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

This week, we continue our look at the candidates running for governor and vying for their party's nomination in the June 9th primary, including Republican Lowcountry businessman Rom Reddy and Democratic Upstate serial entrepreneur and former Clinton administration official Billy Webster.

We start with Rom Reddy, who I sat down with at Liberty On The Lake in Irmo.

We spoke with Reddy before he held one of his meet and greet events, that he's been holding around the state since he launched his campaign on March 16th.

I opened by asking him about why he got in the race.

> There's only two folks in this race, you know.

All of them are in one lane.

I call it the political ruling class.

They've been there, I think, 53 years in office.

I'm in a totally different lane.

You know, it's, I've never run for office, as you know, and I think it's the first time in our generation that anyone has ever run without taking a one dollar of money from anyone at all.

And I think it'll probably be the last time for a while.

That said, why am I in?

It really all started with DOGESC.

I founded DOGESC, we started off on DOGESC with saying, "What, where is all this money going?"

You know, we're the highest tax, income tax, red state in the nation.

You know, property taxes are going up.

All them said, "where is this money going?"

And it started off there.

And then I started running into people in family court, probate court, all these agencies.

And I realized, we have weaponized government against the citizen.

You know, if you're, Gavin, if you go back to just 250 years ago, not that long ago, you know, the founders said two very basic things in the second paragraph of the Declaration said, "We're endowed by a creator with certain unalienable rights," which means our rights come from God.

And the sentence that follows that sentence is that says, "Government derives its power from the consent of the governed."

Which means, government's role is to protect those God-Given rights.

And the last sentence is even more interesting.

It says, these are the founders who were, many of them died, actually, in this cause is that, "We pledge our lives our honor, our fortunes and our sacred honor to defending the principles of this declaration."

What has happened to us?

We have strayed from that and it started with Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president.

And, with this administrative state.

And today, South Carolina, government has taken the money and power from the citizen and through a vast agency state, 101 agencies and a far from independent judiciary, they have weaponized government against the citizen.

Many of the citizens, not all the elites and all these events all of you guys go to and people drink tea from a nice cup.

I'm talking about the voiceless citizen.

Many of them, they fear their government and you know, some wise man said, "When you fear your government, it's tyranny.

When your government fears you, it's liberty."

It's time we went back.

It's time we went back.

Gavin> And just kind of also following up, I know we'll get into all this and more.

But looking at your personal life and so voters who maybe don't know your name or know your history.

Give them some background on who you are, your past career and your family here.

Rom> So I am different there, too.

I'm a first generation American.

I immigrated here legally almost 50 years ago.

As a student, like the president and Elon Musk.

I went to the Wharton Business School.

After that, I worked for Exxon for nine years and then ended up with my partner buying a small division of Exxon in 1990, in Summerville, South Carolina.

That was my first business.

And then we went from there.

We buy businesses, we take them to the next level, we restructure them.

I started two businesses from scratch.

One of the two actually also in South Carolina in, Goose Creek, American Synthetics.

And then, a third South Carolina connection was I moved the headquarters for a third company from Georgia to South Carolina and, became the third largest artificial turf company in the nation, operating in all 50 states.

I'm married.

You probably met my beautiful wife, Renee.

I married above my grade, and, Renee and I have a 15 year old who's a senior in high school.

We attend the First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Great preacher, actually attended the debate, Marshall and, I have two older children from a previous marriage.

And we live in Charleston.

Gavin> It sounds like private equity before people have talked about private equity, right?

Rom> it's private equity.

Yeah, it's private equity.

It's private equity with a slight twist.

There's two types of private equity.

One is where you, you're just an investor, and you kind of work the balance sheet or the income statement.

We were active private equity, so we did less number of deals, but we got active in actually operating these companies.

Gavin> Do you think private equity gets a bad rap these days?

A lot of people say they're scooping up houses they're scooping up businesses and kind of just chopping them, leaving them for dead in some senses.

Rom> Yeah, there are.

And that's what I said.

You know, there's private equity that just works a balance sheet.

They don't really add any value, they know they cut things.

They, we actually built things.

I mean, the last company I had, Sprinter, we were operating, we were doing 22 stadiums in 12 states when I bought it.

And then when we sold it to the largest playground manufacturer in the United States, we were doing 270 stadiums a year, in all 50 states.

Created hundreds of thousands of jobs.

By the way, I had to tolerate this tyranny of Covid when I was running the company.

South Carolina is lying to you when they tell you that they kept everything open, that was not true.

They actually imposed a lot of restrictions.

I was told I was going to be fined two thousand dollars per person, per day, if I didn't force my employees to take a vaccine.

I called the governor, I told him, I'm not going to do it.

I called Ron DeSantis, I said, "What about state sovereignty Governor," who's a good friend of mine and Governor DeSantis, actually led the effort to reverse that.

But I have to tell you, one of the few companies that never shut down, I actually made TV commercials on it.

I refused to let anyone take the vaccine.

I said, "I will not make you do it."

I actually told them, even on masks, if you want to wear one, wear one.

You know, our job is to give you information, not tell you what to do, so.

Gavin> So Rom, you have this legal battle starting, going back to 2023, dealing with this seawall, folks might know about it, outside of your home in Isle of Palms.

Your waterfront home right there, oceanfront.

People have seen this discussion going back and forth with DHEC, now it's Department, Environmental Services.

Tell us about this and, I mean, it sounds like, you know, a one perecenter problem, but what, what is really at stake here?

> Well, it's not a one percenter problem because really, it's, it's a state, it's a statewide issue.

Where, as you know, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution said "Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

Our founders believed, it was actually before it was life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

It was life, liberty and property.

And they thought, you know, George Washington said, "Freedom and property rights go hand in hand, you can't have one without the other."

So what happens in South Carolina is, they just started this about five years ago, They essentially said anywhere creek front, marsh front, oceanfront, whatever.

If you have any type of an erosive event, say from a big storm and your property gets some amount of damage, the government says, I own it now.

You still pay the taxes on it.

You theoretically have it in the county registered to you, and which means you pay taxes on it, but I own it.

And I said, like, heck, you own it.

And I said, that's not going to happen.

And, we stood up and I did it for me.

You know, David Lucas did this in the 90's in a very famous Lucas case, and Lucas wrote a great paper.

He said, "I fought this battle in the 90's, Rom is fighting this battle today.

He's got better things to do with his life, but he is doing it for the people who cannot do it."

The number of calls I got from all over the state saying, God bless you for standing up to these people, they have destroyed our lives.

Gavin> So you founded DOGESC, was that in response to that fight or what prompted you to get involved in that?

Rom> You know, I always say, "God does things for a reason."

And that was the first time I was exposed to government overreach.

When I ran these big companies, I never dealt with government.

I always had compliance groups and lawyers, I had lawyers in 30 or 40 states.

I had compliance groups all over.

I was never involved in these things.

And then government came after me and I said, wow, the power of the state that is unhinged now, uncontrolled because no one controls them, these unelected bureaucrats.

It's not just them, it's DSS.

DSS, one of the most corrupt agencies in this entire state, destroying families.

DES, DSS, all of these things, they are out of control.

Gavin> When you talk about DSS, I mean, I've heard you talk about it before and saying even saying it's almost like a human trafficking, human trafficking-esque when you talk about this, what makes you say that and what, how do you back that up?

How do you mesh that?

Rom> I've never really, I've been very careful when I've said that because people have come up to me and had their kids taken from them and put in very questionable, quote-unquote, "foster care situations" where their children have been harmed and these people don't care anymore.

It is a cabal between the guardian ad litem, DSS, the marriage counselors, the lawyers, they all enrich themselves.

It's like one of the ladies that came to one of my events, she couldn't afford a lawyer.

So they had a court assign her a guardian ad litem sends her a bill for eight thousand dollars, She says, "Your Honor, I can't pay this bill.

I've never seen eight thousand dollars in my life."

She says, "I understand your pain, but this is a, a violation of a court order."

Puts her in prison.

Are we living in America anymore?

Like, what has happened to us?

It's an out of control situation.

Unelected bureaucrats are running our lives.

This is what our founders were prepared to die for.

We somehow lost the courage and the determination to protect ourselves against it.

Gavin> So then, is that what prompted you?

I mean, through DOGESC and through your other experiences and what you're talking about right there?

I mean, is that what prompted you to run for governor?

If so, how would you change some of the situation?

Rom> Well, no, it didn't really prompt me to run for governor.

I was just running, DOGESC and we had a whole bunch of plans.

As you know, we developed a bunch of tools like a forensic audit tool, a tool that compares regulations to law.

We found 37.1 percent of SCDOT regulations were not tied to the law.

So we developed all these tools, and of course, we were responsible for the Judicial Reform Act that passed the House with all 85 Republicans supporting it.

But I needed someone to carry the ball for us in the Executive mansion.

Henry McMaster is useless.

He's, I see you not wearing a pocket kerchief, but if you did, I would say you should consult with him on what type of kerchief he should wear.

That's all he does.

But, I was looking for someone I could back.

I would prefer to back someone.

Someone said Warren was going to run.

I said "He's an outside guy, I might get behind him" and say, "We've got a lot of things that can fix government ready to go, but I need a strong executive."

No one ran, no one.

We get in there and we got all the cabal running, the entire... You look at the stage, I'm the only mister on the stage.

It's congresswoman, congressman, Senator, AG, LG and me.

So these guys are never going to fix it.

Ten years ago, we were the bottom in education, roads, median family income, violent crime.

And today, what's happened?

Same place.

We're in the bottom ten and all of these.

One thing has changed.

We've doubled our spending in that time.

And our taxes are going up all the time, we're the highest tax red state in the nation right now.

So this is where a red state run like a blue state.

And so if you like what you're seeing, if you like what you've experienced, I'm not your guy.

You got five choices.

If people think it's time for something different, someone who has the governing skills to get results, not just talk.

You know, you and I talked before the thing, you know, Nancy talked about 65 bills introduced.

How many got through?

Zero.

You know it's like if as an executive if I go up there with 65 at bats, I better get 50 hits.

Norman says he's not a politician.

He's not a political... He's been there for 20 years, 21 years.

How are you not a politician?

So these people lie to the public, and the public is becoming more and more cynical.

You know that.

And they see that nothing's changed.

Gavin> Billy Webster is a Greenville native, successful businessman and held several positions in the first Clinton White House, including as education Secretary, Dick Riley's chief of staff, and as Clinton's director of scheduling until 1995 when he returned to his family and the business world.

He's one of three Democrats running for the nomination, and he told me about his upstate roots at Augusta Street Market, not far from where he lives in Greenville.

> So I've been, really a business person.

I think nowadays they refer to it as a serial entrepreneur.

Most of my professional life, I took a hiatus, of course, to go to work in Washington.

But I grew up here.

My sister and I grew up not very far from where we're sitting right now.

I had two wonderful parents.

I was blessed with a really, just very nurturing, attentive mom and dad.

My mother was very active in the community, both here and statewide.

My father was in the retail gasoline business and by that, in those days, it was retail gasoline and oil and cigarettes.

There was no convenience store.

It was raw, customer service, gasoline cost the same everywhere.

And so when I worked for my father in the summers, I think at a pretty young age, I realized just the necessity and the power of relating to other human beings and the theme of customer service, regardless of what business I've been in, has been a consistent sort of motif throughout, throughout all my business experiences.

And it really is a great, I think, foundation for politics.

You can talk about all the policy you want, but this business is, the business of politics, is really one of addition.

And you got to meet people where they are one-on-one and talk to them and listen to them and, that's what I enjoy about this process.

Gavin> And I was there when you announced your bid, your governor bid at that Bojangles in Columbia.

And you used that as a backdrop specifically to kind of illustrate your working class background.

I mean, can you talk a little bit more about growing up and doing all the work that you did to get to where you are today?

Billy> Sure.

I think it really started similar to my announcement, with a note my mom had on our refrigerator, which was, don't talk, just do.

So most of my life I was expected to do, and I, you know, that started with my father's gasoline business, I owned a laundry in college, so I folded sheets, towels, and pillowcases on Friday and Saturday night when everybody else was out having a good time.

Graduated from law school and ended up in the back room of a Bojangles, literally nine hours after I left Charlottesville, Virginia.

And most of the formative business lessons I've learned in my life, which are, of course, formative lessons about life, really more so than business.

I learned at Bojangles, and it was listening to other people.

Most of the good ideas that we ended up implementing came from my employees valuing their opinion, respecting them no matter where they came from or who they were, and really the dignity of hard work.

I mean, I watched folks who could have done something else, but who really valued being part of a team that required excellence in execution.

And we just had a great, we had a great company and a great group of folks that worked for us.

So I've, you know, that's really been, as I said, not only business life, but also when I left business to go to Washington, as a White House fellow, I spent a brief period of time in the Bush administration at the State Department before Bill Clinton got elected.

And the day he got elected, I was kind of the only guy he knew in Washington with boots on the ground.

So the first job that I had was with Dick Riley as running presidential personnel.

So we literally spoke to and interviewed every single person who wanted a job in the Clinton administration.

You're talking about intense one-on-one relationships.

It was not only people who were selected, but the ten people who didn't get that job that now have become, you know, friends of mine in all walks of life.

And then scheduling in advance, also relating to folks where they were, we would get somewhere between 10 and 15,000 requests for the president's time a week.

We not only had to sort through the ones that we weren't going to do and communicate with those folks and make them feel heard and appreciated, but execute the ones that we selected.

So really, you know, I'm not a technology guy.

I'm not an in the back room kind of guy.

I need to be customer facing.

And for a long time it was customers, now it's voters.

But it's the same, I think love for just human interaction and as I said, meeting people where they are and listening to them.

Gavin> And I want to talk more about your time in Washington, too.

But tell me about, your time with Dick Riley and how you kind of made that jump from, you know, working at Bojangles, doing all that to getting involved into politics.

What made that transition for you?

Billy> Well, as I said, I grew up not far from here, and one of my earliest childhood memories is sitting at a green, metal kitchen table about this size with my father and Dick Riley.

Dad was his first finance chairman, trying to figure out how to raise 350 dollars to run for the South Carolina House of Representatives.

So, you know, Dick Riley was a fixture in my life from a very early age.

And, you know, over those years, as I watched him, as I was growing up and I watched him as an elected representative and then as governor, and then when I worked for him, I have never met a man who was able to elevate listening and empathy to an art form.

Dick Riley had an amazing capacity to make people feel heard and appreciated.

I've never seen anything like it.

The closest I've ever seen is Bill Clinton, and they shared that they, when they were talking to you, they never looked over your shoulder.

They never were worried about who else was coming into the room.

They were listening to you.

And it was, it was felt on both sides.

Dick would lean in, he'd put his hand on his chin and he would just listen.

And both Bill Clinton and Dick Riley, when people would leave those rooms, they might have come in mad, in a state of disagreement or fit of pique, and they would leave thinking they were the most important person in the world.

And that skill, was wonderful to observe.

I'll never be able to amount to that kind of, empathy as an art, but it's worth emulating.

And I try.

> Yeah, some would say it's probably an innate, probably natural ability, especially for those two politicians to possess.

But, Billy, when it comes to that, I mean, is that what you, like, you're saying?

try and maybe to emulate that a little bit with this campaign, because look at the state of politics in America right now, look at the state of politics in South Carolina.

I mean, obviously, it's an uphill battle for any Democrat running.

Is that what you're hoping to do?

Maybe engage more, maybe be more of a moderate?

I mean, how do you how do you get these folks to listen to a Democrat versus a Republican, especially where we are right now in South Carolina?

> And I would say not be more of a moderate, I am a moderate.

I watched Dick Riley govern as a moderate.

I watched Jim Hodges govern as a moderate.

Bill Clinton was the quintessential moderate, and they understood the art of governing as opposed to politics.

I think one of the real reasons I decided to run was the loss of civility in public life.

It's not the way I was raised.

It's not the way I was taught.

It's not what Scripture teaches us.

I mean, you know, loving your neighbor and treating others as you want to be treated, kind of are the guardrails for the way I want to run this campaign.

But the way my parents taught me to live and I just cannot abide what politics has become.

It's a blood sport where there are only winners and losers, and it's completely antithetical to governing.

That's not the way stuff gets done.

Gavin> So pivot for me from politics into, like, your business career.

And obviously talk about Advance America and how you created that and some controversy around that.

But talk about your life after the Clinton era, running Bojangles and also Advance America.

Billy> Sure.

You know, politics was always a hiatus for me.

It was not... I never thought I would be on this side of the interview, right, as a candidate.

But, you know, still the application of, of personal interaction to the selection of businesses.

In every business I've been in, whether it's gas station business, the laundry business, Bojangles, Advance America, automobile parts, they all shared, you know, these are retail, customer service, working middle class family businesses.

Advance America was the same.

We were trying to solve one problem at the time.

In 1997, when we started Advance America, 400 million checks bounced in the United States.

The average fees on a bounced check were 20 dollars to the bank, 20 to 30 dollars to the vendor.

So a 100 dollar check, which was the average size of a bounced check for retail customers, was about 50 dollars.

The regulated rate at Advance America was 15 dollars.

For the customers that we had, again, they had to have a job and a bank account.

Those economics were simple and compelling.

We built a successful business on that single economic proposition.

We were faster, cheaper, better in bouncing a check.

And parenthetically in those days, and it's still true today, I still read Federal Reserve data on the bounced check business, a customer who bounces a single check bounces between 10 and 13 checks a year.

So that, those economics, are true on every single one of those checks.

So we at the time, we would save customers potentially, you know, several hundred or hundreds of dollars over the course of a year.

Now, to be fair, there were certain consumer protections that we did not realize needed to be embedded in this product.

We, as we learned about those and I learned about them from all kinds of people, including, you know, I would see, Mr.

Mfume and the leadership of the NAACP in Baltimore and I said, look, this is what we're doing.

What do you hear?

What do you think?

What needs to change?

When we got that kind of feedback, we reacted to that and we tried to embed those consumer protections in the business.

After ten years, my ex-wife got a very aggressive form of breast cancer.

My children were one, four, seven, and nine.

So in 2005, I resigned from the company, left Advance America, and went home to raise my children.

And over time, I think the business in the industry changed.

And in point in fact, today there's not, I'm told there's really not very much, cash advance left in South Carolina.

But the consumer finance business in general is broken and it needs to be fixed.

Gavin> And then looking ahead, you know, if you don't win the nomination or if you don't win in November, should you get the nomination in June, what do you want, what do you hope the next governor of South Carolina does for this state?

Billy> I don't contemplate losing.

So I haven't thought about that.

I do think the next governor needs to be a steward of what is great about this state.

And that takes an investment in our competitive advantage.

And that's our human capital, our people, and the beautiful places that make this state what it is.

Any other path forward, we will not be the state we should be in 20 years.

Gavin> You can find these interviews and more at YouTube.com/@SCETVNews.

And that's it for us this week for South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson, be well, South Carolina.

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