TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
SC GOP GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: AG ALAN WILSON discusses upcoming runoff election - 6/15/26
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Yeah, I'm so excited to hear from you, Alan. You know, uh you and I have had many conversations over the years, and and one of the things that I was always so um excited to talk to you about uh in those years was uh what you were doing regarding domestic violence. It had gone really unchecked uh for so many years prior to you stepping into the role. So uh um among the things that uh, you know, the last uh I guess it's 15 years now you've been attorney general, maybe you can give us some career highlights and how you've helped uh protect South Carolinians.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Liz, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Look, I was a career prosecutor before I was elected attorney general. So I've always had a real heart and a passion for victims and working with law enforcement. Um, you know, listen, over the last 15 years, we've done a lot of things. We've created the state human trafficking task force. You know, when I came into office in 2011, South Carolina was ranked one of the worst states in the country in combating human trafficking. We had no laws on the books, we had no task force, we had nothing. And so we created this task force. We've become the gold standard in the country. In fact, you know, Orie County is one of the top five counties where there are reports of human trafficking due to the high nature of tourism and transient uh tourists coming through the state. So um obviously Orie County is doing a good job in reporting it. Um, not other counties are doing as good a job in reporting, but it's a lot of reports are coming from there, but that's because of our efforts to raise awareness. We've uh increased the funding to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force by 400% to go after online predators who are preying on our children. Um we've consolidated all of the victim services in the state of South Carolina under uh under my office to better provide services to victims. Um we've overseen the prosecution of thousands of violent criminals, child predators, drug dealers, and corrupt officials since I've been attorney general. Liz, because of our efforts, South Carolina is outpacing the nation in a reduction in violent crime, and we're at a 30-year low. Are we where we want to be? Of course not. But we are doing better than other states, and I I get that's a testament to the men and women in law enforcement that I get to work with every single day. And finally, Liz, um, we uh last week, week and a half ago, I got to lead a uh our office led a sting operation that seized 48 illegal aliens and six people, uh, some of whom were stealing um uh identifications of South Carolina residents to give them to these illegals. So we've been out there uh fighting on the front lines, delivering results. And that's the reason over 80 percent of the Republican sheriffs in the state have rallied around my campaign for governor because of what we've done on the public safety front.
SPEAKER_02One of the things um, and uh, you know, since we're on limited time here, I just want to cut to the chase on these issues. One of the the criticisms that uh you have received from uh fellow candidates, uh uh especially uh Congresswoman Nancy Mays was how how certain because you mentioned the um cases regarding um you know uh sex child sexual exploitation cases and all that. Can you explain uh what your position was on these things? She she was claiming that 90 percent were dismissed under your watch. Can you just give us the the perspective?
SPEAKER_01Well, so let me let me go in reverse order here. So obviously, you know the Congresswoman Mace endorsed me last Tuesday um uh, you know, on election night, and I'm incredibly grateful. Over the last couple of months, she and I, as we've campaigned, have gotten a chance to sit down, and as we debated issues and obviously fought for the nomination, we've gotten to know each other, and while things started out very vitriolically between us, I was able to explain to her um you know what what actually those numbers meant. And you know, last Tuesday night when she conceded and graciously uh endorsed me, she said I was a law and order governor. I would be the law and order governor. The reality is that when cases are brought, sometimes the feds take the cases, and when they do, you have to dismiss the charges because they're being prosecuted in federal court. And those and those dismissals are counted against us. If someone dies, which that happens a lot, those cases get dismissed. Sometimes someone is charged with 30 or 40 or 50 image downloads, uh, but it wasn't them, it was someone pirating off their Wi-Fi using their IP address. And so if we don't have the evidence to go forward, we have to dismiss charges. And when people look at the numbers, it looks like you're dismissing hundreds of defendants, but it's really charges that you either can't prosecute because there's not evidence, or charges where the person's not alive or they're no longer in the state, they're being prosecuted by the Feds. So people were conflating those numbers. At the end of the day, Liz, this is a top priority for me in my office, and and the men and women in my office have done an incredible job working with law enforcement around the state.
SPEAKER_02Alan, uh we're speaking with Attorney General Alan Wilson. I wanted to ask you also uh the two other cases, especially the one involving Weldon Boyd and Scott Spivey and the stand your ground case and the Murdoch trial. Why are why are we going through this retrial of it? Can you just give us your your update on those situations?
SPEAKER_01All right, sure. I'll start with the Murdoch trial. Obviously, the everyone knows what happened there. The Clerken Court in Collington County did things that were allegedly inappropriate, and the the Supreme Court believed that impaired Mr. Murdoch's ability to have a fair and partial trial. I do not believe the Supreme Court was right. I do believe they got it wrong. Uh, but they are the Supreme Court, and I respect their decision. They're good men and women on that court that are my friends, I know them. And so that they, because of what that woman down in Collton County did, we're gonna retry the case. People tell me all the time, why isn't that a waste of money? I'm like, if your loved ones were violently murdered, and the your, you know, the person who did it was in jail on some financial crimes, that you want us just to wash our hands of it. I think every victim deserves justice, and the families of every victim deserve justice. And so that's why we're gonna re-prosecute that case. On the Spy V. Boyd matter, first off, I want to remind people that, you know, members of my team evaluated that case, they came to a conclusion, they made recommendations to me. Um, and and and of course, those recommendations were on the stands your ground immunity part. It wasn't on it wasn't that there couldn't, you know, there weren't other uh allegations of wrongdoing by the Ory County PD or other things. But what we ultimately did, Liz, is they said we think that there are some allegations against the police department that need to be investigated. So I took the entire case and I sent it to a solicitor on the other side of the case on the other side of the state, a solicitor who has no political involvement with this side of the state, and I said, I want you to reevaluate the entire case uh with the Ori County PD, including the roadside shooting. And the reason I did that is is we're we relied on the evidence provided to us by the Ory County PD. And I said, I'm not gonna make a decision uh on the Ori County PD because people will question whether or not our decision was legitimate. I told the solicitor, you make a decision on whether the police did something inappropriate or Boyd did something inappropriate or make a decision on the roadside shooting. We did that because we wanted to rise above any appearance of impropriety. So that entire case is being reevaluated by another prosecuting office on the other side of South Carolina. All we can do is do our best just to get to the truth. I have no friends to reward or enemies to punish in criminal cases. And so I just tell people all the time, you may not like our decisions, but our decisions are based on the law. At the end of the day, that solicitor will make a decision, Liz, and we will live with it.
SPEAKER_02As Attorney General, uh under, you know, and you served uh as attorney general while the Henry McMaster Evitt um administration was in office. How do you think, what grade would you give them, and what would you do differently? Especially I'd like you to address what happened to us as South Carolinians under the rule of that administration during COVID.
SPEAKER_01Look, um I'm I'm not going to uh rate uh them on how they did what they did right or what they did wrong because hindsight is 2020. What I will tell you is how I will be different. I'm uh I I think Governor McMaster is an honorable man. I think he's a decent man, I think he loves his state. We have very different leadership styles. You know, my leadership style will be more proactive, a little bit more aggressive. In other words, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna work with the legislature. I'm not gonna wait for bills to come to my desk and sign the good ones and veto the bad ones. And the governor's policy was to let it work out in the General Assembly. My view of the office of governor is it's a bully pulpit. And you need to be whipping up votes in the General Assembly, you need to be leading from the front, you need to be leaning in on some of these issues, whether it's eliminating the income tax, reducing property taxes, promoting infrastructure, uh, lowering utility rates, promoting a kids first education agenda. You know, these are things that, you know, judicial reform, these are things that the the legislature needs the governor to lean in on. And so I'm gonna be a much more proactive governor, and I'm gonna be traveling the state, coming to Ory County, coming to the Grand Strand, listening to constituents, let them yell at me, let them tell me what they think we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, and then taking their comments back with us and letting that inform us on how we're gonna govern. This office belongs to you and your listeners, Liz. And I and I'm an employee, and I promise I'll never forget that.
SPEAKER_02Uh I I need you to address what happened to us during COVID, because this is an extremely important issue. Um and we see now that Governor Henry McMaster has appointed Brandon Traxler, Dr. Traxler. And it's just an absolute COVID tyrannical nightmare. So we would like to know what you will do about this person being in that role of health card if it goes through and if it's there from whatever. But there are a lot of mistakes that happen here. A lot of people lost their jobs or took the vaccine and regretted it and have had health issues. We know a lot. 2020 uh hindsight, yes, I agree with you, but many of us saw these tyrannical practices happening as they were happening. So I need to know did they get it wrong? What would you do? Uh what would you have done? What did you do to protect us uh during that time period?
SPEAKER_01Well, Liz, first off, if you remember during that period of time, I was involved in numerous lawsuits at the federal level and at the state level. In fact, I went to the United States Supreme Court on several federal cases where the Biden administration was doing vaccine mandates to the federal uh and contractors, the OSHA mandates we all remember, that was forcing 80 million Americans to get the vaccines. I went to the Supreme Court with a group of states and private parties to get that overturned. I fought back on the federal worker mandate. Every single time there was a federal mandate, we were involved in a lawsuit to challenge it and we were successful. At the state level, I was bringing lawsuits left and right to uh protect parents or give parents the right to not have their kids forced to be vaxxed or masked uh in schools or in colleges. Um we pushed back every step of the way. Um so I did everything that I could with the with the tools uh that the Constitution gives me as the attorney general to protect people. Um when it comes to who the governor's appointing in positions of a power, the next governor is not bound by any decisions of the current governor. And I can tell you right now, I'm gonna appoint people to positions in state government that reflect the values of South Carolinians. Um we're if we're not gonna have people in positions of power that are ever going to be forcing any kind of mandate or affecting anyone's right not to have these things forced down on them. You have my word on that.
SPEAKER_02All right, thank you, because that is really important to us. Um the other thing I wanted to bring up is what has your relationship been with Trump regarding um policies and and um other things that he has worked on. Have you been an ally? Have you had questions about certain things? Tell us what what you have done in regards to that. In the front first Trump administration and the second one?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Well, if you remember, so let's go back to 2016. Now my opponent keeps saying that she was there with him on day one. Well, let's go back to 2016. Um I I endorsed him. I was on the floor uh in Cleveland, Ohio, when he was nominated. Uh uh two days after the Access Hollywood video came out, that controversial video when people started banning him. I had a press conference doubling down in support of the president. As president, I led a 21-state coalition on a an amicus brief to the U.S. Senate explaining why that first impeachment was unconstitutional. I went to Congress and argued that with a number of attorneys general. This is back in 2019. In 2020, I I supported the president's lawsuit to the United States Supreme Court on election integrity. Liz, I had over 30 complaints filed against me with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel by Democrats seeking to take my law license. It took me four years and tens of thousands of dollars to be able to protect my ability to be attorney general, and I wasn't allowed to talk about it for four years. All of these complaints were ultimately dismissed because they were frivolous. But the point is, is I laid my livelihood on the line for the president. Of course, you know, obviously I've supported the president's executive orders. I've defended his executive orders to remove Trend de Aragua from the United States. I've all of his executive orders that have been challenged by the Democrats, I've been involved in defending. So I have supported the president every step of the way, including um, you know, risking my livelihood. Now, my opponent, you know, because of a relationship, because the governors endorsed her, and because of the governor's relationship with the president, he fought for uh his candidate uh with the president and fought for his son, who was originally going to be her uh running mate, and the president endorsed her. But that endorsement, you know, her endorsement is not based on merit. And it's not based on the president. Yeah, she he the president endorsed endorsed her and the son, but that was a function of a relationship with the governor. This is not a function of is she the best candidate to be governor? And right now I will continue to fight and defend the president and his policies, regardless of who he supports, because I already I already agree with his policies. So that's that's kind of my history with the president.
SPEAKER_02I wanted to ask you, uh, do you do you know if Congressman Ralph Norman will be endorsing you at 11 a.m. this morning?
SPEAKER_01Um I'm gonna let Congressman Norman speak for himself. Um obviously I don't want to, you know, I don't want to put any words in his mouth and get out in front of my skis, but whatever decision he makes, uh I'm gonna respect it. But I I've had great conversations with people that I've run against before and competed with for this office, and there's an understanding that we all want to reflect the values of South Carolinians, and I'm gonna let Congressman Norman speak for himself on that front, but I'll let y'all report it as that newscomer.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And how about the South Carolina Freedom Caucus? Would you appreciate um some support from them? I mean, what would that mean to you?
SPEAKER_01Of course. I listen, I want to build as broad a coalition with the Republican base as I possibly can. And there are people in the Freedom Caucus that I have a great deal of respect for. There are people in the traditional caucus that I have a great deal of respect for. And I don't care where the best ideas come from, I just care that they're the best ideas, and I've told the Freedom Caucus, I've told the the the traditional caucus, I'm gonna support the best ideas that do the most good for the most citizens in South Carolina, regardless of where those ideas originate. And so I look forward to working with the Freedom Caucus and the Traditional Caucus to advance South Carolina and to make living in our state more affordable for your families. That that that has been my mantra this entire time.
SPEAKER_02We're speaking with Attorney General Alan Wilson. He is the GOP gubernatorial candidate. Early voting is Wednesday and Thursday. The election is the 23rd. I wanted to just ask you um a couple of questions, like kind of rapid fire, only because we just have a couple of minutes left and we have some questions on the budget lines text line. Um election integrity, do you think we are uh we have safe and uh secure elections here? And if not, uh where where are the glaring issues and and what are you going to do about it?
SPEAKER_01Well, first off, I think one of the things that we want to do in state government is do a top-down audit of every state agency in the state and then invite the public to come in for public comments. So what I would like to do is when it comes to the Election Commission is obviously um do a full audit. That agency will be under that audit process and then maybe and then allow the public to come in and provide comment that will allow us to create a roadmap of legislation or reforms that we can do to address concerns that the public has about it.
SPEAKER_02What about uh corruption? Everyone is talking about corruption in the legislature with uh judicial appointments and uh lawyer legislators and all sorts of things. And one of the issues that kind of came up was, you know, if your office can't handle a certain lawsuit or issue that, you know, there are funds that go to secure attorneys and sometimes that goes to lawyer legislators. I I don't know if that's true. I just want to clear the air.
SPEAKER_01I'm happy to address that.
SPEAKER_00Yes, please.
SPEAKER_01Um so basically we we have a situation where, first off, I don't go find lucrative cases and give them to my friends. That's not how it works. We have this is I inherited this system from Governor McMaster when he was AG, former Attorney General Charlie Condon did this. We have what's called a contingency contract, which means if somebody out there finds where South Carolina is being harmed under some law, they can come to the attorney general and they say, Listen, we are willing to do this case for free, no risk to the state. If we lose, we eat the cost and it costs y'all nothing. If we win, we get a percentage based on a contingency fee contract. And so people bring us cases. If they do all the work and it's a meritorious case, and we don't have the bandwidth to do it, then what we do is we allow them to work on behalf of the state. If they recover for the state, then they get a percentage. It's usually far less than what a private sector attorney would make, but it's based on how much they make. There was one case where we recovered $600 million and the attorneys got $75 million, which is 12% instead of the normal 40%. Um and the state got $525 million, but I did not give those cases to these firms, and I don't give cases to lawyer legislators. There may be law firms that bring them to us that have legislators in them, but if I don't give if at the end of the day, you give the case to the person that brought it. If you don't, they quit bringing you cases. Um if the cases aren't meritorious, we say no. And by the way, Liz, we have over 8,000 cases in my office. Only five of them currently are outside contingency contracts. Five out of eight thousand. And they're all published on the website for you all to see.
SPEAKER_02Before we run out of time, the other issue is state income tax. Uh, a lot of people saying uh that are running for office, we have to eliminate that. Your stance?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes, we can eliminate it, and you can do it by capping the rate of spending to the rate of population growth. Basically, we're we're spending every year, the rate of spending is growing by double digits. Our population is only growing by an average of about three, three and a half percent every year, uh, maybe less, but we're spending at north of ten or twelve percent every year. If we bring down the rate of spending to the rate of population growth, we can eliminate the income tax over time. Other forms of revenue will grow, replacing the income tax and allow you to keep more money in your pockets.
SPEAKER_02All right. I would love to uh give you the last uh 30 seconds here to ask the people for uh their vote for you for governor for nomination.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Liz. Thank thank you, folks. Listen, folks, I don't promise you I'm gonna be a perfect governor because I'm not a perfect person, but I promise you I will be a governor who is accountable to you and a governor who is accessible to you. This is this job, this is a job interview that I'm on right now, and I'm asking you to hire me, and I would be honored to have your vote next Tuesday, and I hope you all tune in to the debate tomorrow night, and I'm looking forward to uh going to work for all of you. God bless you all.
SPEAKER_02Uh Attorney General Alan Wilson, thank you so much for joining us. And regarding accessibility, would you still um uh accept invitations for interviews on the radio if you are elected governor?
SPEAKER_01Liz, for you and the few people listening, and I'm sure there's tens of thousands, I will come on as often as you want me to, and I will even come in studio when I'm in town to sit down for long interviews to be accessible to you.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Thank you. Because I've been through two governors and they haven't done that.
SPEAKER_01I will do it. I'm committing right now.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, uh good luck to you, best of luck, and thank you so much for giving us all this time this morning.
SPEAKER_01Yes, ma'am, thank you.