Sanford Impeachment Considered

Sanford Impeachment Considered
By SHAILA DEWAN
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: November 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/us/25sanford.html?th&emc=th


COLUMBIA, S.C. — Over the protests of Gov. Mark Sanford’s lawyers, South Carolina lawmakers on Tuesday began the preliminary steps of a process that could lead to the governor’s impeachment and removal from office.

A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, made up of four Republicans and three Democrats, held its first meeting to review a resolution to impeach the governor for secretly leaving the state in June to see a woman in Argentina with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Members voted unanimously to broaden the review to include 37 ethics charges that accuse the governor of misusing state aircraft for personal or political reasons, repeatedly violating a policy that requires officials to fly in coach class, and misappropriating campaign money.

In a separate action, the State Ethics Commission will hold hearings on the 37 accusations early next year.

The night before the meeting, Mr. Sanford released the full ethics complaint and a lengthy legal review of the impeachment process, in which his lawyers said neither the secret trip nor the ethics charges were grounds for impeachment. The State Constitution’s standard of “serious crimes or serious misconduct in office” seeks “to make sure only the most egregious offenses would lead to impeachment, and not merely personal moral failings, neglect of duty or a temporary absence from the state,” they said.

But the lawmaker who drafted the resolution, Representative F. Gregory Delleney Jr., said no crime was necessary to impeach an official for serious misconduct.

“Impeachment is a political process; it’s not a legal process,” Mr. Delleney, a Republican from Chester, told the other members of the subcommittee. “The South Carolina House of Representatives alone defines what meets the constitutional threshold of serious misconduct in office.”

Representative James H. Harrison, a Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there was little precedent to follow, since no South Carolina governor had ever been impeached.

The subcommittee’s review is only the first step in the impeachment process. The group, which will meet several times next month, will make a recommendation to the Judiciary Committee, which can then vote to send the resolution to the House floor when the Legislature convenes in January. Two-thirds of the House members must agree in order to impeach, which would result in Mr. Sanford’s immediate suspension until the Senate concluded an impeachment trial.

Tuesday’s meeting began with an address by Speaker Robert W. Harrell Jr., a Republican, who struck a cautionary tone, noting that voters had bigger concerns.

“In our work we must rise above any personal or political feelings we may have,” Mr. Harrell said. “Come January, we need to be fully prepared to tackle the major issues facing our state, and your work now will allow us to address issues like putting our citizens back to work.”

Mr. Sanford did not attend the meeting, but his private lawyer, Butch Bowers, was there, along with Ross H. Garber of Hartford, Conn., who was hired with taxpayer money to defend the interests of the governor’s office.

Representative Walton J. McLeod III, a Democrat on the panel, took issue with Mr. Delleney’s use of terms like “dereliction of duty” and “AWOL” to describe Mr. Sanford’s actions, saying those were military terms that should not be applied to the governor.

The subcommittee also heard several affidavits, including one from Scott English, the governor’s chief of staff. During the governor’s five-day absence, Mr. English said, “I tried to reach Governor Sanford by phone on multiple occasions but was unable to speak to him” until Tuesday morning, the day before he returned. Even then, Mr. English said, he did not know of the governor’s whereabouts.