Adultery charge again roils S.C.

Maybe it’s something in the air, but South Carolina’s Republicans are showing a flair for adultery scandals so pronounced it almost makes the Palmetto State look like the set of an extreme reality-TV show.

“These stories have a life of their own,” state Rep. Joan Brady, a Republican. “We just continually offer fuel and fodder, like it’s our job.”

The latest example has ensnared state Rep. Nikki Haley, a gubernatorial candidate, “tea party” favorite anointed as a rising conservative star and endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

But now the 38-year-old married mother of two is angrily fighting accusations by conservative local blogger Will Folks - who claims to be a Haley supporter, no less - that the two had an “inappropriate physical relationship” in recent years. He won’t say what kind, but in South Carolina those words mean an affair of body, not of state.

The he said-she said fight has rocked the state, still recovering from the international scandal provoked by the “Appalachian Trail” extramarital affair of outgoing GOP Gov. Mark Sanford - the man Mrs. Haley hopes to succeed.

In an angry statement, Mrs. Haley said that she has been “100 percent faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage.”

“This claim against me is categorically false. It is quite simply South Carolina politics at its worst,” she said.

Mr. Folks, who said he went public because various press outlets in the state were investigating the purported affair, has stood by his story and all but dared Mrs. Haley to sue him for libel. He released new text messages Wednesday purporting to show a reporter, an aide to Mrs. Haley, and an official from a rival campaign all discussing the potential exposure of the relationship, although he produced no direct communications between himself and Mrs. Haley.

Privately, Republicans who know both Mr. Folks and Mrs. Haley well confided in interviews with The Washington Times that they are conflicted: They can’t imagine Mr. Folks’ lying about a matter like this any more than they can believe Mrs. Haley had an affair with him - or anyone else.

Mrs. Haley had been gathering momentum in her come-from-behind bid against three better-known rivals: state Attorney General Henry McMaster, a former state GOP chairman; U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett; and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. The gubernatorial primary is June 8.

She has dropped her initial charge that her primary rivals were behind Mr. Folks’ claims.

But the new notoriety the story has given to South Carolina is irksome to current and former politicians in both parties.

“Everybody’s forgotten about the issues,” said former Rep. Butler Derrick, a Democrat. “It’s all about digging up dirt on your opponent.”

Mr. Derrick said he was tired of the preoccupation with what used to be considered private matters. “These people so far as I know aren’t stealing,” he said. “And as far as I know Nikki Haley is a good legislator.”

Mrs. Brady, the GOP lawmaker, is equally put off by the whole thing.

“I’m more interested in a local legislator’s rise to national prominence because of the intrusion into her campaign of national money,” Mrs. Brady said of Mrs. Haley. “She received contributions from the Club for Growth and other national conservative groups.”

Mrs. Palin is among the national celebrities who have endorsed Mrs. Haley and encouraged national contributions to her campaign.

Mr. Folks, who once worked for Mr. Sanford and later briefly for Mrs. Haley, is a longtime exponent of the hardball school of politics. “People love his blog but don’t necessarily believe or like him,” a state Republican lawmaker said, declining to speak on the record.

Mr. Folks was Mr. Sanford’s spokesman in his 2002 campaign and when he took office. Mr. Folks left in 2005 and not long after pleaded guilty to a criminal domestic violence charge involving his then-fiancee, whom he married in 2007.