S.C. politics

Jeb Bush’s political-action committee, Right to Rise, has named two senior advisers in South Carolina ahead of the former Florida governor’s expected bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, The State has learned.

Brett Doster, a longtime Jeb Bush adviser, and Jim Dyke, who worked for President George W. Bush, are Jeb Bush’s first two paid staffers in the Palmetto State.

Jeb Bush, who is scheduled to speak Saturday at the S.C. Republican Convention in Columbia, is gaining some major backers in the state.

Spartanburg Republican financier Barry Wynn said he was among 250 attendees at a meeting in Miami with top Bush supporters over the weekend. Wynn backed Bush’s brother in his presidential runs.

Right to Rise’s S.C. advisers have experience in presidential campaigns.

Dyke has worked on four presidential campaigns and was a communications adviser to President George W. Bush. Dyke also was communications director for the Republican National Committee during President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election and press secretary for U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. He lives in Charleston where he operates JDA Frontline, a communications consulting firm.

Doster is president of Front Line Strategies, a public relations firm in Tallahassee, Fla. The Citadel graduate was the Florida senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. He also was Florida political director for the George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and Florida executive director for his 2004 re-election campaign. Doster was a special assistant to Jeb Bush in his gubernatorial campaigns and worked in Florida’s tourism and economic development office.

House OKs bill making it easier to build, expand hospitals

The S.C. House gave key approval Wednesday to a bill that would make it easier to build and expand hospitals and other medical facilities, and would end a state oversight program called the certificate of need entirely at the start of 2018.

The bill, passed 103-1, would allow existing hospitals, medical centers and nursing homes to add beds within a mile of their facility. It also would allow hospitals to expand services that already are approved under the program and remove the need to seek permission to buy costly equipment like X-ray machines or MRI scanners.

The proposal passed in committee ended the certificate-of-need program in 2020, but House members agreed to move that date up two years. The bill now moves to the Senate.

The program nearly died when Gov. Nikki Haley vetoed its funding in 2013, but was resurrected a year later when the S.C. Supreme Court ruled the program couldn’t be eliminated unless lawmakers directly voted to kill it.

Senators have not discussed the bill or had any hearings on it this year.

Prosecutors: Don’t toss DUI cases for imperfect video

S.C. prosecutors want state law to put less emphasis on video in drunken-driving cases, saying too many are being dismissed because of imperfect recordings.

But defense attorneys say there should be better officer training, not lowering of standards.

Since 1998, state law has required videotaping of drunken-driving arrests. Recordings must begin as soon as an officer activates his blue lights and include field sobriety tests as well as the breath test, if a suspect agrees to take it.

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Wednesday debated a bill that says cases can’t be tossed simply because video equipment fails to capture sobriety tests. Solicitor Barry Barnette says problems can range from bad audio to a suspect walking out of camera view. The panel took no action.

Andrew Shain, Associated Press

This story was originally published April 29, 2015 at 7:52 PM with the headline "S.C. politics."