Alan Wilson for Attorney General

The race of Attorney General has been under the radar in most ways in South Carolina so far.  With the sex or non sex scandals, pick your side of the Republican Governor’s race, the race for the GOP nomination for the state’s top prosecutor has went relatively unnoticed.

Though we at VUI have had our fun with William Leighton Lord III, it is clear that all three candidates could do the job without embarrassing South Carolina as some previous constitutional officers have done recently.  Such a race comes down to simply who you think would get the job done best and who you can trust.  Lord, with his impressive civil law resume, chose to run campaign ads that stretched a bit his law enforcement experience.  That is forgivable.  Campaign consultants talk good men into bad decisions.  Frankly, and Lord knows VUI thinks this by now, had he stuck to his resume’s real strengths, he would be a better candidate.

But, there are two other candidates with real prosecutorial experience. That is Robert Bolchoz and Alan Wilson.  Bolchoz has prosecutorial experience, but he also has ties to the banking industry that reminds us too much of bailouts.  Bolchoz also seems a throwback to the Condon years, and whatever anyone else might think of those years, the politically charged Attorney General’s office of that day is nothing VUI wants to return to. 

That brings us to Alan Wilson.  Alan Wilson has proven experience as an assistant solicitor, an assistant Attorney General, and as a combat veteran in Iraq.  Wilson knows the importance of working with law enforcement and prosecutors to keep the public safe in South Carolina.  That is why 60 current and former prosecutors, including the living legend of prosecutors, Donnie Meyers of Lexington, support Wilson.  Those supporters know the “real deal” when they see it.  Add to them the majority of County Sheriffs who support Wilson.

Perhaps that groundswell of support comes from not only Wilson’s experience, but from the fact Wilson actually cares enough to ask people what they will need of him as Attorney General. That is refreshing in politics.  Wilson is a guy who actually cares about what the people he will serve think about what he should do. 

Some say that Wilson’s approach is a throwback to older political times in this state, when someone like Strom Thurmond would ask people what help that they needed from him.  Those critics say that kind of politics is wrong today.  VUI disagrees. South Carolina needs more leaders who think of serving the public instead of thinking how the public can serve them and their interests.

That is why we endorse Alan Wilson for Attorney General.  Proven in the courtroom and on the battlefield, Wilson is a man who has the experience and the humility to stand up to do what is right to protect the people of South Carolina as Attorney General.  A vote for Alan Wilson for Attorney General is a vote well cast for a man who seems bent on serving South Carolina first.  South Carolina needs that in its next Attorney General.