One of the most powerful jobs in SC government is going away

It wasn’t on the ballot this year, but November’s election did away with one of the most powerful jobs in S.C. government.

When senators return to the State House in January, state Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, will step aside as the body’s president pro tempore, an influential post that directs the Senate’s agenda, and also controls appointments to a bundle of state boards and commissions.

Leatherman won’t be replaced in the position. Instead, the job is going away, thanks to a constitutional change that will shake up the way the Senate works.

With that change, longtime Senate veteran Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, is expected to take up the new job of president of the State House’s upper house.

“I’ll be interested to see how it all works out,” Leatherman told The State. “We’re in new territory. The pro tempore position goes back a century or more, so this is a new day in the Senate.”

Leatherman and both party leaders in the Senate say Peeler — a former GOP Senate majority leader, 39-year State House veteran and Gaffney dairyman — is likely to be elected the next head of the state Senate, unless another candidate emerges before lawmakers return to work Jan. 8.

Peeler confirmed to The State he plans to seek the job.

“It would be an honor,” he said. “It’s new, so I can bring a fresh look. But I’ll bring with me my years of experience.”

Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Nikki Setzler of Lexington said Peeler likely won’t face too many hurdles to winning the job.

“I think he will have bipartisan support,” Setzler said.

Peeler’s new job will replace the state’s lieutenant governor as the Senate’s presiding officer. That role was eliminated from the lieutenant governor’s job description by the same change that put the governor and his No. 2 on the same ticket.

If elected Senate president, Peeler also will inherit the Senate president pro tempore’s former appointment powers, what the Gaffney Republican calls “license tag appointments,” a reference to the official state license plates that the appointees can put on their cars.

The powerful committee chairs in the GOP-majority Senate still will be decided by seniority within the majority party. However, Senate members who are on conference committees, which hammer out compromises with the S.C. House, now will be named by the majority and minority party leaders, and the Senate committee chairmen involved.

“This really increases the power of the majority and minority leaders, and the committee chairmen,” Peeler said. “It will be a team effort. But the buck stops with the president.”

“The members will notice the difference in how the body operates,” said GOP Majority Leader Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield. “It will be a fairer distribution of power.”

Under the new arrangement, the Senate president won’t be able to chair a committee that will send legislation to the Senate floor.

“I felt, and others were concerned, that if legislation came out of his or her committee, then (the president) would rule on points of order and which bills would come forward, and it would be a problem,” said Leatherman, who did not want to continue as Senate leader because he wanted to keep his post as chair of the Finance Committee. That post gives Leatherman a large voice in the state’s budgeting process and a seat on the state’s Fiscal Accountability Authority.

The formal powers of the new president’s job haven’t been explicitly spelled out. The Senate will vote on those powers when it convenes next month, but party leaders informally have agreed on how the position will operate.

“You don’t want bloodshed on the floor of the Senate,” Leatherman said. “I told them not to think about who’s here now. They have to think about what the impact will be five or 10 decades down the road.”

This story was originally published December 14, 2018 at 5:00 AM.