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And now, back to News Talk 98.9, WORD's exclusive Governor Series. Powered by Guzzling Electric. Once again, Charlie James and Joey Hudson.
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Welcome back to the Governor's Series on News Talk 98.9 WORD brought to you by Gosling Electric. I'm Charlie James along with Joey Hudson. We're talking with Congressman Ralph Norman. Congressman Norman, there was recently a famous exchange between Representative Mike Kasky and Representative Sarita Edgerton, where Mike Kasky said that representatives don't actually read the bills in Columbia.
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Is that truly a Republican form of government if our legislators aren't reading the bills? Both parties aren't reading the bills. What they do, what is rampant at the federal level and at the state level, your staff writes the bills and that's why it's so important to recycle people out. It ought to happen to staff too and those career bureaucrats who many are nice people but they end up writing the legislation. No, that's exactly right.
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Serita reads everything. I'm on the budget committee. I try to read as much as I can. I was on rules committee and it takes a lot of time to read. I mean, if you don't read the things that are affecting the people in South Carolina, what good are you? But he just admitted what's obvious. exactly right. One of the things that President Trump has been successful at at the federal level is to eliminate regulations that are just
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simply not needed. What would you do at the state level and give us some examples of regulatory issues that you would try to eliminate? First of all I would go to the law enforcement and ask what, where do we need to change the laws that will actually enforce some things like the Frederico case where the girl was shot and the killer was had been out 23 or 24 times.
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What needs to be changed if anything or was it just things not judges just letting them out? ah I would go to the businesses like the truckers who we got involved with because they were being charged a citation for going over bridges that they had no way of knowing that they didn't support the weight load. They did at one time. I said what needs to be changed? I'll go with the I've got a insurance uh lady that
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My chief of staff recommended that I talk with, and I called her. She says, I just want to give back the insurance and the whole medical field that's filtered through insurance companies with uh so many of the people. I can't afford it. She said, but I know the ins and outs to go to fix it. And affordable health care is non-existent. We will start to building blocks to find out what changes can we make, even if it's incremental.
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the changes you can make to make uh health care more affordable. I'm a big proponent of loser pays. things that insurance premiums we're paying, have they ever come down? No, it's like electricity bill, has it ever come down? It has not. Talk to any restaurant on the joint and several liability with the lawsuit that a uh law firm can bring in every
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restaurant that you had a drink, regardless if you got drunk at one, and bring in all these other restaurants, we're going to fix that. They did a, I call it a postage stamp as a cure for it, but it didn't happen. I'd get with some of the meanest lawyers who have nothing to gain the system, and I ask, how can we fix this joint service so that restaurant owners are not charging outlandish prices for every meal?
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because of the premiums you're having to pay. Had one OBGYN tell me I got rid of all my malpractice, he was OBGYN, he said I've had it, I'm not going to work. I think he said five months of the year paying a premium. I go to the businesses that understand it. If it were in your field, I'd say what regulation in the media world is redundant or doesn't make sense or costs you money. And then I weigh it and then that's how I...
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that's how we'll cut regulations, that's how we'll solve or start solving the affordability crisis. You mentioned Logan Frederico. What do we do about changing our judicial system here in South Carolina? mean, certainly that needs to be reformed, right? The way the Joint Merit Selection Committee is composed of trial lawyers and for them to pick the judges, again, is like that they appear before, is like telling Clemson and Carolina, pick you on referees. How is that fair?
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So it's gotta be a system that it could be a hybrid of what DeSantis has done in Florida where the governor picks the Supreme Court justices. I think there's a way to let the people pick it, pick judges. You put the parameters around the money, because you'd have judges, the money element, and up playing a role with who gets elected. But the big thing is rescissions. If you have a judge that goes rogue,
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like the one that, for Frédéric, like many that I see at the federal level. You ought to recall them. Make them live up and make them face the music on these rulings that are letting killers back on the streets. And that's just common sense to me. Yeah. If the legislature sends you a bill that you personally disagree with but passed overwhelmingly in the legislature and appears, supported by
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the people of South Carolina. How do you decide whether to sign it or veto it? Well, I asked that on the issue about oh the bills with saving the life of a child. If it makes it more restrictive to be able to kill a live child, I'll sign it. Pure and simple. ah On the other things, I'd have to weigh it issue by issue to know whether I would go against the people. I'd go against, if it doesn't make sense in my mind, I would... uh
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I would address it and again the bully pulpit, I'd weigh both sides on it and I would make sure it's not just legislature driven on false information that they have given the public. I don't react real quickly to that kind of force or that kind of, I don't put my finger in the air and say what's popular politically. I never have and I won't start now. A lot of cases are so partisan that
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you know, but I would look at it. But on the case with killing a child, that was an easy one for me. Republicans have a super majority in the House and the Senate. Does it trouble you that leadership appoints Democrats to position of power like subcommittee chairmanships? Absolutely. Look, the Democrat Party now is a new socialist party. It's not the Democrat Party of the 60s, 70s or 80s. They're now government run everything.
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Mendame, New York sets the guidelines. AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Omar uh are driving that party. And they're getting more radical. If you look at the candidates they're putting up across the country, they're radical. They're Muslims. They abide by Sharia law, which has no place in this country. And they're elected officials in South Carolina to have the majority that we have, a supermajority.
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to put the judges up that they have. And I know how it works. They run everybody else out and then they have one who happens to be a Democrat. And uh in many cases. uh So no, I would highlight that and tell the legislature, I will not be quiet on that in fear of oh retaliation by other elected members. If you look at where South Carolina is,
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We're either going to go one way or another. We're going to go totally liberal like California has, or we're going to set it on a, make it a state that Florida has set the example in my mind, and right, and causing, having a balance. And I don't mind taking on big projects. I was asked the other day, taking on big firms that can't be beat. I said, I disagree with you. You can take on the mammoth opposition.
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Look it in Florida, Walt Disney. DeSantis took him on. He won. We've gotta take that mindset. It's a case where you're gonna stand up for the people paying the bills, and I will do that. I asked another candidate this question, I'm gonna ask you. Will you make Florida jealous of us? Florida, in fact, I may think about annexing Florida, but they're not conservative enough for me yet. North Carolina's going south quick.
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their liberalism, yeah, every state's gonna be jealous of South Carolina. Look what we have. We have what California had when Ronald Reagan set a high bar of less government, less taxes. All we get now is words. We don't get actions. And that's across the board. It's gonna change with me because I wanna get along as well as I can, but bad policy's bad policy. Spending other people's money is easy, but it's not gonna be with me.
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You said earlier that your lieutenant governor's not going to be kissing babies and cutting ribbons. Blowing bubbles. Blowing bubbles. Excuse me, thank you. um When will we know who your lieutenant governor is And will you announce tonight? I mean, we're ready. No. No. Okay. Not going to announce tonight. It's coming sooner rather than later. What are you looking for? There you go. A strong business person, a like-minded, uh philosophically
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And even more than that, you're going to have some courage. This job, if you want to be liked by everybody, go do something else. uh But it's a job that you've got so much opportunity, particularly in a state like we're in. uh They will be able to take leadership positions. And they have got to have the ability to elect people who are smarter than they are and who are experts in the field.
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If you're scared to hire somebody that is accomplished, that is smarter than we are, politicians are famous for keeping people down and electing people who are dumber than you are. It doesn't make sense to me at all. You put people in place that have been successes and that uh will carry on the policies. Something should happen to me. It'll be a working position. Charlie, did you notice he said he?
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Oh I did. Does that mean we're looking at a male running mate?
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Can't say yet. Y'all are parsing my words. There you go, there you go. Let me ask you something. um A lot of times on the program, people will send me texts and they'll say, Charlie, South Carolina is a sanctuary state. Do you believe we're a sanctuary state? And what do we need to be doing better as far as illegal immigration is concerned? Well, you know, we are a sanctuary state in certain cities and counties because judges put us in that position.
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Now if you take a step back, who elected the judges? That's why we're have to have a wholesale change on who elects the judges of this state. um You have got, we've gotta put, I think it's the 287G program, a program that allows law enforcement, uh you take a course, and if you stop somebody that's illegal, uh they can take action against them, put them, incarcerate them. But look, if you're illegal,
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and they have no place here in South Carolina. If you're in law enforcement and not willing to enforce the Constitution and the law, then you ought to be dealt with in a way that the public knows about what you're doing. Law enforcement will tell you everything about what needs to be done to make sure sanctuary state does not exist and that laws are being enforced like they should be.
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And it's just not happening now. And the Frederico case is one of many. The shooting at the bar in Beaufort was another example. The guys that killed him are running free. You got a lot of pedophiles that are running free. I mean, you can't have that. Something is wrong. But I'm not scared to call that out. And I don't care who it affects. We're Republican Democrat. So with our supermajority, what has it brought us? Very little.
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The state senate passed a bill that's going to give some relief to senior citizens for their property taxes. Not sure where that is in this final week of the legislature. Would you support eliminating property taxes on seniors altogether? And could we ever think about just eliminating property taxes across the board? Well, you know, that affects local cities and municipalities as well. mean, you can't just politically, I can say, I'm going to eliminate all taxes.
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Senior citizens need special treatment. Our military veterans need special treatment. So I would look to them to, I'm gonna cut as much as I can and not affect the primary goal of getting our functions of government in place and working. And so, but yes, I'm gonna be as much of a hawk on income taxes.
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more so than anybody because I've had to live under it I know what it means. We've not only got the governor's race coming up, we've also got the attorney general's race coming up. What are you looking for in an attorney general and are you looking for an attorney general that will fight corruption in Columbia? The attorney general is going to have to fight corruption in Columbia. It's the good old voice system. I know how it works. I've seen it front and center stage. And it'll have to be willing to go against the
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Joe White coins it perfectly when he said you've got your money trail, you've your lawyer trail, ah and the money trail takes a lot of different avenues and they come together to control a small body to control it. You've got to fight that. uh all the candidates are not qualified nor will they fight. They may say they will. What has been their record? It's like I'm telling people with governor, what's the record? What have you done?
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not said you're gonna do, but attorney general, I'm gonna have to have a strong one because there's a lot that's falling through the cracks. The attorney general on the Captain Sam Spit said it's out that he had a uh 16 % chance of losing, only a 16 % chance of losing. Yet it cost the state $32 million. That's not gonna happen. I'm gonna have a lot of exercise
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a lot of influence, hopefully, and counsel on why things should be prosecuted as attorney general. And look at the money that they allocate. I want more to go to Solicitor's uh to break the pedophile and all the things that happened to our children here. That hadn't been done. It just hasn't. The money has been kept in Columbia. I want to go back to, we talked earlier about earmarks.
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You named a couple of the examples. Is there any way that we could ever just completely eliminate earmarks? Yeah, it is. Now earmarks again takes us, it's like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder. But uh we don't have, particularly now, things have been so neglected, we don't have time to build that building on that preferred campus because you're not going be able to get to the preferred campus because of our neglected infrastructure.
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Earmarks have no place. They get around it. And you can have all the laws in the world. But if you're crooked and if you are dishonest, you'll find a way to come around it. I will cut out as much as I can, as quick as I can. And I will call it out. And people know, generally, the bridge to nowhere that was Don Young built in Alaska. You got a lot of bridges to nowhere, in a sense, in South Carolina. um
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the woke museums. And everybody says, you know, it's only a small part of the line item. Last time I checked my credit card statements, there were all a line items that really, in a sense, a percentage of the total bill, but guess what goes to the total bill? All those items. That's how I look at things. That's how the business, if running a business, you had to look at things. That's how to look at it in South Carolina's budget.
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What can we do about education? It seems like no matter how much money we spend, no matter how much money is in the budget, our education always seems to be down at the bottom. How do we make those steps up? A couple of things. You let the dollar file the child. You enforce uh order in the classroom. You make examples of those teachers who are not doing their job. I don't think it's money. mean, everybody wants more money, but is it getting the job done?
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It's like having a car that the valves are knocking. You put it in reverse, it goes in drive, and you say, we're going to put a higher octane gas and a better oil in the car. No, we've got to ignite the people in South Carolina that are paying for homeschooling, paying for private schools, and the property tax is paying for public education. Public education is going to have to meet the challenge. We're losing a generation of children.
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17 of my grandchildren go to public schools. It's a war zone. It's just a war zone. And not at every level, but you deal with it. And I'm for home school and charter schools, private schools, and public schools. But they're going to have to have standards that the teacher is teaching the basics and the child is responding. And whether that's core curriculum, that's measurable, everything ought to be measurable. And we just somehow got in the way.
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gotten away from that. When you have a situation, and let's just use a data center for example, we saw a case uh in Spartanburg County where people just let it be known, they were not interested in that being in their community. But if you have a uh potential for economic growth, whatever it be, data center or large warehouse, manufacturing, and it conflicts with the community, maybe there's environmental issues, where do you draw the line there as to
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you know, you turn it away or you allow it to come into the community? Well, I won't. I will ask for community involvement. That's where the regulations start. That's where your planning commission starts. I will urge them to get involved. And if they don't want it, that's fine. If I have a company that that would in my mind would benefit South Carolina, it definitely involves the county that it will be built in wherever that is all across the 46 counties in South Carolina. So I would involve them. I would get there.
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buy in hopefully and we've got to get to the point where again it comes to giving away our state we don't have to do that anymore any company that comes in now it's going to be questions as to are you going to provide your own power are you going to uh you know how you use my water how you use my air and you get the community involved I want more involvement it's like the guy who I sold a lot to who's came in he had a stack of papers
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like that and he threw it on the table. said, you know the lot you sold me was level, level topo, no field dirt. I could dig footings and build. He said, the regulations cost me $35,000 on this house. I said, now John, I've urged you to get on the planning commission. You're busy, you've done well. I've urged you to take ownership in your community. That's how I, you've got to get people involved and they can't tell me they don't have time. Look, we all have a...
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finite amount of time, you have to get involved and let the government that's closest to the people and run by the people uh is what will make this state even greater. And I will encourage that. Over the past five days, 100,000 articles have been written about the hantavirus. People are calling for masking. People are calling for social distancing. How would you as governor handle a an outbreak like hantavirus or go back to COVID? How would you handle that?
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Well, just like I did in COVID, I was the only congressman that stood with the frontline doctors. Only one. Black Lives Matter was all around us, in front of the Supreme Court. There will be no shutdown under a normal administration. We shut down 421 days for COVID. I don't trust anything the World Health Organization comes up with. It's controlled by China. There will be no shutdown. Look what it did to our children in the education field.
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Look what it did to the businesses. Government should not be able to dictate that. If I remember right, states formed federal government, not federal government created the states. That's a core belief of mine. What's something that you hope to accomplish in your first term that when that four years is up, the voters can look back and say, he was successful, we need him for another four years? I saved the state by saving it meaning
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We had orderly growth. We made South Carolina better. We reduced government. We reduced taxes. We concentrated on things that really value to that person, whether he makes $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 a year, and the person who makes more. But you have a quality here that I will have protected South Carolina. I mean, that's why I'm doing it. Because if we keep going the way we've been going, it's going to be just like all the other states.
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and we don't have to do that. So if we made the quality of life better, it would have been a success, and let them be the judge on whether we've accomplished it. They will find we have accomplished it, or at least we're putting it to the people so that they can get behind and say we made progress. Maybe it was incrementally small, but we made progress. Along those same lines, take just about a minute and tell us what, why the folks out there listening and watching should vote for Ralph Norman for governor.
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The reason you ought to for me is look at my record. You're getting ready to elect somebody that you're locked in with for eight years with incumbency. And I'm the only one that's got the record of doing what I'm saying. The others are talking about it, but they've never done it. And would you let a surgeon who has never actually done it operate on you for eight years? Would you elect a CEO or a coach that says they're coaching? They would like to do this with the team, but they've never been in a ball game to coach.
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That's what I'm up against. um Whether you want somebody that has done it, has got a track record of doing it, or you just want to take a bet on somebody that really, yes, they talk well, yes, they're saying they're doing the same things, but they've never demonstrated that they'll do it. Simple as I know to do it. Say it.
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Congressman Ralph Norman, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon on the Governor Series brought to you by Newstalk 98.9 WORD and our friends at Gosling Electric. We appreciate you guys tuning in and watching. Thank you, Joey Hudson, for being here this afternoon. It's going to be a big election. Don't forget the primaries are coming up on June 9th, so get out there and vote.
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Stay informed, make your voice count in the upcoming South Carolina primary Tuesday, June 9th. Thanks for listening to Newstalk 98.9 WORD's Governor Series.
May 11, 2026
