GOP candidate blasts McMaster for not doing more for power customers. Could he have?

Gov. Henry McMaster’s GOP primary opponent is blasting the Republican governor over his handling of SCANA’s nuclear debacle.

Catherine Templeton did not criticize McMaster’s threat Tuesday to veto any bill that requires ratepayers to continue paying for two abandoned Fairfield County nuclear reactors – even if that move kills Dominion Energy’s plan to buy the corporate parent of SCE&G.

Instead, Templeton attacked McMaster for not stopping a law that allowed SCANA to charge its customers for the reactors and for accepting donations from the utility’s executives.

“Why didn’t Henry McMaster speak out as attorney general when this unconstitutional scam was passed? Where was he when $2 billion of ratepayers’ money was spent on a project to nowhere?” Templeton said Tuesday. “He was taking at least $115,000 in campaign contributions from SCANA executives, doing their bidding and looking the other way.”

McMaster was S.C. attorney general when the controversial Base Load Review Act was passed in 2007. As recently as last year, he called the act “fair” as he solicited the support of SCANA executives.

But McMaster has been critical of the utility since the nuclear construction project collapsed, including forcing the release of a secret report detailing red flags about the project long before it was abandoned.

Typically, attorneys general defend a state’s laws, offering opinions on their constitutionality only when requested by a state legislator.

In September, Attorney General Alan Wilson issued an opinion critical of the Base Load Review Act, at the request of state Rep. James Smith, the Columbia Democrat who is running for governor. Wilson’s nonbinding opinion questioned the act’s constitutionality.

Templeton, the former director of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, is running against McMaster in the June GOP primary. Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant of Anderson and former Lt. Gov. Yancey McGill of Williamsburg also are running in that primary.

This story was originally published January 24, 2018 at 10:35 AM with the headline "GOP candidate blasts McMaster for not doing more for power customers. Could he have?."