Gary Simrill, House GOP leader who helped bring SC the gas tax, to retire after 30 years
Time was running short.
At stake was a potentially history-making Carolina Panthers deal, a fast-tracked proposal to give the North Carolina-based NFL team $115 million in tax breaks to move and build its operations and practice facilities in Rock Hill.
But a freshman state senator named Dick Harpootlian was holding up the legislation, for months prolonging passage of a massive economic deal to lure the Panthers. He argued that South Carolina was going to get the raw end of the deal, and claimed the only winners would be the pro football team’s billionaire owner.
A standoff was brewing in the State House.
At the center was House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, of Rock Hill, leading the push to get the deal across the finish line with what his colleagues identify as two of his strongest skills: persistence and consensus building.
He had wielded those skills with great success in the General Assembly time and time again — when the state managed to pass a gas tax increase in 2017, when after years of neglecting higher education the state poured more money into colleges and universities to help keep tuition low, and, years before, when the young legislator leveraged a quick introduction with the governor to get a left-hand turn lane installed on a busy street in his district.
Simrill landed that Panthers deal, since put on hold, in May 2019, the final month of the legislative year.
Now Simrill — whose enchantment with South Carolina government started at age 13 on an eighth grade school field trip and who entered the House at age 26 — is retiring after 30 years in the state House. It ends the tenure of a three-term Republican House leader considered to be one of the savviest negotiators in the Legislature.
He had toyed with the idea of retirement before. His term as House Republican leader technically came to a close two years ago — the House Republican Caucus term limits leaders, unlike the Democrats — only to be extended by the caucus to help with the once-in-a-decade redrawing of political maps.
But Simrill, who will turn 56 in May and has served in the House for more than half of his life, zeroed in on a quote from John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address when asked why in a recent sit-down interview with The State he’d leave now.
“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,” Kennedy said then.
A “new generation” stuck with Simrill, a consummate lover of history who has a sharp, innate understanding that the pendulum swings back-and-forth in politics.
“Each person is allotted their time in this,” Simrill told The State. ”And I’m grateful, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to serve.”
Simrill was elected to the state House in 1992, the first Republican to represent his Rock Hill seat. It is a suburban, moderate district in York County that has exploded in growth over the last decade thanks to its location on the South Carolina-North Carolina border, near Charlotte.
He joined the Democratic-led chamber in 1993, split between rural and urban, as part of a large and competitive class elected under the cloud of Operation Lost Trust, a multi-year political scandal in the General Assembly. His class would include some of the state’s future political heavyweights, like House Education Chairwoman Rita Allison, former House Speaker Bobby Harrell, state Rep. Jerry Govan, Molly Spearman, the outgoing superintendent of education, and future U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
“By the ‘90s, in particular with Lost Trust, which took out a huge contingency of senior members in the body, then you saw really, what I like to think is the beginning of the end of Democratic dominance in the state,” Govan said.
Simrill’s retirement, preceded by an avalanche of whispers over the past several weeks, won’t likely alter the party split between Democrats and Republicans in the House, all up for reelection this year. Republicans currently control 81 seats in the House (two are vacant because of early retirements), leaving Democrats with 43.
His home county has kept a red hue over the years, and is unlikely to go blue anytime soon. Most of its House members are Republicans; so are its senators. The county is represented by U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, another Republican.
But Simrill’s departure from the General Assembly, particularly in the House, carries a greater weight, according to interviews with dozens of his current and former colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans.
They say they aren’t just losing a colleague. The legislative body, they said, is losing so much more: The institutional knowledge. His willingness to listen and set aside scores to reach consensus. A member more interested in bettering South Carolina rather than partisan slogans that erode good policy debates and have created factions within the House Republican Caucus. Simrill calls it “bumper sticker politics.”
State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, the longest-serving House member and Black legislator and never one to mince words, did not for Simrill.
“The state of South Carolina needs him to stay in the Legislature. That kind of knowledge, we need him. I’m not blowing smoke or trying to make him feel good about it, the state needs him. God knows we do,” said Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, who sits on the House budget-writing Ways and Means Committee and serves on its higher education panel with Simrill.
“Some people you can lose, won’t really matter, and some people you can’t lose. And Gary Simrill is one (you can’t lose), in my opinion.”
‘He rode the wave of Republicanism’
Gary Simrill likely was destined to enter the political fray.
He stood awestruck from the House gallery at 13 and, as a teenager who loved history, delivered the newspaper to doorsteps.
His father, the late Hugh Simrill, was a House member from 1958-1964, representing the same area Simrill now covers today. His House career was over before Simrill was born in 1966. Politics, Simrill said, played a much larger role in his home than public service. His uncle, Jack Simrill, was the first family court judge in York and Union counties.
By his 20s, Simrill was very much a part of the Republican Party machine emerging in South Carolina.
He’d volunteered twice on Ronald Reagan’s campaign, once at 14 and then 18. He became an election precinct chair, and helped then-Upstate Congressman Carol Campbell run for governor. He finally eyed the opportunity to join the State House chamber that had left him in awe more than a decade before.
In 1991, state Sen. John Hayes ran to become a circuit court judge, and Democratic Rep. Wes Hayes (both of Rock Hill but no relation), found his chance to join the Senate. There was Simrill’s opening to get into the House.
“I decided at 24 years old to run for the House,” Simrill said of his race against Alton Hyatt, a race everyone expected him to lose. “I was defeated.”
He lost by 117 votes.
Simrill, the Winthrop University graduate who was then a young Republican vying for elected office in what had been a Democratic-held seat, understood the challenges of overcoming expectations.
By the time Simrill graduated from high school, there was no money in his college savings account, drained after his father, a lawyer, invested poorly in solar energy and real estate. He worked full time at a moving and storage company and attended college part time, graduating in seven years without student loan debt. He was put on academic probation once.
“I worked on a moving truck to my pay my way through college, and so I ended up in that business,” Simrill said. “When the Hayes thing happened, I had great people working with me. They said, ‘Sure you can run for office.’”
Months after losing the 1991 special election, Simrill returned to prove everyone wrong, on the way picking up what also would become his most vital voter contact information for the woman who became his wife, Mary Ruth.
“I go up and knock on the door. (Her) mom comes to the door. I’m talking to her; Mary Ruth, my wife, drives up in the driveway. She was living across town, but she came to pick her mom up to go to lunch,” Simrill recalled. “She comes up in the driveway, and she’s like 100% attractive. I’m distracted now.”
Perhaps she became his good luck charm.
In 1992, a presidential election year between George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Simrill beat Hyatt.
This time by more than 500 votes. He’s been challenged eight times since, all in the general election.
“He was a young kid when he came to the House, ... but he was smart,” said Greg Delleney, the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “People, if they’re smart, they sit back and aren’t brash, they try to figure out how things work, and one of the things I’ve learned about life, which is proved in politics, is always knowing your place. If a door opens runs through it.”
Simrill, by some fault of his own, his colleagues tease, was going to stick out in the Legislature.
He had the hair — high, big on the top, which has since evolved into a heap of curls — and large glasses, another piece of Simrill’s fashion that has since evolved over his decades-long tenure in the General Assembly. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Simrill, a lover of cars who in an instant like so many others understood that life is fleeting, decided to embrace a long-held passion and opened Carolina Motorworks, a used-car business in Rock Hill, now part of his persona in the House.
“My first impression of him was here’s this slick guy, total politico, no substance, just slick Republican hack guy. This is before I know him,” said former state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, who served in the House with Simrill and ran twice for governor. “I rapidly learned that he is a very real grounded person, very just regular guy. Yeah he’s got a slick hairdo, but just a regular guy.”
He also was a self-described firebrand known to frustrate Sheheen’s uncle, Bob, the last Democratic speaker of the House, advocating the House vote by roll call, an individual naming of how each member votes rather than a voice vote — whichever group is loudest. He earned the nickname, Gary “Roll Call” Simrill.
“Bob Sheheen would get so furious, he stomped his foot at me one day,” Simrill said. “When I ran for office in ‘94, they used that against me because it cost like $38 to do a roll call. My opponent, we’re speaking at a Kiwanis Club in Rock Hill in 1994, and so he’s telling how much I cost the taxpayers by demanding the roll call. It’s my turn to respond, and so I said, ‘My opponent’s exactly right. But you didn’t know how we were voting. It’s worth $38 for you to know what we’re doing.’”
Simrill got a standing ovation.
“I always thought that nobody recognized Gary’s talent,” said House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington. “He was kind of stuck on the Judiciary Committee, he was stuck in mud, he really wasn’t a favorite of leadership. ... To me, he’s got one of the best political minds up here.”
He started as kind of an outsider, Sheheen said of Simrill when he was first elected.
“But he rode the wave of Republicanism.”
‘Politics (is) a blood sport in today’s world’
By 2014, South Carolina leaders said they were ready to seriously address the state’s crumbling infrastructure.
A year before, they’d sent millions of dollars to the state’s transportation department to fix roads, bridges and finish projects. But it wasn’t sustainable, lawmakers said. So in 2014, a panel was created to actually address the state’s infrastructure woes.
Before lawmakers met, Harrell was indicted on misusing campaign cash for personal use.
“So (state Rep. Jay) Lucas becomes speaker, and Lucas puts me in charge of that committee,” Simrill said. “I said, ‘Man, why would you do that to me. I was thinking, No. 1, DOT needs to be reformed, they certainly don’t need any more money.”
So began years of public hearings. And, in the House, there was Simrill helping to lead the negotiations.
“There is nobody in the House that knows more about gas tax and, take it a step further, roads and funding than Gary Simrill,” Lucas said.
That was evident to House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, who sat on the conference committee with Simrill.
“I just remember feeling like we, the conferees, didn’t need to be there because he could have handled it all,” he said.
In 2016, Simrill was elected House majority leader — a job description that includes speaking for House Republicans, setting the agenda for the party and deciding how to spend on legislative races.
“Now you’re carrying Republican water, which I’m happy to do,” Simrill said. “The irony behind me being majority leader, I didn’t want to be.”
And Christy Hall was confirmed as state transportation secretary amid a large audit of the department.
There were years of hearings, and failed attempts to pass. There were differences between chambers, a deal Sheheen recalled looked near to blowing up, so he left the beach and Lucas left Darlington County to hammer out issues in the State House parking garage on a Sunday. There was the threat of a governor’s veto and an actual veto.
In 2017, the Legislature raised prices at the pump for the first time since the 1980s.
“I was never confident about it going in, because, again, thinking back to when I stepped into the role, it was a very tumultuous time. I was always hopeful and optimistic, but at the end of the day, something like what was being discussed hadn’t been tackled in 30 years,” Hall told The State.
Simrill, Hall continued, was “without a doubt the leading champion of infrastructure and investment in infrastructure.”
Gov. Henry McMaster told The State he still, years later, supports his decision to veto the gas tax.
“But Gary Simrill has been instrumental in our progress,” McMaster told The State, noting disagreements happen.
Simrill, in his role as majority leader, has had a front row seat to major policy decisions in the state — a leadership position in the State House that McMaster said has made Simrill “one of the greatest consensus builders ever to my knowledge.”
The gas tax. Overhauling the state’s utilities after the V.C. Summer nuclear facility blunder that left thousands of workers without jobs and millions of South Carolinians facing higher electricity bills. Making boiled peanuts the official snack food of South Carolina, and the once-in-a-life Panthers deal aimed for Simrill’s home district — an effort between legislative leaders, Panthers officials, the governor and Rock Hill Mayor John Gettys, who Simrill endorsed over pushback he was backing the other side of the aisle.
Simrill has strongly defended the Panthers deal, despite criticism the state was, in part, peddling to a billionaire, telling The State, “show me a large business that doesn’t have a wealthy person. We are hung up on a personality instead of a business.”
“Politics (is) a blood sport in today’s world, but in our community, there is this sense that we work together regardless of your ideology and that comes to our leadership,” Gettys said.
It’s not the only area Simrill has faced critics.
The corruption investigation that led to Harrell’s indictment and other Republican House members became the center of a lawsuit in 2017 brought by South Carolina media outlets, including The State. In this case, the House GOP Caucus — of which Simrill leads — refused to turn over to the public financial records it had made available to investigators.
Newsrooms had the backing of media lawyers, even the governor.
A judge ultimately denied the media’s request, deciding the caucus was not a “public body.”
“You have to be able to flesh out ideas,” Simrill said in defense of the caucus’ stance. “... If you have a caucus where the exchange of ideas can’t be talked about in an open manner, then you stymie that, and then you end up with that oligarch, somebody else is making in a smaller room, making decisions for the larger footprint of people that serve and I don’t think that’s fair to those constituents.”
Only one House lawmaker — Jonathon Hill, of Anderson — is no longer a caucus member, ousted in 2019. Simrill is often a target of Hill’s Facebook videos and social media posts. In one instance, he called Simrill, “The Wizard of Oz’s ... man behind the curtain.”
From the gas tax hike to the recent unanimous income tax cut, Simrill has led the caucus through tough votes and come out unscathed on the other end.
“He has the ingredients of what it takes to rise and sustain leadership in the General Assembly,” former Sen. Wes Hayes said. “And that’s energy, and honesty, and I think to some certain extent when I say honesty, you don’t have to watch your back with Gary. He does what he says he’s going to do, and I think that over time people with those characteristics tend to rise.”
But his greatest legacy, said House Budget Chairman Murrell Smith is what he did for the state’s colleges and universities.
“We really had not funded higher education since the Great Recession,” Smith, R-Sumter, said. “Then we got into the perpetual battle of them raising tuition, blaming us and us blaming them for being a bloated institution and going in and expanding beyond what was necessary to educate the citizens of this state.”
In 2018, Smith, then a brand new chairman, called Simrill, asking him to chair the higher education panel.
Simrill, who was chairing the economic development subcommittee at the time, said on one condition, Smith said: “I’m willing to do that if you give me some independence and some authority to fund higher education. But if you’re not going to do that, then I’m not interested in that.”
Millions of dollars have since gone to the state’s college and universities in order to keep institutions from raising tuition.
“I think people who I knew that knew him sort of tangentially or in broad, (saw him as a) Rock Hill used car guy; had low expectations, maybe is the best way to say it,” said Walt Whetsell, a top GOP strategist who started work for the caucus in 2019. “Boy did he destroy that quickly. He is really, really good at his job.”
‘I want to have purpose’
It’s not lost on Simrill, the senior House Republican, that he’s leaving the South Carolina Legislature at such a critical time.
Nor is it lost on his colleagues — of both parties.
“I think Gary is part of a dying breed that we’re going to see in the political arena here in South Carolina,” Smith said.
“He has the bat right-handed or left-handed, and with any degree of sophistication watching it, you understand you’ve got to step back and watch,” Rutherford said. “He does not miss. He does not miss. Fast ball, slow ball, he’s going to hit and knock it out of the park every time.”
“Well liked, just masterful at his job,” said House Speaker Pro Tempore Tommy Pope, R-York, Simrill’s seat mate.
“I kind of try to emulate people I respect,” said state Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Richland. “.... I look at how Gary works on things, I respect that and try to emulate that, trying to work with all the stakeholders of both parties, as many people as you can.”
Republicans hold a stronger majority in the chamber now than two years ago, when the GOP flipped two state House seats, giving the party greater leverage to pass, even without Democratic support, more socially and fiscally conservative policies.
But, as evidenced last year when the House was pushed into a full-scale culture war over COVID-19 masks and vaccine rules, and, in another instance, competing bills to loosen gun restrictions, the party that celebrated expanded size in 2020 has seen the flip side of those wins.
“I think social media has changed politics a lot and the dynamics of it. I don’t say that it’s for the good, because I think we’re more topical and have less depth of subjects. And, again, we get involved in the bumper sticker of things,” Simrill said. “We are hung up in bumper sticker politics; we are hung up in verbiage.”
Simrill said he has no guilt about his decision to retire his District 46 seat, going back to Kennedy’s 1961 address.
He has three children: Mallory, 26; Sarah Kate, 23; and Dozier, 18 — named after his mother’s uncle, James Dozier, the state’s longest-serving adjutant general. And his wife, Mary Ruth.
He’s served under four speakers: Bob Sheheen, David Wilkins, Bobby Harrell and Jay Lucas. And six governors: Carol Campbell, David Beasley, Jim Hodges, Mark Sanford, Nikki Haley and Henry McMaster.
“You know when it’s time, you feel it yourself,” said Rep. Allison, one of the few left from Simrill’s ‘93 class. “When you’re to the point where you feel like, OK I’ve been there, done this given it all, the person knows. And I think all of us would rather go out when we feel like we have done all we can do.”
In an interview, Simrill put it simply: It’s just time.
The stories he can tell sound like a bygone era. Take his and other’s stories about lunchtime politics, for example.
Back then, a group of relatively young legislators would band together at lunch time.
Smith said the genesis was Hooter’s, but they eventually moved to Wild Wing, Rockaway and Harper’s Restaurant, among others. They discussed policy, politics, pranks and “Andy Griffith Show” trivia.
There was Simrill, Smith, Lucas, former Rep. Jim McGee (now a judge) and others. At some point, state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston, was added for some bipartisanship after, coincidentally, they were put in a House office suite together: Room 420. “Always a fun suite” Simrill said.
Guests came and went, like former Gov. Nikki Haley or famed State sports columnist Ron Morris, some legislators couldn’t stick it out. A couple of reporters were often invited as guests.
Stavrinakis, the token Democrat, described the group as “guys at lunch, taking a break from work.”
They were the Eatin’ Caucus — the “g” is silent.
The caucus, maybe not entirely disbanded but on a sabbatical of sorts, embodies Simrill’s “no labels” mantra.
“I’d rather deal with people,” Simrill said. “I look at my colleagues in the House as my colleagues, not as Republicans and Democrats.”
Simrill declined to spell out specifically what he plans to do next, but it’s easy to realize he isn’t completely walking away from decision-making in South Carolina.
“I want to continue to be, I want to have purpose,” Simrill said. “There are stages of life. This stage is time for a close. The next stage is really to begin (something) purposeful.”
Aaron Gould Sheinin, a former longtime State House reporter for The State, who covered the South Carolina State House from 2000-2007, said he’s long believed there are three kinds of people in politics.
And it’s easy to see, he said, where Simrill fits in.
“The ones who get up in the morning and want to know how to help themselves, the ones who get up in the morning and want to know how to screw the other guy, and the ones who get up in the morning who want to make things better,” Sheinin said.
“And there’s not enough of that third group.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
