TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
ALLEN WILSON STOPS BY TO SPEAK WITH LIZ CONGRATULATIONS!!! 6/25/26
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Great guest coming up next.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we do. He is on the line right now.
SPEAKER_00All right. So what a difference a few days makes. Alan Wilson, our Attorney General, is joining us right now. The last time we spoke to him, he was a candidate for the nomination, and now he is the official DOP nominee for governor. Good morning, sir.
SPEAKER_01Hey, good morning. It's great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me back.
SPEAKER_00All right. So, Alan, I know you're very busy, and I and I know you're working on uh now focusing on the general election as well as being Attorney General. Uh and so what are some of the things that uh you will be focusing in on now? What is your main goal, the main messaging of the campaign going into that general election in November? I mean, uh, you know, for the last couple of months you've been um battling basically You're all on the same page pretty much as uh you in in a race with other Republicans, but now we're going against a Democrat. What is the messaging going to be focused on?
SPEAKER_01Well, first the first thing is is uh primaries, as you know, are a big family squabble, right? Um but when the squabble is over, the intent is for the family to come back together. And I've I've tried to do that with other candidates who, you know, didn't make it to the runoff. And you know, right now my message to all of the the voters who supported uh the lieutenant governor in this race is like, look, I've you know, the decision's been made. I would love the opportunity to earn your support. I'll I'm reaching out to business leaders, elected officials, folks who weren't with us, but may sh maybe share our values to say, hey, look, we'd love to have you on the team. We'd love to build a coalition that we can do the most good for the most people after we win this election in November. So the first thing to do is to kind of just finish unifying, getting everyone together on the same sheet of music. That's what my focus is over the next few days. Of course, your question was, you know, regarding what message are we going to take to the general election? And it's going to be very similar to the message I ran on in the primary. I mean, I'm looking to every voter, regardless of your party affiliation, regardless of, you know, how you feel about politics, and saying, look, at the end of the day, I want to do as governor, I want to do everything I can to make living in our state more affordable for you and your family. And I want to make our economy as profitable as I possibly can for your business. And of course, a lot of people are concerned. They're cynical and they're skeptical about government. I want to make government more accountable, more transparent, more modern, more efficient. I want people to have faith in their government again, and that's going to require to do a top-down overhaul of it. And those are the things I'm going to be focused on, and I think that's going to have a broad appeal.
SPEAKER_00So uh you mentioned uh talking about getting all because especially here in Ory County, you know, it was kind of 50-50, even though uh uh Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evick carried Orie County in this race. We carry three counties, this Marlborough and Marion, uh you won in Georgetown. The fracture in our internal uh GOP structure here, and you you were speaking to that uh pretty much in the beginning here. Uh how are we going to feel in Orie County particularly this is a very big county with a growing population, we have infrastructure issues people are concerned about uh tax increases and concerns increases. We are a coastal community, there are a lot of things that we're working with that people are. Some people want I-73, some people do not. What uh is it that you can say to Republicans and voters uh listening right now in particular about our county? Because they're concerned. Um, you know, uh Lieutenant Governor had has a second home here, so she notes very familiar with Dory County. They kind of some people feel like you're maybe not gonna pay as as much attention as we need. We're uh uh a tourism driver, an a revenue driver, so we need some uh some more attention from our governor here.
SPEAKER_01Well well, first off, nothing uh first off, I appreciate the question, and nothing can be further from the truth to those who believe that you're gonna be overlooked. You gotta remember, my family grew up, I know it's not the Grand Strand, but my mother's from Florence, South Carolina. I um, you know, I went to Francis Marion University just a short drive from the Grand Strand area. You know, I've I burned up that highway all the way through Upper Conway, Lower Ain, or we used to call UCLA. I've spent a lot of time in Myrtle Beach over the years. That area of the state is an area I'm very intimately familiar with. My running mate, Mike Rickenball, represents that area of the state and has a you know has uh advertisers there. Y'all have seen the Rick and Ball dealership advertisements. I mean, he is very intimately familiar with that area. This is an area that is very meaningful to us. Liz, tourism and agribusiness are two of our top industries next to manufacturing in the state. I mean, billions, billions of dollars from the agribusiness as well as tourism. And I how could we ignore one of the revenue generating engines of our state that is Orie County? Ori County is too important to ignore. And my commitment to the business leaders and to the people of Orie County, you're gonna be sick of seeing me. You know, to those people who fought hard for the lieutenant governor in this race, I'm gonna fight harder for you than you fought for your candidate. Um I I'm I'm all in with this area of the state, and you have my word on that. And obviously, infrastructure is gonna be literally at the tip of my tongue in everything I talk about, you know, removing uh burdensome regulations, red tape, making government more responsive and efficient, doing everything that I can at the state level. Obviously, I can't control local governments, but we can certainly do a lot to move them to making you know things more uh easy for businesses to grow and you know produce jobs and revenue. That's that's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00All right. Um and so with that, uh I was speaking with our um our guest uh earlier. Uh he's a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, and we were speaking, and he wasn't totally convinced you were going to be the best choice, although he didn't have any other choice, uh he said. But and and the reason why was he was just afraid we were going to get more of the same. And quite honestly, I have been seeing that on um social media people who are always posting Jermaine Johnson under uh anything that I post, and they're saying, you voted for red enough, the prices have gone up, health insurance, car insurance, homeowners insurance, taxes, gas tax. Why are you gonna vote for the same? You know what I mean? And it's like you know, tell us how it's going to be different. How are you gonna make it different?
SPEAKER_01Well, first off, and I I I have a great deal of respect for Governor McMaster. I talked to him yesterday, we had a wonderful conversation. I think he's a a good man who loves his state and has served his state honorably. And there's a lot of people serving in the legislature in both parties that I have a lot of respect for. But here's the thing: I'm asking people, don't tight cast me, don't put me into a box because of what letter is behind my name or what faction of the party you think I belong to. Um I'm you're gonna see a type of aggressive, and I don't mean aggressive in a confrontational way, but aggressive in a movement way. We are going to aggressively move to do things that have never been done before. We are going to get outside the comfort zone. We're gonna challenge the status quo, we're gonna move beyond the establishment views of the world, you know. We're gonna live outside the comfort zone and try to deliver real results for the people of South Carolina. Like I believe eliminating the income tax. I believe that we can we can work to reduce property taxes. I want to remove burdensome regulations. I want to have regional governors, I want to have an Office of Local Government Affairs representing the governor's office in every region of the state so that there can be more accountability. Um I'm going that's here's the other thing, Liz. I'm not gonna wait for bills to come to my desk. Yes, um and uh you're gonna see me out there leading from the front, like advocating hard, traveling the state, meeting with leaders, taking the best ideas from those who are being regulated by the government and giving them a direct voice, direct input into how the rules, regulations, and laws being passed are gonna be implemented. That is what I intend to do.
SPEAKER_00All right. I love that. I love the fact that you are, you know, Attorney General and believe in law and order. Uh one of the cases, and I have asked you about this before, but people keep keep bringing it up. And I'm just gonna ask you to put your Attorney General hat on for just a moment, uh, talk about a case that's really torn apart this community in particular and was a major driver in commentary regarding you or Lieutenant Governor Pamela, if it even came up in some of the um questions and debates. The Attorney General's office, your office initially declined if I get this wrong because I'm trying to get it right. Initially declined prosecution in the Scott's Bible case. And false shooters Boyd and Williams were later denied a standard ground immunity by a judge regarding the civil case. So how can you explain this discrepancy about how he evaluated evidence and how your office followed up on this? So what happens next?
SPEAKER_01So first off, you've got a criminal case and a civil case, and you're dealing with two different types of standards. Yes. Um you also, you know, when a prosecutor is looking at web, and by the way, stand your ground is a law that Governor McMaster signed, actually supported, it extends the Castle doctrine to wherever you have a lawful right to be, not just your house. Um what people have to understand is this you know, you can attack me all you want, but career prosecutors uh reviewed this within my office. And a lot of what people have read online, if you're getting your news from a podcast or social media, you're probably getting flawed information. Um the judge in that civil case made uh had an opinion that immunity did not apply. Now, here's a there's a difference between self-defense and immunity. Stands your ground means you're immune from prosecution at all. It doesn't mean that the self-defense claim can be made in a civil or criminal case. But at the end of the day, this is what we did. Uh several prosecutors with a combined over 100 years of experience reviewed this thing. One of them was a former judge, a circuit judge who reviewed this. They made the recommendation to me that immunity would apply on the criminal case, okay, um, based on the facts that we had uh that's given to us by the Ory County P. D. When allegations came of that the Ori County P. D. had engaged in conduct that was not appropriate, that report came to me, and instead of us doing the review of Ori County P. D. I said, look, we're not going to rely on uh or we're not gonna make a decision on Ori County PD when we're the ones who relied on their information to begin with on the roadside shooting. So I sent the Ori County P. D case to a solicitor on the other side of the state with no political connections whatsoever to review that investigation, and I instructed that solicitor to reevaluate everything. And if you come to different conclusions based on new evidence or information, then make a decision that you think is appropriate. What people have to understand is we don't have friends or enemies in this case or any case. We're not out there trying to protect or hurt or help anybody. We're just calling balls and strikes as we see them. And why would we do anything else? So my intent was to get this case to a solicitor on the other side of the state who was re-evaluating it and may come to a different conclusion or may not, or may find something else that we didn't see based on the initial reports we got. But we can only make decisions based on the information we have at a particular time. And that's what the t that's what my team did, and I backed them up because they're the best at what they do. So, you know, for people out there who somehow think that, you know, they're they're screaming justice for spivy and things like that. Well, we're trying to give him that. But we're trying to follow the law. And again, at the end of the day, a family lost a person. And that's not lost on me. This is a tragic, horrible. I mean, my heart hurts for them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But people are trying to politicize a case for you know political expediency, and we're not going to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. Thank you for answering that question again, because that's really important here uh for a lot of people. Now, the other case that really was heart-wrenching is Logan Frederico and her father stood up for you, not stood up for you, but I mean uh endorsed you and and spoke about, and he's from North Carolina, and spoke about how important uh you know criminal justice reform is. So what do you from the perspective of that case and the the the the um career criminal that just kept escalating in his crimes, what can you do as Attorney General or as governor? What will you do to try and stop these repetitive criminals from coming out and preying upon innocent people?
SPEAKER_01Well, first off, I want to thank the Federico family, Stephen Federico, who did endorse me the night of that debate and you know, when we were here in Ory County. Um I didn't ask him to. He he just told me he was gonna do it, and I've been very careful not to politicize or do anything that would be seen as capitalizing on the tragedy that was his daughter's murder. Um and I've I may I've gone out of my way, but he I said the second I get a question about criminal justice, I'm going to raise her name because I don't want to ever forget her name, and I don't ever want you or any of your listeners to ever forget Logan Federico, a beautiful 22-year-old woman who last May was brutally murdered. She was visiting friends in Columbia and she was shot while she was in her bed and uh by a man who who should have been in prison that was slipped through the cracks. And without getting overly complicated here on the radio, basically we have a criminal justice system where you can have good judges and good prosecutors or bad judges and bad prosecutors, but if the system that the you you you put the information into the system and if the systems aren't connected and they're not talking and and the judges are relying on flawed information like backgrounds and things like that, they may they may make bad decisions. Prosecutors may make bad prosecution decisions because they have bad information because of the systemic failures and the gaps. So yes, judicial reform is absolutely imperative. We've got to change how we select judges. Obviously, you all get to vote for and against your solicitors, so there's a political check there. But the systems that the prosecution that the courts rely on to be able to make decisions on sentencing or whether to prosecute or not prosecute are inadequate. And we need to reform those to close those gaps so that someone doesn't ever slip through the cracks and then end up on the street and murder another beautiful young soul ever again. So is that through the legislature?
SPEAKER_00Is that so require So what do you do? What can you do? You said you're not gonna sit in the back seat and wait for bills to come to your desk. So what are you going to do to push this along? What can you do?
SPEAKER_01First thing we're gonna do the first thing you have to bring all the stakeholders to the table. You have to bring the court system, you have to bring the head of the judiciary, the chief justice, we've got to have the solicitors at the table. We're gonna have to have honestly counties at the table. The public indexes don't always reflect the wrap sheets that judges and solicitors rely on. We have to have all the stakeholders at the table along with legislative leadership. We need to measure the problem, identify where the gaps are, where the breaks down breakdowns are, identify what the solution is, put it into a drafted piece of legislation, and once we have once we do that study, then we're gonna go ahead and I'm gonna barnstorm the state advocating for those changes. But you've got to get people bought in on the front end, and that's how I'm gonna do it. We're gonna identify the problems, come up with solutions to address and fix the problems, and then we're gonna lobby the legislature to get it done.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, I have to ask you a question. You talked about, first of all, is it Rickenbach or Rick and Ball?
SPEAKER_01Well, if you ask Mike, the the German pronunciation is Roschenbach. It's very guttural. You almost have to hockey to say his name. But for purposes of saying it in South Carolina, Rick and Ball. This is a software.
SPEAKER_00Okay, but in his commercials, you know, I do Conway Ford commercials. I'm the the spokesperson and and he does Rick and Baugh. And we're all in the same Ford family, by the way. And I see him at the Christmas parties.
SPEAKER_01And I also Rick and Bob has never corrected me.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I'm gonna ask him next time I talk to him. All right, so uh with that, you have assigned him a specific task regarding families, and I would like to know what that is. I love the idea. I love that he has this to sink his teeth into, and he's been he told you family first, and and this is this is his wheelhouse. So tell us what he's gonna be tasked with.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So first off, we're gonna create what's called the Families First Audit Initiative. It is a kind of a doge-like organization that's going to I kind of already talked about it a minute ago, but basically we're gonna go agency by agency and do a top-down audit from top to bottom and back again. We're gonna re-evaluate everything, we're gonna identify what regulations need to go, we're gonna look at the bureaucracy, see what where we can trim. We're gonna look at what needs to be modernized from technology standpoints. Government is running on antiquated, outdated technology that can sometimes make it difficult for people to get the government services they needed, maybe like even getting a business permit or something. Um we're gonna streamline that. We're gonna identify the things that can be changed through executive order by the governor, things that can be changed internally by regulatory tweaks, and then the things that require legislative fixes. And then I'm gonna use that those reports that and Mike is gonna oversee this commission. Um, and I will be I will be involved too, but he will be the day-to-day guy.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And we're gonna use that as a roadmap for drafting reforms that are gonna change government forever.
SPEAKER_00All right, and one more question before we let you go, because I know I've kept you over. Um will you and how will you get rid of Dr. Brandon Traxler as the health czar in South Carolina?
SPEAKER_01You just simply say you're not gonna be the next director. And again, I'm gonna look at every single agency and I'm gonna look for and identify people who are A competent and can do the job and B that reflect the values of South Carolina's South Carolina citizens. And it's just gonna be that simple. Um there's really no there's no more straight answer I can give.
SPEAKER_00It's not something you have to wait to do, like uh you know, because we were I I think we I heard it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01And I have to wait to be sworn into office. Yes.
SPEAKER_00You know.
SPEAKER_01But after that people keep people people keep saying, hey, governor or governor elect, I said, guys, you're jumping, you're getting in front of the C's. There's there's another election in November, and then I have to get sworn in in January. But during that transition phase, we're going to be laying out every agency and we're going to be looking at it. And part of, you know, there are some agencies, some agency directors will probably remain because they're doing a good job. Other agency directors may be invited to pursue other opportunities, um, you know, because we're going to start anew. I'm I'm not making commitments one way or the other. But what I will tell you is this is that that individual, I don't know her at all. Um, know her to do she may be a lovely person, but you know, I'm going to start fresh in that agency.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Excellent. Uh anything else you wanted to make sure we know? Um, you know, are you making will you be make coming through here again? I'm sure because you're still campaigning.
SPEAKER_01This this yes. So this is what I would offer. You know, Ori County, I I I think I got 45% of the vote there, uh overperformed. I want Ori County to know this, and I want the surrounding counties to know this. You know, if you voted for the other person in this race, I I'm asking you for the opportunity. Don't believe everything you've read on the internet, on social media, or blogs, or podcasts. The vast majority of it is not true. What I'm asking you for is the opportunity to let me serve you, let me fight for you. You know, nothing is as simple as, you know, Alan doesn't care about certain people. That's not how it works. You know, when it comes to justice, we're going to ensure justice is for everybody. We're going to ensure that your government is transparent and accountable to you. I'm going to wake up every morning and do everything I can to fight for you. Give me that chance in November, and I promise you won't be disappointed.
SPEAKER_00All right. The next time we talk, and I hope it's soon, uh, we'll really drill down on education piece because that's huge. We have a huge education system here, and uh I I'd like to talk more about that and housing and roads, but we're out of time. Um but I appreciate it all that you've given.
SPEAKER_01I look forward to coming back very soon and often as governor. I will come on your show often. And come into the studio. That would be great to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, one hundred percent. All right.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you soon, Attorney General Alan Wilson, GOP nominee for governor. Uh you can find him on the website and of course all the social media platforms will talk to you soon. Congratulations.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.