SC Gov. McMaster says GOP gains will help his agenda, from abortion to Santee Cooper
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he sees new advantages in the more Republican-controlled state Senate, where legislation he has championed from more restrictive abortion bans and pro-gun bills to ending the years-long debate over whether to sell the state’s public utility have been unable to see light.
Republicans won big in the Palmetto State on election night.
In the House, Republicans kept their seats and flipped two more. In the Senate, Republicans flipped three seats and kept two seats left by two retiring Republican senators, growing the majority’s membership to 30 — its largest membership in years.
“They are eager to get to work as are others,” the governor told reporters Thursday. “What has happened is we have elected some conservative, sensible, determined people to come to Columbia and that’s good news. And that means that a lot of the things that we have been trying to do for some time will likely have a better chance of getting done.”
In particular, the governor said he would sign a so-called “fetal heartbeat bill,” should it cross his desk, legislation that would ban nearly all abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, or about the sixth week of pregnancy — before some women know they are pregnant.
Almost a year ago, the governor stood in the State House lobby between the House and Senate chambers calling on the Senate to pass a similar bill that included exceptions for victims of rape and incest. That proposal passed the House a year earlier but was tweaked by senators to require victims of rape and incest to report the crimes against them in order to have an abortion.
The Senate failed to pass the measure this year, killing it once the last session came to a close. In another instance in 2018, Senate Democrats successfully filibustered another anti-abortion bill that banned virtually all abortions, ensuring it wouldn’t pass.
Should it ever pass and become law, South Carolina would arguably have one of the most extreme abortion laws in the country and would almost certainly face a legal challenge, a test many Republicans in the State House are sure to push now that the U.S. Supreme Court tilts more conservative.
House leadership also told The State this month that legislation to curb abortions and also to expand gun rights are at least two priorities likely to be at the forefront of what the Republican-majority House tackles when lawmakers return to work in January.
“If they get to my desk I will sign them,” said McMaster, who, with the House’s 124 members, will be up for reelection in 2022. “Additions to the Senate will make that more likely to happen.”
It’s not just abortion, however, that the governor wants to tackle.
McMaster said he’d like more funding to go to law enforcement next year and renewed his push for a retirement income tax cut for members of the military, law enforcement and first responders, a plan he proposed during his last gubernatorial run in 2018.
And he also renewed his plan to further expand four-year-old kindergarten, whose most vocal advocate, now former Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, lost his Kershaw Senate seat to Republican Penry Gustafson, who was sworn into office this week.
“You’re right, ... he has been a leader. There are other leaders,” McMaster said of Sheheen. “One thing in our state we do when someone is out of office ... we tap the talent wherever we can. That’s what we did with (the COVID-19 task force) Accelerate SC. So, I think in future months, you’ll be seeing more and more people getting involved on the Accelerate SC model to see that we don’t lose sight of what we need to do and we don’t lose any expertise in getting those things done.”
There’s also the question of what to do with Santee Cooper more than two years after the state utility and what was SCANA Corp. abandoned plans to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County, leaving Santee Cooper with billions of dollars in debt.
McMaster wants to sell the state-owned power provider but faces a challenge in the Senate where senators can filibuster legislation.
One lawmaker who has sworn to protect Santee Cooper is Sen. Larry Grooms, whose Berkeley County district includes the utility.
Still, McMaster remained confident Thursday that the Legislature would ultimately move toward a sale.
“I think we were headed in that direction before we were interrupted by the virus,” McMaster said. “They’ll be some new members going on the board. And there’s been, we’ve had a lot of discussions in the last few months about Santee Cooper with the leadership in the House and the Senate. My belief is that it’s inevitable, it must be sold. The debt is so deep. ... But that remains to be seen. But I think these changes in the Senate, they may help” that.
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 9:03 AM.
