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For social liberals in South Carolina, the state Democratic Party can be kind of a letdown. Entrenched in red territory, its current nominee for governor, Vincent Sheheen, won't even come out in favor of marriage equality.

Enter gubernatorial candidate Steve French, a pro-choice, pro-marriage-equality candidate who adamantly believes South Carolina should be the next state to legalize recreational marijuana use. If you want a social liberal in the Governor's Mansion next year, here's your guy.

French is the Libertarian Party candidate, though, so he also holds some aggressively conservative views on fiscal matters. He likes school vouchers, for example, and he wants to replace income and corporate taxes with an across-the-board 7 percent sales tax with no tax breaks or incentives.

As the fall election season heats up, French is going to say some things that are a little hard for both sides to swallow. But he'll tell you that all he's looking for is a little consistency.

"We have Republicans that talk about smaller government, but they'll kick your door in because you're playing a poker game," French says. "We've got the Democratic Party that talks about individual liberty, but then they want to unload all these taxes on us at the same time."

French is sitting in his home campaign office in Mt. Pleasant, leaning forward in a swivel chair as he lays into his campaign platform. At age 33, French would be one of the youngest governors in state history (the minimum age is 30). The man is intense in his rhetoric, self-assured in his views. When it comes to Sheheen and other state Democrats, he thinks the soft-sell approach isn't working.

"I don't know why the Democratic Party down here doesn't go as far left socially, whether they just don't believe they can win with that," French says. "I think the opposite. I really feel like our generation especially is pretty much in agreement of what we feel the government's role should be."

All Aboard the Grease Bus

Steve French is in the grease business. He is the CEO of Low Country Grease Service, a company that buys used cooking grease from local restaurants, refines it in North Charleston, and sells the product to biofuel companies.

"I'm not that far from being in poverty," French says. "When we started my business back in 2009, we were lower than broke."

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Libertarian gubernational candidate Steve French is left of the Dems, right of the GOP

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Local and State News

To that end, the group is holding its spring strategy session on Saturday at the Teamsters Union Hall in West Columbia, where, according to Director Brett Bursey, the network will polish its message and decide whom to target. The networks three core issues are expanding Medicaid to the poor under Obamacare, funding education and protecting voting rights.

Bursey said Monday the planning process will involve calculating incumbents vulnerability and their voting records to prioritize them as targets.

One list were looking at is the 31 House members that are sponsors of the reintroduced son-of-nullification bill that aims to undermine Obamacare in South Carolina and would specifically outlaw an expansion of Medicaid, Bursey said.

The bill came about after conservative state legislators conceded that South Carolina does not have the constitutional authority to nullify the Affordable Care Act, a federal law. Bursey argues that such extremism is the will of only a tiny fraction of eligible South Carolina voters who, by dominating GOP primaries, have an outsized voice in setting South Carolinas policies.

Youre looking at single digits, like 4 or 5 percent of the people in South Carolina, that are anointing these tea party wackos in the primaries to set our state policy, he said. Thats insane. Literally, its insane, letting people that are against government run your government.

Well have [targeted incumbents] listed, and were going to try to prioritize them as far as whos most vulnerable, like a triage. If a person is bleeding, well go stir up the sharks. We want to go into the House districts and go to the churches that these people go to and ask the what kind of theology theyre spreading that Rep. So-And-So, who goes to their church, would be denying the least of us health care.

Its a name-and-shame strategy that Bursey says worked in 2012, when the group was trying to get a Senate floor vote on Medicaid expansion. He said the Progressive Network found like-minded congregants in the churches of Sens. Ray Cleary (R-Georgetown) and Paul Thurmond (R-Charleston), neither of whom could be considered tea party stalwarts, who were able to persuade the two Republicans to vote in favor of Medicaid expansion.

The Progressive Networks spring strategy meeting is scheduled to run from 10 a.m. till 5 p.m. on Saturday at the Teamsters new union hall, 2604 Fish Hatchery Rd., West Columbia. The public is welcome but ther

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S.C. Progressives Turn Their Eyes to Fall Election

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