Donald Trump has been endorsed in South Carolina by Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster, which is appropriate: If there’s anything that Donald Trump knows, it’s how to find creative solutions to get out from under enormous debts that you’ve run up in the service of failed enterprises — those companies didn’t drive themselves into bankruptcy — and McMaster has some experience in that field, too.
In 2010, he ran against Nikki Haley in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which he lost. He then — according to the ethics complaint lodged against him — “created a phantom general election in which he was not participating and solicited additional donations for that election in an effort to circumvent the law.” The money was used to retire earlier campaign debt.
He is scheduled to face 51 counts of campaign-finance violations in March.
That’s a new one for me: I’ve seen politicians do some skeezy things to raise money for elections in which they are participating, but I cannot recall having seen one raising money for an election in which he wasn’t participating. It seems like there really ought to be a word for that.
I’d say that this episode shows poor judgment on his part, but I began by noting that he’s just endorsed Donald Trump, so that would be redundant.