Sanford's audacity of 'nope'

As I questioned Gov. Mark Sanford's pending decision not to take the economic recovery funds offered to the Palmetto State last month, Rep. Ted Vick and I begged him to leave his multi-million dollar Sullivan's Island home, and we asked him to look around the rural parts of South Carolina where federal aid is needed.

Apparently he did not take our advice, opting instead to base his decision on what will get him closer to his party's presidential nomination and endear him in the hearts of the Cato and Goldwater institutes.

Since being elected to Congress in 1994, Mark Sanford has made a political career out of saying "no." He was nicknamed "Dr. No" by some of his colleagues in Washington and he carried that same mentality with him to the Governor's Mansion in Columbia.

Since his election in 2002, South Carolina's economy has tanked. For nearly that entire time, the former Goldman Sachs employee who claims to know so much about economics has presided over a state that has hovered at 48th and 49th in the nation's employment statistics.

During this same time we have watched our state's commerce chiefs come and go.

As more and more South Carolinians find themselves out of work, employers coming to the Southeast continue to ignore South Carolina for our friends in Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama, and just last year, Volks-wagen passed on us and went to Chattanooga.

Now, six years after Sanford took the reins in Columbia, Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States. After touring the rural parts of South Carolina while running for president, something Mark Sanford has rarely done, President Obama witnessed the need for recovery aid to rural and small-town America. He saw the dilapidated schools in our "Corridor of Shame" along I-95. He saw the closed textile mills and the rural communities still struggling to find jobs to replace those decades-old closures.

After traveling on our crumbling roads and seeing our shortcomings, President Obama is now in a position upon his election to help rural America, and he is offering us a helping hand.

Sadly, Gov. Sanford now has the audacity to say, "No."

Mark Sanford, never one to turn down an ultra-conservative brownie point, was quick to return to the habits of his days in Washington, and he gave a Ron Paul-style "No" to the president's offer to assist the people of South Carolina.

Why, in the face of all of our needs, would the governor of a poor, rural state neglect the citizens who elected him?

The answer is clear. Sanford was just continuing his political games.

Instead of listening to the needs of a state that is either stuck in neutral or in full reverse, he chose to champion the agenda of the radical right-wing think tanks.

By attempting to divert $700 million away from efforts that will save 7,500 teachers their jobs, fix our crumbling schools, repair our roads and bridges, and create needed jobs, Mark Sanford has failed the people of South Carolina.

Mark Sanford is more concerned with promoting his political philosophy than he is defending our fellow South Carolinians, and because of this, he just doesn't get it.

Essentially, our governor does not realize that we are not a discussion or a case study in a Washington think-tank seminar, or a political science classroom.

However, we are in the real world, and his decisions have consequences and affect the lives of South Carolinians.

Boyd Brown, a Democrat, is a member of the S.C. House, representing rural Chester and Fairfield Counties. At the age of 22, he's the youngest state lawmaker in the nation.