Local reps: Don’t rush into Confederate flag vote

If the S.C. Legislature does vote on removing the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds, local representatives say they haven’t yet made up their minds how they’d vote.

Gov. Nikki Haley, in the wake of a recent shootings at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, where nine people were killed, called for the flag’s removal recently. Not long after the shooting, police arrested a 21-year-old suspect linked to the white supremacist movement. He has a Confederate flag emblem on his car and allegedly told victims he wanted to start a race war.

Haley can’t act unilaterally because state law requires action by the Legislature before the flag can be removed.

S.C. Rep. Deborah Long is hearing plenty on the flag issue, she said.

“I would like for us to take our time with this, but, I understand the flag means different things to different people,” Long (R-District 45) said.

Long understands some people view the flag as a symbol of history or heritage, but said too many people see it as divisive. She referenced the swastika, at one point associated with Christianity, but now far closer linked with Nazi Germany. Like that symbol, Long said, the Confederate flag carries a negative stigma because of how it was used.

“The flag has been distorted, and been co-opted by bad people,” she said.

Long said some constituents proposed compromise, like putting a different Confederate flag at the same location at the Statehouse. She said she feels the flag that flies now will be taken down. She doesn’t see a wider reach in eliminating historical sites tied to the Confederacy.

“What I don’t want is for us to cover up or whitewash our history,” she said.

S.C. Rep. Raye Felder is concerned.

“Our entire state has a very deep wound now, and it has to heal … I’m hoping we will give a little time to heal and a little time 100 percent support these families before we start this conversation,” she said.

Also weighing in last week was U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, who said it took the shooting in Charleston for him to appreciate the range of meanings the Confederate flag holds for different people. The Indian Land Republican last week discussed the growing calls for removing the flag. He said his initial reaction to demands for removing the flag was that the move would be an admission that the historic banner is a symbol of hate. He knows many South Carolinians vehemently disagree with that view.

“But in speaking with many people over the course of the last few days, it has become clear that the flag does in fact mean different things to different people in our state,” Mulvaney said in a statement issued June 23.

“And I blame myself for not listening closely enough to people who see the flag differently than I do. It is a poor reflection on me that it took the violent death of my former desk mate in the S.C. Senate, and eight others of the best the Charleston community had to offer, to open my eyes to that.”

Because of the different – “and very valid” – impressions of what the flag represents, “I admit that the flag has become a distraction: something that prevents us from talking about all that is good about South Carolina.”

That realization came when some of his African-American constituents reached out to him this past week about where they hoped he would come down on the flag issue.

Mulvaney, who represents the South Carolina 5th Congressional District, said he wasn’t politically active in 2000, when a compromise was reached to remove a Confederate flag from atop the Statehouse and to place one near the Confederate soldier’s monument just a few yards from the capitol’s north steps.

“I thought this discussion was over, that everybody, black and white, agreed with this,” Mulvaney said.

But when he heard others “express their concerns, it really registered with me for the first time, and I thank them for being comfortable enough to speak with me on that.”

Mulvaney has spoken at NAACP events during his public career. But, he says, the Confederate flag had never come up.

“The flag is not a federal issue,” he said. “People at those events were more likely to talk about unemployment or Medicare or other issues. There was no context in which this could be easily raised.”

He now says the flag should come down, but he expressed hope that the Legislature can craft a compromise similar to what was done in 2000. The compromise then also created created an African-American memorial on the Statehouse grounds.

“I want us to have a debate that is respectful of all sides,” he said. “I don’t want to yank the flag down summarily without having a discussion, and I hope now we’ll have that debate in the Legislature.”

Mulvaney said he had been asked by Haley’s staff to go to Columbia June 22 for a discussion of “great importance to the state.” He and his staff were unable to determine exactly what that issue was, and he kept to his regular schedule while the governor made the historic call to remove the flag. Joining her were some other members of the state’s Congressional delegation, including Republican Mark Sanford of Mt. Pleasant and Democrat Jim Clyburn of Columbia.

“It could have been about the Export-Import Bank for all I knew,” he said, referring to the current debate over whether the bank should be allowed to go out of business this week. “I hoped to be part of that discussion (about the flag), but in hindsight, it looks like the governor had already made up her mind.”

He hopes the focus can shift to the families of the nine people who died at Emanuel AME Church, and the outpouring of grief and support from around the state.

“If the flag has become an excuse for people to ignore things like that, then perhaps time has come for a change,” Mulvaney wrote in his statement. “Maybe with the flag removed, people will listen.”

This story was originally published June 29, 2015 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Local reps: Don’t rush into Confederate flag vote."