Posted on Sun, Oct. 27, 2002

McConnell also uses threats — and gets results.

Last year, after Howard Covington, chairman of the State Infrastructure Bank Board, made a flippant remark about the Hunley, McConnell called for Covington’s resignation.

Covington’s offense? He deliberately called the Hunley by the wrong name and proposed, in effect, that McConnell sell the sub and use the proceeds to help build a new Cooper River bridge.

Covington wrote a public letter apologizing, saying he was “proud of the efforts to raise the Hunley.”

When McConnell was angered earlier this year at a judge’s decision, he began a campaign that resulted in the judge losing his election. (In South Carolina, judges are elected by the 170-member Legislature.)

McConnell has additional power over judges: he chairs a screening committee that decides whether a prospective judge can even run for a judgeship.

In recent months, the Hunley story has moved into a Richland County courtroom.

There, before state Judge G. Thomas Cooper, lawyers for the Friends of the Hunley are fighting a lawsuit that seeks to have that group declared a public entity.

It will be up to Cooper to decide whether the Friends of the Hunley is public or not — and therefore subject to the State Freedom of Information Act.

Lawyers for the Friends say the plaintiff in the case, Edward Sloan of Greenville, already has been given the documents he sought.

But Sloan’s lawyer, Jim Carpenter, told the judge in a pre-trial hearing several weeks ago that the Friends — which has received $8 million in public money — gave up the documents only after a lawsuit was filed.

Carpenter said he hopes no one else ever has to file suit against the Friends to find out how public money is being spent.

“We don’t want anyone to have to go through what we went through,” the lawyer said.

Call John Monk at 803-771-8344 or jmonk@thestate.com