“I spent the night with Ms. Haley, and we had sexual relations. We had sex . . . We had several drinks, we went to dinner, we went to a couple bars, we were with a lot of people — you know, it just happened.”
Classic: “It just happened.” Because, after all, what woman can resist a perma-tanned guy with a pink tie?
When Larry Marchant walks into any cocktail lounge in America, you can bet your bottom dollar he’s going to be spending the night in the hotel room of a Republican politician.
He’s magic. It just happens.
UPDATE II: David Kurtz at TPM is compelled to ask, “What is wrong with these people?”
Republican politics in South Carolina has been a rough sport since the era of the legendary Lee Atwater, but the dirty games have descended to a new low in the past 10 days.
On May 24, GOP consultant/blogger Will Folks claimed that he had an “inappropriate” relationship in 2007 with Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, who had surged to the front of the four-candidate primary field after being endorsed by Sarah Palin.
Folks was unable to substantiate his accusation, which seemed likely to fade away until Wednesday when — mere hours before the final televised debate leading into next Tuesday’s primary — a campaign staffer for one of Haley’s GOP rivals claimed that he had a one-night stand with Haley in 2008.
Larry Marchant, the latest accuser, is a consultant and lobbyist who was reportedly asked to resign Wednesday from the campaign of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer.
Oh, and in case you didn’t know: (a) Haley’s mentor, Gov. Mark Sanford, escaped impeachment after admitting an affair with an Argentine woman, and (b) after Bauer called for Sanford’s impeachment, Bauer was accused of being gay.
This story has more twists than a package of Ramen noodles.
An adviser to the Barrett campaign, which has been accused of shopping the affair rumors about Haley, sent a story about the new allegation to reporters shortly after the news broke Wednesday.
Yeah. Honor.
UPDATE III: This video clip highlights the deer-in-the-headlights expression on Bauer’s face after Nikki called him out:
UPDATE IV: Feeling pretty well vindicated for having pointed the finger at Bauer, Erick Erickson says:
Thus we see Andre Bauer’s entire campaign strategy — ignore the issues, ignore the experience, and go straight to calling Nikki Haley a whore. I really and truly hope South Carolina voters will not reward the man for something so disgusting.
Bauer had paid Marchant’s Black Label Strategies $21,361 since he formally opened his campaign account for governor in October. He also paid Black Label $29,099 in 2009, according to campaign finance reports.
Folks, Marchant and Bauer have had business relationships. Long-time Bauer advisor Rod Shealy hired Folks in 2006 to work for former state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel’s campaign. Folks said Wednesday that Marchant also hired him to work on school-choice issues but that work ended in 2005.
The political ties between Folks and Marchant make their claims tougher to believe, said Winthrop University political scientist Scott Huffmon. . . .
“More names with no more proof is certainly going to make it look like Nikki Haley is under attack,” Huffmon said. “It’s probably going to end up, in the mind of the public, needing a higher level of proof.
“What we have irrefutable evidence of in South Carolina is political incest.”
Nikki Haley has a family; and her family, her children, hear these stories. These political operatives show an absolute callous disregard for her life. A friend of mine mentioned the deep misogyny involved here and that Will Folks, in particular, has a history of misogyny and objectification of women in both his writing and his actions. Where are the feminists? Oh right, she’s a Republican.
A lobbyist who resigned from a rival political campaign is claiming to have had a tryst with a South Carolina lawmaker trying to become the state’s first female governor. . . .
Marchant says their one-night stand happened in 2008 during a trip to Utah.
7:20 p.m. ET: OK, as readers might guess, this was the “very interesting report” I’d heard earlier about Larry Marchant’s resignation from the Andre Bauer campaign: Marchant had gone to media outlets telling them this story and, when Bauer found out about it, Marchant got the ax.
We’ll wait to see how this plays out, but frankly it looks to me as if Haley’s enemies have become desperate to destroy her. It seems to me that voters in South Carolina now must ask themselves which of two things was true: Either (a) Haley was just spreadin’ the love around to every GOP operative in South Carolina, or (b) she is the victim of a vicious smear campaign.
My guess is that they’ll believe (b).
7:45 p.m. ET: A South Carolina reader sends me this photo:
According to the reader, this shows Bauer’s campaign bus parked in front of Larry Marchant’s office at 4 p.m. Wednesday — four hours after Marchant supposedly resigned from the campaign.
Say this about South Carolina Republicans: They’re world champions at campaign shenanigans.
7:55 p.m. ET: In December, Larry Marchant was busted for DUI. Of course, just because he’s a drunk driver doesn’t mean he’s the kind of backstabbing scumbag who would lie about shagging a Republican gubernatorial candidate, but . . .
At this point I half-hope that all these charges against her are true, just because that’d actually be less depressing than the thought of this many lying scumbags running around South Carolina smearing innocent people.
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Andre Bauer said today he has asked for and received the resignation of a political consultant for “inappropriate conduct” but would say little more.
Lt. Gov. Bauer announced that adviser Larry Marchant gave him his resignation at noon today.
Bauer said he had become aware of a situation several days ago, and reached the conclusion that decisive action was dictated.
Astute readers will recall when it was first suggested those close to the Bauer campaign had a role in pushing the Folks allegations against Nikki Haley. It was a commenter who pointed me to one connection, and now the same source blogs:
Evidently the connections we made here and here are started to get some heads rolling.
Of course, we don’t know that Marchant was involved, but absent any other explanation, the shadow of suspicion now looms.
Bauer is currently being advised by longtime confidant Rod Shealy, Sr. and Columbia lobbyist/ consultant Larry Marchant.
So now, amid the Folks-Haley imbroglio, Marchant is asked to resign for “inappropriate conduct.” To quote Allahpundit: Hmmmmm.
UPDATE II: If what I just heard about Marchant’s resignation is true . . . oh, boy. But I got it third-hand, so I’ll have to keep you wondering. When I told one source that I’d heard a very interesting report, the source replied, “Well, whatever it is, I won’t be surprised. It’s South Carolina.”
Will Folks claimed he was pressured to admit his extramarital affair with South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley last week because of a soon-to-be-broken news story detailing his “inappropriate physical relationship” with the Republican. But, a week later, that damning newspaper article is nowhere to be found. . . .
On his website, Folks insinuates the Columbia Free-Times newspaper was about to break a story about his affair with Haley, and indeed the newspaper itself has admitted one of its reporters did investigate such a rumor. But according to one knowledgeable source, while a Free-Times reporter did talk to Folks on May 13, no story was ever budgeted to run that week.
The reason? The Daily Caller has learned that around the time Sarah Palin endorsed Haley at a Columbia rally, an attorney for the paper advised editors not to run the story because the paper only had one source alleging the affair.
Oh, and speaking of stories that didn’t pan out, Pappas interviewed Erick Erickson at Red State, who explained that his”we know who paid Will Folks” non-story fizzled because South Carolina sources stopped returning his phone calls.
I’ve had a similar problem the past few days. People in South Carolina who seemed ready last week to dish dirt on Will Folks have stopped talking. Maybe they decided there’s no need to take the scorched-earth approach, since Folks has done such a fine job of discrediting himself.
What a douchebag — Will Folks, that is, not Ace. And this transparent attempt to hustle a book deal (tentative title, Honey, I Shtupped the Candidate) out of his own rumor-mongering is pathetic. Ace hat-tips Jim Geraghty’s Twitter.
The guy who has spent two years spreading salacious rumors about his former employer has taken to recording private phone conversations and claiming that supporters of Nikki Haley are waging a “smear campaign” against him.
A Sullivanesque irony-deficient lack of self-awareness? Whatever.
I’m going to share the real reason that men become bloggers: Hot Republican Babe Sex. . . .
You may be wanting to know how all this works. Well, here’s the plan:
You may remember these text messages about Nikki Haley from South Carolina GOP consultant Wes Donehue to Will Folks:
From: Wes Donehue
To: Will Folks
Sent: May 13, 2010 2:55 PM
I just don’t know who has told more people, you or Nikki.
From: Wes Donehue
To: Will Folks
Sent: May 13, 2010 5:01 PM
Here my promise to you, man to man. If you tell me that a story will f*ck up your marriage, I’ll do everything in my power to kill it.
From: Wes Donehue
To: Will Folks
Sent: May 14, 2010 10:36 AM
Now, I don’t give a f*ck [if] you believe me or not. [You’re] the one who screwed her. You’re the one who bragged about it. She’s the one who told BJ. Yall point fingers at your own damn selves and leave me the f*ck out of it.
From: Wes Donehue
To: Will Folks
Sent: May 14, 2010 11:50 AM
I’m going to try to kill it. You need to get BJ to back down. Nothing good will come of this getting out. I’ve already helped bust up one family. No need to take down another one.
From: Wes Donehue
To: Will Folks
Sent: May 14, 2010 12:28 PM
I didn’t start this. I just told too many people that it was happening.
OK, so Donehue said he would do what he could to kill the story, but wanted to be left out of it. And as he he says in this video (beginning at 0:42), Donehue “was drug into something I don’t want to be drug into.”
Donehue has been consistent: He wanted no part of this story. So why would Will Folks attempt to portray Donehue as an “instigator”? We don’t know. Perhaps he was attempting to draw as many people as possible into his personal melodrama.
However, so that you might assess Donehue’s personality and character, here is the latest episode of the South Carolina online video program, “Pub Politics,” which Donehue co-hosts:
[A]pparently a little less than a year ago, Folks got himself all worked up in a lather thinking that we were going to break the story that’s consuming so many people these days. But we weren’t. Never were. Never even considered it. Whole thing kind of caught us off-guard at the time.
After all, the blogger kiddo of S.C. politics has been doing everything short of going to the corner of Gervais and Main to wear a sandwich board to get the dumber people interested in state politics to pay attention to his bullsh*t. . . .
And, let’s not forget that it looks like the anti-social whinerhas pissed off one of his last backers, the S.C. Policy Council, a so-called “non-partisan” (yeah, whatever) group chaired by Rick Quinn. The second that started falling apart, the child started ripping Quinn’s boy’s site, The Palmetto Scoop . . .
If Folks was any more needy, he’d be the kitty from Thundercats, sending up a signal to call Lion-O back home. So, by all means, please justify this a**hole’s existence! Otherwise he might go back to fatty coffee beverages and fried chicken!
So Folks is an “anti-social whiner,” and in April 2010 had lost “one of his last backers.” In addition to his low opinion of Will Folks, Wolfe expressed contempt for Folks’ patron, Gov. Mark Sanford and Sanford’s protege, Haley:
Will Folks is a world-class wuss. Coward. Dipsh*t. He hides behind his high-priced attorneys and the imbeciles who give him information, and acts like he’s hot sh*t. That’s most likely why another world-class coward and dipsh*t, Mark Sanford, hired this idiot to begin with. Also likely why his joke of a protégé, Rep. Nikki Haley, did the same.
In the same post, Wolfe says he believes the rumor of a Haley-Folks affair, but understands Haley’s denial:
Why Haley is lying isn’t a surprise. If you f—-d that bald ugly fool, whether you’re married with children or not, would you want the world knowing about it? Doubtful.
Ah, if — the most powerful little word in the English language. But there is nothing tentative, hypothetical or equivocal in Wolfe’s assessment of Will Folks. See Rule 6.
Nikki Haley can speak for herself. . . . Meanwhile, the voters of SC seem to want more substance and less BS with the debates coming up. But if Folks wants to keep pushing BS, when it comes to blogging, I believe turn-about is fair play and one fights fire with fire out here. So, I agree with Erick Erickson, if Will Folks wants his 15 minutes of infamy, maybe he should get it – and more.
Maybe Will Folks has nothing to hide. But if he does . . . well, let’s wait and see. If anybody in South Carolina knows any dirt about Will Folks, just e-mail Dan Riehl. (Serious stuff only — no Nigerian oil ministers, Russian dating services or “herbal Viagra.”)
SEPT. 8, 2010: Today political blogger and former Sanford spokesman Will Folks released a Hallmark get-well card he received from Republican gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley in 2007.
Folks said it is proof that she “cared enough to send the very best.”
Haley’s campaign could not be distracted for comment.
Somehow I don’t think Will Folks will be getting too many “best wishes” cards from Republicans in the future. Restraining orders, perhaps, but not “best wishes” . . .
