The congressman from the 2nd District is Joe Wilson, a Republican who won the seat in a December 2001 special election. In Washington, he has a reputation as a staunch conservative, but mostly he is known as the lawmaker who breached congressional decorum in a spectacular way in 2009 by shouting, “You lie,” during President Barack Obama’s health care address to a joint meeting of Congress. Read More
The congressman from the 2nd District is Joe Wilson, a Republican who won the seat in a December 2001 special election. In Washington, he has a reputation as a staunch conservative, but mostly he is known as the lawmaker who breached congressional decorum in a spectacular way in 2009 by shouting, “You lie,” during President Barack Obama’s health care address to a joint meeting of Congress.
Wilson grew up in Charleston and graduated from Washington & Lee University and the University of South Carolina law school. He worked as an aide to 2nd District GOP Rep. Floyd Spence and then for Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond. Wilson was deputy general counsel at the Energy Department during the Reagan administration. He practiced law in West Columbia for 25 years and worked on many political campaigns. In 1984, he was elected to the state Senate, where he chaired the Transportation Committee. During this period, he served 31 years as a staff judge advocate in the South Carolina Army National Guard, retiring in 2003. (All four of Wilson’s sons have been Eagle Scouts and served in the military, two of them in Iraq.) In 2001, when Spence died after more than 30 years in the House, Wilson became the front-runner to replace his longtime friend and mentor. In his campaign, he pledged to continue Spence’s focus on national defense. He won the Republican primary with 76% of the vote, and defeated his Democratic opponent easily, 73%-25%.
In the House, Wilson has had a conservative voting record. With a seat on the Armed Services Committee, he has concentrated, as promised, on military issues. In January 2011, he became chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee of Armed Services. He has advocated a closer military relationship with India, and he supported President George W. Bush on the Iraq war, traveling frequently to Iraq and Afghanistan to gauge progress. When Democrats were in the majority in 2010, he opposed Democratic Chairman Ike Skelton’s defense authorization bill that included a provision repealing the ban on openly gay service personnel. Wilson was a strong backer of a 1.9% pay raise for the military that year.
Wilson was unknown outside of his district, and barely known in Washington, before his outburst during Obama’s September 2009 speech to House members and senators gathered for a joint session of Congress. As Obama was answering what he called critics’ “bogus claims” of his health care legislation, Wilson called out, “You lie!” His behavior was the subject of stinging commentary on editorial pages and talk shows around the country. He apologized to Obama in a phone call, but rebuffed Democratic demands for a more public apology from the well of the House. His South Carolina colleague, then-Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn, alleged there was a taint of racism in Wilson’s reaction, noting that no other president in memory had been the target of a similar breach in protocol during a joint session. Democrats pushed for a floor vote to sanction Wilson and the House passed a “resolution of disapproval” on a mostly party-line vote.
Wilson also took some heat at home in 2010, after he refused to sign a letter requesting an appropriations earmark for a $400,000 study of dredging in the Port of Charleston, a project aimed at making the port capable of accommodating larger ships that will be coming through an enlarged Panama Canal after 2014. The letter was submitted to the Appropriations committees from the South Carolina congressional delegation, but Wilson and Sen. Jim DeMint declined to sign based on their objections to the practice of earmarking. Because of the dissension in the delegation, the earmark for the study was refused, enraging civic and business leaders who saw the project as vital to the state’s future economic growth.
On other issues with strong local interest, Wilson joined most other South Carolina Republicans in opposing trade promotion authority for presidents, but he voted for the Central America Free Trade Agreement in 2005. In March 2010, he criticized the Obama administration’s decision to withhold funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository in Nevada, saying the Savannah River Site would be stuck indefinitely holding 7,200 containers of spent nuclear waste.
On the Education and Labor Committee, Wilson in 2003 won House passage of a bill to expand college loan forgiveness for math, science and special education teachers who work in impoverished areas. He also worked with Democrats to make permanent the child adoption tax credit. But Wilson failed in his quest to get the top Republican slot on the committee in 2009, when California Rep. Buck McKeon relinquished the post to become the ranking member on Armed Services. Wilson had more committee seniority than his competitors, but lost out to John Kline of Minnesota.
Over the years, Wilson has made a practice of conducting an annual five-day bus tour across the district, and from 2002 to 2006, he was re-elected by wide margins. In 2008, Democrat Rob Miller, an Iraq veteran, spent $624,000 without any help from the national party, and held Wilson to a 54%-46% victory.
Miller decided to run again in 2010. A Democratic poll showed an even race, but Miller was a disappointing candidate. The State newspaper said Miller ran “a stealth campaign, holding few public events and kicking a Columbia TV crew out of a speech to Democrats.” Wilson spent $4.8 million and Miller $2.9 million, setting a record for South Carolina House races. But the result was almost identical to 2008: Wilson won 53%-44%, carrying white-majority counties and losing black-majority counties. It was not the Wilson family’s only electoral success that year. His son, Alan, won a race for state attorney general, 54%-44%.
