Welcome to the 578th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Mike Fair, who served two decades on the South Carolina State Senate, from 1996-2016, and back in 1998, he made an unsuccessful bid at running for Congress in South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. After two decades in office, Fair was torpedoed in the GOP Primary for his seat in the South Carolina State Senate by William Timmons, and that may have had something to do with the fact that in his final term in office, Mike Fair went bonkers and was fighting the culture wars against everyone and anyone without any level of patience to actually prepare an appropriate response.
Let’s start back in January of 2014, as an investigative report was released that South Carolina’s prison system was neglectful enough of mentally ill prisoners that it was being faced with legal action over the abuses. Mike Fair is the head of the Corrections and Penology Committee in the South Carolina State Senate, and responded to this revelation by saying he “didn’t know that we had a problem with any particular aspect of mistreating or not treating inmates who have a diagnosis of mental illness”. And that is remarkable, because about a decade earlier, Mike Fair was the chair of a Task Force whose findings were that the mentally ill in South Carolina’s prisons were facing terrible conditions. After a ruling from Judge Michael Baxley found that inmates had died because of a lack of basic care in South Carolina’s prisons, there obviously was going to be a discussion on how to fix the problem held by the Committee on Corrections and Penology… except that Mike Fair literally opened that meeting by trying to silence everyone and forbid them from discussing Judge Baxley’s findings. Thankfully, one of his colleagues, State Senator Marlon Kimpson ignored Fair’s protests, and went ahead and brought it up anyway. That probably would be because refusing to discuss a problem is detrimental to actually, y’know, SOLVING IT.
A month later, in February 2014, Fair started making headlines because he was opposing teaching standards for teaching evolution in school, holding up the process at almost the last minute. This was not uncommon, however, as Fair had argued as a Creationist against teaching natural selection in schools as far back as 2005. But it really was two months later in April 2014 that Mike Fair went off the deep end in his opposition to evolution… an 8 year old girl by the name of Olivia McConnell had petitioned to the South Carolina State legislature that she thought it would be a nice nod to the history of South Carolina if they would name the Colombian Wooly Mammoth as the official state fossil of South Carolina. And a bill got submitted on behalf of her teacher and class by one of the state legislators, to teach the kids how government works. The lesson they got, however, was less than inspiring. And that would be because Mike Fair decided to try and litigate his fight over evolution again, and felt this “Colombian Wooly Mammoth” bill should be fought tooth and nail, because it was attacking his belief in Creationism by being older than he thought the Earth was. The rest of the Republicans in the South Carolina State Senate realized it’s bad optics to be a d*** to an 8 year old bill and dropped the Creationist language that Fair had added.
Only two weeks after that in April, Fair was teaming up with CSGOPOTD alumni Lee Bright and freaking out about a play being performed at the University of South Carolina Upstate titled “How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less” calling it a “recruitment tool” and comparing those performing the play to “skinheads and radical Islam” looking to bring others into the fold. (Because we know radical Islamists love LGBT themes.) Both Fair and Bright also voted against reappointment of University of South Carolina trustees because of gay-themed performances and “left-leaning” assigned reading materials.
Now, one of the bigger political stories to come out of South Carolina in the past few years was in June of 2015, after the mass murder carried out by Dylan Roof at the A.M.E. Emanuel Church in Charleston, Gov. Nikki Haley called for the Confederate flag to be removed from the state capitol. While Mike Fair did eventually vote for its removal, he was hardly falling all over himself to do so. After Gov. Haley’s announcement, Fair declared her call to the state legislature to remove it “opportunistic”, and he was calling for the vote to be delayed for six months.
Almost a full year went by before Mike Fair made the papers again, this time in April of 2016, when he actually tried following the disastrous lead of North Carolina to pass transphobic bathroom legislation, co-sponsoring a bill on a bathroom ban submitted by his buddy Lee Bright. It fortunately went nowhere, but true to form, Fair would take out his frustration on the dreaded left in America soon thereafter.
An LGBT advocate named Caleb Laieski, who was actually invited to the White House in 2011, frequently writes letters to state legislators asking them to consider having their states submit and pass legislation to ban the practice of “gay conversion therapy”, because of that nagging little detail where international groups are beginning to consider it a human rights abuse. Well, rather than respond politely with a “this would not pass muster in our legislature at this time”, or just choosing to not respond at all, Mike Fair sent a letter back to Laieski where he called him “warped”, “sick”, and “shameful”.
“Your encouragement of life altering surgery as a young teen but fighting against counseling from those who are no longer in the ethereal and sick behavior involving same sex sexual profligacy is beyond irresponsibility. Your warped advocacies are shameful.”
Charming, right? Well, we’d like to say that all of these sorts of moments were Mike Fair’s undoing in that primary race, but it seems much more likely that the people of South Carolina were just tired of voting the same gasbags into office, and went with someone new instead. After all, it’s not like the rest of the Republicans in South Carolina are catching any flack for anti-choice votes, pushing for voter-disenfranchising Voter ID laws, attempts at trying to nullify the Affordable Care Act, or trying to legalize carrying firearms in bars. Mike Fair had all that, and more, in his own voting record, though, adding to our own concerns about him.
One Year Ago, May 8th, 2016: Karen Davis (CA)
Two Years Ago, May 8th, 2015: Glenn McConnell (SC)