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."
}:-)4
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Nobody has enough fingers and toes to count the number of Liberal politician’s relatives on the public payroll. The difference is they are not making $8 an hour, but 6 figure yearly salaries. In places like Massachusetts, they could number in the hundreds. The reporter should take a look at the Massachusetts Probation Department, or the Judicial system, or the Mass Pike.
well the girl wouldn’t be making $8 an hour if the dems had not pushed raising minimum wage.
No, the dems want the Governor’s daughter to set a good example by sitting around and waiting for a handout instead of building a work ethic.
If this were a Democrat governor we’d get stories about how hard working the children are. That despite despite their mom being a powerful person, the daughter works for $8 per hour. What values they are instilling... Etc.
The media is corrupt!
Do the Democrats really want to go there? Claiming nepotism over an $8hr gift shop job of 20hours a week? Actually, I guess I can see their point. Most Democrat and union nepotism type jobs just put the person on the payroll with no work involved at all.
How dare this girl actually labor for her $160 a week!
That said, it was stupid for Gov. Haley to let this happen. It's not exactly "Tea Party" values, is it? It's not even smart politics.
Doesn't matter how much the Dems practice it or voters do by electing sons and daughters of politicians.
I have no idea what she's doing at a gift shop retail job at 14, but that's SC for you. Her daughter should learn how difficult it is to get a job in this economy, you know LIKE THE REST OF US.
amazing.
Yet, the federal government giving condoms to 11 year olds is not even newsworthy
Sasha and Malia are listed as “staff” when they fly around the world
Sorry, governor, but if you want to teach your daughter a work ethic, let her find work IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR.
There's a struggling adult or unconnected teenager trying to start life who could use that state job.
$160,, before taxes
Now some will defend nepotism, why not just stay true to what is right.
yeah, get her a job at a hedge fund, or better yet, NBC.
I grew up just outside of Rock Hill and even as a kid in the 70s, I thought it was terrible and it hasn’t gotten any better with age.
No matter where the child got a job there would be complaints she only got it because her mother is the Governor.
Should my 14 year old have not taken a job this or last summer just because I know the owner? Or any other job she has had, that she got only because she was my daughter?
But it would be okay if she had a made up job at a hospital making six figures, like Michelle Obama had? That wasn’t even important enough to fill after she left?
The Rock Hill paper has a circulation of around 30,000 and it’s own website! :)
how petty!! - kids get these little summer jobs - all of my children had summer jobs; one of them in the plant in which I was a department manager (not my department). It gives them some work experience and provides the employer extra help during vacation season.
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