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Why We Whisper?

Speech is power. Speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

JIM DEMINT: THE FIRST DEBATE-OCTOBER 3, 2004

I was dead tired. After almost two years of campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat, my mind and body felt almost numb from running on adrenaline twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I was on my way from Columbia, South Carolina, to Charleston for the first televised debate with my Democratic opponent.

I thought back to the summer, when I was embroiled in the middle of a six-way Republican primary. The polls showed me a distant third, well behind the front-runner, former governor David Beasley, who was predicted to get over 50 percent of the vote in the first round of the primary. Second place in the polls with 18 percent was Charlie Condon, a former attorney general in South Carolina and a recent candidate for governor. I was stuck in third, barely ahead of a political newcomer, Thomas Ravenel. The Ravenel name was well known around the state because Thomas's father had been a congressman and a state senator-in fact, a bridge in Charleston was named for him. Thomas was a self-made multimillionaire who had vowed to put over $3 million of his own money in the race. No one really believed he would do it. Before it was over, he did.

Fifth in the polls was the mayor of Myrtle Beach, Mark McBride. While not well known outside of the city where he was elected, McBride was a young, energetic, handsome candidate with a popular "put America first" message. Sixth place was held by latecomer Orly Davis. Davis was unknown and underfunded, but as the only woman in the field, she threatened to capture enough votes to change the outcome of a close primary.

Together we were headed for the most competitive and expensive Republican primary in South Carolina history. On June 14, 2004, Governor Beasley received 36 percent of the vote. I was a distant second at 24 percent, barely edging out Ravenel in third, who had come on strong the last two weeks and gained 23 percent of the vote. Fortunately for me, South Carolina election laws require that candidates receive 50 percent of the vote to win a primary election without a runoff. Now the race was between David Beasley and me, with the election scheduled two weeks later.

I knew what I had to do. Six years earlier, in 1998, I finished as runner-up to another candidate in my first congressional primary. That year I won the runoff and the general election in November. This runoff was a repeat of that one. To win, I had to double the number of votes Beasley received, and get the support from Republicans who had voted for other candidates in the primary. The State newspaper in Columbia virtually wrote me off, saying, "Jim DeMint is the guy you'd want to do your taxes.... David Beasley is the guy you'd want to be with when you blew your refund." But something remarkable happened in those two weeks. Campaign contributions poured in, and we were able to outspend Beasley on television.

On election night I was uneasy. When the results came in, I won the Republican runoff 59 percent to 41 percent, almost a twenty-point spread. The newspapers were at a loss to explain the margin of victory, and they quickly turned to writing about the difficult general election contest I would have in the fall against my Democratic opponent.

Inez Tenebaum was in her second term as state superintendent of education, having won more votes in her reelection than any Republican running for a statewide office that year. She began the general election race with a fresh disposition and had significantly more money than I did. I was exhausted, and the $4 million I had raised had been spent to win the primary. Now I had to start again from scratch to contest the general election.

One consolation of spending money in the primary was that I began the general election campaign with the same name awareness as Superintendent Tenebaum. The polls even showed me with an early lead. My campaign team was well aware that any margin would likely evaporate once the Democrats started their television advertising. The Tenebaum campaign stumbled out of the gate, but she soon fired her campaign leadership team, and our polls showed me with an eight-point lead going into our first televised debate in October. The margin was less than it had been several weeks before because the Tenebaum campaign found something in my record, and they bore down relentlessly, like a hornet working in the spring.

The national Democratic Party began to air commercials saying that I was going to raise the sales tax 23 percent on everything we bought. The allegation seemed so preposterous that my campaign was slow to respond. We didn't think anyone would believe that one of the most conservative members of Congress would raise taxes by any margin, let alone by 23 percent. After millions of dollars worth of commercials aired saying I would raise taxes, my lead in the polls evaporated. For the first time, the Democrats saw that they had a good chance to win.

Tennebaum redesigned her whole campaign around the sales tax charge. Commercials showed her walking around grocery stores with a cart full of bags each labeled, "DeMint 23%." She visited nursing homes telling seniors that I would raise taxes on their prescription drugs. She told college students their books would cost 23 percent more. Her entire campaign was built on a lie, but in time the attack worked.

The origin of the charge lay in my desire to reform the tax code. For years, I had pushed tax reform in Congress, constantly encouraging the Republican leadership to begin the debate about how to fix a tax code that I believed was the biggest job killer in America. I cosponsored any bill that would replace the current system, including one plan to eliminate all federal income tax, payroll (FICA) taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate and business taxes, death taxes, and replace them all with a 23 percent national sales tax. I didn't think this proposal was perfect, but by cosponsoring this and other plans, I hoped to encourage the tax committee chairman to think differently about taxation and to be willing and open about debating different plans. I wanted to reform the tax code nearly any way I could.

Of course my Democratic opponent failed to mention that the 23 percent sales tax would replace all other federal taxes, and that I had supported other tax reform initiatives. But as I was learning that fall, the truth doesn't often get in the way of a good political campaign. The Democrats plowed millions into the effort to mislead and confuse South Carolina voters. The State newspaper, with the largest circulation in the state, appeared to be part of the staff for Tennebaum. They consistently referenced "my plan" to raise taxes 23 percent, and criticized me for wanting to raise taxes on the poor. By the night of the first televised debate at the College of Charleston, the main issue in the campaign was the 23 percent tax increase. I was on the defensive, and I knew it.

Tennebaum and I were seated at a small round table along with the debate moderator. Across the table sat my opponent, in the same bright red dress she wore in every television commercial and had pledged to wear every day of the campaign. The audience was diverse-it included both my own and Tennebaum's supporters, a large contingent of the college's faculty and staff, and a smattering of students. I could tell by the scowls that there were few DeMint devotees in the audience.

The questions went as I expected for most of the hour. Whatever query the moderator asked Tennebaum, she responded with how my sales tax increase was going to destroy the nation. She was well rehearsed, and brought every issue back to the 23 percent tax.

I felt like I was debating a parrot.

On important national issues like the war on terror, reforming Social Security, and the state of health care, she had almost no in-depth understanding of the problems. Even on education, which was supposedly her strength, she offered no new ideas, only a defense of her accomplishments while superintendent of education.

Then, just when I thought I had escaped the first debate without a major gaffe, the moderator read from a document, and asked me: "The state Republican platform says that practicing homosexuals should not be allowed to teach in our public schools. Do you agree with this statement?"

My full response was:

I think Americans have a right to live in the way they want, but if they try to redefine our institutions such as marriage, which is what's going on today ... we cannot have the government doing that. A marriage is our most esteemed institution, and we need to protect it, and we need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our ... values. And I certainly think people should be able to live as they want, but I don't think the government should embrace [homosexuality], just as the military doesn't. If a person is a practicing homosexual, they should not be teaching in our schools. Tennebaum responded: Well, first of all, this is America and people should be able to live their life freely, and a person who's a homosexual that wants to teach in our public schools, they should be allowed to. And many wonderful teachers may or may not be gay. I don't think anyone asks them that, because they respect their privacy. But to say that a homosexual can't teach in a public school is really, really a bad thing, and it's just un-American. One of my political weaknesses is that I always try to answer whatever question I am asked. More than that, I want to help people understand my answer. This is not smart in politics. I had another problem as well. As I prepared for the debate, I realized I was not only tired, but also sick. At this point, I just wanted the debate to end.

This question was a curveball, and I am fairly sure that if I had been at the top of my game, I would have answered that the question was not a federal issue and was not relevant to a U.S. Senate campaign. I should have let that curveball go by. Instead I took a big swing at it. I was confident that my answer was defensible, or at least worthy of debate. The Supreme Court had decided that public school teachers could not pray in class because of a child's inherent "emulation of teachers as role models." If the Court concluded that the special teacher-student relationship was strong enough to result in religious indoctrination from a simple prayer, surely there would be concern about students emulating openly homosexual teachers. I would soon discover, however, that the same logic used to remove prayer from the classroom did not apply to politically protected behaviors.

The question about gay teachers was just one of many that we took that night, and I had forgotten about it until I walked into the pressroom before leaving the college. The only question that I was asked was whether I thought the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the military should apply to gays teaching in the public schools. I said I thought it should.

After the debate, I had dinner in Charleston with my campaign staff, and we were all in the mood to celebrate. In spite of the curveball I'd been thrown that night, I believed we were headed into the home stretch with all the momentum.

I could not have been more wrong!

The front page, top-of-the-fold headline in the State newspaper the next morning screamed: "DeMint Says Gays Can't Teach in Schools." The article was scathing in its indictment of my prejudices. Newspapers across the state took advantage of the situation to use biased sources to push their editorial agenda. "I'm surprised that any candidate with three terms in Congress could be that politically awkward," said Jack Bass, a professor of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston. "His comments have definitely hurt him. It's become the principal issue in the race." In Myrtle Beach, a letter to the editor declared that "DeMint's comments [were] not isolated.... The Republican Party is fomenting intolerance ... [the] anti-gay stance shows how far to the right the Republican Party has lurched."

The irony in this controversy was that the South Carolina Department of Education brochure, distributed under the supervision of Inez Tennebaum, included a "Code of Ethics of the Education Profession" section. The so-called "un-American" stance I took was fully in compliance with the "highest possible degree of ethical conduct," of the profession as advocated by the State Department of Education. What is more, my position was in conformity with South Carolina law. Under the "just cause" for removal of teachers, the Code (59-25-160, 1990) lists "immorality and conduct involving moral turpitude" as reasons for the revocation of a teaching certificate. I was about to learn that "immorality ... and moral turpitude" were outdated concepts where teachers were concerned.

My opponents, and the press, finally had what they wanted from me: a mistake. Over the previous year the State had not bothered to send a reporter to most of my press conferences, but when this offered them the opportunity to radicalize my values by painting me as a gay-bashing homophobe, there was not enough ink to publish my remarks. In Washington, the Hill newspaper declared that my comments had turned "what looked like a sure win over Democrat Inez Tennebaum into a cliffhanger."

Two days later I added more blood into the water. While meeting with an editorial writer for the Aiken Standard, I explained (it's always a mistake to explain) that my comments were not intended to single out gays. I would have given the same answer if the question had been about "an unwed pregnant teacher who was living with her boyfriend." I didn't think any parent should be forced to put their child into a classroom with a teacher who was openly opposed to their values. As I saw it, the law had its roots in a well-intentioned desire to protect underage students from morally suspect lifestyles or questionable viewpoints. Moreover, it was the responsibility of the local school board-not a distant legislator or administrator-to determine what was or was not morally appropriate for a public school education.

The Aiken Standard must have e-mailed my comments to the Associated Press before I left their parking lot. The media liked Act Two even better than Act One, and a brush fire quickly became a forest fire. My campaign staff suggested I make a public apology, and it was clear that we needed to do something. The media was making "teachers" the only issue of the Senate race.

I built my campaign strategy around a positive, proactive message that included discussion of the real national issues of tax reform, Social Security reform, health insurance reform, and educational choice. But it had become painfully obvious that the press cared more about symbols than substance. None of these important national issues were being covered by the media, and the sensational was making headlines over the substantive.

I decided to make an apology, but I would not apologize for what I believed. We issued a press release in which I apologized for answering the question. The press release stated, in part, "I clearly said something as a Dad that I just shouldn't have said," and I went on to say that the issue was a local school board concern. I apologized for distracting from the debate by answering a question that had nothing to do with the U.S. Senate. "Whether DeMint was apologizing for Sunday's remark about gays, Tuesday's remark about unwed teachers, or both, wasn't clear from the statement," said the Greenville News, "[and] DeMint's campaign declined to clear the air."

I had befuddled the media at their own game. Calls from the press wanted to know if I was apologizing to homosexuals or to unwed mothers. I chose not to respond. One letter to the editor said, "Jim DeMint is either a bigot, an idiot or a savvy campaigner," and another, "it is obvious Jim DeMint is a condescending, chauvinistic, good old boy who has obvious disregard for the very laws that are in place to protect the citizens of this country." A University of South Carolina professor of education opined that he knew of no "data showing that homosexual teachers, single [or] pregnant and living [with a] boyfriend had a negative influence on students." A leading columnist in the State declared that my position was "un-American, bizarre and unconstitutional," although he was vague or simply ill-informed as to where the Constitution endorsed and protected gay teachers.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Why We Whisper? by Jim DeMint Copyright © 2008 by Jim DeMint. Excerpted by permission.
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