From the archives: Mile-a-minute McMaster riding ethics reform wave

Originally published October 28, 1990

When Henry McMaster beat the more moderate Sen. Sherry Martschink in the Republican primary in June, conventional wisdom said Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore could look forward to an easy summer and easier re-election.

But conventional wisdom didn’t anticipate the biggest political scandal in S. C. history, which would make legislative ethics front-page news for three months and, by extension, taint every government insider.

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Enter the ultimate, heretofore unelectable, outsider, who now tells voters, “If you want to throw the rascals out, then throw me in.”

McMaster, 43, is the man who talks about ethics in his spare time, who jokes about Theodore’s ethics study committee — “Nick’s only been in there since 1962; he needs to study the problem” — and who begins and ends every speech, every hand-shaking session, with ethics.

He warms up 75 members of the Anderson Sertoma Club by telling them, in his distinctive Southern drawl, about how nothing gets done by itself, about how South Carolina can be a wonderful place, but for the “inefficient and corrupt government” holding it back.

“There’s nobody in this room that doesn’t think we’ve got a problem at the State House,” he says, to nods of agreement. “And I tell you, it didn’t start with this sting. It’s been around a long time, and the people who have been there are part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

Few politicians in South Carolina were more perfectly positioned than Henry McMaster to take advantage of an ethics scandal.

Months before ethics and full disclosure were in, McMaster was showing off his income tax returns and an FBI report done before he became U.S. attorney. He was talking about cleaning up the “good ol’ boy” system, and preaching in his untiring, energetic way about how the lobby between the House and Senate feels like a private club, where only big-spending lobbyists and politicians need apply.

The best way to describe McMaster is intense — a fast-paced, non-stop kind of intense that leaves no doubt who’s in charge of the situation, whatever it may be.

When he’s not talking to people, he’s polishing up the speeches, reviewing the notes, catching up on the news. On the flight back to Columbia from Anderson, he stops long enough to nap, but only because he’s afraid that working on the bumpy ride on the single-engine plane might make him too sick to spend the afternoon preparing for a debate.

McMaster is a specifics person, who makes lists of every thought and translates his disgust with corruption into specific proposals: He wants to limit politicians to 12 years in any one office; bar lobbyists from giving anything, from trips to meals to money, to legislators; and turn the statewide grand jury loose on the Legislature to make sure his proposals work.

There’s still some room to talk about other issues. His big three from the primary — closing the state borders to incoming shipments of hazardous waste, abolishing parole and executing drug kingpins — still show up in the speeches.

He’s still the person to talk about them, the former crime-fighting federal prosecutor who made a name for himself by running the most flamboyant anti-drug investigation in state history.

Those issues just don’t matter quite as much as before; his eyes don’t flash quite as brightly as they used to when he talks about them.

“Those same three still apply,” he says. “But in addition to that, now the question of ethics and reform, which was an issue in the primary, is even more of an issue now.”

Defying the odds, McMaster has used that issue deftly to get about as close as any Republican has ever been to becoming the first of his party in modern history to take the lieutenant governor’s office.

There’s a bit of irony here: He’s doing it all without the kind of help that Carroll Campbell gave Tommy Hartnett four years ago when the two ran as the “dream team,” and Campbell made it into office.

It’s only been in the last couple of weeks — insiders suggest only since McMaster’s poll numbers came up enough to make the Campbell people feel comfortable that he could actually beat Theodore — that Campbell has appeared to want McMaster in the office across the hall from him at the State House.

Even as Campbell talks about not having any gripes with Theodore, McMaster insists that anyone suggesting he’s not working closely with the top of the ticket just isn’t looking close enough.

He makes a point of working Campbell’s name into his speeches and conversations as often as possible.

It’s a natural thing to do, personally and politically.

Politically, being tied to the popular governor can’t do anything but help.

Personally, he’s pure Republican.

Born and raised in Columbia, McMaster grew up on a golf course, attended boarding schools and received undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Carolina before spending a year in Washington working for Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Back in Columbia, he spent seven years at his father’s downtown law firm before Thurmond nominated him to be U.S. attorney. Done with that, he took on Sen. Ernest Hollings in 1986, getting trounced and returning to the firm to prepare for the 1990 election.

He decided he wanted to be lieutenant governor, he says, because he wanted to help his Republican governor, and because the office is full of potential he believes isn’t being used. He wants to turn it into a bully pulpit, where he can work the voters into a frenzy over his ideas and then pound the Legislature over the head with the public support.

When one of the Anderson lunch crowd asks him how the lieutenant governor can clean up corruption, he replies that the mere presence of an ethics-crusading former prosecutor should discourage legislators from flouting the law.

And besides, he says: “I know how to pick up the phone to give ’em a call to turn criminals in. I know the number.”

This story was originally published January 27, 2017 at 1:30 PM with the headline "From the archives: Mile-a-minute McMaster riding ethics reform wave."