Voters' No. 1 issue is jobs

Caroline Lamitie of Lexington would love to be campaigning for her preferred gubernatorial candidate, state Rep. Nikki Haley.

Lamitie, 43, would be happy to be pushing in lawn signs, handing out stickers or working a telephone bank to tell people to vote for Haley.

"But I don't have the time," Lamitie said.

Lamitie is one of the thousands of South Carolina workers who lost their jobs in the recession. She has not spent this election season listening to speeches. Instead, she has gone back to school in an effort to snag another job.

For Lamitie - and for many other South Carolinians - jobs is a crucial issue. More than 53 percent of likely voters said the economy and jobs were the most important problems facing the country today, according to a Winthrop Poll conducted earlier this month.

No wonder. South Carolina's unemployment rate in September stood at 11 percent. Only five states had higher unemployment rates that month.

Some pockets of the state are so distressed that one in five people are out of work. Just under 237,000 South Carolinians are out of work, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Haley, a Republican from Lexington, and her opponent, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, have talked a great deal about jobs. But controversy has been the real source of heat in their campaigns.

Why did Haley repeatedly fail to file or pay her taxes on time? And what, exactly, were the circumstances in which she left that $100,000-a-year job with Lexington Medical Center?

Sheheen has blasted away at Haley on those questions, repeatedly questioning Haley's honesty and fitness to be governor.

As for Sheheen, Haley has ripped him as a tax-and-spend liberal trial lawyer who backs President Obama and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while suing the state to fatten his wallet.

The percussion of those political grenades has drowned out what Haley and Sheheen have put forward on the issue of how to create jobs.

Sheheen said he would overhaul the Department of Commerce, which he argues has been "ineffective and unaccountable."

Special attention would be paid, Sheheen said, to recruiting jobs to areas of the state that have the highest unemployment rates.

Sheheen said he would appoint professional business leaders to serve on the State Ports Authority and direct them to look for ways to capitalize on the expansion of the Panama Canal in 2014.

The state's technical college system as well as its four-year schools should be key players in job creation, Sheheen said.

Sheheen and Haley would be loath to admit it, but their approaches to job creation are not all that dissimilar, though some of Haley's focus on what outgoing Gov. Mark Sanford called the "soil conditions" for job growth makes her sound more like him.

Robert Oldendick, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina, said that while jobs are an important issue for voters, the election is not likely to turn on that issue alone.

"It's really more about partisan affiliation," Oldendick said.

Republicans are drawn to Haley's smaller-government is better rhetoric, just as Democrats are drawn to Sheheen's promise of a smarter, honest government, Oldendick said.

Neither candidate has put forward revolutionary ideas when it comes to jobs.

"As you listen to their commercials and listen to the debates, you ask, 'Do their plans really lead to job creation?'" Oldendick said. "You'd be hard-pressed to say that. [The governor] does not really have the power to bring jobs to the state."

Haley's approach does have the political benefit of sounding more anti-government. And with anger at the Obama administration, anger about the federal deficit and high unemployment, the very word - "government" - has become something of an epithet.

"Government doesn't create jobs," Haley said during a debate with Sheheen.

Many of Haley's ideas on job creation, however, do start with government.

She said she would have a Department of Commerce that is "organized and focused" and "supplied with the resources to get this job done."

Haley, who has argued that the state's workers' compensation system is a nest of political insiders who have failed to keep costs down, has proposed folding the Workers' Compensation Commission into the Department of Insurance.

Improving the state's physical infrastructure of roads, rail, air and ports must be a priority, Haley said, "within the constraints of the coming budget years."

Another Haley idea on jobs and unemployment is to demand that those who are out of work undergo drug testing in order to receive unemployment benefits.

Sue Berkowitz, director of the S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group, said she doesn't like that idea.

"There may be one or two people out there who have no intention of going back to work, but people want to work," she said. "To blame them by saying we need to be doing drug testing, that's not helping them."

Lamitie said she understands the argument of those who think unemployment compensation should be increased, though she, too, worries that such an increase would be financially tough for the state and could disincentivize work.

"The answer is we need to have jobs that pay more," she said.