Haley, Greene top S.C. stories for 2010

COLUMBIA -- When voters went to the polls two years ago, Nikki Haley was a South Carolina state representative mostly known for backing Gov. Mark Sanford's vetoes and stepping on toes in a push to force lawmakers to record every one of their votes.

Alvin Greene was toiling away in the Army, an anonymous grunt with a string of bad performance reviews from an earlier stint in the Air Force. Tim Scott was a Charleston County councilman who had just become the first black Republican in the South Carolina House in more than a century.

But 2010's election season thrust all three to the forefront of South Carolina's consciousness and, for a time, the nation's. Haley was elected governor, Scott was elected to Congress and Greene notched an improbable win in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary before losing in the general election.

The political scene dominated South Carolina's news during a year in which the state's unemployment peaked, a mother was accused of slaying her children and a sitting governor divorced for the first time.

Scott and Haley, who is Indian-American, helped change the hue of upper echelons of South Carolina's Republican Party. Greene's quixotic, unsophisticated run for the U.S. Senate became for a time the most popular political story in America and left Republican Sen. Jim DeMint free to spend time and millions to bolster the tea party movement.

Other notable political changes included the election of three new congressmen besides Scott.

Among them is state Sen. Mick Mulvaney, who knocked off 28-year veteran Rep. John Spratt to become the first Republican to represent the 5th District since 1883. And just last week, the state learned that a boost in population will bring a seventh seat come 2012.

For others, tragedy struck. On normally tranquil Hilton Head Island, a jogger from Georgia died when a small plane with engine failure struck him as it made an emergency landing on a beach. The husband and father of two young children was listening to music and never heard it coming.

In Orangeburg, Shaquan Duley asked a passing motorist for help for her two sons, saying they were trapped in a car submerged in a river. She now is accused of suffocating the boys and staging the accident.

About 70 miles away, Lee County's sheriff went from community icon to felon. E.J. Melvin could face life in prison after being convicted of conspiring to extort money from drug dealers in exchange for protection from investigation.

Thousands continue to struggle financially, though the picture has started to improve. The state's unemployment rate peaked at 12.5 percent in January but hit 10.6 percent in November, the third month of improvement in a row.

But perhaps no story was more stunning than the rise of Haley, who was born Nimrata Randhawa to parents who emigrated from India. Next month, she will succeed a string of 89 white men who served as governor of South Carolina.

Haley started the year as the least known of four Republicans running for governor. She used that to her advantage, telling voters that U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, state Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer were part of the establishment. A well-timed endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a few weeks before the June primary appeared to offset a blogger's claims - never substantiated and always denied by the candidate - that he'd had inappropriate physical contact with the married representative.

Haley won the GOP primary in convincing fashion. Stories about her paying her personal income taxes late and missing tax deadlines as bookkeeper for her parents' business didn't stop her momentum as she beat Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen in November.

Haley wasn't the only big news on primary night. The state and the nation also quickly got to know Greene, then a 32-year-old unemployed veteran with an itch for politics. He did almost no campaigning, and was unknown to Democratic party leaders days before the primary.

"If a candidate wants to give the state $10,000, go for it, I guess," party Chairwoman Carol Fowler said before voters went to the polls.

Greene rolled over former legislator and judge Vic Rawl. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know who he was. And they got rambling, barely coherent answers from a man dressed in warmup pants and a 17-year-old "Greene Family Reunion" T-shirt.

Just as quickly, they found out Greene was facing a felony obscenity charge. And a few months later, the Air Force released Greene's records, saying he was passed over for promotions for reasons ranging from uploading sensitive intelligence information to a military server to an overall inability to clearly express his thoughts and perform basic tasks.

DeMint simply ignored Greene. They didn't debate and DeMint never ran a TV commercial. Instead, DeMint fashioned himself as a kingmaker for Republican candidates around the country, backing some conservatives who won. He easily swept to his own victory.

South Carolinians haven't heard the last of Greene. He said he'll run for president, and on Christmas Eve he filed to run for a state House vacancy created by a lawmaker's death.

Meanwhile, Scott's political career kept soaring. He'd dropped a campaign for lieutenant governor when Rep. Henry Brown announced he wasn't running again, and ended up knocking off the sons of Sen. Strom Thurmond and Gov. Carroll Campbell to become the state's first black Republican congressman in more than a century.

Along with Brown, the state lost three more U.S. House members - Barrett, who left for his unsuccessful run for governor, Bob Inglis, who got trounced in the Republican primary, and Spratt.

The dean of South Carolina's delegation, the Democrat seeking a 15th term finally got caught by changing demographics in a district that has never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Spratt was beaten by Mulvaney, a state senator who moved to South Carolina just eight years before and decided to run because he didn't like what Spratt said about health care legislation at a town-hall meeting.

And life kept changing for the man moving out of the governor's mansion. His divorce finalized, a much more humble Sanford won some legislative victories. As Jenny Sanford promoted her memoir, the governor made a quiet weekend trip to Florida to see the woman he'd once called his "soul mate."

Sanford hasn't revealed much more about that relationship or about what he plans to do when his second term ends next month. He recently said his itinerary doesn't go beyond climbing in his son's pickup truck and hitting the road.

"I'm driving east on (Interstate) 26 and beyond that," he said, "it's a new adventure and we'll figure out the next chapter of life."