdraw gracefully.
Soon thereafter, Washington was abuzz with insiders texting, emailing and tweeting about, "The Harpootlian Scandal."
According to public records, Harpootlian has given thousands of dollars to Republicans including some of the most radical racists in the SC legislature. Walt Wilkins (R-SC) was a former aide to Strom Thurmond (R-SC) who received money from Harpootlian.
In Columbia, political insiders are abandoning Harpootlian in droves with remarks: "He's a Judas!" and, "Hypocrite," and "Traitor," as well as the increasingly popular label - "Republicrat!" and the recently coined: "Harpootlicrat."
The rise and fall of Dick Harpootlian is now on the lips of SC's political elite. Harpootlian is a tough-talking lawyer who became SC Party Chair in 1998 the year of the backlash against the excesses of Kenneth Starr over his handling of the Monica Lewinsky race. While Jim Hodges was elected governor under Harpootlian's stewardship of the Party, that was the sole positive happenstance of his term. For the next five years, the SC Democratic Party waned into the nearly invisible and ineffective rump of a few favored families in Columbia.
According to an SC Democrat, "Harpootlian presided over the decline and fall of the Party in South Carolina. It is madness to think he could restore a Party he dismantled by a formal policy of benign neglect and covert collaboration with the Republicans."
Harpootlian's most popular opponent is now on the warpath.
Phil Noble said, "In public he gives them Hell; in private he gives them money."
Noble issued a statement zeroing in on the core of the scandal, "Over the past few years, I have been encouraging people in South Carolina to look at where money for the Republican Party and its candidates is coming from. But even I am amazed to learn that my opponent – Dick Harpootlian – is actually the source of some of that money."
Noble's statement captured the spirit of the moment and is now being read aloud in the salons of Washington, Columbia and Charleston. Here is a lengthy excerpt:
According to public records published this morning on a well-regarded South Carolina political blog, the Politics of Jamie Sanderson, Dick Harpootlian has given over $15,000 in campaign funds to Republican candidates and elected officials across South Carolina.
If this is true, as it appears to be, he should immediately withdraw from the race for SC Democratic Party Chair. After all, how can he credibly lead the Democratic Party if he's giving money to the other side?
When I announced that I was running for Chair, I did so because I believe we have to set a new course. If we want to convince voters that we deserve the chance to lead again, we have to stop doing what we have always done and expecting the outcome to be different.
Many Democrats around the state think of our party –- their party -- as being run by a club of well-meaning insiders in Columbia without a clear strategy for winning or even moving forward. Of course, they have great sound bites for the media and put clever things on their websites… but in the evening it’s back to the politics of you-scratch-my back-I’ll-scratch yours.
And apparently we are not just talking about any Republicans. We're talking about those whose politics are diametrically opposed to those of mainstream Democrats, and most likely the mainstream of people of our state.
In public he gives them Hell, in private he gives them money.
Jake Knotts is loose cannon whose public statements often echo our state’s racist past. He routinely embarrasses himself and South Carolina in the national news media – including making racial slurs about President Obama. What in heck is Harpootlian doing writing him campaign checks?
Henry McMaster could not be more of a partisan right-wing Republican. Why in the world would Dick be giving him money?
So far, we have only heard about $15,000 in direct contributions from Dick to SC Republicans running for office. However, I imagine that is only a partial list. The truth is, we have no idea how much he might have raised for any of these Republican campaigns from among his family, friends, and associates.
This year we got Nikki Haley to finally start paying her taxes. Now, apparently, we need to make the same kind of effort to convince the leaders of the Democratic Party in Columbia to stop giving money to our Republican opponents.
Therefore, I am calling on Dick to end his campaign for party chair and apologize to Democrats for his support of our opponents. I especially think he owes an apology to those Democratic candidates who have run against these Republican friends of his, and the rank-and-file campaign people who walked precincts and made phone calls for them.
I have never given or raised money for a Republican candidate – ever – not one red cent. And neither has my wife, my children nor any of my businesses – and I make a commitment that I never will. Now I challenge Dick to make the same commitment.
This whole episode represents precisely the kind of cozy, insider politics that Democrats in this state are sick and tired of. And if I am elected Chair of the Democratic Party, we're going to start putting a stop to it on Day One.
While writing this diary, I just opened an email from a South Carolina Democrat in London. It read, "Harpootlian is Toast."
Bang on the money, I'd say.