“Ard for lieutenant governor”

Ken Ard is a businessman and Florence County Council member who has the experience and the perspective needed in Columbia. South Carolinians should choose him as a lieutenant governor who could do more with the job.

The Palmetto State’s lieutenant governor is seen as mostly a ceremonial position. The office holds little power. The lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate and handles the Office on Aging. And he would become governor if the governor could not continue in office. The latter condition rarely happens.

Ard says he wants to do more. He wants to work closely with the governor and the Department of Commerce and work on bringing more employers to South Carolina. Every candidate for lieutenant governor says he can work with whoever gets elected governor and help with economic development, but Ard seems to be the candidate with the right personality and perspective to pull it off.

He is more practical than ideological. He knows the state and the nation have run “the ox into the ditch.”

And he knows that the only solution is for everyone “to get in the ditch and get the ox out.”

Ard focuses on his role in running a manufacturing business. He had to focus on payrolls and productivity. When setbacks occurred, he says it did him no good to sit around and apportion blame. He had to prepare for setbacks and work with everyone to recover from them. In a divisive Columbia atmosphere, Ard’s perspective is needed.

Ard, the Republican candidate, is opposed by Democrat Ashley Cooper, an attorney who works with the energy industry. It is unfortunate that Cooper has used his campaign money mostly to criticize Ard’s record on the Florence County Council. Cooper is a bright candidate who could make an attractive case for his own candidacy. He should have spent more time telling South Carolinians why he should be elected.

By the “Spartanburg Herald Journal”