What Rock Hill GOP Senate winner Climer plans to do next

Wes Climer triumphed in one of the most-watched political races in South Carolina on Tuesday, when he unseated 25-year incumbent Sen. Wes Hayes in the Republican primary for the South Carolina Senate.

Without any opposition in November’s general election, the Charlotte-based financial adviser and former York County GOP chairman is all but certain to be Rock Hill’s next state senator.

He sat down with The Herald to talk about the election and his plans for the future.

What’s it been like for you since your primary win Tuesday night?

Been very busy calling supporters, talking to folks from around the community and the state, trying to get as much advice and insight as I can take in.

How are you preparing to take over the District 15 Senate seat?

The most important thing to doing the job well is staying in touch with the people who sent you there in the first place. So I’m spending as much time as I can calling folks, asking questions, and getting advice from people, whether they supported me or not, who are interested and involved in the welfare of our community in York County.

Have you talked with Sen. Hayes about the transition?

I spoke with him on election night, and I hope to speak with him again in the near future. Did you hear his remarks on the floor (Wednesday)?... It really speaks once again to his exceptional character. He implored his colleagues to help make this a smooth transition for the people of York County.

Does the ethics bill that passed this week go far enough, or is there still work to be done?

There’s still work to be done on ethics. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but that bill included income disclosure, and I believe in full financial disclosure, which would include assets, liabilities, real estate, boards. I also think there are structural issues with the new ethics commission that will ultimately need to be resolved, including the fact that you need a three-fourths vote to initiate an investigation. It will take time to work through that, but that work is not yet done.

Ultimately, ethics reform requires a cultural change, not just a statute. So more than anything else, I hope to lead by example. I will be transparent, and do what I know to be right, and go above and beyond what the law requires. I don’t think you should set as your standard doing the bare minimum what the law requires. The standard has to be doing what you know to be right, not just the bare minimum.

If it took the Legislature this long to get to this point, is there much of an appetite to toughen ethics enforcement even more?

I hope so. I want to do that. Part of the problem in getting an ethics bill done is the same thing that’s held up progress in so many other areas, and that’s the antiquated rules in the Senate that just stifle progress. It’s too easy to hold things up. I’ve spoken with a few senators since Tuesday night, and that has been a subject of our conversations. I’m very hopeful that momentum exists to change the rules in the direction of making the Senate work. I have not heard or spoken to a single one of them who thinks this bill is the end of ethics reform. I don’t. I think there’s a long way to go, and I intend to fight for it.

Do you have a to-do list for what you’d like to get done in the next legislative session?

The roads issue still needs a lot of work. The bill that recently passed doesn’t include real DOT (Department of Transportation) reform. We have to have DOT reform. Our transportation system is structurally broken. DOT is broken internally. There are governance issues, procedural issues within DOT, and then there’s a funding mechanism piece. All three of those have to be part of the ultimate solution.

Long term, are we going to have to raise the gas tax to fund roads repair?

It’s a mistake to take a tax-first approach. We need to deal with the reform component, taking the politics out of DOT, replacing a process that’s politically-driven with one that’s driven by traffic counts, safety concerns, economic development. Because throwing money into a broken system is never a solution.

I spoke with a local public official who deals with roads, and the way he described the system is, a municipality goes to DOT and says, “We want to do this project.” They’ve hired an engineer, spent a lot of money and time to get the project ready. DOT says, “We’ll greenlight it as soon as you fix these five things.” The municipality takes up to six months to make the changes, because it takes time, it takes work. They submit it back to DOT. DOT takes two or three months to come up with an answer, and DOT says, “Thanks for changing these five things, now we need you to change these seven things.” … That’s why it takes seven years on average to build a road in South Carolina.

How do you move that along?

An easy thing to do is say DOT gets one shot on corrections, and they have a finite amount of time to respond to the municipality or the municipality can move along with the project.

What can be done procedurally to change the way the Senate works, and is there an institutional ability to make those changes?

The rules need to change. Based on the conversations I’ve had over the past couple days, I’m extremely optimistic that that will happen. It remains to be seen. The Senate for a generation has been the place where optimism turns to pessimism, but I hope we can fix that.

You got the endorsement of Gov. Nikki Haley. Will you be working with her on these initiatives?

I know the governor is committed to reform. She’s committed to DOT reform, stronger ethics reform. She’s an ally on all those things, and at the end of the day I’ll work with anybody who wants to make our government work better. There’s definitely a hunger among people all over the state to see government work better. People are tired of swerving around potholes. That is basic. Government has to get stuff like that right. They’re tired of seeing tons of money get wasted all the time. Those kind of things have to come to an end.

You worked for a while on Capitol Hill in Washington. Is that experience you can apply to the Legislature, or are those two different worlds?

I’ve seen dysfunction up close and personal before. And what I learned there is that the people who stayed focused on the people who sent them up there are the ones who are also the most effective in the Legislature, and that’s the lesson. It’s people who become friends with lobbyists and paid politicos that cause most of the problems. So, if anything, that experience taught me that if you want to get something done, you got to stay focused on why you got sent there in the first place.

Finally, do you have anything to say to the voters, the ones who voted for you and the ones who didn’t?

I spent a lot of my time yesterday talking to people who supported Mr. Hayes. I made a point especially of reaching out to people who vocally supported Mr. Hayes, because I think in order for you to do the job well, you have to take into account that people aren’t always going to agree with you on everything, but we all want a better place to raise our kids and go to our jobs and live our lives. It takes everybody pitching in on that effort to make it a good community.

On the other side, dozens and dozens of people went out and knocked on doors, made phone calls, put out signs, gave contributions, and I can’t thank those folks enough. I’m deeply grateful to the people who voted for reform, people who voted to change the way they do business in Columbia. It’s a daunting thing running against an incumbent. It’s not an easy decision to make. But I ran for the right reasons, and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to go and work on those things.

Good public policy can make our lives better. Bad public policy can be ruinous. I have three little kids with a fourth one coming in August, and I loved growing up here. It’s a wonderful place to live. And we’re going to have to work hard to keep it that way.

This story was originally published June 18, 2016 at 9:58 PM with the headline "What Rock Hill GOP Senate winner Climer plans to do next."