South Carolina panel to widen impeachment scope

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Over the protests of Gov. Mark Sanford's lawyers, South Carolina lawmakers on Tuesday began the preliminary steps of a process that could lead to the governor's impeachment and removal from office.

A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, made up of four Republicans and three Democrats, held its first meeting to review a resolution to impeach the governor for secretly leaving the state in June to see a woman in Argentina with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Members voted unanimously to broaden the review to include 37 ethics charges that accuse the governor of misusing state aircraft for personal or political reasons, repeatedly violating a policy that requires officials to fly in coach class and misappropriating campaign money.

In a separate action, the State Ethics Commission will hold hearings on the 37 accusations early next year.

The night before the meeting, Sanford released the full ethics complaint and a lengthy legal review of the impeachment process, in which his lawyers said neither the secret trip nor the ethics charges were grounds for impeachment. The state constitution's standard of "serious crimes or serious misconduct in office" seeks "to make sure only the most egregious offenses would lead to impeachment, and not merely personal moral failings, neglect of duty or a temporary absence from the state," they said.

But the lawmaker who drafted the resolution, state Rep. F. Gregory Delleney Jr., said no crime was necessary to impeach an official for serious misconduct.

"Impeachment is a political process, it's not a legal process," Delleney, a Republican from Chester, told the other members of the subcommittee. "The South Carolina House of Representatives alone defines what meets the constitutional threshold of serious misconduct in office."

Rep. James H. Harrison, a Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there was little precedent to follow, since no South Carolina governor had ever been impeached.

The subcommittee's review is only the first step in the impeachment process. The group, which will meet several times next month, will make a recommendation to the Judiciary Committee, which can then vote to send the resolution to the House floor when the Legislature convenes in January. Two-thirds of the House members must agree in order to impeach, which would result in Sanford's immediate suspension until the Senate concludes an impeachment trial.