Reece Lays Out Moderate Message At Forum

Tommie Reece, a petition candidate for South Carolina Senate's District 6 seat held by longtime incumbent Mike Fair, fielded questions Thursday written by students during a forum at Travelers Rest High School. 

The forum featured questions submitted by Berea High and Travelers Rest honors and AP government students, and was moderated by Travelers Rest City Councilman Harvey Choplin. Fair was also invited to the event, put on by Travelers Rest High School, the T.R. Tribune, Berea High School and the Travelers Rest Chamber of Commerce, but did not attend. 

Reece used her opening remarks to paint Fair and other other entrenched incumbents as ineffectual and complacent.

"If we had true and good, thoughtful leadership at our state level, we would be doing better," Reece said. "Our neighboring states are coming out of the recession quicker. They're passing us by. We should be doing better. We deserve better. We can't keep sending the same people to Columbia and expecting different results." 

As for as policies go, Reece struck a moderate chord on issues like schools, taxation and illegal immigration. While responding to a question on the state budget, Reece agreed in principal to keeping the sales tax low, but added that exemptions aimed at special interests on high-dollar items should either be closed or the tax caps on the items raised in order to provide more sustainable, predictable and stable revenue streams for the state. 

"If you buy a $15 dollar model airplane, you pay 90-cent sales tax, but if you buy a $1 million dollar Leer jet, you pay only $300 sales tax," Reece said. "Well, that's a $59,700 exemption for that person buying the Leer jet."

She added that a person buying a used car could under the current system pay the same amount of sales tax as a person buying a $400,000 Lamborghini. 

"Well if I can pay $400,000 for a car, which i'd never do, I can afford to pay more than $300 in sales tax," she said. 

Reece also said she would "certainly be open" to diverting tax dollars from more affluent school districts to poorer ones in need of the assistance, as long as it was done in a fair, equitable way. 

Meanwhile, instead of striking a hardline stance on illegal immigration often found in the uber-red Palmetto State, Reece said there must be a way found to make college education affordable, even if for children who were brought to the country illegally when they were too young to make the decision for themselves.