10/31/00 2:50 p.m.
No Pals of Al
South Carolina Democrats are returning the favor.

By Michael Graham, author of Clinton & Me: How Eight Years of a Pants-Free Presidency Changed My Nation, My Family and My Life, scheduled for release on Election Day

o ads, no appearances, not so much as a quick "shalom" from Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Al Gore has clearly written off the state of South Carolina. Now local Democrats are returning the favor.

The Democratic governor's chief political advisor has written off Al Gore. The governor is raising money for pro-lottery ads in the state that refer to how badly Al Gore is doing in the polls. With less than a week to go before the election, Al Gore is finding out that payback is hell.

South Carolina's Democratic governor, Jim Hodges, defeated a GOP incumbent in 1998 with no help from the national Democrats in general, or Vice President Gore in particular. Relations have since been strained. When the South Carolina Democrats had their big party fundraiser in March, Bill Bradley was there. Al Gore wasn't.

Both Gov. Hodges and Gore say they've patched up their relationship. But they may be back in counseling when the vice president hears the governor's newest radio ad promoting his statewide lottery plan.

In South Carolina, the Election Day referendum on a state-run lottery is a much hotter campaign than the race for president. Most polls give George W. Bush at least a 10-point lead, and that's conservative. Meanwhile, the lottery's once-solid lead has been dwindling. The election is likely to be very close.

Hodges, who ran on the lottery issue in 1998, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the pro-lottery campaign, about half of it from out of state. One of the radio ads Hodges's dollars are paying for touts the George Bush/Texas lottery.

Not only are South Carolina Democrats linking their own lottery to the "successful Texas lottery" of George Bush, but the ad features an actor playing former President Bush bragging about how his son is "cleaning Al Gore's clock."

That's right: South Carolina Democrats are spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads featuring George W. Bush's success, and announcing that that Al Gore is getting his clock cleaned in the 2000 election.

As a Democratic governor in a conservative state like South Carolina, Hodges can't align himself with the national party and its policies. But using donated dollars to announce your national candidate is losing an election is taking triangulation to a new level.

Hodges' campaign chief, Kevin Geddings, is the mastermind behind these ads. He is privately acknowledging that the South Carolina governor's team has written off Al Gore, telling reporters off the record that "Al Gore is toast."

But that doesn't mean that Hodges and Gore have nothing in common.

Hodges has solicited at least $40,000 in contributions to the lottery campaign from New York financial institutions like Salomon Smith Barney and Goldman Sachs. In about two weeks, these same firms will be up for the contract on about $800 million in state bonds related to South Carolina's tobacco settlement. Gov. Hodges sits on the Tobacco Settlement Revenue Management Authority and will make that multi-million dollar decision.

At first, Hodges claimed he could not remember ever sending a letter soliciting contributions from these firms. This week, the South Carolina attorney general made public a copy of such a letter from the governor to Merrill Lynch. According to The State (Columbia, SC), Gov. Jim Hodges and his campaign asked potential lottery supporters to send $50,000 to either the South Carolina Democratic Party or the lottery campaign. "The South Carolina Democratic Party has no reporting requirements," one of the letters noted. "Contributions are confidential," as opposed to donations to specific political campaigns which must be made public.

Hodges has since announced he will not take part in the upcoming vote to award the bond money. But he continues to insist that his solicitation of funds from these firms was not a violation of the law because he claims he "made no commitments in exchange for donations to the South Carolina Education Lottery Coalition," according to The State.

In other words, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I promise not to do it again."

Did somebody say "no controlling legal authority?" Maybe Al Gore does have a fellow traveler in South Carolina after all.