Posted on 07/28/2012 11:48:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
South Carolinas largest newspaper has a new anti-Republican scoop: Gov. Nikki Haleys 14-year-old daughter is working in the State House gift shop, raising questions about nepotism that the governors office declines to answer. The daughter, Rena Haley, is working about 20 hours a week at $8 an hour.
The newspaper called The State (based in Columbia, the state capital) is holding an online poll asking "Is it proper or improper for a governor's child to have a state job?" Three-fourths of respondents said "improper." The paper marched over to the Democrats so they could denounce Haleys lack of ethics:
The issue is not Haleys daughter but the Republican governors judgment, said Dick Harpootlian, chairman of the S.C. Democratic Party.
You dont use your position to get your daughter a job. Its not about the daughter. Its about lack of judgment by the governor, Harpootlian said. The appearance of impropriety doesnt seem to bother the governor.
In South Carolina, with the nations fourth-highest unemployment rate and a governor who boasts of cutting state spending, the hiring of Haleys daughter also raises questions of unfair favoritism.
Even these minimum-wage jobs in this economy can be pretty tough to find, said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Washington, D.C.,-based Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan think tank on government issues, including ethics. While this is probably a small-potatoes case, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest and strikes me as a politically tone-deaf decision.
Meredith McGehee spent 15 years at the liberal lobby Common Cause (and before that four years with liberal Congressman Lane Evans), so don't rely too heavily on the "nonpartisan" label. As for Harpootlian, his lack of judgment is shown by his description of proposed voter-ID requirements as "electoral genocide."
Gov. Haley responded to questions with anger: “Y’all are not allowed to talk about my children.” But the newspaper persisted. “The State newspaper ... should be ashamed for printing details of a 14 year old’s life and whereabouts, against the wishes of her parents,” Haley’s spokesman, Rob Godfrey, said in a statement to the newspaper July 17. “We have nothing more to say.” They did later put out the daughter’s hours and wages to a different newspaper, the Charleston Post and Courier.
The State executive editor Mark Lett told readers that “It is not our practice to cover the children of sitting governors.” That’s no longer true. “In this instance, the essential issue is whether it is appropriate for the daughter of the governor to be placed on the state payroll. The child was put in that position by adults in state government and in the Haley family. We have made no attempt to interview the daughter but have asked those adults for comment.”
Lett might also have said "This is only our practice when the Governor is a Republican with a shot at being a vice-presidential contender and it would get us noticed by our liberal colleagues in the national media."
I’m still waiting on the in-depth articles about the children of Democrats.
Eight Bucks a Hour? GASP!
Obviously this is the first time in the history of the world that a politician helped a relative get a job.
I’m sure that we will soon hear cries of child-labor exploitation from the Unions.
wow....
It’s still a mole hill..
Hows the reporting on Fast and Furious going???
Shesssh the gall of some people. She used her power (allegedly..) to get her kid a 8 dollar an hour job? I’d have thought she’d have more pull than that.
I am absolutely certain that no Democrat politician has ever allowed one of their children, or any other close relative, to be employed by the state government of which they were in charge.
Nikki Haley Ping
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I remember my Father telling me that no one had ever helped him get a job.
Mother then reminded him that his Father had gotten him a job with the State Road Department when they were first married. This was during the depression so any job was a big deal.
14 y/o’s can work on a payroll in S Carolina?
Yeah shame on her for teaching her daughter responsibility by having the kid work. What was she thinking? She should have had the kid get pregnant and sent he to Planned Parenthood instead!
Bunch of whiney liberal assipes......................
At the risk of appearing less than properly multi-culturally aware, where did the name “Harpootlian” originate?
If El Estado is complaining about it, there isn’t usually isn’t much to whatever it is. It is a horrible paper. The only one worse in SC that I have run into is the Rock Hill Herald.
Im still waiting on the in-depth articles about the children of Democrats.
They get no show unions jobs..............
I don’t know but I wish he and all of his ilk would go back there.
Obviously, a $300,000 job as a hospital administrator would be more appropriate.
Perhaps she could get a job of delivering orders at the State House for Chick-fil-A.
Nikki Haley is my kind of Governor!
If the only thing the opposition can find to slap her around with is this then she must be doing a fantastic job running the State!!!
The door is now open. All dems and reps who have family members working in state jobs should be exposed.
Sure, it might ‘look’ a bit untoward, but in all honesty, because of security requirements, where else is the kid going to work if they want to? They pretty much would have to do something like that or the state would be paying a hell of a lot more for security off site.
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