Here's why Nikki Haley will be SC's next US Senator
DeMint's resignation has caught everyone in SC by surprise. A story in today's State newspaper http://www.thestate.com/2012/12/06/2545982/sc-governors-job-approval-rating.html showed that Haley's popularity is almost 10 points lower than Obama! That is not a misprint. You would think Obama would rank somewhere below General Sherman in SC, but his approval is at 48% while Haley is at 38.3%. Disapproval is 41.3 for Haley and 41.2 for Obama. SC Senators are rarely beaten (although Graham will have a tough primary challenge from a Teabagger) so Nikki may feel that is a better shot than possibly losing re-election to the State House.
One reason for Haley's bad showing is that the state Dept of Revenue did not have its data encrypted, and someone hacked in and stole almost all of the tax records for the last 10-15 years, personal and business. The state is forking over more than $12 million to give everyone a free year of credit monitoring and identity theft insurance, but after that everyone will have to pay $3-400 a year to keep it in place.
One interesting note- Whoever is appointed only serves until the next election in 2014. So, the state will have both US Senate seats on the ballot: A new 6 year term for Lindsay Graham's seat and the remaining 2 years on DeMint's seat. The last time SC had this situation Governor Donald Russell (later President of USC and a federal judge) appointed himself to the vacancy. The public didn't like that, so in 1966 Fritz Hollings beat Russell for the seat, and held it until 2005 when he retired and the seat was won by............Jim DeMint.
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