Two former gubernatorial candidates — one Republican, another Democratic — are evangelizing across the state about the benefits of a new political party for South Carolina, the American Party.
Oscar Lovelace, a Newberry doctor, and Jim Rex, a former state superintendent, say they’re frustrated with how our two-party system fails to perform and, instead, ends up perpetuating the same petty politics that have limited the state for decades.
“This system is not going to improve if we leave it up to the duopoly,” or two parties, Rex said at a recent Charleston organizational meeting. Lovelace added, “If gridlock doesn’t work in your home or your business, why should we expect it to work in our government?”
Both men, who said they realized that they agreed on a lot more than they differed when they got to know each other, pointed to multiple problems in government at state and national levels: the corrupting influence of money, legislative logjams, career politicians, partisanship and the lack of real transparency and accountability.
“Many Americans have abrogated their responsibility of citizenship — and that is to take ownership of our government and make it work for the common good,” Lovelace said.
He and Rex believe a new party that focuses on four fundamentals can start to bring sanity to the system. The American Party’s four principles include:
- Legislating and governing for the middle by finding common ground and placing the interest of the nation and states before party allegiance and the desire to be re-elected.
- Increasing the nation’s economic global competitiveness.
- Curbing career politicians through term limits, limiting the influence of money supporting incumbents and encouraging more people to engage in public service.
- Holding political parties accountable for candidates and office-holders by punishing violations of campaign fundraising policies and unethical or illegal behavior.
“We really need to be able to have adult conversations,” Rex said.
In many ways, focusing on candidates who agree to principles is a way to inject the rigor of a parliamentary system’s loyalty to the party over individual hogging of the limelight, although Rex said American Party legislators would be able to vote their consciences. He emphasized, though, that the party would expect them to spend most of their time focusing on big issues, not the petty.
Term limits, viewed as problematic in some states because of the empowerment of an unelected management class that really runs things instead of elected officials, would be disruptive, Rex agreed, to the current system but would be better on balance than not. Why? Because it would inject new people and ideas into the system and get rid of career politicians bent on reelection.
Rex also emphasized that the new American Party wasn’t calling for a litmus test in its desire to be responsible for good candidates and office-holders (although it sure sounds like there is some kind of undefined hurdle a person has to jump to qualify).
“We are not proposing a litmus test for candidates, but the average McDonald’s puts more thought and effort into recruiting,selecting and preparing its servers than either party does in providing the American people with its slate of candidates,” Rex said. “A party is (or should be) judged ultimately by the quality of its candidates-specifically their behavior,their efforts and their results.
“This party is ‘warranting’ its candidates more than any party has previously. We want our ‘recalls’ to be rare in occurrence and few in number.”
To be able to offer candidates next year, the American Party has to get 10,000 signatures from voters. We hope it gets them and shakes up things a little.
And while the politics of now and the state legislature are pretty easy targets in our hyper-partisan world, does this new American Party have a chance?
Maybe, but only if enough people get behind the effort and fund it so it can compete. In South Carolina, state of the stagnant, how can it hurt?
Andy Brack is publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.
