♪ Gavin> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina I'm Gavin Jackson.

Tonight we talk with a new state elections director, as he prepares for the upcoming primaries in his new role.

But first, we continue our conversations with the candidates.

This week we're talking with Republican gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Alan Wilson.

We caught up with Attorney General Alan Wilson at the Greek Restaurant Grecian Gardens, a staple of the West Columbia community and not far from Wilson's election headquarters and his downtown Columbia office.

We spoke for nearly 30 minutes, with an emphasis on his time in the South Carolina Army National Guard.

His time serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom and other aspects of his life before becoming State Attorney General in 2010, a position he's been re-elected to three times.

Atty.

Gen.

Alan Wilson> So I grew up ten minutes from here over near West Columbia.

It's Springdale town, the town of Springdale, and grew up in a family with three brothers.

My, mother was married before, and she and her first husband had me.

He was my biological father.

And when I was, about two years old, he was tragically killed in a training exercise at Fort Bragg.

Mom returned back home here to the Columbia area with with a toddler.

And she was a public school teacher, and within a year or two, she reconnected with an old flame, Joe Wilson.

And they got married when I was four and he adopted me.

I grew up in a house I remember very distinctly, you know, as a young kid, you know, my dad would come in every morning and say, you know, that, you know, or, every night, rather, you'd hear my prayers.

And he would say, you know, there are little boys out there that don't have a dad in their life, and you're so blessed that you had two in your life to love you with all their heart.

He always remind me of that blessing to have, you know, two dads who love me.

And, I just grew up in a very loving home.

I mean, obviously my parents were not perfect.

None of us are, but they, they did.

They sacrificed to give my brothers and me every opportunity.

My three brothers and I all grew up.

We all became Eagle Scouts.

I give my mom the credit for that.

Staying on top of the...merit badges.

All four of us as adults, we all became commissioned officers in the military.

All four of us have served overseas.

I'm still serving now in my 30th.

I'm getting, about to start my 30th year in the military service as a colonel, but, I got that from my dad.

My dad, Joe, was a, my biological father was an, an Army guy.

My adopted father, Joe, was a National Guard officer for three decades.

Most of the men in my family have served in some capacity, so public service was always drilled into us.

Of course, growing up, my dad was obviously very active in the community, civically speaking.

He was obviously representing this community in the state Senate.

So I got to grow up watching him.

You know, I went to, to Rotary meetings Sertoma meetings, Kiwanis meetings.

We'd go to festivals and parades on the weekend and, just seeing people come up to him and thank him for something that he had done to make their life better, just kind of something that really appealed to me.

So public service is just kind of got baked into me early.

I graduated law school.

I thought I was going to be a real estate attorney, but I ended up pivoting at the last moment, becoming a prosecutor.

And I was clerking for Judge Mark Westbrook in Lexington County.

And, I got to sit up there on the bench with the judge every day for that year.

And I got to see people go into the courtrooms and argue their, plead their cases.

And I just fell in love with the courtroom.

I fell in love with the idea of being a part of the law enforcement community.

So I pivoted from being a transactional lawyer to being a prosecutor.

And the rest is history.

Gavin> What prompted you to run for AG?

Atty.

Gen.

Alan Wilson> So a couple of years before I ran for attorney general, I was prosecuting a case.

It involved a young woman who had been sexually assaulted by this guy.

And, during, you know, during that time, it, you know, that she was like 12 to 15 years old.

So it was early adolescence.

That case got conflicted down to the attorney general's office and assigned to me, and I took it to trial.

It was an eight day long trial.

It was a very graphic case.

I'll spare you the details.

At the end of that trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

And I remember distinctly, as we were walking out of the courtroom, he was being taken to the Department of Corrections.

She and I were walking out the back of the courtroom, and I looked over and she, she was very emotional.

Her eyes were watery.

And I remember thinking she was upset and asked, are you okay?

And she, she's... before I tell you what she said, the information I admitted happened was that the man that had done all these horrible things to hurt her in that four year period was not only her grandfather, but was a retired police officer.

And he would say things to, to her when she was 13 years old, like, no one will believe you because I'm a cop, you're a kid.

He would explain what reasonable doubt was.

All I need is one juror to have reasonable doubts.

He'll say you'll destroy this- Gavin> Terrifying.

Yeah.

Atty.

Gen.

Wilson> Yeah, sure.

He manipulated her, but she didn't know how to, you know, overcome that.

So as we're walking out, she looks up to me and she says, Alan, I'm not crying because I'm sad.

I'm crying because I'm happy.

For the first time in my life, I'm not a victim.

I'm a survivor.

And I remember that, that... like, was like a gut punch.

I remember thinking, wow.

And we could not undo what happened to her.

But I can play a role in being a bridge from "victimhood" to survivorship for her.

I could give a voice to someone who had no voice.

I could empower someone who felt they had no power.

And I don't know where she is today because I was like 18 years ago.

But I know wherever she is, she's a survivor today, not a victim.

When the opportunity to consider running for attorney general opened up, I love the challenges of leadership that I learned in the military as a young officer, and I love my passion for prosecution.

And when the opportunity to run to be the state's chief prosecutor as attorney general opened up, I put the two together.

It just it made sense to me.

And I had never run for office before.

I had no political background, but I made a decision there that I can live with losing.

I can't live with not knowing.

And I offered my name up that day or that year, and I worked my butt off, and the people of South Carolina gave me the great lifetime honor and privilege of serving as their Attorney General.

Now, I'm the longest serving Attorney General in the country.

Gavin> When you look back over that tenure, I mean, what are the big accomplishments?

What are the big proudest moments that you have looking back at your tenure as AG?

Atty.

Gen.

Wilson> Well, first off, the office is over 300 years old.

It predates the state.

So when you think of an ancient office and how it's evolved over three centuries, you got to think, what is my, what is my footprint going to look like in the history of this office?

And so, I tried to really push the office into the modern world.

I tried to upgrade it on technology.

I tried to change the culture of the office.

We were able to create the State Human Trafficking Task Force, which did not exist.

There were no human trafficking prosecutions because there was no human trafficking crime, so there were no stats being taken.

We created that task force, grew it from about 15 members to over 1500 members.

We quadrupled the funding for the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force because we're and we're still backlogged today.

It is very difficult.

These are very difficult cases to prosecute.

But we quadrupled the funding for that, adding many prosecutors and forensic investigators, we reformed our victim services, we created the Crime Victim Services Division and we consolidated from all state agencies, all victim services, and at the wholesale level at state government, so that all victims in the state of South Carolina and all victim services in the South Carolina come to the Attorney General's office for their training, for their funding.

You know, with the Ombudsmans now located there, we have the, you know, the compensation folks are here now.

So we do all the training for the victims advocates.

So I'm effectively now the chief victim's advocate.

I would say, I'm the chief advocate for victims advocates in South Carolina.

That was a major issue.

And then, of course, Gavin, our efforts to push back when people would, would pass unconstitutional laws or conduct unconstitutional actions on the state of South Carolina.

You know, we pushed back during Covid, we pushed back, during the Obama and Biden administrations when they were passing regulations that were hurting farmers, hurting small businesses.

We were out there filing lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

Many of, many of these lawsuits, we won.

We didn't win them all, but we were able to raise the issue up in the public discourse and represent the people of South Carolina.

Those are very proud accomplishments.

Gavin> And when you enjoin those lawsuits nationwide, I mean, is that what does that add?

I mean, is it just to show that you have support with other states when you're trying to fight back against some of these federal regulations?

Atty.

Gen.

Wilson> Well, it's funny, you know, some of the criticisms I got from my detractors, are Alan Wilson needs to focus on South Carolina.

Right?

He doesn't need be out there doing all these other lawsuits.

But they don't understand these lawsuits all around the country do affect South Carolina, and not getting involved with them hurts our state.

I'll give you an example.

During the Biden administration, they passed a federal regulation through the Department of Education saying if you don't allow boys in the girls bathrooms, you will lose your federal funding.

At the same time, the state legislature passed a law saying, if you do allow boys to go into girls bathroom, you lose your state funding.

There was a lawsuit that was not even in our state.

It was out in another circuit in Florida, the 11th circuit, that was challenging that.

I joined in that case.

It went to the Supreme Court, found that the Biden administration regulation was, was overruled.

Had we not been involved in that case, the schools in South Carolina would have been left with an untenable position that we either lose federal or state funding because we can't keep them both.

But we went to another state, engaged in another case that helped us here.

The Skrmetti case, two years ago, which was a case that dealt with can states passed a law prohibiting the transitioning of 12 year old kids to the opposite sex.

And the states said, yes, we should be able to do that.

We got sued, just like Tennessee.

Tennessee's law went up ahead of ours.

So I joined in that one because I wanted to get an answer at Supreme Court there on Tennessee so that we could resolve it here in South Carolina.

So defending the rule of law all over the country is, was defending the rule of law here in South Carolina.

>> So, General Wilson, you told me what got you motivated to serve in the military, to run for AG.

Tell me what got you to run for governor right now, to throw your hat in the ring in this race in 2026?

>> Well, a couple of things.

First off, you know, as attorney general, there is a lot of power to focus on a few things.

And, you know, as attorney general, I've had the opportunity to weigh in on a lot of issues.

One of those issues is going after corruption in government.

You know, everyone focuses on elected officials, but there's a lot of rampant corruption on non-elected officials, people serving at all levels of government.

I can't tell you the number of times we would investigate some allegation of corruption and what we would find would be fraud, waste and abuse, you know, or abuse of practices, wasteful practices.

But they weren't criminal.

They weren't violations of any criminal statute.

They were just, it was bad government.

<Yeah.> And what I've learned and what I've tried to explain to people is you can't always litigate your way out of bad government.

You can't always indict your way out of bad government.

Sometimes you have to be in a position to remove personnel and implement, implement policies.

As the attorney general, I could indict and sue all day long, but I couldn't remove personnels and I couldn't implement policies.

The governor can.

So the governor has a different set of constitutional tools in their tool bag.

And, you know, the ability, got to have a broader portfolio to engage on economic issues affecting businesses.

As Attorney General, I've been defending businesses for the last 15 years.

I could implement policies and put in place personnel that would protect our citizens, which I've been doing in courts as attorney general.

So for me, it seemed like a natural transition to go to the CEO of South Carolina, because I've been the CEO of the Attorney General's office, which is a very I mean, in the last 15 years, we've recovered $2 billion for the state.

And so I would like to be able to take that type of leadership with me to the governor's office.

Gavin> General Wilson, you have actually been in life and death situations when you served abroad, over your 30 years in military service.

Can you talk to us about that time serving in Iraq and what you did?

I know, there's a recent ad out talking about your, your time over there.

And, you have some of your journals from that time over there, but walk us through, what that was like, because that was in early 2000s, right after 9/11.

It was a different world back then.

It was a nerved world in some, some ways.

What was it like serving over there and getting that call to have to go?

Atty.

Gen.

Wilson> Well thank you.

I was, I deployed in early 2000s, late 2003, early 2004, and in 2004, I was leading a convoy.

I was, I was a staff officer in a field artillery brigade serving in Iraq doing convoy operations.

And I was leading a convoy.

And our convoy came under attack twice in a 24 hour period.

One was a roadside bomb, an I.E.D., and the other one was brief, intermittent small arms fire in Baghdad.

But the, the convoy commercial you're talking about is something that really impresses me to this day, because I got to observe the heroism of some of the most amazing young men I've ever seen in my life.

And, in fact, I "journaled" about I kept journal notes.

These are my three journals from my Operation Iraqi Freedom tour, 367 entries.

And I have an entry for every day I was over there and I wrote extensively about my experiences, and I wrote about this one.

And to sum it up, our convoy came under a roadside bomb attack which destroyed a vehicle immediately behind me and damaged my vehicle, not rendering it inoperable, but still damaged it.

Shrapnel missed me and the occupants in my vehicle by, you know, a foot or two.

I went out the front windshield.

So we were we were spared.

The vehicle behind us was not as lucky.

It caught on fire, started, and I watched three young soldiers come back into the kill zone, climb into a burning tractor trailer truck and pull these soldiers out.

And then we left and, you know, went back to a forward operating base where we took stock of everything.

And I tell people all the time, to this day, when I think about having the courage to do something like run for governor or make a tough decision as attorney general, I think of the courage of those soldiers, some of those soldiers are in that, that commercial, you know.

But I think of the courage of those young men who know, through no personal regard for their safety, risked their lives to drive into an area they thought they would be shot, climbed onto a vehicle they expected to explode, and they did it to save their fellow brothers in arms.

That inspires me 22 years later.

And I put that commercial out there to basically brag on them and to let people know that I have served in the most hostile of conditions.

And so being in politics and have people say mean things and attack my record and attack me personally pales in comparison, to people who are trying to kill me.

>> Now for an update from the State Election Commission and its newly confirmed director, Conway Belangia, Welcome to the show and congratulations on the new job.

>> Well thank you.

I'm looking forward to the new job and, doing things for the state instead of for one county.

Gavin> Well, that's right.

We'll talk about your background, in a moment, sir, but I just want to ask you just, about this position that you're in right now, statewide, of course.

You replaced interim director Danny Wooten, who still serves as chief of staff at the S.E.C.

She simply didn't have that required, election experience under her belt to become director like you have, and was put in that temporary position after Director Howard Knapp was arrested and fired last October on charges of embezzlement and misconduct in office.

That's a case that is still ongoing.

I'll spare us all the details of that, because we only have so much time.

But there's been a lot of drama at the S.E.C., no doubt.

Easy to say that, especially as we are now sprinting toward the June 9th primaries.

You came on the scene in the middle of candidate filing back in March, and you were just recently confirmed by the state Senate on April 21st.

So tell us, what your vision is for the agency and how you plan to stabilize it.

Conway> As you stated, we are in a sprint towards the June primaries, and that is the first order of business for me.

And the staff at the State Election Commission is to make sure that, that June primary, is conducted at the highest efficiency that we can muster, county to county.

Gavin> And how is that going so far?

What's the status?

Conway> It's going well.

You know, the, the, the drama that took place at the State Election Commission really had nothing to do with the elections.

And, and none of that affected the elections.

And so it's just a change in who's driving the car.

But the vehicle, in the State Election Commission is, is operating very, very well.

And so we are you know, in, in the situation of being able to conduct elections like we always have.

And so I'm, I'm confident that, our primary in June and runoff two weeks after that.

And, and then going into November that, the, the elections will be, no change for the voters.

They'll, they'll do the same thing, act the same way, produce their I.D., cast their ballot after they check it, to make sure that, that who they want to vote for is on that ballot.

And, and then we will certify all the results, you know, and, and take care of anything past that.

But, that's the major function of our election process is to make sure these are done properly and fairly.

Gavin> And I'll talk more about, your efforts at the agency and, and some more of your background in a moment.

But we had some big news this week, specifically dealing with your commission.

There has been a lot of friction between the states and the U.S.

Department of Justice.

When it, when last year they were seeking to obtain detailed voter information such as Social security numbers, driver's license numbers.

That's beyond what was publicly available, in an effort to check for ineligible or non-citizen voters.

Something that, I've not, been aware of any problems here in South Carolina.

Your predecessors have never talked about that to any degree.

But tell us about the agreement that was struck between the commission and the state of South Carolina and the Department of Justice this week.

Conway> And the biggest thing is that we protected the Social Security number, which is the only thing that, that we collect that is protected and it's protected by federal law, as well as, state law.

And so, as long as we could protect that, and, and then we didn't mind providing that information, but that took a long time.

We had two federal shutdowns.

We had change in staff at D.O.J., and we've also had change of staff, here in the state.

And so, you know, the timing just happened to hit, whenever I started, but the, the negotiations between the state of South Carolina and the D.O.J., have been ongoing for, you know, a long time.

And so whenever certain agreements could be put into place, that's when the state of South Carolina decided to sign the memorandum of understanding.

And with that, you know, we've protected the Social Security number by hashing, which is a new term for me.

And also, we retain the right to monitor and any information they send to us by way of there's somebody illegal, there's somebody who's ineligible or they're registered in another state, even, we have the right to review all of those before we remove them from any roles in South Carolina.

And we'll follow our standard protocol with that.

So, it's, it's a process, but we retain the right to make the final determination.

That's not a D.O.J.

function, even though in other states it is.

The agreement with other states was that, you know, when we send you this information, you've got to remove these people.

And we said, no, you know, we're in the business of conducting elections and we will, we will protect our voters and if we find a reason to remove them from their roles, we'll do that.

But you can just advise us and we'll take it from there.

Gavin> So what do you credit that to, compared to other states, I mean, our ability to negotiate such an agreement where we do have such power?

Conway> I...wouldn't necessarily call it power, but it, you know, the, the, the back and forth, I think the D.O.J.

and, and the state of South Carolina, they wanted to come to some arrangement because it's not a bad function that they're doing for the states.

But it needs to be, you know, vetted a little bit better.

And of course, the real challenge was, can we protect the South Carolina voter?

And when we got to that point and D.O.J.

was willing to do that, then, then, you know, we signed the agreement.

But, it was a situation with D.O.J.

of, you know, here it is.

Take it or leave it.

And we said, "Well, we'll leave it."

And then they say, Well...you know, can we reach some agreement?

And then, then it was back and forth and back and forth, and so whenever, like in any negotiation, when, when things got together and both sides could agree, you know, then we signed the agreement.

Gavin> And have what's the process already?

I mean, have you all already gone through the voter rolls to make sure that there are no non-citizens or ineligible voters on the rolls?

I mean, it seems like that's been the scrutiny that we've been going under for the past ten, plus years, always when it comes to elections.

Conway> You know, actually, that goes back to the National Voter Registration Act, of 92' or 94'.

Anyway.

But, it's difficult for the state to monitor and look for illegals and that, and the people who should not be on our rolls.

Now...it used to be, and the reason we collect Social Security numbers is for that main reason, you know, and then all of a sudden we find out that, Oh, well, illegals were given Social Security numbers.

Well, that complicates matters, because we have to deal with the form that comes to us, and, we, the federal government won't let us do a lot of checking of that information.

So we try to monitor, as best we can, polling places or small in relation to, you know, relationship to the state.

And, but, you know, so when somebody goes to vote, hopefully they're looking at friends and neighbors, that are conducting the election.

And, you know, they can sort of know that, Oh, well, that, that's, that's this address here is, you know, a place where it's more transient than permanent.

And they may question, but by and large, we've, we've trusted our system as best we can.

I'm sure we have some on the rolls, but not in big numbers.

You know, so we've been pretty good in, in doing that at the county level and then at the state level.

Gavin>...so Conway, we have about three minutes left, and I want to ask you a bunch of other questions, but will you make those findings public from the D.O.J., anything that they find that you guys need to cross-reference with?

Conway> There will be legal issues that we will address.

And if we can, we will, you know, the idea of transparency is strong.

Gavin> Doing more towards your background, you come from directing one of the largest county election offices in Greenville.

Did you ever expect that you'd be running the show statewide?

And do you have any plans to make any changes that you've maybe seen over your four decades in elections, that you've been waiting to implement?

Conway> Well, you know, I can truthfully say that many years ago.

Yeah, I probably had aspirations to be in this job, but in recent times, you know, that aspiration sort of, waned.

But the opportunity presented itself in a situation where I thought I could be of good service to the state of South Carolina.

And so I'm here.

As far as changes go, the only thing that will change is the emphasis from the State Election Commission, because we will, we will depend on and work with and assist counties statewide.

We we want the counties to be part of a team.

And that, that was not prevalent with the previous administrator.

So that, that attitude from the State Election Commission to the counties is going to be different, and we hope a better situation, because if we didn't have the counties and the poll workers, we couldn't conduct elections.

So those two entities are real important to me and will be to me and my staff.

Gavin> Have you fielded any like concerns from, election directors across the state about the D.O.J.

MoU, this week?

Conway> Of course, everybody has the, you know, what are we doing or why are we doing this?

And you know, the real kicker here is that the only information that we have in our system that is not public information is the Social Security number.

So we bend over backwards to make sure that, that is protected.

And, we're sure that, to the best of our ability, to the best of our ability, it is.

And so we, we feel confident moving forward with this process.

Hardly anybody is going to see anything from this.

We will deal with, the few names that they send to us, which we expect there will be a few names, but we will deal with those.

Gavin> And, of course, voter registration deadline is May 10th and you can go to SCvotes.gov to find that information.

Any final words with 20 seconds about just the faith that you have in elections over the past 40 years?

Conway> Well, we understand that elections are a ground up situation.

We need good poll workers.

And poll workers are our friends and neighbors in our neighborhoods and in our communities that we hope will step up and, and, and conduct elections for us.

You know, the pay's not good, but a lot of people will do it because they want good, clean elections.

And if they want good, clean elections, then come be a poll worker.

And that'll filter up to us through the counties.

And we'll have a, a wonderful election season and hopefully, keep that confidence that people have in South Carolina elections at the high level that it is.

Gavin> And we'll catch up with you after the primaries and before the general election, this year.

That's State Election Commission Director Conway Belangia.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Conway Belangia> Glad to be here.

Gavin> That's it for us this week.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

♪ ♪