For approximately three hours Tuesday a seven member panel of South Carolina House members questioned attorneys for Governor Mark Sanford, to determine if he should be impeached.

The panel examined nine counts Tuesday, including count 20, the “hair cut flight,” where Sanford flew back from business in Myrtle Beach during March of 2006, business including speaking to a Rotary Club, and had his hair cut in Columbia. The hair cut point stems from a note jotted in his calendar.

One of Sanford’s attorneys, Butch Bowers, says the governor was already in Myrtle Beach on official business, speaking to a Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, and had gotten there on his own, when a staff member flew in and they flew back to Columbia.

Bowers said the governor did not take a flight to Columbia just to get an $11 hair cut and called the idea absurd.  He said that Sanford had to return to Columbia at some point anyway. Bowers said that the governor also ate dinner that night but that, as well, had nothing to do with a flight at tax payer expense.

Bowers says even if the hair cut were a factor, that the return trip is completely permissible since the governor was returning home for the night, even though he went back to Myrtle Beach after that, because by law the governor must reside in the Governor’s mansion.

Bowers, pointed out that the Ethics Commission investigated 663 legs of trips that Sanford took, but in every case, the governor’s use of the state plane was in connection with official business and Bowers asserted that none of the points brought up rise to the level of impeachment.

Attorney Butch Bowers

Sanford’s attorney Ross Garber, an impeachment specialist, points out that the Ethics Commission will consider Sanford’s defenses on each count, in due course. Garber also asserted that none of the alleged violations rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the South Carolina Constitution, which provides for impeachment only if the governor committed serious crimes or serious misconduct in office. He adds that the South Carolina impeachment standard is high and strict. Garber says no modern governor of any state has been impeached without having first been charged with felonies. He says only serious crimes and serious misconduct in office that corrupts the system of government may lead to impeachment, what he called the political equivalent of capital punishment.

In November 2006, Sanford flew from Columbia to the Charleston area and attended a book signing at an Applebee’s restaurant. Then he flew to Aiken for a birthday party for a campaign contributor. Sanford’s attorney Kevin Hall says there shouldn’t be too much emphasis on whether the company that owns the restaurant gave money to Sanford’s campaign, since that company is a major employer, with 1500 workers in South Carolina.

Hall said the party in Aiken was connected to the fact that the individual was a major employer in that area–an auto ignition manufacturer headquartered in Aiken that employs more than a 1000 people worldwide.    But Representative James Smith asserted that the party was more about politics.

In the fall of 2006 Sanford flew with his family from a National Governor’s Association Conference in West Virginia to a family vacation on the Georgia coast. Attorney Kevin Hall responded to Representative Walt McLeod, saying that Sanford elected to take his family directly to Brunswick, Georgia, rather than stop in Columbia and then drive down there, with a security detail. He suggested it may have even resulted in cost savings for the state. [Read more...]