Gov.-elect Nikki Haley announced the chairman for her transition team: former S.C. House Speaker and former Ambassador David Wilkins. The campaign noted Wilkins’ “experience tackling our state’s toughest problems.”
Critics noted Wilkins’ most obvious trait: Establishment credentials. “The governor-elect has given the highest position on her team to one of the very same good ol’ boys she campaigned against,” says Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler. “She can’t move this state forward by continuing to reach backward,”
Columbia blogger Will Folks, a former Haley consultant and alleged paramour, called it “a decidedly status quo selection from a politician who campaigned as a ‘political outsider.'”
“So much for raging against the machine, right?” he wrote in a post today.
There are two ways that you could read this move: Haley has few politically savvy friends she can put to this task or she’s rightly stepping out of her comfort zone, looking for ideas from across the GOP spectrum.
In other transition news, Congressman-elect Tim Scott is already in Washington getting ready for the next session. He’s one of four freshmen members on a GOP taskforce to lay out the new majority agenda. According to The Associated Press, the team is led by several movers and shakers in the party leadership, including Reps. David Dreier, Paul Ryan, and Pete Sessions.
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