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South Carolina Political Collections 

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT 

Interview 

with 

Edward E. Saleeby 

University Libraries 

University of South Carolina

Interviewer: 

John Duffy 

Date: 

March 5 and July 19, 1999 

Location: 

Saleeby Office, Hartsville, South Carolina 

Synopsis: 

Hartsville native Ed Saleeby (1927-2002) reflects on his life and distinguished career 

in public service. Saleeby received his LL.B. degree from the University of South 

Carolina in 1949, served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, 1951 to 1959, 

and on the USC Board of Trustees, 1961 to 1972. In 1972, he defeated powerful 

incumbent state senator Spot Mozingo in a hotly contested race. 

He served in the Senate from 1972 until his death. 

At the time of this interview, he chaired the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. 

Transcriber: 

Larry Grubbs 

Citation: 

Edward E. Saleeby Interview, South Carolina Political Collections, 

University Libraries, The University of South Carolina

South Carolina Political Collections Oral History Project Edward E. Saleeby Interview, p. 2 

March 5, 1999 

[Begin Tape 1, Side 1] 

Duffy: Senator Saleeby, would you start off by telling us something about your 

life and your career, and anything of special interest? 

Saleeby: I was born in Hartsville, and finished Hartsville High School. Then there 

were only eleven grades. Being born in September, I was sixteen when I finished. I 

started [the University of South] Carolina in June at sixteen, being seventeen in 

September. That was when there were very few civilian students, because the war was 

still on. There were only about thirty civilian students, maybe forty. When the war 

ended, the veterans started coming back, and we started going to school year round. 

Dean Prince let me in law school after two and a half years, but I had to go year round to 

keep up with my class. I was sworn in in January, 1949 to the bar. I started Carolina in 

June of ’44. I came home and worked with Spot Mozingo from February through April, 

then opened my office here at my home in May, ’49, where I’ve been since. I was a little 

interested in politics. I got interested in the university. I was a little interested because 

my father used to have me haul people to the polls to vote. When I was just a small kid, 

just fourteen, having a driver’s license. When there would be some candidates that didn’t 

have automobiles, on my days off, I would drive those candidates around to see people in 

the country. I got active in politics while I was still a child, you might say, a young 

person. 

At the university, I ran for junior class president against my good friend. Bob 

Lake and I really are good friends. At that time, he was in one fraternity and I was in 

another one. I thought only sophomores could vote for junior class president, and that’s 

where we campaigned. His fraternity, I think it was -----, they all went down en masse, 

and voted in that election. In the run-off I had all of my fraternity, and my gym class, go 

down and, en masse, vote for me. [laughter] There was no way to check which class you 

were in, and so I was elected junior class president. Later on, I ran for vice president of 

the student body, and was elected. Before finishing that term, I was so tired of


economics, having had so many classes on it with Professor Dreher, I said, “I’ve got to 

do something, either go to law school or quit.” Dean [Samuel L.] Prince let me enroll. I 

stayed there two years, and then came back home. It’s been fifty years. I retired at age 

seventy from law practice. I’m what you call senior status here now. That means no pay. 

[laughter] 

Then I got interested in the House. In ’49 and ’50, I was opening up my own law 

office. Hartsville didn’t have but three or four lawyers, and I didn’t have a lot of practice. 

I had plenty of time to campaign, and I had some people ask me to run. I would just 

close my office every afternoon, and go out and campaign around the county. You didn’t 

have single-member districts back then; that was before the one-man, one-vote rule. 

There were twelve candidates. I led the ticket and missed having a majority by four 

votes. I waited a few days, and asked for a recount, particularly of all the large boxes. 

We got in the recount, and somebody told me that I had waited too late, that I had not 

secured the boxes. Sure enough, half the votes in Hartsville number one, which was my 

big box, were missing. The law is now, you go by the original count, but I didn’t know 

what the law was. We had to have a run-off. The top six candidates had a run-off, and I 

was elected that time. I served eight years in the House. 

In the House, I think probably one of the most important pieces of legislation that 

I introduced, and we got established, was the Department of Rehabilitation. At that time, 

we had about three people working in Rehabilitation under Dr. [Jesse] Anderson, 

superintendent of education. He wasn’t interested in that particularly, and we were just 

doing nothing about it. There was a gentleman from Newberry who went around the 

state and helped campaign for it. He was interested in it. I told him if he would do the 

traveling, I would get the legislation through. We put that bill in, and got it through the 

House and the Senate. The Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, which is now the 

department of something else, it’s changed names. It’s really been a very successful and 

good thing for people in South Carolina, taking handicapped people and training them to 

do certain jobs. They review all the Social Security disability applications and the state 

disability applications as far as state employees, and just do a tremendous amount of 

work.


Duffy: Why were you interested in that particular topic? 

Saleeby: My brother Thad, who later served behind me, he was crippled, and 

walked with a stick, and crutches for a while. Probably that piqued my interest more 

when there was an idea about doing something to help people rehabilitate themselves. 

Thad introduced the legislation that dealt with the more severely handicapped people. 

The Saleeby Center out here is named after Thad, and you’ve got the Pee Dee Center in 

Florence. I’m sure you’ve got one in Columbia, and around the state, that take care of 

them. A lot of them are mental, but most of these children are so physically handicapped 

at birth that they have to have special care. Thad led that legislation. 

When I first went to the Senate, school teachers received state health insurance, 

but if you were not a school teacher or principal, if you were a janitor or in the cafeteria, 

non-degree personnel did not receive 

any fringe benefits such as 

hospitalization. It took me about two 

years to straighten that out, but we 

did. Of course, the courts would have 

eventually done it. We finally 

persuaded the Senate to go along with 

insuring all state employees 

regardless of what category you might 

be in. Like at the university, you 

insured professors, but you didn’t 

insure janitors. It was terrific 

discrimination. It shocked me when I 

ran for the House to see how much 

discrimination was going on back in 

those days. I think we’ve made a lot of improvement in discrimination, but I think we’ve 

gone backwards the last ten or twelve years. Maybe that will turn around. 

The Republican Party, in my opinion, was able to gain ground primarily because 

of racism. Back before we had a two-party system, we really had a two-party system, but


we didn’t call it that. We had, say, the Saleeby crowd and the Mozingo crowd. It was 

really two tough parties. Not until you had this racial problem did we flake off this 

crowd that became big Republicans. I quit the House in ’58, and went on the Board of 

Trustees in ’59 or ’60 because of my interest in the university. Dr. [Robert] Sumwalt was 

acting president at that time. It wasn’t very long before [Governor] Fritz [Hollings] 

brought in Dr. [Thomas F.] Jones. 

Duffy: You were on the Board when Jones came in? 

Saleeby: Yes. 

Duffy: You want to talk about the Board? 

Saleeby: It was rather amazing. Dr. Sumwalt was doing a pretty good job. But 

Fritz, because of his tough race, I guess, against Olin D. [Johnston], was determined to 

get that job filled, and he brought Jones in. Jones was there during the building of the 

physical plant of the present-day university. He brought in the people that helped build 

the coliseum and other facilities. Poor Sol Blatt, Jr., was always blamed for running the 

university, but really Mr. Rut[ledge] Osborne was such a tough character. He was always 

able to stay out of the paper, but Rut ran the university. Poor Sol was always voted 

down. There were some pretty tough times with Mr. Osborne having been there so long. 

Any time something went wrong, the papers blamed it on Sol, Jr. At the university, we 

had this conflict, at that time, with the legislature. We didn’t have a lot of support in the 

legislature in those days. We created the USC Educational Foundation, to divert 

contributions to the foundation so that we could buy property. When we finally got 

money from the state, we would sell the property to the university, and put the money 

back in, and buy more property. Without that scheme, we would have been in pretty bad 

shape, as far as property is concerned, waiting for the state to appropriate the money at 

the appropriate time. They just wouldn’t do it. Those were some things that Jones set up. 

On the athletic committee, when [Coach Marvin] Bass left the football team, the 

board stayed there all day one day. The board voted to bring in the head football coach at


Duke as athletic director. That was in executive session. Sol and I held out all day, and 

finally Sol capitulated to Mr. Rut. I stayed in Columbia most of that night, calling board 

members, and telling them the reaction that the Carolina fans were going to have to such 

a sudden appointment from Duke. Back then, we probably hated Duke worse than we 

did Clemson. I got a big majority to change their vote. I called Tom Jones early the next 

morning. He was having a press announcement at ten. I called, and Mrs. Jones said he 

was in the shower. I said, “You better get him out of the shower so I can talk to him.” 

[laughter] She got him out of the shower, and I told him what I had done. I said, “Tom, 

the thing you don’t understand is, you may make that announcement this morning, but if 

you do, the public will demand your job. You’re gone.” He said, “Ed, I won’t drop the 

ball.” At ten o’clock that morning, he sent that fellow back to Durham. I knew Paul 

Dietzel would come, and I told the board Dietzel would come. I had learned that from 

Frank McGuire. That’s how we got Dietzel. That was a sad story in the end. [laughter] 

It was a losing proposition, and probably a mistake, looking back on it. 

Duffy: What was your opinion of Jones? 

Saleeby: I was very fond of Jones, except he—unfortunately, and I don’t blame 

him—couldn’t take the harassment of the legislature. He hated to go there to make a 

presentation. Here’s a big brainy fellow here having to deal with somebody, back in 

those days, that probably hadn’t finished grammar school. [laughter] They’d be giving 

him hell about an appropriation, and didn’t know what in the world they were talking 

about. He just couldn’t take that. I proposed, and we got, a legislative person. I 

recommended Jerry Beasley. They didn’t know Jerry, and they said I was crazy, and that 

wouldn’t work. I said, “You’ve got to get somebody over there.” It was no secret. Dr. 

Jones didn’t like that part of the job. They turned my suggestion down. I had Jerry to 

come down from Congressman Bryan Dorn's office. Jerry was born in Lamar, and I had 

known Jerry since he was a child. I got Jerry to go around and see Sol and all the 

trustees. The next meeting, we voted to employ Jerry. We paid Jerry six months out of 

the foundation, and paid him six months out of the university budget. Jerry was, in my 

opinion, very successful in helping us get our image turned around, at least as far as the


legislature was concerned, helping us get through the budget without a constant battle. 

He did a good job for us, I think. 

Duffy: Did you have any association with Dr. [William H.] Patterson? 

Saleeby: Yes. I was on the board during that gap. I was very fond of Dr. Patterson. 

I thought Dr. Patterson made us an outstanding president. I really thought we should 

have kept Dr. Patterson on a little longer, rather than just as acting president. I thought 

we should have made him permanent president. I thought he was just a fantastic fellow. 

A lot of you faculty people may not have felt as I feel, because I was dealing with him 

just as a board member. He was just a regular fellow to deal with, in my opinion. 

Duffy: Did he ever have a role with the legislature? 

Saleeby: I don’t honestly recall that he was ever a controversial figure with the 

legislature. He kind of had the ability to get along with everybody, and I thought the 

faculty, too. I think sometimes, he capitulated too much to the faculty, particularly in that 

law school instance I went through with Ed, Jr. He was a good friend of yours, too. You 

were very kind to him. We proved at the confidential hearing in 1975 that a professor 

had coded ten files. “WC” was the code, if recommended by the president, and that was 

Dr. Patterson. He’s not the one who coded it, but if he recommended a student, it was 

coded “WC”. Some students happened to see this particular professor in the file room 

with these ten files out, and with their names on them. There was a telephone conference 

on the final grades of all the students, and each list of names that went out, the ten names 

had a dot by their names. We showed that. Ed, Jr., for instance, made a B-plus on 

domestic relations two weeks before the final exam. On the final exam, he went from a 

B-plus, in order to keep him out, to a D. Later on, he took the course, and had the highest 

scores in domestic relations. I was a little upset, although I’m over all that now, that the 

Bar just wouldn’t accept the fact that those papers were coded, and the names were 

coded. It put so much pressure on Patterson, he finally gave up, and I finally said the hell


with it too. Why disturb the whole world about the thing? But it took me a while to get 

over people not standing up to that kind of thing. 

Duffy: You served on the Board in a period of tremendous growth, and also 

tremendous conflict. Do you have any reaction, as a trustee, to the riots, and all that kind 

of thing? 

Saleeby: The day they had the big riot, there was an executive committee meeting. 

I was entrapped in the building like Sol and some of the others were. I’m trying to think 

of some of the student leaders. Was Tom Turnipseed one of the leaders of that thing 

then? 

Duffy: No, Tom wasn’t. But there was Brett Bursey. 

Saleeby: Brett Bursey was one. We were pretty harsh later in our actions, I 

thought. The full board met and took some pretty strong actions against some of the 

students. We were going through a pretty tough time with young people. I thought we 

came through it pretty good. I don’t know if that was at the time of the Orangeburg 

massacre, wasn’t that in there too? 

Duffy: This was after. This was in the seventies. 

Saleeby: The early seventies. It was while Bob McNair was governor. The 

university never did have that kind of problem, but we were not that integrated then, 

anyway. 

Duffy: Were you there when they integrated the university? 

Saleeby: What year was that? 

Duffy: ’64, if I’m not mistaken. [September, 1963]


Saleeby: I was there. 

Duffy: What was the background on that? 

Saleeby: We just didn’t have a problem. We never had a problem with integration 

at the university, as they almost had at Clemson, as they had at South Carolina State, or 

as they had at a lot of the other southern universities, at Alabama and Arkansas. I just 

can’t remember the details, exactly why we didn’t have the problem, but we didn’t. We 

didn’t have any violence. I mean, we had the student sit-ins, and that kind of stuff, but I 

don’t think that was racially oriented. 

Duffy: Let’s go on to the Senate, when you decided to run for the Senate. 

Saleeby: I had somewhat of an understanding with Spot Mozingo. I had always 

supported Spot. I worked in 

his office for three months, 

February, March, and April 

of ’49, when I finished 

school. He and I had always 

had an understanding. I 

would be in Hartsville, we 

were friends. Hartsville’s 

still a small town, and I knew everyone in Hartsville. I don’t know how we reached this 

understanding, but we did. We would just not oppose firms as far as taking cases against 

one another. He had primarily a plaintiffs’ practice, and I was going to develop primarily 

a claimant’s practice. But back then, that just wasn’t that much of a practice. The 

corporate interests were already represented. Like in Hartsville, one law firm represented 

all the corporations. In Darlington, one law firm. So there was really no room for 

anyone to establish a business law firm in a rural county. That went on for many, many 

years. We did not oppose one another in any lawsuit. As he got older, I think he


probably got a little selfish. He started representing Carolina Power & Light. By the 

way, that corporation is our largest taxpayer now, and they are friends of mine now. He 

started representing CP&L in rate cases. I thought that was not quite right to represent 

utilities before the public service commission. That didn’t represent the public's interest. 

Then, what really got me was that he started representing CP&L in the condemnation 

cases, when we were building Lake Robinson up here. I was representing land owners. 

In the case of Copeland v. CP&L. . . . . 


Saleeby: In that particular case, they had offered a certain amount. By that time, 

[Lee] Chandler and [Benny] Greer had recently broken off from the Mozingo firm. 

That’s former, and now retired, Judge Lee Chandler. They didn’t want to handle the case 

against Spot in a trial, having been with him so long. They asked me if I would handle it, 

and I said, “I’m sure Spot will settle it.” We went over to the clerks’ jury, and I was real 

surprised. I said, “Spot, what are we going to settle the case for?” He said, “I’m not 

going to pay anything. You want too damn much money.” [laughter] We went out and 

tried the case, and I’m still thinking all the time he’s going to settle the case. We tried the 

case, and the jury gave me about three times what Spot had offered. Spot filed a notice of 

intention to appeal. Then you had to go from the clerks’ jury, common pleas jury, and 

then the Supreme Court. He appealed, and I appealed. That gave me the closing 

argument. We tried it, still thinking we were going to settle it. We tried it before a 

circuit court, and I got an even larger award. I said, “Spot, are you going to pay me, and 

I’ll take a little bit less?” He said, “Hell, no.” So we got to the Supreme Court. 

We argued the case in the Supreme Court. I went to speak to the justices. We 

went back to their room, where they all meet afterwards. Most lawyers go back and 

speak to them. Spot and Justice [Woodrow] Lewis were in the men’s room speaking 

privately. It did just make me suspicious that they were going to reverse the case for 

political reasons. About three or four months after that, there was another case that John


Ralph Gasque had. The decision was handed down some months later. The facts were 

almost identical to my facts involving a condemnation case that Senator Gasque had 

handled in Marion County v. CP&L. I don’t remember the plaintiff’s name, but it was a 

CP&L case. In that case, for the first time, the court started discussing the qualifications 

of the expert testimony, as to value. I thought it was right unique in the way they got 

around some existing law, the way they were talking about the law, and saying that the 

witnesses presented by Gasque in his case were competent to testify as experts, and 

therefore the verdict was proper. They let the jury verdict stand. That case was just what 

was worded in such a way as to. . . . . 

It really made me suspicious that that case was designed to help Ralph Gasque 

sustain his case. He was a powerful senator then. Sure enough, a couple months later, 

our case came down, reversing Copeland v. CP&L. It was reversed on the basis that 

eyewitnesses were not qualified. I realized then what had happened. I think it was really 

just politics. That made me decide to run against Spot Mozingo. [laughter] As long as 

we had been friends, that he could use the courts to his advantage. I just felt that 

something needed to be done. That’s when we started drifting apart. That’s when I 

decided to run. When the time came to file, much to his surprise, I know, I filed. 

It was a bad, bad campaign. I beat Spot by about seven hundred and fifty votes. 

We were using paper ballots, and I didn’t want anybody to. . . . see, back then, you 

wouldn’t even know if a worker, overzealous, would steal a vote for you. He just 

counted your name, when it should be another name. I told my workers I had to have a 

perfect race in order to win this thing and not have any problems. We had two watchers 

at most every precinct, except one precinct. At the Swiss Creek precinct, it was really 

going my way. He got a hundred and thirty-eight votes, and I got eighty-six votes. That 

was the first count. The watcher I had out there, a Mr. Yarborough, came in that night. 

He said, “Everything was going your way, and they just stopped counting. They called 

Judge Lewis.” He was later Chief Justice. They called Judge Lewis to help them count. 

They divided the votes into two tables. He said, “I’d be at table number one, and it 

would be Saleeby, Saleeby, Saleeby, and Mozingo, and over there, it would be Mozingo, 

Mozingo, Mozingo. I’d run over there, and it would change and be Saleeby, Saleeby, 

Saleeby. I know what they were doing, but I was by myself, and you didn’t have


anybody else out there.” So we lost the box. He said, “You didn’t lose all those votes.” 

By the way, the recount, I picked up forty-four votes out of a little over two hundred. 

That was the only box in the county in the recount to have a substantial change. I still 

had a majority, it just increased my majority. 

Spot was so mad about the thing. He appealed, and we had two different 

hearings. Ross Anderson, who is now a federal judge in Greenville, and Kermit King, 

both young lawyers, represented me at the hearings. Both times it was favorable. The 

second hearing, we were not in there when they voted, but forty-five members voted to 

sustain the election results. Only one didn’t. That one, I later learned, who was also a 

good friend of mine, was Jim Waddell, who is still living in Columbia. I served many 

years with him in the Senate before he retired. He was so close to Spot. 

Spot had called around. Most of these people he knew because he had been in the 

state Senate so long. Edgar Brown was on the state Democratic Party executive 

committee then. As he was coming out of the meeting, he was talking to a friend, who 

later told me what he said. He said, “You know, I told Spot, I can steal fifteen, twenty, 

twenty-five, or thirty or forty votes for you, but there ain’t no damn way in the world I 

can steal seven hundred and fifty votes.” So there was Edgar Brown having to vote 

against his old friend, Spot. [laughter] 

Duffy: This was the executive committee of the Democratic Party? 

Saleeby: Yes. That was still before the two-party system. The first time I met 

Edgar Brown, we were somewhere in the state complex. He had not been there, and he 

very seldom came. He was kind of like Spot for a while. Spot introduced me to Senator 

Brown. He said, “I’m so happy to meet you, son. You know Spot and the other boys up 

here, they’re just waiting for me to die, so they can take over. But I’m not going to die. 

I’m just going to ugly away. I’m going to stay here as long as they’re here.” I never will 

forget that. [laughter] He finally, health-wise, had to retire. Then he got killed in an 

automobile accident.


Duffy: How has the leadership changed since then? He was pretty much the boss, 

wasn’t he? 

Saleeby: Whatever Edgar wanted, Edgar got, I guess is the best way to say it. 

[laughter] It’s rather amazing that being chairman of the Finance Committee, and he’s 

probably the only one in my lifetime that would have had that much power being 

chairman of the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee, even though Spot was 

probably smarter, he was just so much smarter than most members of the Senate. They 

did what he wanted them to do. For instance, he was a big Clemson man, and Clemson 

was smart. They made him a life trustee. [laughter] It didn’t matter what we needed at 

Carolina in those days. If we needed four million for some very worthwhile project, 

when it got to the Senate, he would put in four million dollars for Clemson. It may be for 

a damn cow barn. Dollar for dollar. Small school, big school. State university, 

agriculture school. [laughter] He always made the state appropriate the same dollars, 

which was pretty tough on us. 

Duffy: So you served in the House under Blatt? 

Saleeby: I was in the House when Sol Blatt was Speaker. 

Duffy: How would you compare those two leaders, and how did they get along, in 

your opinion? 

Saleeby: As long as it was something for Barnwell, they would help them jointly, 

but they did not get along that well. Sol was a big University [of South Carolina] man. 

[laughter] Everything he could do for the university, he would do. That’s when Edgar 

would come back and match him dollar for dollar, for no reason. You had to give 

Clemson whatever Carolina got, just because Edgar Brown was a life trustee at Clemson. 

He just wouldn’t let you appropriate money based solely on need. They had competing 

law firms. They did not get along the last ten or fifteen years that they lived. They didn’t 

get along like people thought they did, although they were still called the Barnwell Ring.


The breakup of the Barnwell Ring happened for other reasons. But it was just 

personalities. Their sons both started practicing law. Edgar’s daughter married Dick 

Jefferies’ son, and they had competing law firms. That created conflicts way back 

amongst the children, Sol, Jr., and Dick Jefferies. That’s when the families started 

drifting apart, although Sol, Jr., was a very good member of the university board. It was 

just bad that the newspapers always blamed Sol for everything that went wrong in 

athletics when, really, Mr. Rut had total control of that board, except for me, and Sol, Jr., 

and maybe we finally started pulling one or two others off. Mr. Rut would control the 

executive committee. They really, when they got together, made the decisions. That’s 

what the majority of the board did. He really ran that board. I know he loved the 

university, but sometimes he was just pretty stubborn in his positions. 

Duffy: Has anybody else been able to put that kind of leadership and control 

together? 

Saleeby: At the university? 

Duffy: No. In the Senate. 

Saleeby: No. You have now what you might call a group. In particular, since you 

have the two-party system, your control now really, since we have a slight majority, rests 

in the Democratic caucus. That’s made up of all the Democratic senators. We meet 

every two weeks and pretty well decide. We’re not locked into this, now, you can go 

your own way. But we pretty well decide what we’re going to do, and what we’re not 

going to do. We pretty well decided a year or so ago that we were going to beat David 

Beasley, for instance. To the man, except for Verne Smith, to the man, we all went out, 

for the first time in my memory. We organized and raised money, and participated 

locally just as if we were running. We organized each county we could organize. We 

had a fair amount of Republican help. A pretty good bit of Republican help that felt like 

we needed a change. In my county, a lot of people were upset with me because I was for 

[James] Hodges, but the state’s so much better off with someone who is competent such


as Jim Hodges. He’s a very competent individual. Much more competent than David. 

David was probably a little immature for the particular position. If you didn’t do certain 

things he wanted you to do, gosh, it was vicious. They’d just take it out on you. For 

instance, here I am, the third ranking senator in South Carolina. I did not go to his office 

the last two and a half years, or more, that he was in office. 

Duffy: Can you give me a kind of a thumbnail sketch of the various governors 

you served under? 

Saleeby: I started with James Byrnes. James Byrnes was such a statesman. You 

would have to say he was a great man. I voted for Tom Pope. But I was a young fellow. 

I didn’t realize that The State newspaper really controlled politics back then, and they 

endorsed Byrnes. All the older business people did. He was a very good governor 

because if he wanted something. . . . for instance, when [Strom] Thurmond went out, 

before I went in and Byrnes went in, they had an awful debate about the three-cent sales 

tax. Thurmond wouldn’t take a firm position because of politics. It just did not pass. 

Byrnes came in, and bam, the first year, he said, “We’ve got to do something about the 

schools.” Of course, he was doing it on the basis that separate but equal facilities might 

still be constitutional. Up until the South Carolina 

decision, that was the old law. If you had just gone by 

the decisions, you would have said, well, Byrnes is right. 

He was a former Supreme Court member. We got the 

sales tax through on that basis, with Byrnes’ leadership. 

We would have eventually had to do it, but we wouldn’t 

have done it when we did without Byrnes. He was very 

influential. 

George Bell Timmerman, Jr., was a real nice 

fellow, but he just didn’t have the influence that Byrnes 

had. Fritz Hollings, as you know, was a very competent 

governor, and got the tech centers going. I was for 

[Donald S.] Russell the first time that he ran, I guess because he was such a big university


man. Also, he helped so many people. Fritz finally forgave me for that. My brother 

Thad was for Fritz, and I was for Russell. Here we were running in the county, and Thad 

was still in the House, and when Thad beat me, and Fritz carried Darlington County, a lot 

of people kidded me about that. [laughter] Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Thad was 

really popular, and he was really strong for Fritz. 

When Russell appointed himself to the Senate, [Robert E.] Bob McNair came in, 

and I was out. I felt like Albert Watson was going to beat Bob, until Albert made that 

statement. We really needed a four-cent sales tax, but at the time, Albert just made it too 

soon, at some convention at the beach. Bob just played that tape the last two weeks, and 

that enabled Bob to beat Albert Watson. Bob was a very good governor, a very good 

administrator. He’s proven that to the world with his law firm. He went from a little 

country lawyer to a multimillion dollar law firm. He was able to serve six years as 

opposed to four years back then, because of having gone in during the middle of a term. 

When I went back to the Senate, John West still had two years to go. John was a pretty 

good governor. John and I are still good friends. At the time I ran John had every state 

agency from SLED to the Labor Department, and you name it, in Darlington County, 

trying to defeat me. I got over that. 

Duffy: Edwards. What was your reaction to what happened to the Democratic 

Party then? [The election of James B. Edwards as governor in 1974] 

Saleeby: I was not for Pug [Charles “Pug” Ravenel]. I supported Bryan Dorn. He 

beat Bryan Dorn. I had actually met with Pug, and we were having a supper for him here 

during that little interval. I said, “Pug, I’m just concerned about what the court may do.” 

Pug had gotten a local court to rule that he met the qualifications of residency, that he 

was actually qualified to vote and run in South Carolina. He didn’t appeal that case. 

That decision that allowed him to run in the first instance just stayed at the circuit court 

level. He didn’t take it on to the Supreme Court at that time. I don’t remember who the 

moving party was, but someone immediately took that case to the South Carolina 

Supreme Court.


Duffy: A fellow named Ben Dekle [and Milton J. Dukes]. 

Saleeby: I was scared, because Judge Lewis, in my opinion, had already started 

showing his Republican tendencies. He didn’t like blacks, and Pug was pretty liberal. 

Isn’t it amazing how a fellow like Pug could appear liberal, could just capture so many 

votes in South Carolina? He got everybody, from the working man, blacks and whites, 

the wealthy, broad, broad support. When Judge Lewis bumped him out, I felt we were in 

trouble to go back with Bryan, since he had not been nominated by the people. I tried to 

help Brantley [Harvey]. If Brantley had stayed another race or two. . . . maybe Brantley 

would have had a chance to win that race. When Brantley was not named by the state 

convention, then I thought it was going 

to be pretty tough. 

Jim Edwards 

was a nice fellow. Jim and I were desk 

James B. Edwards good governor, as opposed 

to maybe later Republican 

governors 

being more party-oriented. 

Duffy: 

Jim’s successor was Dick Riley. 

mates during the brief time he came to the Senate, and 

I liked Jim. But the resentment to the Supreme 

Court’s decision of denying Pug the right to run was 

just so tremendous, it elected Jim Edwards. He was a 

good administrator, and knew how to get along with 

us, Democrats and Republicans. We all, frankly, were 

very fond of Jim Edwards. The party label really 

didn’t have any bearing on government at that time. 

The four years he was there, he didn’t play politics. 

He did what he thought, he would consult with his 

friends, what he thought was best. I think he was a 

Saleeby: 

Probably one of the best governors we ever had. Dick was just a hard 

worker, and competent and smart. He headed the state in the right direction, particularly 

on education. That’s when we had the constitutional change pretty early on. . . .



Saleeby: I voted to let governors run for two terms during Dick’s first two years, so 

that 

that could be ratified by us, so that when Dick was up again he could run. We had a 

good 

eight years, particularly in education. [Carroll] Campbell got by as an education 

governor. It always amazed me that people refer to him as the educational governor. 

What Campbell would do, he’d say, “I’m for the teachers getting, say, a three percent 

raise,” up here. But under here, he would take three percent away from the universities 

and higher education. His crowd, frankly, were not for education or improving the 

system, although he’s known for that. I could just see up there, but you couldn’t do 

anything about it. Every time you picked up The State newspaper, they were talking 

about what a great thing he was doing for education. They wouldn’t talk about where he 

was cutting them under here. [laughter] 

David [Beasley] did the same thing, until his last year. His last year, he, I think, 

saw the light, and started supporting some important things in the field of education. I 

think he waited too late by then. It’s the 

first time I’ve ever seen a coalition of state 

employees, teachers, retired teachers, retired state employees, highway patrolmen, county 

employees, city employees, basic government people. Lexington County has always 

been heavily Republican, because so many state employees live over there. They 

generally have been Republicans. This time, for the first time, most of those people 

voted the Democratic ticket. They realized that for the four years they had all suffered 

under Beasley. He would submit a budget, and never recommend an increase for state 

employees, in spite of inflation. We [the General Assembly] had to do it. So he lost a lot 

of support. 

Duffy: By the time of Campbell, we had full-time, two-party politics. There was 

a lot of shifting 

back and forth. You did not shift.


Saleeby: No, I didn’t. 

Duffy: 

Why did you remain steadfast when so many. . . . 

Saleeby: 

Some of the candidates that I’ve talked to about why they shifted, the 

usual res ponse is…for instance in Greenville. A fellow will be honest 

with you and say, 

“ You know, that’s Bob Jones territory.” They’re ultra-conservative, right-wing. If you 

are a Democrat up there, they will label you with the national policies about integration 

or intermarriage, or whatever it might be. They will go out en masse. They had 

organized probably fifteen, twenty years ago. They had databases and computers. In 

elections, they just had it so organized before we knew how to organize people like that. 

The people they voted for were usually Bob Jones people. Eventually, they just got them 

to change parties. Every member of the Greenville delegation, except one black in the 

Senate, is Republican. It’s such a right group, their voters just will not vote for a 

Democrat. 

I think it’s mainly because of racial feelings. We’re going to have a meeting 

Tuesday at two o’clock to name the new insurance director [Ernie Csiszar]. He’s just 

gotten his citizenship 

papers. Some people in the upstate, I’ve heard them make 

comments. We’ll have a meeting Tuesday and try to get him reported out for 

confirmation. They say, “Oh, you’ve got a foreigner coming up.” I went through that as 

a kid, a little bit. I’m half-Lebanese. Back when I was a child, you didn’t notice that 

discrimination amongst the children you were in school with, but you could feel it a little 

bit when you got older. A lot of that has changed in Darlington County. I may get beat if 

I run again, but no one has ever received a higher percentage of votes than I have 

received, I don’t think, in the history of politics in this county. When I first ran I was 

opposed by the Ku Klux Klan, and called “the nigger candidate,” and stuff like that. 

Obviously that was not a majority of the people. I led the ticket. 

Duffy: The Pee Dee area was not significantly Republican for David Beasley.


Saleeby: That’s true. The Pee Dee has basically always been Democratic. 

always 

had more blacks that have stuck with the party. [Marion Hardy] Kinon lost his 

seat because he switched parties. That’s a heavy black county. My district is about 

thirty-five percent minority. It makes it pretty hard to win a race on the Republican 

ticket. 

I don’t think that ever entered my mind. I never thought about changing. It 

would be 

pretty hard for a Republican to win. We just elected our first member, by 

sixteen votes, to the House in my Senate district. It’d be pretty hard to elect a Republican 

with the stuff that has gone on in the State House. Like last year, the Supreme Court had 

already repealed the employment law that you had to give preference, in effect, to 

minorities. The House just passed the same bill, just to offend the blacks. They didn’t 

need to do it. In the House Judiciary Committee, no one ever asked that the bill be put on 

the agenda. They just did that to anger the blacks. That was an attitude that Beasley 

permitted, although I don’t know that he personally…well, at one time, he didn’t feel that 

way. 

People didn’t believe me when I said he was going to run for governor. They 

said, “No, 

he’s just living in the upstate and getting ready to run for lieutenant governor.” 

He switched parties and he developed all this. He was going to run for governor, he was 

going to get that Bob Jones crowd. He went up there for three months and lived, he and 

his wife and baby. He got the Bob Jones crowd. Then we made some bad mistakes. Joe 

Riley got mad. John Land got mad. They were together, you know. I was for Nick 

[Theodore]. I said, “Look here boys, we’ve got to get together or we’re going to lose the 

race.” They wouldn’t help us in the run-off. We lost a fair amount of the minority vote. 

In fact, the minority vote elected David Beasley in the lower part of the state. He must 

have realized it, then forgot it. He wouldn’t have been elected without the black vote he 

got because of people being upset with Joe Riley having lost. He just did lose, you know. 

Joe would have beaten David Beasley soundly. Joe would have beaten him this 

time, soundly. What shocked everyone was that Jim Hodges beat him. Everyone knew 

that David was vulnerable to not being re-elected because of the way he had offended 

everybody. That boy who was his chief of staff from Greenville [Will McCain], his chief 

of staff offended everyone. The reason I stopped going down there, the last time I was 

It’s


there twenty minutes. They kept telling me he was busy with staff. I said, “Well, I’ll see 

him later.” It was something important I needed to let him know, and I never went back. 

He called me maybe a year later and apologized. There has always been a rule with the 

other governors that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, while we were in session, that those 

two days were set aside for the legislature. If we had a problem, or if he needed to know 

about something, just call up, and they’d tell you exactly when to come down. They 

didn’t take outside appointments on those two days. It was hard for us to get in to see 

Beasley on Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Duffy: When you got to the legislature, 

you had virtually no kind of staff support. 

Saleeby: None. 

Duffy: How did that 

change over the years? 

Saleeby: I wonder now how we…Maybe because 

we were smaller, we didn’t need 

as 

much staff. We didn’t have any staff. When I went to the Senate, Gressette was kind 

enough to tell all eighteen of us—there were seventeen others on the Judiciary 

Committee, he had one big room off the chamber. He said, “Boys, if you need any help, 

these two ladies are over here, y’all just come over.” [laughter] That was the only staff 

we had. Off the Senate chamber we had two ladies who would do our letters. That was 

our staff. [laughter] When we first built the Gressette Building to have staff, I said, 

“This is going to be a terrible thing. I don’t think the public will accept this.” But after it 

was done, I realized how wrong I was. Everybody that came over to visit the Gressette 

Building liked it, and [they] were impressed and seemed to appreciate that we had staff 

that could greet them and handle their problems, and be more responsive. While it’s been 

expensive, it’s probably. . . The bad thing is it’s made us more full-time senators, when 

we’re not. But the good thing is it’s helped us serve our people better. 

As I’ve gotten older, I have actually reduced my work load. I used to handle most 

bills in Banking and Insurance. Going back for some years, we had 

the Automobile 

Committee and a study committee, and I headed that. I prepared most of the bills that


went through the Banking and Insurance Committee during Marshall’s [Senator Marshall 

Williams] days, when he was chairman, and during John Martin’s days, and Horace 

Smith, they all preceded me. My committee prepared all Banking and Insurance bills. 

Since my heart attack and bypass surgery, I don’t do as much work. I’ve got probably 

one of the best subcommittees. Glenn McConnell, who is a Republican from Charleston, 

is a good friend of mine. Republicans in the Senate, with a few exceptions like Joe 

Wilson, we all work together, regardless of party. He [McConnell] heads up the major 

subcommittee on Banking and Insurance, and handles basically all my insurance 

legislation. That just lets me avoid constant meetings and hearings. When it comes to 

my full committee, all I have to do is have him to give a brief report, and we pass the bill 

out or not. It really has enabled me to probably remain in the Senate. I couldn’t do it if I 

didn't have subcommittees, which I think is good. The Judiciary Committee, we handle 

so much legislation, you have to have subcommittees. The chairman couldn’t possibly 

do it all. It’s all he can do just to head up the committee. Everything on the Judiciary is 

subcommittee work. I take a lot of bills, because they know that I’ll stop a lot of 

legislation. I take a lot of grief from a lot of people. But I just think we pass too much 

legislation. [laughter] When they want something killed, they usually send it to my 

subcommittee. 

Duffy: The Judiciary always had the reputation of being, especially Gressette’s 

committee. . . 

Saleeby: Gressette’s Graveyard. When Marshall was chairman, he said, “I’m going 

to do away with 

the Gressette Graveyard. Everybody’s going to be heard.” He put 

everything 

on the agenda. Can you imagine how much confusion we had? Oh, it was 

awful. When Donald Holland became chairman, he went back to the subcommittee. I 

don’t have that known reputation, but anything that’s bad, he sends to me. I just kill it. I 

don’t have any hearings on it. I really get a lot of pressure. You just can’t imagine the 

stuff we have introduced, and the stuff that comes from the House is just made up of. . . 

Of course, when I served in the House in the early days, you didn’t have single-member 

districts. For instance, Charleston, most every member from Charleston was an attorney.


You may have had one or two members not. Attorneys just knew more about legislation. 

Now, the majority of the House, there are very few attorneys left in the House. You’ve 

got a lot of non-lawyers. Some constituent comes in and says, “You know, I don’t like 

that rooster crowing at night next to me. There ought to be a law that you can’t have 

farm animals within five thousand feet of a house.” They’ll put it in a damn bill. It’s just 

about that damn ridiculous. Thank goodness we kill most legislation. 

Duffy: You, as a legislator, represent this area, but your view of your job is 

statewide. 

Saleeby: Yes. I was the first person on the first reapportionment decision, one-man, 

one-vote, when 

I ran against Spot. Most everybody had a divided county or more than 

one 

county. But Darlington County, at that time, fell right in the middle, where we met 

the one-man, one-vote 

rule, and that was the district. Now it’s Darlington, Lee, part of 

Florence, which is Timmonsville, one precinct in Chesterfield. Next we had Marlboro, 

Hartsville, a little of Chesterfield. 


Saleeby: . . . . We learned, after Spot appealed, that Mr. [Ed] McGowan, who was 

head 

of the labor department in Columbia, and was also chairman of the state Democratic 

Party, 

was going to ask for an order for SLED to seize the boxes and take them to 

Columbia. I called Sol Blatt, Jr., who was then a young judge, in Charleston, and told 

him what was going on and what I thought might happen. He called Pete Strom, who 

was head of SLED then, and ordered him, if he received an order to seize the boxes, to 

bring the boxes to Charleston, and they’d put them under lock and key there, instead of 

Columbia. I sent Jim Herring over, Judge Lewis was in his office, and McGowan came 

in. I said, “Just ask him when he comes in, if he gets the order to let you know, so you 

can call Pete Strom and Sol.” By that time, Pete had called McGowan. He and the Judge


were in a conference for an hour. But they didn’t issue an order, for some reason. They 

backed out, I think because of Sol Blatt’s order to take the boxes to Charleston. The 

reason we watched the truck, we knew we had a ballot box missing. Hartsville voted so 

many people that we had to have a lot of extra boxes to put the votes in. When you got 

through counting, you had them neatly stacked, and you didn’t need all these extra boxes. 

When people took the boxes in, there were some boxes left out that you didn’t need to 

guard. Then the janitor took one of those boxes that didn’t amount to anything. 

Spot made an issue out of the boxes missing. I took about ninety-five percent of 

the vote in Hartsville number one. They were trying to infer that that box was missing. 

All of the ballots were in the other boxes. They were trying to infer that there was 

some 

discrepancy over here, because the box was missing. We later felt that that box was 

given by the janitor ----- ----- worked for Spot when I said the boxes were empty. We 

later saw a SLED agent take a box into his store room here in Hartsville, and we think 

that was the box. They were going to mess up the ballots to confuse the election. We 

followed the truck all the way to Columbia. They took back roads. A logging truck tried 

to cut my people off. [laughter] We followed them all the way to the Town House 

[Hotel in Columbia]. 

My brother Thad kind of ran my campaign. You mentioned Don Fowler’s name. 

This was Don’s first term [Fowler became Chairman of the state Democratic Party in 

1971]. Don was new. I didn’t know Don. I was worried about what the state officials’ 

position might be. Don was pretty straight when the party voted to affirm the election 

results. He stuck with that. Barbara Sylvester did, too. They had their own 

investigation. We spent days over at the state headquarters, where the boxes were. 

They’d let us examine the ballots. I really didn’t know what they were looking for. 

Barbara kind of led up the investigation. I didn’t know at that time the particular printer 

machine had always put a secret mark on the ballot. He would do that on the affidavit, 

and they would put it in a sealed envelope and lock it in a safe. I didn’t know about all 

that. On these ballots, the Mozingo people discovered, looking in the microscopes, there 

were two marks. Some ballots had one mark, and other ballots had a different mark. I 

didn’t even know what they were looking for. They said there was something wrong 

with the ballots. When the shift changed, the first one had a certain mark, and his


affidavit was in the vault, sealed. But when the fellow came on the second shift printing 

ballots, it was his responsibility to put his own secret mark. He put his mark on it. That 

was in the messenger vault, closed up with the affidavit. That’s why we had ballots with 

two different secret marks. I didn’t even know there was a secret mark on the ballot until 

this investigation went on. They didn’t find any irregularities. SLED put some of my 

poll managers, three of them, under a polygraph test. They all passed the polygraph test. 

I don’t remember now whether they claimed we were trying to steal votes. . . . It was just 

a bad time. 

Duffy: What, in your opinion, was some of the major legislation that you were 

interested in, 

and that played a major role in changing South Carolina? 

Saleeby: I think supporting Dick Riley on his additional sales tax for education, but 

a lot of us did that. I think that was our first move towards attempting 

to improve 

education 

in South Carolina. I think eliminating the practice of lawyer-legislators 

representing telephone companies and utility companies before the Public Service 

Commission was another. I ran on that. That was a major part of my campaign against 

Mozingo, that that practice should stop, because it was not in the public’s best interest. 

The public was just getting gouged, and they were paying tremendous fees to certain 

senators to represent them before the commissions. They never lost. Unless you had a 

senator or a prominent House member to represent you, you just didn’t win your rate. I 

don’t know why the public took that so long. I think that was one of the major changes. 

We brought about a number of ethical changes. 

The last bill we passed was probably too restrictive or went too far. It’s like a nocup 

of coffee rule. It’s a little bit ridiculous. The thing that’s concerned me, in spite of 

passing that bill, the lobbyists probably have more influence in the legislature than 

they’ve ever had. When we had Steve Hamm heading up the consumer affairs office, we 

had a good representative. Steve, I think, did a good job of saving the taxpayers a lot of 

money. We haven’t had someone as strong as Steve since then. Now Steve’s become a 

lobbyist, and he’s representing credit life insurance companies and small loan companies. 

They’re just tough to regulate. I really spent more time on automobile insurance than


anything else. I got on the Gasque Committee right before he got in the trouble about the 

housing. I served on that committee when I first went in the Senate, and then he got in 

trouble about the housing sales and purchases, and unfortunately they convicted him. 

That was, in my opinion, all political. I started chairing that committee. I chaired it until 

David Beasley cut it out. 

We just constantly had different legislation going on about automobile insurance. 

I was on the committee when we passed the old law that we finally repealed. That law, at 

the time, was needed, because 

we had a system of assigned risk back then that had just 

gone astray. John West, while this was his third year in office, he asked us to seriously 

consider doing something about automobile insurance. We prepared a bill, but the 

committee went a little bit too far. There were a few states that said you had to offer 

anybody that walked in an office insurance at the same rate based on certain status. We 

were the first state that probably put in also property damage, or what I call collision 

insurance. I voted against that on the subcommittee, knowing that that would just be a 

tremendous cost, such a source of fraud. It could be, and has been. They left that in 

there. 

It still worked out pretty good for a while, until Carroll Campbell came along. 

Carroll ran on the insurance law, and he was going to do something about it. This old


law that we had that was working pretty good, it wasn’t a perfect law, but it wasn’t that 

bad. We had tried to make changes. By that time, the insurance lobbyists were so strong. 

We passed two major reform bills in the Senate that my committee worked on. We took 

a combination of the Virginia law, the Florida law, and the North Carolina law, and put it 

together. I thought it was a pretty good bill. We passed it. They killed it in the House. 

We waited another year. We passed it again, and they killed it in the House. By that 

time, Carroll Campbell ran on the proposition of reducing automobile insurance rates. 

The Republicans drafted a bill amending our law that our committee had passed about the 

second year I was there. That was such a horrible bill. It was a fight, because some of 

my own buddies voted with the House on the proposed recoupment fees. I finally got an 

amendment through to his bill, cutting their proposal on recoupment by fifty percent. But 

even at that, I think Carroll must have realized it was such a bad bill by the time it got to 

him. All I was doing was a salvaging job, because the mood was “Pass a bill for 

Carroll.” When it got to him, he just let it become law, he didn’t sign it. That’s why we 

have these high recoupments, because he permitted it to be put in the statute. 

If you get a speeding ticket over ten, you get four insurance points, which 

means 

you pay four hundred and some dollars per year for three years. It wasn’t just a speeding 

fine, it was twelve hundred dollars people were having to pay. Insurance companies 

really raked up. They did pretty good on this business. [laughter] Then, after we got in 

that jam, we kept trying to change it back some, and of course, they wouldn’t let us 

change it back. Your servicing carriers, like Seibels Bruce, and American Mutual of 

Charleston, and the one that Jack Lindsay formed, they were just making so much 

money. You couldn’t lose, because your recoupment paid you back all your losses. 

When Beasley got elected, he eliminated my automobile subcommittee, trying 

to 

fire Mary Lou Price, who had been with me so many years. She ran the committee. He 

was mad with Mary Lou because she had worked for Nick Theodore’s campaign. His 

people told me they were upset about it, and would try to fire her. I said, “She’s got a 

right to do what she wanted to do.” When he eliminated the committee, which was 

probably a good thing for us, I just formed the special committee I told you about with 

Senator McConnell. I just put Mary Lou on that full time. They rewrote the insurance 

law that you’re now going under. Most good drivers will eventually experience a very


substantial reduction in premiums. The few bad drivers, they’re getting a break right 

now. It’s like this ten percent cap. We passed a good bill, but this girl [Lynn Seithel] 

from Charleston, she was so close to American Mutual that she said she wouldn’t let the 

bill pass in conference, unless we put a ten percent cap on recoupment. That was to keep 

their fees down. That’s probably the only thing wrong we did. That was the only way 

we could get a bill. We may take that cap off some time. It would eliminate recoupment 

in two more years anyway. That’s probably the thing I spent most of my time on, 

insurance legislation of all kinds, automobile being first. 

Second, trying to get credit life insurance rates down. 

When I first took that issue 

up, the commissions on that was something in the area, for some companies, of sixty 

percent. It was just really a raping of the public, mostly poor people, because they get 

small loans, but the banks were doing it too. So we got it cut. We finally got a bill 

through; it’s on the calendar now. We think we’ve got another cut coming, but it’s still 

too damn high. It’s like forty percent or thirty-five percent. The problem is, all your 

small loan people, that’s where they make a lot of side money. Your automobile people 

probably make more money. When you finance a car from, say, Newsome Chevrolet, 

they want to sell you the package and let them handle the financing. They also sell you 

what they call a credit life insurance policy. Their fee will be fifty percent. It’s like 

lawyers who do a lot of title work that I think is wrong. 

Title insurance companies in this state pay anywhere 

from fifty to sixty percent 

commission to attorneys. What has happened is most people have cut their lawyers’ fee 

for handling the title of the transfer of property to where it’s not profitable. But by 

getting fifty percent of the five hundred dollar title insurance fee, that’s two hundred and 

fifty bucks, they do that, but the clients do not know that. We do a little bit of that here 

out of self-defense, because we were paying so much money to other attorneys who 

didn’t have licenses. When I started practicing law, they didn’t pay us anything. We 

would write the lawyers’ title, and they’d send us a reasonable price, and the client would 

pay it. Since then, they’ve gone up pretty high on the premiums; they give the lawyers 

fifty to sixty percent. I think someday the lawyers may be held liable for writing those 

policies, if you have a defective title for a piece of property, and the insurance company 

goes broke. You as an agent having issued a policy, in effect, because you sign it. I


think there’s going to be some crying going on if these companies ever go broke. I 

wanted to do something this time. I put in a bill a few years ago to cut the commissions 

on title insurance. Lord have mercy, all the big firms from Greenville, Charleston, and 

Columbia, the big title boys came down there and raised hell. We almost had a war. 

They killed it. 

I’ve been 

more interested in public interest things that don’t create a lot of 

publicity. But I do try to pass legislation that helps consumers. I’ve done a lot of that. 

That’s been my main concern. At the same time, I’ve also, within reason, tried to do 

things that might be helpful to industry in South Carolina. Sonoco is the life blood of 

Hartsville. If I see something that’s too extreme, I try to make them aware of it, and take 

their position. Now, we’ve got this problem. The Commerce Department apparently has 

convinced DHEC—and they’re friends of mine, I’ve known those boys for years—that 

they should permit any dumping of waste into any river or stream, as long as the waste is 

treated enough that it does not lower the oxygen content of the river. When I saw that 

regulation on the calendar, the thing just excited me. I went around to [Arthur] Ravenel 

and Holly Cork, and all the lowcountry boys that were on rivers, and we got an objection. 

We raised enough hell about it and moved it back to committee. I assumed that was 

going to be the end of it. Now they’ve got another regulation back up again. 

The problem with Cooper River, for instance, is that they’ve already reduced 

the 

oxygen content so damn low now, that it’s a bad river. They want to say, even though 

the oxygen content is low in the Cooper River, we still want to bring some industry in 

that will treat enough that it won’t make it any lower. I think they ought to be going 

back, like Sonoco, which has probably spent over a hundred million dollars over the year, 

cleaning up Black Creek, trying to get rid of pollution. Now Black Creek is pretty clean. 

They used to kill all the fish. I think their move should be toward getting like we have in 

our side of the Pee Dee River. Instead of keeping everything the same, we’ve gotten our 

industry to spend millions and millions of dollars to clean up the Pee Dee River. I think 

you should not stay at the same level just because you’re in bad shape, but to gradually 

clean it up, and raise oxygen levels back to where it was. But that’s a battle that's going 

on now.


Then there’s a battle going on about recreating the so-called Coastal Council. My 

experience when we had the Coastal Council was…it ended up in the Lucas case, a U.S. 

Supreme Court decision saying it was a taking. I agree with them. Waddell was not 

completely truthful with me when the bill was up for discussion. I went over to Waddell 

and said, “How are we going to pay people? Because what you’re doing, you’re 

permitting a taking of property by regulation. But you don’t have any financing here. 

This is going to really create a problem.” He said, “We’re going to put the financing in 

next year.” I said, “Why don’t we go ahead and put in a property tax now, like a 

transferred stamp tax, or figure out some scheme to create a few dollars on every 

transaction, say in the coastal counties? We’ll put that in the part of the regulation that 

takes a piece of property, and just let the Coastal Council, the state, buy it. Then, that 

will become public property, and it will be access to the ocean.” The next year, I said, 

“Waddell, what are we going to do about getting this money up?” He said, “Well, we’ll 

work it out.” Of course, we didn’t ever work it out, and we got stuck, and then we 

abolished the Coastal Council, and that’s what we should do. There were just so many 

things like that that we got involved in. 


Saleeby: In the ’84 reapportionment matter, I was in the minority, in that I did not 

agree with the Senate plan. In ’84, the biggest problem I had, with the first 

reapportionment that I was involved with after going to the Senate and being there ten 

years, was taking Darlington County and putting us in the Fifth District when it was not 

necessary. I was one of two senators. Alex McCaulay, who is now a judge—I think we 

were the only two in the Senate to vote against the Senate-passed plan. It was just a 

matter of a short while before the Supreme Court knocked down that plan. The plan that 

Alex and I supported is what we operated on. People may not realize it, but we operated 

on a court plan the rest of the eighties. Then in the nineties we started again. I had had 

my heart attack and had a pretty tough time, and some bypasses. I guess they just


assumed that I wasn’t going to be there long. They really chopped Darlington County up 

into all kinds of pieces. I raised enough sin about that. . . that ended up in the court, too. 

The first time we ran, Fifth Street, when you came into Hartsville, was in Hugh 

Leatherman’s district. I was against the state Senate plan. The courts again went along 

with us. We did only serve one term with that crazy plan. We finally got some 

compromise, and put Darlington County back together basically. I had to have a little bit 

more, so I took most of Lee County. There have been so many changes. At one time 

they stuck me in Bennettsville, and now I’m out of Bennettsville. Hugh Leatherman’s 

back in Bennettsville. It’s kind of up in the air whether I’m going to retire or not, even 

from the Senate, as well as the law practice. It’s not good politics to be saying it, but I 

just have a little uncertainty, being seventy-one years old, and having gone through my 

heart condition. Someone said, “No, don’t do that, until we get through 

reapportionment.” [laughter] Can you imagine, he wants me to stay in the Senate 

another term, just because reapportionment is coming up? 

Duffy: After the 1990 census, wasn’t there a move on the part of Republicans to 

create some safe Republican districts all around the state? 

Saleeby: Unfortunately, we did let them create some safe districts. We capitulated. 

We in the Senate did not initially do that, as passed by the House. It looked like we were 

not going to get anything through, so we did capitulate on some districts, like Hugh 

Leatherman’s district. Had we left his district as originally proposed, it would have been 

a more Democratic district. That was just one I remember. To avoid a filibuster, we 

gave him kind of what he wanted, and the Justice Department bought it. I think this time, 

with the numbers being so close, with the Republicans having a four-vote majority in the 

House, the mood this time is not to be as concerned about Republican districts, and to try 

and create more Democratic districts. 

The thing that amazes me is that this U.S. Congress caused half their trouble when 

they reapportioned the congressional districts, some years ago. Newt Gingrich was 

almost defeated right before reapportionment. For some reason, the Georgia legislature 

just took all the Republicans in his district and cut out all the Democrats. And it was a


Democrat-controlled state house. Newt was in a district he could not have been re- 

elected in. They gave him a hundred percent safe district. He went on to put his so- 

called theories together with his boys. They were going to change the world. 

The first public speech I heard David Beasley make, I knew that he would be in 

trouble. It was in Columbia, a gathering of the Chamber or something. He said, “I’ve 

just come back from Washington, and my friend Newt. . .” I said, “Oh, my Lord, if he’s 

going down that path, he’s going to be a one term governor.” I didn’t announce that, but 

I said it to myself. The majority of the people of this state did not believe in what Newt 

believed in, in my opinion. He was big on that stuff. He just got carried away with 

people like Newt Gingrich telling him what to do. 

It’s interesting. You’ve got so many districts with black majorities. Had you 

stayed county per county, and you didn’t have one-man, one-vote rule, you would have 

more black senators in this state than you have now. But they didn’t realize that. You 

take somebody like John Land. He represents Clarendon, a piece of Lee, a piece of 

Sumter. No one can beat John Land in that district, although it’s a black district. You 

take the senator from Williamsburg, Yancey McGill. That’s a black district, but as long 

as Yancey McGill wants to be there, he’ll be there, because the blacks all vote for him, as 

well as all the whites. There are a number of counties that would have black senators 

now, if you didn’t have one-man, one-vote rule, where you have popular white senators 

representing those districts. It’s really reduced the number. 

Duffy: You mean if you went back to the old way of each county having. . . ? 

Saleeby: Without the one-man, one-vote rule, you’d have more black representation. 

Duffy: Like Allendale. 

Saleeby: Yeah, Allendale. All those counties around there have a majority black 

vote. Another House member is [Henry] Brown. That’s a majority black district, but 

Brown’s popular enough with the blacks that he can get elected. He really politics.


All these people I have known. I’ve known of Maurice Bessinger ever since the 

integration stuff. It’s amazing. He’s developed a tremendous business, and he was 

probably the leader of the anti-black movement when I was coming along. That's where 

he became famous. 

Rembert Dennis was a very good senator, but he was for Berkeley County. We 

called it the Rembert railroad. He tried to get the state to pay for a railroad down there, 

and we had a big filibuster. He finally backed down, and the company that needed a 

railroad built the spur line, instead of having us build it. Now, probably, with the 

commerce, we’d build it. But back then, we didn’t spend as much money buying 

industry as we do now. We spend millions and millions of dollars a year. 

Jack Lindsay was a very good buddy of mine. He was chairman of the Banking 

and Insurance Committee while I was a member. Jack was very helpful to me. I’ve 

always served on the Judiciary, and you can’t serve on the Judiciary and Finance. Jack’s 

always been on Finance. If I needed something in the Pee Dee, or Hartsville, or 

Darlington, I could always go to Jack. I went to 

Jack and said, “Jack, we need to establish a fire 

academy in South Carolina, to improve the fire 

departments and have more qualified people.” 

He said, “What’s the problem?” I said, 

“Waddell said that I couldn’t do it in the 

appropriations bill.” He said, “The hell with 

Waddell. Have it drawn up and give it to me.” 

[laughter] I gave it to him. Of course, it’s not 

really constitutional. In those days, people 

didn’t question that. So we established a fire 

academy. I gave Jack the amendment. The 

appropriation bill came up, and Jack put it in the 

appropriation bill. That’s how we got the fire 

academy. I had a fellow here who’s very interested James Waddell 

in it. Charlie Dent is dead now, but he’d been a volunteer fireman all his life. He was 

very interested in having a fire academy, and that got me interested in it. Rembert was


kind of sickly then, through one of his accidents. He was still there. Jack and Waddell, 

while Rembert was out, basically ran the Finance Committee. That’s why that got 

through. 

Bubba Ness was one of my close friends. When he had his big race for the court, 

Thad voted for him. I could talk about him a long time and tell you some stories about 

him. We were real close. Matthew Perry, I supported Matthew for either circuit court 

judge or a Supreme Court slot here, when all of the sudden they put him on the federal 

bench. I never did get to vote for him. I’ve always liked him. Ted Riley, that’s Dick’s 

daddy, was a very active person in the Democratic Party, on a statewide basis, and very 

influential in the state conventions. He was a very likable person. Donald Russell was 

probably one of the smartest people we’ve ever had at the university. Brainy. Just smart. 

I really was fond of him. 

When Donald appointed himself to the Senate, for him to be re-elected would be 

making history. I still supported him. People don’t frown on get out the vote money now, 

you do it legally, and there’s nothing improper. You just sign a check, and you put the 

person’s name down, and you pay him to haul votes. Back then, you didn’t have all these 

requirements about filing. People always dealt in cash. I still wonder why we did it, 

when there was no law against it, but we did. Bill Jones recently passed away. He and I 

were in school together. He was a solicitor and in the House. Bill was staying with 

Donald in Columbia, helping him in his re-election campaign at a Columbia hotel. I 

called Bill, and I said, “Bill, I’ve been in this thing a long time, and locally, I’ve got 

people lined up to do the hauling.” I think it was four thousand dollars. I said, “It’s 

going to take four thousand dollars for the county, but now, whatever you do, don’t give 

the money to Spot.” We were still friends then. But don’t give the money to Spot. He 

said, “Okay.” Then I called Bill. “Bill, where’s the money?” He said, “Well, I talked to 

Donald, and Donald said, no, Spot was an old buddy of his, give Spot the money. He’ll 

take it down there.” On the day before the election, I couldn’t find Spot. Election Day, 

Lee Chandler and I, and Dan Beasley, we all went to Spot’s office, and they said Spot 

was out of town. We didn’t see Spot. We couldn’t find the money. Dan Beasley and I 

got five or six people together. We got up four thousand dollars out of our own money. 

We didn’t see Spot until after the ballots closed. We never did see the four thousand


dollars. He took the four thousand dollars. And that is his best friend Donald Russell’s 

money he’s taking. We got beat. I never told Don, but I told Bill Jones, “We had to raise 

four thousand dollars on Election Day, because Spot took off with the money.” Spot had 

gotten pretty greedy. He just would do things. Fritz beat the hell out of us, because the 

people just would not elect someone who was appointing himself. 

Pete Strom, I can tell you an interesting story about Pete. All the senators back 

then, everybody would come to you and say, “I want to be a SLED agent; I want to be a 

wildlife man.” I had someone who was a county deputy sheriff here, and a lot of his 

friends wanted him to become a SLED agent. Pete and I were sitting upstairs—back 

then, we had that little balcony upstairs, where we usually had the hearings. That was our 

Judiciary Committee room. We didn’t have the Gressette Building. I said, “Pete, you’re 

going to be able to put the boy on?” He said, “Ed, are you supporting the governor on the 

sales tax?” [laughter] I said, “You SOB.” I said, “As long as I’ve known you, I’ve 

never known you to be involved in the governor’s position on legislation.” [laughter] He 

kind of tickled me. Until he died, he and I would laugh about the fact that Riley was so 

determined to pass his legislation that he had gone around to all his state agencies and 

said, “Don’t you help a soul unless they agree to vote for the penny sales tax for 

education.” [laughter] I just thought that was one of the more humorous things that I 

experienced with Pete Strom. When I went to the House in 1951, Pete was still single. 

Strom Thurmond, who was going out as governor, had just picked Pete as head of SLED. 

He and I both were single, and we were running around a little bit, and going over to 

Cornell Arms, that was the new skyscraper back then. That was the biggest building in 

Columbia. That’s where all the secretaries stayed, and the single girls, too. Pete’s 

present widow, she was staying there with a lot of girls we knew. So we’d go over there, 

and Pete started dating her, and later married her. That’s how far back Pete and I go, 

back to the fifties. For him to pull that joke on me. [laughter] Anyway, the boy got the 

job. [laughter] I supported the tax for the education program, and the boy got the job. 

Pete and I had a lot of other stories. 

[Begin Tape 3, Side 2]


Saleeby: . . . . representing this individual in a comp case. After I got in the case, 

in talking to the doctor, I knew I couldn’t, at that time, win the case. But the fellow, I 

thought, might be a mental case. We tried the case and lost it. A workers’ 

comp[ensation] case. I talked with the doctor about it again, and he said, “Ed, the boy is 

about to go crazy because he thinks he’s entitled to some money, whether he’s entitled to 

it or not. That may cure him.” The full commission ruled against us. Frankly, that was 

the proper decision, but I thought that would kind of relieve the boy of his anxiety, if the 

full commission explained to him why he wasn’t entitled to an award for the particular 

injury on the job as a result of an in injury sustained in a fight. It was pretty obvious, 

when we developed the evidence, that he was the aggressor. The cases are pretty clear 

that you can’t recover for injuries sustained in those situations. I quit, after no fee and 

taking it to the full commission. The boy went nuts. He went to a psychiatrist, and told 

the psychiatrist he wanted to kill me. The psychiatrist sent me a confidential note, and I 

gave it to Pete. Pete loaned me a pistol. I had never owned a pistol in my life. Pete 

asked the people down here to kind of watch the fellow. 

I kept the pistol for about a year. Then some big stink got going in Columbia 

about somebody getting pistols from SLED, not accounting for pistols. I called Pete, and 

I said, “Look here, buddy. I appreciate the protection, but with all the stink going around 

about missing pistols, I’ve still got this pistol.” It was a thirty-eight. I took it out one 

time, and Jim Cox tried to teach me how to shoot it. He’s a pistol fanatic, my law 

partner. I took the pistol back to Pete and gave it to him, because I didn’t want to worry 

about it. I think that boy finally got all right, although I got a letter two or three years 

after that, saying the boy was still totally disabled, mentally. 

Sol Blatt I got along with reasonably well, not as well as I did his son. Sol, Jr., 

and I are still real close friends. Bryan Dorn, at the time he ran, I think he was tired of 

Congress. I hate to say this, but I don’t know whether he was drinking a little bit too 

much or what, but he just didn’t make the candidate that we needed. Jim Edwards, I take 

responsibility for his being governor, because when he came to the Senate, he sat to my 

right, at the desk next to me. He was so green. He’d have all these crazy bills. He had a 

bill up, so help me, that cut the entire state budget, every item, ten percent. He said, 

“What do you think about this?” I said “Well, you don’t ever want to come back to the


Senate, do you?” He said, “What do you mean?” [laughter] I said, “You can’t cut 

teachers and state employees, and just everybody you can think of, everybody in the 

budget, ten percent.” He said, “You think that would be bad?” I said, “Jim, half of them 

are not making a living now, particularly the low-paid employees. You can’t cut them 

ten percent, too.” He said, “Well, maybe you’re right.” I bet I made him tear up fifty 

damn bills. He was just inexperienced. After he was elected, he and his wife and my 

wife got even closer. There was no partisanship. I stuck with the Democrats. I didn’t 

help him. But anything that I needed, I could go down to his office and, within reason, he 

would accommodate me. It was no matter of Democrat or Republican. Sometimes we’d 

gang up on him. [laughter] I’d get Gressette and Dennis with me if I needed something 

done. [laughter] “How about y’all going downstairs with me?” The three of us would 

go down there, and they would support me on whatever I wanted. With the three of us, 

Jim would go along with it. In particular, he was very supportive of Senator Gressette. 

He and Gressette got along real well. 

I supported Olin Johnston the first time Fritz ran against him. I can’t remember 

why I supported the incumbent and I didn’t support Fritz, but I didn’t. Olin just did beat 

him, then died later on. John West is still a good friend of mine, although he was big, 

big, big for Spot. We got over that. He was a fair governor. [I. De]Quincey Newman 

was the first black senator in our time. He was born about four miles from where my 

mother was born. My mother was a Stokes, out here in Kellytown, and Quincey 

Newman was born in what we called next door Clyde, on the back road to Camden, in 

Darlington County. I knew his family, and he knew a lot of my people and a lot of my 

friends who were up in Clyde. Kay Patterson was the second black senator in our 

modern time. Kay Patterson was born over near Dennisville in Darlington County. So 

the first two black senators came from Darlington County. When they were bringing 

Quincey in to introduce him and swear him in the first day, as he came down the line, I 

shook his hand, and I said, “Reverend Newman, we’re happy to have you.” He said, “We 

now have two senators from Darlington County.” [laughter] I didn’t even think about 

that. 

Hyman Rubin was a very good senator. I think he was very hurt that he got beat. 

He’s too old to do anything about it now, but he was very hurt. They beat him primarily


because he voted not to suspend the senator from Dillon who had been convicted in the 

vote thing with Alan Schafer. They later on got Alan Schafer, too, after the change in 

administration. I liked him. They convicted him primarily because they used Gene 

Carmichael’s cabin when they were having their night before, get out the vote meeting 

with the blacks and the haulers. That’s when you gave them money to haul. That was 

involving a local race, but because there was an uncontested congressional name on the 

ballot, the federal government claimed it gave them jurisdiction. If it’s just strictly a state 

matter, the federal courts have no jurisdiction. They made a federal case out of it. They 

may have passed out money for votes. We didn’t. We just paid people to haul; we didn’t 

pay people to vote. They may have. But I think there’s a lot of politics to that, getting 

Carmichael involved. 

Duffy: He was later re-elected to the Senate. 

Saleeby: Yes. He served one term, after he served a few months in prison. Later 

on, they came back with a new U.S. attorney. He was down in the Islands, and 

swallowed a piece of steak and choked to death. That fellow was pretty fair. He was 

going to cut all that crap. But when Tom Lydon died in the islands, they put in Mark 

Buyck as U.S. attorney, and then politics got back into it. Mark was determined to get 

Alan. Alan had been to the meeting earlier, had been by the cabin before they even 

talked about the money. They were able, under the conspiracy theory, to say that Alan 

was part of it. No question, Alan has always put up the money. They couldn’t prove all 

that, but they made Alan serve time, which almost killed him. That was strictly politics. 

They used the U.S. attorney’s office to get people. Bob Sheheen was a very smart 

individual, but ran the House without the authority that the present House Speaker has. 

We thought he ran it pretty tough and hard. But this new fellow, the House has given 

him the right to name the chairman of all the committees, and to change the committees. 

The Speaker now has even more power than Bob had. 

Someone told me Bob might not run again. Some members like Bob, they just 

will not compromise their positions. Maybe they’re right, I don’t know. Bob is against 

bingo, he’s against poker machines. He’s against the lottery, I assume. I tend to let


people vote on stuff like that. I go by referendums. I don’t play poker machines, but I 

don’t care if other people want to. The only mistake we made about poker machines was 

only getting two hundred million dollars a year out of them. We’ve just made the 

mistake of not getting that revenue. We could put all that into education. That will do 

more than the lottery is going to do, although I support the lottery. That will get us more 

money in a hurry. I’m hoping the Senate’s going to do that, in spite of what the House 

has done. 

[House Clerk] Inez Watson was there when I went to the House, and boy, I’ll tell 

you, she was a terror. [laughter] She ran that House. Even when I was a House member, 

and I was new and young, twenty-two years old, she treated us like children. She’d tell 

us what to do, and what not to do. [laughter] Looking back on it now, it is kind of 

comical. Man, we’d have to go up there and say, “Miss Inez, will you help us do so and 

so?” [laughter] Can you imagine a clerk of the House running the House the way she 

did? Unless you were there, you really can’t. It’s just not done anymore. Even the clerk 

of the Senate, you can’t get by with telling members what they can do, and what they 

cannot do. Unless you were the most senior person in the House, she would tell you what 

to do, and when to do it, and how to do it. She ran it. She was a very unique woman, you 

know. Where can you find a person like Inez Watson now? They don’t make them 

anymore, do they? I always laugh about it. [laughter] Later on, after I quit the House, I 

would hear these other boys complaining about Inez. I thought it was funny, because I 

had gone through the same thing for eight years. This new crop that went in there, she 

was kind of mothering them, too. As time moved on, the membership didn’t like that as 

much, the clerk telling them what to do. I think that was probably why they finally 

elected somebody else. The lady that they elected, she was a pretty strong individual. I 

think that Norma Russell was in the House then too, and Norma was always causing 

trouble back then. What got the then-clerk in trouble was that the House always would 

draw numbers for seating arrangements every two years. The clerk disliked Norma so 

much that she pulled Norma’s number out of the hat, so that Norma’s name didn’t get 

back into the hat until most of the choice seats were taken. [laughter] They finally had to 

get another clerk, and that kind of ended it. That probably was the end of the House 

clerks having a lot of authority. They started selecting different people.


July 19, 1999 


Duffy: Last time, you mentioned the fact that you had an interesting story about 

how Judge Sol Blatt, Jr., got to the court. We’ll start with that, and then we’d like to go 

from there. 

Saleeby: Sol Blatt, Jr., and I became pretty close friends when I went on the 

University Board of Trustees. Sol was on at that time. We became friends. At the same 

time, after a few years, I was serving on what was then the South Carolina Bar Executive 

Committee. Back then, we didn’t have what they call the integrated Bar. It was strictly 

an association, and we were not regulated by statute, but we ran the Bar Association. As 

such, when federal appointments came up, judgeships, they generally got the approval of 

the Executive Committee of the South Carolina Bar. 

In that particular meeting, the two names came up. There happened to be two 

openings, and Bob Chapman was in the running, and so was Sol, Jr. So, the Bar met, and 

my being that close to Sol, I got the Executive Committee to recommend Sol. Of course, 

the Executive Committee recommended Chapman, that I didn’t particularly support, but I 

felt like, between the two, that was a compromise, and we had two judges coming. Over 

a week or so later, I learned that Washington had received word that the Executive 

Committee had not approved Sol, Jr., for an appointment to the federal bench, which 

disturbed me. And when Sol called me, I just told him that just couldn’t be so, because it 

was a unanimous vote. We had approved him. So he asked me would I give him an 

affidavit. I gave him a very detailed affidavit about the meeting and about the approval. 

That was then sent to John Mitchell, who later became infamous for various reasons, but 

who was Attorney General at the time. John Mitchell came down and interviewed Jay 

McKay. Jay admitted to him that he had misspoken when he had said that we had not 

approved him [Blatt], because there had been some old hard feelings because of a big 

railroad case that Sol, Jr., had won some years before against the McKay law firm. He


admitted to John Mitchell, who actually came to Columbia to do a personal investigation, 

that we had, by a unanimous vote, approved Sol. 

That went back to Washington with Thurmond. Thurmond was a big supporter of 

Sol, Jr., but with the Bar turning him down, it was going to cause some difficulty in 

getting Sol approved. But once we got that corrected, Sol was routinely approved, along 

with Chapman. We’re over that. I mean, Jay and I now get along. But for many years, 

that kind of strained our relations, that I had gotten so involved. He was Chairman of the 

Executive Committee. The federal people, naturally, called him, as Chairman, for our 

vote on whether we approved the judges. But that’s been many, many years ago, and Jay 

and I now get along. But for a long time, it put a strain on our relations. 

When I ran against Spot, of course, Sol was on the bench by then. On the night of 

the election, we had our security people, off-duty policemen, to stay in the basement of 

the Clerk’s Office, where they kept all the records and locked the boxes up, around the 

clock. We didn’t want the ballots tampered with. We kept them there. This goes on for 

about a week before you have the state Democratic meeting to confirm 

the election. 

We felt that if Spot’s 

people got hold of the boxes, 

they would tamper with the ballots. That cast some shadow 

on the election. We knew they were trying to do it, because 

we knew there was a vacant, surplus box missing from 

Hartsville Number One, and that they had possession of it. 

They would try to do something, because I carried Hartsville 

Number One, like, four to one. They were going to try to do 

enough to give the state committee reason to call another 

election. 

The weekend before, we received word that the state J.P. “Spot” Mozingo 

party, Ed McGowan was Secretary of the party then, was going to get an order from 

Judge [Woodrow] Lewis releasing the boxes to the state party. So I called Sol and told 

Sol that I had a problem with the possibility of a state order permitting the state party to 

seize the boxes, and I thought it would be to end up tampering with the ballots. He called 

Pete Strom, who was then head of SLED, and would have had to seize the boxes, and


ordered Pete Strom, when and if he received an order, to bring the boxes to Charleston. 

He wanted them under federal jurisdiction. 

I had Jim Herring sitting in the courthouse that Saturday when McGowan came 

over. He spoke to him and said he was just waiting to see what they were going to do. 

He went up and had about an hour’s conference. By that time, he had received a message 

from SLED that if they got such an order, he could not bring the boxes to Columbia. He 

had to take them to Charleston, and they would be under federal jurisdiction. So 

McGowan left without any such order. Then, interestingly, when the state ordered a 

recount, SLED sent a big old panel truck over to carry the boxes over. We had our 

security people to watch all that and follow them. They went the back way to Columbia. 

Some truck pulled out which would have really blocked the road. Our people just went 

out in the field, and went around, followed them all the way to the Town House. The 

boxes were not tampered with. We had the recount that night, and I gained votes. 

That was the end of Sol’s involvement as far as that part of the election’s 

concerned. Don Fowler was coming on the scene then [as a leader in the state 

Democratic Party], and he presided over most of that dispute and recount. We had a 

second recount and of course it came out the same way. The Executive Committee 

voted, they had one per county, and I think it was forty-five to one to confirm my 

election. 

There was another interesting part involving the Judiciary that is something you 

couldn’t do today. The election was scheduled for June. This was right at the time we 

were having our first major reapportionment case. We had never had the question of one 

man, one vote, as far as the state Senate was concerned before. The Senate was working 

on that then and it looked like one of the proposals had Darlington County—we met the 

exact number to be a single-member district. In fact, we were the only county that ended 

up in that particular plan with one senator and one county. Rembert Dennis was a singlemember 

district, but he had Berkeley and another county. That was another reason I was 

more willing to run in Darlington County than in a multi-county race. 

Our race was going pretty good, and we had a big lead on Spot as far our 

amateurish polls were concerned, and Spot knew that. This matter was constantly before 

the court, about whether they were going to approve the districts or not.


Some time before the race, some of Spot’s people came back and said, “Boys, 

don’t worry, we’ve got a thirty-day delay. The courts are going to give us a thirty-day 

delay.” You couldn’t do this today, but, Judge Russell was on the panel, Judge Robert 

Martin was a senior federal judge at the time on the three-man panel, and one other judge. 

So, when I heard that rumor, Judge Russell and I had been such close friends, I called 

Judge Russell, which you can’t do now. You can’t just call a judge and talk to him about 

a case. But back then, frankly, thirty years ago, people were not that concerned about 

judges talking to people about a case, as long as you didn’t do anything dishonest. So I 

called Judge Russell, and I told him what the rumor was, that they were going to just 

grant Spot a thirty-day delay. He said, “Oh, no, Ed, we wouldn’t do that. We wouldn’t 

do that.” Of course, he liked Spot. “We wouldn’t do that. Don’t worry about that.” So I 

felt pretty good. But about three or four days later, Martin’s order comes down. They all 

signed it, a thirty-day delay, and they did not change a single district in South Carolina. I 

mean, there was absolutely no reason for the federal court to grant that order, other than 

to give Spot another thirty days to overcome my lead. 

We had timed our election, and all politics is a question of timing. A lot of it is 

timing and peaking. At that time, we figured we were going to beat Spot [by] about 

twenty-five hundred votes, and we only beat him by seven hundred and fifty votes. 

That’s how damaging that delay was. But what we did to counter it, we had a big 

meeting up at Gus Hoffmeyer’s lake house, and instructed all of our workers to just stop 

campaigning, and to do nothing but register, because that re-opened registration for thirty 

days. So we registered for thirty days all around the rural districts around Hartsville. We 

registered two thousand people in thirty days, and he registered a thousand in the 

Darlington area. That was the difference. Then, when that period ended, the registration 

closed, and we started campaigning again. It was still a hard fight, but we had registered 

enough. Most boxes in Hartsville voted over ninety percent. Some boxes voted ninetyfive 

percent. They all were for me. That was why I was able... Now, I lost Darlington as 

bad if not worse, but we had more votes in Hartsville and the rural areas here, and 

towards Lamar. I basically carried this side of the county and that was enough to beat 

him. He carried all of the African-American votes in Darlington, and I carried them all


here. That kind of neutralized his African-American vote. Then, of course, following 

that, all of those appeals I’m telling you about occurred. 

Maybe you pick up enough [reading] in some of the newspaper clippings to see 

how bitter that race was. It was probably the most bitter race at the time in the state, or 

probably since then. Another thing—and this I wouldn’t want you to publish unless 

maybe my son later on, or daughter ten years from now, approved it. The only box that I 

gained votes in, I had watchers at every precinct, was Swift Creek. Justice Lewis took 

charge of the counting of the votes in that little rural precinct. My watcher out there 

came in that night and said, “Ed, there’s something wrong. They had two tables in that 

little old precinct, and every time I’d go to one table, at the other table you’d lose, so I’d 

run over there, and you’d start losing over there. I couldn’t keep control of it.” But I 

gained votes. 

They were so bitter with me that Spot had convinced them that he had a lot of 

stuff on me, what I can’t imagine. This was back before [President Richard] Nixon was 

doing all the recording. [laughter] But Spot recorded everybody that went in his office, 

forever. But I knew that. He apparently had told Judge Lewis that he had some 

recordings on me that would enable him to disbar me. After Spot died, [Attorney 

General] Dan McLeod spent hours over here listening to tapes. There wasn’t anything 

they could involve me in, and this went on while I was in my first year in the Senate. 

After the first year, when they were still kicking it around, I just had Benny Grier, 

who generally represented me as my attorney if I had any problems, go to Judge Lewis. 

We knew Judge Lewis was coming up to be Chief Justice. I said, “You just go tell him 

that I’ve got the affidavits on the Swift Creek watchers, and I’ll promise him, if he 

doesn’t stop harassing me, he’ll never be Chief Justice.” That ended the Dan McLeod 

episode and Judge Lewis episode, although Judge Lewis never has liked me. He got 

pretty furious with me just because I ran against Spot. Later on, he got to be the great 

Chief Justice in the rules, and got to be so straight about everything. That may cause 

some hard feelings, but, those are the type of things I had to go through. 

Duffy: The two newspapers were heavily involved, the newspaper here and the 

paper over in...?


Saleeby: The Hartsville Messenger supported me a hundred percent. The 

Darlington News and Press was just to the point of being ridiculous, like doing an 

editorial that I killed Spot. 

[Tape stops then restarts after Senator Saleeby attended to some business] 

Duffy: What is your estimate of Mozingo’s overall career? 

Saleeby: Spot had a brilliant mind and could have done so much for Darlington 

County and South Carolina if he had just devoted his time to helping the state and the 

county. But he got greedy. For instance, I-20. If you’ll look at a map of I-20, of course, 

it made a bend at Dillon for Alan Schafer [owner of South of the Border], which you’ve 

heard about. But still, if you take I-20 to Columbia, you should draw a line between 

Hartsville and Darlington. Okay? Spot got together with some of his friends and he 

found out where if I-20 ran that way on this side of Florence... They bought up a lot of 

corners between Florence and, as you take I-20, on. They had a little corporation and 

they went around and bought up properties as close to intersections as they could. Spot 

was more interested in making money off of I-20 property than he was in helping I-20 

come where it should have come, which would have helped Darlington County. 

Hartsville had always been a supporter of his, but he had thought that would help 

Hartsville too much, and it being between Darlington and Florence would help 

Darlington. Well, actually, Florence has just destroyed Darlington, because it’s just so 

much more convenient, if you live in Darlington ten miles away, you just go to Florence 

and do business. So, Florence has really hurt Darlington, where if we had had the 

interstate here, where it should have come, it would have been a boon to Darlington 

County, and it would have also helped the city of Darlington too. It would have naturally 

helped Hartsville. But he got so greedy he let that control him instead of devoting his 

abilities to the state.


He did have a lot of ability and a photographic memory. He was a fantastic 

speaker; he was very much in demand for speaking engagements. I don’t know whether 

his second marriage changed him. I don’t know. He was first married to Katherine 

Lever, who was [the daughter of] Congressman Lever from Lexington County, Frank 

Lever’s daddy, in Lexington. They had three boys. Then he divorced Kathy and married 

Margaret Johnson from Florence. She had married Clator Arrants, who [ran for] 

Lieutenant Governor shortly after they were married, and then ran for something else, 

and got beat. Anyway, Margaret had a lot of influence on him because he had one child 

by Margaret, and I think when he died in 1972, his estate was worth about seven million 

dollars, which was a lot of money back then. It’s a lot of money now, but, I mean, it was 

even more then. He left his three boys about $25,000 each, and left the rest of the estate 

to Margaret and Aladdin [the child born to Mozingo by his second wife] and cut those 

three boys out. It was just hard to believe that a man could do his children that way, but 

he did. 

Duffy: In the state Executive Committee of the Democratic Party, you carried it 

overwhelmingly, is that correct? 

Saleeby: Yes. 

Duffy: As far as you were concerned, the state Executive Committee had done its 

job appropriately and properly? 

Saleeby: Edgar Brown said this to a friend of mine. We couldn’t be present at the 

final vote at the hotel where we were meeting. Edgar Brown voted to affirm my election. 

He said, “Hell, Spot, I can’t steal seven hundred and fifty votes for you. I can steal ten or 

fifteen, or twenty-five or fifty, but you want me to steal seven hundred and fifty votes, 

and I just can’t do that.” The only person that I understand voted for Spot, and he and I 

later became friends, for Spot to call another ridiculous election, was Jim Waddell. They 

were very close. It was forty-five to one.


Duffy: You went on to have a general election. 

Saleeby: Yes. Judge Lewis was so bitter about it that he convinced Vinton Dee 

Lide, who practices in Columbia now, to switch parties. That’s back when your ghost 

candidate could withdraw. That’s gone now. We had a ghost candidate; I think that was 

a fellow by the name of Johnny James in Darlington. He withdrew, and Dee Lide filed. 

Margaret Mozingo financed the bulk of the campaign, and it was a rough campaign. The 

same bitterness carried over. Margaret, even though Spot was dead, campaigned. If I 

would go to a ball field to campaign, she’d be there in opposition, asking people to vote 

against me. It was pretty bad. But luckily, in that particular race, I was able to solidify 

the African-American vote. They offered all kinds of money to try to change it, but I 

beat Dee Lide by 1,500 votes. But it was a very bitter campaign. It was still bitter 

through November. The same old faction just switched [from supporting Mozingo to 

supporting Lide]. We didn’t have a Republican Party then. It was basically the Mozingo 

crowd versus the Saleeby crowd. 

Spot was scheduled to be Chairman of the Finance Committee when I beat him. 

Edgar Brown had announced his retirement. He [Spot] thought that would elect him. It 

was probably good. Spot had gotten so darn peculiar, it was probably good for Spot not 

to take over the finances of South Carolina, you know. He had just gotten a little bit 

greedy. 

Duffy: There was no Republican Party, it was just a bunch of people who...? 

Saleeby: Well, there really wasn’t a Republican Party, but they had filed a ghost 

candidate. Really, at that time, it wasn’t the Republican Party, it was just Mozingo vs. 

Saleeby, and that carried over into the November election. 

Duffy: Did the presidential election have any impact on the Republican vote in 

this area?


Saleeby: It scared the hell out of me. At that time, you had Thurmond in that race, 

and you had Nixon. You had an impressive federal ticket. They kind of ran on that, 

Nixon-Thurmond, vote this ticket. Lide was on that ticket. It cost me some votes, but I 

was able to hold most of my Hartsville people, my routine Democrats, that I came up 

with, as well as the Cokers and the corporate people around here, although they normally 

vote Republican. They had supported me against Spot and they supported me against 

Dee Lide. They had contributed to my campaign and they wouldn’t turn on me. 

Duffy: Have you ever had to run against a Republican since 1972? 

Saleeby: No, I don’t think so. I ran against a Libertarian once. That was nothing. I 

mean, that wasn’t a race. I pretended that I didn’t have opposition. I’ve had Democratic 

opposition twice, I think. 

Duffy: Who were your Democratic opponents? 

Saleeby: The first time was Maxy Redick. He was a former sheriff and a retired 

lieutenant general. At the time he ran against me, though, he was serving on County 

Council. That’s one of the most unpopular things you can serve on, even though it’s 

elected, and then run for another office. They’re never popular. He had done so many 

unpopular things and I was still young enough that I ran a strong campaign. I beat him 

with a fraction under eighty percent of the vote. And he was the strongest opposition that 

I’ve had. This boy that ran last time, from Bishopville. They just ran somebody because 

they wanted somebody from Bishopville, which is kind of ridiculous. But I carried every 

precinct in my district except one. I carried every precinct in Lee County where he was 

from, but he was really not strong opposition. So, I don’t know, as old as I’m getting, if I 

had some younger opposition, I don’t know how well I would do now, frankly. 

[laughter] I would carry the old folks, but I don’t know how I would do with the young 

folks.


Duffy: But you have remained a Democrat. Of course, many people your age 

have changed parties. Why have you remained a Democrat? 

Saleeby: Why have I stayed? We entertained some people Saturday for a girl 

getting married. One fellow came and he said, “Ed, when are you going to switch 

parties?” Well, I was born here, and I came up in pretty hard times. I remember when 

the minimum wage was passed by [Franklin D.] Roosevelt, twenty-five cents. 

Everybody said, “Man, it’s going to break Sonoco [Products] and ruin everybody.” But I 

felt like the policies of the party did more to help the poor and middle class to raise our 

standard of living. In fact, so many people now that came up as Democrats, you’re right, 

are Republicans, because they’ve made so much money, they feel like that’s the social 

thing to do in South Carolina. You’ve still got the black feeling there, and there’s still so 

much prejudice in South Carolina. They feel like the Democratic Party is the party of the 

blacks, and the Republican Party is the party of the whites. I’ve just felt like I should be 

loyal to what I think has been best for the majority of the people, including myself, even 

though if you go by net worth, I really should have probably switched to the Republican 

Party. But that’s never bothered me, and fortunately, it’s never bothered most of my 

friends that are Republicans. Like if Sonoco needs something, you know, I represent 

their interests. But if we need to do something, like we increased the appropriations for 

Medicaid this time. Well, yes, I supported that. I’ll do something for the poor, too. By 

this appropriation we’ve made for Medicaid with the federal match, the dentists will have 

a twelve million dollar fund this year to work on poor children. Now, most of these 

dentists are Republicans, but here we are giving them twelve million dollars between the 

state and the federal match to work on poor children. In fact, the schedule, I learned, is 

really higher than their normal fees. So many of those people have made money and they 

just feel like they’ve got to be [Republicans].... A lot of farmers, not all, have made so 

much money, even though we’re getting to some tough times now, just feel they’ve got to 

be Republicans. I think a lot of that is a racial thing. I don’t see a solution yet... 

[Begin Tape 4, Side 2]


Saleeby: I’ve been a Democrat so long, I’d feel awkward even thinking about 

changing. [laughter] I’ve just never entertained the idea, even though sometimes the 

party may have done some things that a lot of people, such as myself, would have 

changed. But I don’t think it was the party so much. It may have been individual 

members of the party. I just wouldn’t let the actions of some individuals change my 

affiliation. I’ve been a very hard worker for the party. Since I don’t practice much law 

now, I worked three months for Jim Hodges, the last three months of the election. We 

carried the county for Jim Hodges. We should have carried it [by] more than we did, but 

we carried it. David Beasley is from Darlington County. Contrary to what Robert Ford 

says, he’s a friend of mine, he says that they did it all, but really, it was a lot of people 

that elected Jim Hodges. The teachers, for instance. Of course, we did have the African- 

American vote. Law enforcement people, and just any group or factions I can tell you 

about, just went out and voted against David Beasley. I was one of the few that said 

Hodges was going to win, because the anti [-Beasley] vote was just so much greater than 

most people could comprehend. 

Duffy: Beasley was a Democrat... 

Saleeby: If Beasley would have stayed a 

Democrat, and if Nick Theodore had not run for 

the second term as Lieutenant Governor, the deal 

that David Beasley wanted was for Nick to go 

ahead and run for Governor, and that would have 

been against Carroll Campbell, second term. 

Theodore running again for Lieutenant Governor 

upset David, because that’s when David wanted to 

move up, then. David stayed in the House, and 

then he dropped out and started campaigning, 

supposedly for Lieutenant Governor, as a 

David M. Beasley Republican. Arthur Ravenel encouraged him. 

Arthur thought he was going to run, but I knew all along what he was doing, he was


really going to run for Governor. He spent three months in the Greenville area, going to 

all the churches, and all of a sudden, boom, instead of running for Lieutenant Governor 

with Arthur Ravenel on that ticket, he ran for Governor. Carroll Campbell picked him 

up. That, plus some mistakes Nick made... Nick should have been elected, but he just 

kept making mistakes, and that’s what elected Beasley. 

Duffy: [Joe] Riley played a role in that, from Charleston. 

Saleeby: Riley also cost us the election. I mean, there were a lot of factors, Riley 

was one. John Land, who is my buddy and a big Democrat, John Land went with Riley. 

They took a lot of black votes for Beasley. There are other factors, too. That ruling Nick 

made when they had the election for the DSS [Department of Social Services], the fellow 

I voted for, which was kind of the anti- crowd, we won by fifty to fifty-one. Somebody 

raised a point of order that that wasn’t a majority. [laughter] Nick had a recess and we 

came back after lunch and Nick ruled that it was not a majority. Well, by that time, they 

had changed enough votes, they beat our man. He [Theodore] never got over doing that. 

He did that for a group of blacks, then the blacks were not that loyal to him when he ran. 

My crowd who was for the fellow who got beat, they never forgave him. They just never 

would forgive him for that, and he did make a stupid ruling. I don’t know how he figured 

out that some fraction, one over half, wasn’t a majority. [laughter] But that’s what he 

ruled. 

Duffy: Now, we’d like some reaction on your part to some of the people you 

served with. You mentioned [James] Waddell. Would you comment on Waddell’s role 

in the Senate, as you saw it? 

Saleeby: I like Waddell, but Waddell was probably a little bit over his head. For 

instance, on the Coastal Council bill, we were getting the bill up and were debating it. I 

said, “Jim, y’all haven’t provided for compensation.” He said, “What do you mean?” I 

said, “What you’re doing is you’re fixing to pass a bill and you’re going to take property, 

but you haven’t provided financing of the taking of the property.” He said, “Oh, we’ll


take care of that next year.” Well, he just didn’t have enough legal—and most lawyers 

will not run for the legislature any more, but he didn’t have enough legal training to 

understand that you couldn’t pass that Coastal Council bill and just take property without 

compensation, in my opinion. That’s what the Supreme Court ruled later on. I went to 

him the next year, and I said, “How about let’s do, put a tax on this, something to pay for 

property, and just let the state buy it, and we’ll keep the property for public use?” [He 

said,] “Oh, well, we’ll get around to that.” We had to lose that case. That was the 

beginning of the end of the Coastal Council, because Jim just had them with so much 

power, and disregarding people’s rights. That really disappointed me in Jim, that he 

didn’t have enough vision to do that. He just was not as strong a leader as, say, Rembert 

Dennis. Of course, neither one of them were as strong as [Marion] Gressette. Gressette 

was, whether you liked him or not, I mean, he ran the Senate. [Laughter] You wouldn’t 

have had all the crap going on now that we have going on if you had a fellow there like 

him. We just don’t have anybody like Gressette now. You need a pretty strong 

individual, you know? 

Duffy: Who were your strongest allies in the Senate over the years? 

Saleeby: I would say John Land and maybe Tom Moore. I hate to say my strongest 

ally. Glenn McConnell, he’s a Republican and probably my best friend. The other boy 

from Charleston, Republican, Arthur Ravenel. I get along with most. There are only 

four or five members of the Senate that I don’t consider one of my friends, you know. I 

get along with Kay Patterson, John Matthews, Maggie Glover. They are very supportive 

of my positions. 

Duffy: The Senate really never has split along party lines like the House has. 

Saleeby: No, as long as we have people like Glenn McConnell and Ravenel and that 

group of senators, we will not. At the same time, see, we’ve never forced them off 

committees. We’ve stuck with the seniority system regardless of parties. So, you have as 

many Republican chairmen as you do Democratic chairmen. There’s a small group over


there that, if they had a majority, and if they could, such as Hugh Leatherman and the 

Lieutenant Governor [Peeler], if they could, they would go back to seniority based on 

party and I think they’d wipe us all out. But I don’t think they can do it, even if they get 

a majority, unless it’s a big majority, because there are certain senators, like the ones I 

mentioned, Republicans... We’ve all had an understanding over the years that we would 

always honor the system, regardless of party. As you probably have observed, most 

Republicans, we vote together. We don’t fight like the House does. 

Duffy: You mentioned Gressette’s leadership in the Senate. Who would you 

characterize as following Gressette? You said there hadn’t been anybody who has had 

that kind of power since. Is that correct? 

Saleeby: Yes. From what I hear, now I didn’t serve with Edgar Brown. He went 

out the year that I went in. But they tell me that as far as the financing end of South 

Carolina is concerned, that you did what he wanted done. He ran it. If Edgar wanted 

this, you did it. I didn’t have that experience, but, having served under Gressette, he was 

a fair person. People think a lot of bad things about him, but he was a very good person. 

Every time somebody would bring up a garnishee law, he’d deep six it. He would never 

give it a hearing. [Laughter] I appreciated his concern of poor people, even though he 

represented a lot of industrial people, but his concern of poor people was much greater 

than most people realize. He was for the average working people in South Carolina. He 

just had a way that... If you didn’t go along with him, and I didn’t on the congressional 

reapportionment, because they were wrong, and the courts went along with the districts 

that I voted for, eventually. We were close, and most all of us pretty well supported his 

position, because he’d get very upset if you didn’t. 

Duffy: You said a lawyer probably wouldn’t want to run for the legislature today? 

Saleeby: Most lawyers do not because it’s gotten to the point now where attorneys 

cannot make money... The time it takes to serve reduces your practicing time so much 

more now than it did in the old days, that it’s very difficult to make a decent living now.


That’s been bad for the legislature and it’s been bad for South Carolina. See, so many of 

our good lawyers have gone on the bench, I mean so many of our best legislators. That’s 

hurt us. 

[Tape stops, then restarts] 

Saleeby: Back when I started serving in the House, we were about fifty percent 

lawyers. Of course, you didn’t have single-member districts. It just gradually decreased 

in numbers, and now you have probably as many insurance agents in the legislature as 

you do attorneys. [laughter] I laugh at the way people pick on lawyers, but, Lord, if you 

didn’t have some lawyers there.... The non-lawyers sometimes have no idea what they 

are passing. Somebody will say, “Look here. Here’s what’s happened to me. You need 

to pass a law.” They’ll come to Columbia and put in a bill. We just get all kinds of just 

crazy legislation. Of course, most of the stuff comes to the Judiciary [Committee] and 

[its Chairman] Don Holland sends stuff like that to me, and I kill it. I just don’t have a 

hearing on it. It’s just ridiculous. 

Duffy: You mention Don Holland. What has been your relationship with him? 

Saleeby: Don and I served in the House together. When I quit the House, Don went 

to the Senate before I did. He may have come to the House shortly after me. He has one 

term on me or a couple of years on me in the Senate. He was in the House with my 

brother Thad, when I stopped and did not run in ’58. You knew Thad. 

Duffy: Yes. 

Saleeby: Thad was elected and Thad served. I stayed home to practice law to make 

money. I realized then that I could never accumulate the kind of money I wanted to 

accumulate if I stayed in the House. By the time I ran against Spot, I had started creating


a firm, because I also realized that I couldn’t serve in the Senate if I didn’t have a firm. 

But as a new member of the Senate, frankly, you don’t have that much work to do. But 

as you gain seniority, you get on more important committees and subcommittees, it 

becomes more time consuming for the senior senators. In fact, it’s probably more than I 

could do now with my health, except I’ve got, like, Glenn McConnell on my Banking and 

Insurance Committee. Glenn heads a special subcommittee to handle all insurance 

matters. Glenn is chairman of that and he’s relieved me of eighty percent of my work. I 

probably couldn’t do it if I didn’t have that kind of help from people like Glenn 

McConnell and Arthur Ravenel. They all work with me and help me. 

Duffy: Aren’t you on the Judicial Merit Selection Commission? 

Saleeby: Yes. 

Duffy: How does that change the quality of judges? 

Saleeby: Well, the critical thing it has done is make legislators stay out for at least a 

year, so we’re not losing as many legislator-lawyers as we were before. Before, you 

know, if you were a member of the legislature, you kind of automatically got elected. So, 

that’s helped in that respect. In the other respect, we have now four public members. 

Harry Lightsey and Judge Shaw are the two lawyer-related members, and the African- 

American lady from somewhere and an attorney from Sumter are on this, so we have four 

non-legislative members on the Committee, three senators, [and] three House members. 

Having people like Harry Lightsey has made a great difference. Even though he is 

brilliant, he’s not, like a lot of brilliant people, crazy. He’s just got an average thinking 

mind and he’s kind of like a regular fellow, yet he’s got that brain. That’s an unusual 

combination. With Harry there and the other public members.... Like last time, on one 

particular seat, there were a number of candidates. I kind of stayed back on it, because of 

a relationship. But when they got through with the candidate, he didn’t get one vote. It’s 

better in that we have to name no more than three candidates for each seat, regardless of


how many have filed. If ten filed, we only name three. It’s enabled us to probably select 

more qualified people for the seats. 

Not permitting legislative members to run, you have a lot of interest amongst 

other members of the Bar now that are running for judge positions that wouldn't have 

offered twenty years ago. So it’s helped. The combination of restricting legislators from 

running, they have to be out a year, plus the screening panel.... And they do a thorough 

job. They do a SLED check. We had a fellow up a couple of years ago, for my circuit, 

and I really thought he was going to be elected a Family Court Judge. During this 

process, he got stopped in Columbia for DUI [driving under the influence]. Of course, it 

never hit the papers, but he just withdrew. The Merit Selection Commission has helped. 

I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay on it because it’s gotten to be a hard job. It’s also 

tough for me, like on one particular seat, we probably had five people qualified, ten 

candidates, and we could only submit three names, and so we had to eliminate two people 

that are very qualified. That bothers me. You do eliminate some that are qualified. 

Duffy: There are several other loyal Democrats that I’d like to get your reaction 

on. Isadore Lourie? 

Saleeby: Isadore Lourie, he and I have been friends for many, many years. He and 

Thad served eight years in the House together, and they were so close. I don’t know how 

I got close to Izzy, but I’ve been close to Izzy for many, many years. He’s been a loyal 

Democrat, and his son Joel is going to make an outstanding member of the House and, I 

think, an outstanding member of the Senate, hopefully. I asked him the other day 

whether he was going to run. He said he couldn’t run against [Warren] Giese because 

Giese’s faction, even though they are Republicans, supported Joel, which kind of 

surprised me. He said he wouldn’t run against Giese. When Giese steps down, I would 

expect Joel to be elected to that position, unless he steps on a land mine, because Joel is a 

very active, intelligent, smart politician and Democrat, he and young James Smith. You 

don’t see many young people like that that are willing to come out as Democrats. I think 

people like that are good for the party.


And I think also in the last few years we have had a very active Senate 

Democratic Caucus. We raise money and we use that money. For instance, the last time, 

even though I only had token opposition, the Caucus gave me $5,000 for my expenses. 

We’ve got enough money to give probably more than that. The last time, we gave 

Hodges $30,000. We have a fund raising committee, and we have another group that 

keeps issues. We have part-time political experts that meet with us. We meet once a 

week. The Senate Democratic Caucus has been very active the first three or four years. 

We do everything we can to help the party, and I think that’s had a pretty good.... Like, I 

think it worked on David Beasley, and I think that helped Hodges. Well, I know it did. 

Duffy: What do you think the future of the Democratic Party in South Carolina is 

going to be? 

Saleeby: Well, there have been times when I felt like it was hopeless because of the 

Bob Jones influence, the Greenville influence, the anti-black influence. But I feel like 

now, if we will continue to go like we’re going we’ve got a chance to get control back of 

the House and increase our percentage in the Senate. I feel better now than I did, say, 

three or four, five, years ago. For some reason, Carroll Campbell still has all this 

popularity, but all of Carroll Campbell’s people, they pretended to be for education, but 

they really were not for education. They’d talk about being for education, but they’d cut 

it at the back door. Some of his people, his lobbyists and consultants, they just made 

fortunes, you know. Then David Beasley carried on the same crowd, like the crowd that 

represented Chem Nuclear. That was all a deal from Warren Tompkins. 

They tell me he got $175,000 for his initial retainer from Chem Nuclear, and then 

$5,000 a month the whole time David Beasley was Governor. He got us out of the 

[Nuclear Waste Disposal] pact, and said, “Let’s just let Barnwell take in low-level waste 

from everywhere.” That was all his and Carroll Campbell’s allies. They set that up 

because Warren was making money out of it. 

Hinton Davis, the fellow that furnished the airplane that flew David [Beasley] 

around, the jet. I saw a letter from the vice president of that company recently, and I 

don’t know what all we’re going to do about this, but I saw a letter where he said that he


had to pay Hinton Davis $400,000 in order to get the automobile liability contract. 

Hinton Davis had said they were going to submit a bid themselves, and they knew the 

Board would give it to them. Well, I recently got on the phone and called the Insurance 

Department. I said, “The fellow can’t even write automobile insurance.” They own the 

license to do workers’ comp and casualty, and I called the Commission and they 

confirmed that Hinton Davis has never been licensed to do automobile insurance. Yet 

they were getting $400,000 a year to be the local agent, plus a dollar a policy under what 

they call the local signature law. We repealed that this past session, so at least [we] 

knocked them out of that. The taxpayers were paying for it when it was just not 

necessary. So there was just so much stuff that went on in state government that the 

public's not aware of. Poor Geiger and McElveen. Geiger was a good friend of mine, 

Don McElveen still is. Geiger went out of the architect business. But when David 

[Beasley] got elected, or when Carroll Campbell got elected, they purposely, and how 

you can do this... cut them off, did not give them any business, and made certain 

architects that were their buddies millionaires. 

They were pretty vicious. For instance, in my little situation, Mary Lou Price 

works on my committee in Columbia on automobile insurance. She took a thirty-day 

leave and rode the bus around with Nick Theodore. She loved Nick and supported Nick. 

I got the word that if I fired Mary Lou that I’d get along better with the governor’s office. 

I kind of laughed about it, but when my budget came up, on the House side, they just 

knocked all of my financing out on my committee. It got to the Senate, I put it back in, 

and then we got in the Conference Committee, and I didn’t realize it was this strong, but 

the three House members absolutely would not fund my automobile study committee. So 

I met with the Management Committee of the Senate, and we just switched enough 

money back to the Banking and Insurance Committee that I chair, and that’s when we 

established the permanent subcommittee of the Banking and Insurance Committee. We 

let Mary Lou and Glenn McConnell run that. So Mary Lou is still there, and David is 

gone. But they went to such extremes to fire her, just a state employee, because of the 

way she voted or because she supported a candidate. I thought that was kind of 

ridiculous, but they were that mean.


Duffy: So, there is more partisanship in politics than when you started out, 

Democrat vs. Republican? 

Saleeby: Oh, yes. 

Duffy: What are the other big changes that you’ve noted? 

Saleeby: Well, of course, the biggest change is the fact that you have to accept the 

fact that what you call the Republican Party has a lot more influence than when I started. 

I mean, they had no influence. Part of that is because they’ve been able to—so-called 

Republican Party sometimes caused them a little bit of trouble, but they’ve been able 

to.... Who would ever dreamed that Bob Jones, when he started in Greenville, that that 

influence would have just grown so? That movement is kind of statewide now, you 

know. Some way or another, they’ve been able to align themselves with the Republican 

Party, which is bad. You’ve got all of these churches, they’re not Baptist churches, 

they’re just branches. If you go around this county, you’ll see little churches everywhere. 

They’ve got people thinking that the Democratic Party is the party of the blacks and the 

party of evil. I hate to say it, but most of these little rural churches, so many of the 

members are just anti-black. I think that’s a major change, that’s gotten a lot worse over 

the years. Instead of getting better, I think the racial question is more tense now than it 

was twenty-five years ago. We integrated Butler and Hartsville High School twenty-five 

years ago, and we didn’t have a.... 

[Begin Tape 5] 

Saleeby: There are all kinds of changes like that. 

Duffy: In the most recent reapportionment, some years back, Republicans 

basically called the shots.


Saleeby: The fellow that was from the House who was elected judge, he got the 

Justice Department to go along with him on that House reapportionment. He was 

primarily interested in being a Circuit Court Judge, which he is now. He went along with 

it. He got the blacks to go along with him, and that went along with the Justice 

Department. That satisfied the Republicans. That’s why they took control of the House, 

because those districts were designed to compact the blacks. That frees up a lot of other 

areas that became Republican. That was just a bad decision. It was bad politics for the 

Democrats and the blacks did that to themselves. They have paid for it with the 

Republican leadership in the House. The vast majority of the Republicans in the House 

look on blacks as “niggers”. They certainly have no respect for them. It’s really bad. 

We don’t have that problem in the Senate, but the makeup of the Senate, as you will see, 

are people who are older, they are more mature, they are generally more successful in 

business or professions. And I think that’s the basic difference in the House and the 

Senate. You have a pretty steady group of people who have been there a while, and they 

are mature and old, and have had experience. They don’t have the prejudices that a lot of 

the young House members have coming from districts, like certain districts in Greenville 

where you just can’t elect a Democrat. There are certain places like Williamsburg, our 

Senator [John Yancey] McGill is an exception because of his daddy. But if you ever lose 

people like McGill and John Land, then those will be black senators. But you’ve got two 

unique people there, who, even though they are in a large majority black district, they are 

able to keep the black leadership behind them and very supportive. And that’s why they 

are able to stay there. Right interesting. 

Duffy: Are there any other comments that you want to make, or anything for the 

record? 

Saleeby: I think we’ve stayed out of trouble pretty good, haven't we? [laughter] 

Duffy: Let me ask you a question. Did you play a major role in the ’60 

presidential election in South Carolina? Were you involved in that, or your brother?


Saleeby: Which race was that? 

Duffy: ’60 would be when John Kennedy narrowly carried the state. 

Saleeby: Yes. I had quit the House. Kennedy was so unpopular. Watson Pitts, who 

is now deceased, was chairman of the [county] Democratic Party. He wouldn’t support 

Kennedy. Spot was scared to support him. So they asked me if I would take the 

chairmanship of the party. This was kind of off-season for it to happen, so the Executive 

Committee met, and I agreed to take it. They had $4,000 in the budget. I said, “I’ll take 

it if you’ll give me the $4,000 to run the Kennedy campaign.” We went from a deficit in 

this county. I got Fritz [Hollings] to help me, and I put on big chicken bogs and had big 

massive meetings. The Kennedy campaign was so efficient. I sent out by newspaper boy 

some type of flier every day to hit different groups of people. We carried this county by 

2,500 votes in the Kennedy race. As soon as that happened, Spot came back in and the 

next time we came up for election, he ran for chairman. So I’ve never offered myself as 

chairman of the county Democratic Party. I’ve never been elected chairman. I served 

one brief period and that was for the Kennedy election. 

I met Robert Kennedy at that time. You know, Fritz was wide open for Kennedy, 

and he was governor then. Fritz had a drop-in at the Governor’s Mansion for everybody 

that was supporting the Kennedys, and that’s where I met Robert Kennedy. We were 

very successful, and carried the state, which everybody thought was impossible because 

he was a Catholic. When he first announced, the reaction from Pitts and Spot’s friends 

was, “Oh, we’d never vote for a Catholic, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That’s the only time I 

took the chairmanship and we won that race. I was chairman of the county party for that 

election. 

Duffy: So, you have played a major role in some presidential elections? 

Saleeby: In that election particularly.


Duffy: What about the [Jimmy] Carter election [of 1976]? 

Saleeby: Yes. This is a little bit of history, too. I gave the first hundred dollars to 

the Carter campaign in South Carolina. It was kind of a joke. Dick Riley was selected to 

be the main Carter chairman, so to speak. Dick and I were walking back from dinner one 

night to the Wade Hampton [Hotel in Columbia], and he told me what he was doing. He 

said, “Ed, how about helping us? We really need some money. How about giving me a 

hundred dollars? We don’t have any money.” So I gave him a hundred dollars. He said, 

“Well, this is the first hundred dollars that I’ve received.” [laughter] After that, we had 

Carter’s son, I think he was called Chip. 

Duffy: Yes. 

Saleeby: I set up a big meeting over here and invited all our political leaders. And 

Chip came over and we had a supper and met people. We did a pretty good job with the 

Carter race. I was still embarrassed because the race track element were just so antianybody 

they may perceive to be a little bit liberal or a little bit sympathetic to the blacks. 

When Carter was introduced to the crowd, they booed him. It was very embarrassing. 

But at the same time, when David Beasley was introduced this past time, for the first 

time, they booed David Beasley, too. That’s when I knew it was over. [Laughter] 

Duffy: That was probably over the [Confederate] flag, don't you think? 

Saleeby: Probably so. See, you go over there, you see all those darn Confederate 

flags. You’re right. But yes, I was active in the Carter campaign, Carter and Kennedy. I 

was a little bit active in [Bill] Clinton’s campaign, not that much, but a little bit. 

Duffy: Do you know Clinton? Have you met him? He is a friend of Riley’s, I 

know.


Saleeby: I’ve never had any contact with him. I’ve never gone to a national 

convention. I’ve always had these other people who want to go, and I’ve always felt like 

I’m going to do what I want to do. They want to go and it’s an honor for them to go. 

Going to a national convention doesn’t necessarily mean that helps you politically, but to 

a lot of people, it’s quite an honor. I’ve always let other people go and use my seat. 

Grubbs: I was going to ask you about the South Carolina Bar Association. You 

were Chairman or President of it at one time, is that right? 

Saleeby: No, I was on the Executive Committee. That was back before you had 

what they call the integrated Bar, or the Bar that's now controlled by statute and the 

Supreme Court entirely. And I was President of the South Carolina Trial Lawyers’ 

Association. 

Grubbs: What were your responsibilities in that, and how did you come to get 

involved in those two positions? 

Saleeby: Well, back then, I started out as a plaintiff’s lawyer. Spot and I, and a 

small group of us, started having little meetings and trying to get people interested in 

forming a trial lawyers association. When I was in the House in the early fifties, we had 

Melvin Belli come to Columbia. He was passing through from Washington and we had 

him to come in, and we just invited lawyers and had a seminar. We just got started 

working on that, and we finally got Fritz [Hollings] involved, and Bo Morrison in 

Charleston, and we finally got some lawyers in Greenville. Now, it’s probably one of the 

strongest organizations in the state. But we organized because we had nothing, you 

know, [to promote our cause for retired and poor people]. 

On the state Bar, that was a voluntary situation. I probably was interested in it 

because I knew they had such an influence on naming judges. I wasn’t pleased with all 

of the judges they were okaying. I don’t know that my crowd from this circuit named me 

to serve. I was on the Board at the University, so I didn’t try to go any further then than 

serve on the Executive Committee.


Grubbs: Did you find that you made a lot of political contacts serving in those 

bodies that helped you out later on in your Senate career? 

Saleeby: I probably made more political contacts when I served as Potentate of 

Omar [Shrine] Temple in 1968. I knew people all over South Carolina. I served five 

years on the divan, four years before then. You were going somewhere about every 

weekend and meeting people. I think I made more contacts on that than I did on the Bar 

Association. In fact, I probably should have stayed active in that, but I didn’t. I didn’t 

have time [because of our activities in the Senate]. 

Duffy: That was a non-political organization, but it was someplace where you 

could meet people of like mind. There are other groups in this state—I think you 

commented on the Citadel group. Is that still a viable political...? 

Saleeby: Not as much as it was, although they try to be. There are just not enough 

of them. They are pretty tough. Jim Cox in my office is just as rabid as he can be, as any 

Clemson fan. They used to like Tom Pope and tried to make him governor. And he 

would have been governor, but Byrnes jumped in the race at the last minute, and of 

course, Byrnes didn’t even have to campaign. 

Duffy: Another group is the National 

Guard. 

Saleeby: They’re very active. I was a 

member of the Guard. When that fellow from 

Newberry, in the first race, came out and was 

ahead of Eston [Marchant], I just quit work for 

two weeks, and I got myself, Isadore Lourie, Arnie Ed Saleeby at work 

Goodstein, Alex Sanders and Gus Hoffmeyer, I got about ten of us together. The next 

day we met in Eston’s office, and in two weeks’ time, we raised about $75,000. We


organized every Guard unit except for the Newberry area, and we called in these Guard 

people. It’s just hard to describe to you what we did for two weeks but we won the race. 

We were behind thirty thousand votes on the first race, and in the run-off we won by 

thirty thousand, but we really won by about fifty thousand, but they never got the official 

count in. We took the Guard units then, and elected Eston Marchant. I forgot about that, 

but yes, I headed that up. 

Duffy: But the Guard also would have supported someone like Earle Morris when 

he ran. 

Saleeby: Yes. I was not in it that long, but I kept my contacts with them and had 

enough friends in the Guards that we were always able, back then, to use them as a pretty 

good force in particular races. It was very effective. 

Interview Ends

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