SC Gov. McMaster's environmental czar survives millionaire opposition, climate change doubts

When it came time to vote, four Republican members of the committee — Everett Stubbs, Roger Nutt, Stephen Goldfinch and Josh Kimbrell — ultimately withheld their votes, letting Reece through without a “yes” or “no” on her confirmation, allowing her to proceed to the floor with seven out of the 13 members present in-favor.

Climer, the committee chairman, was the only one to vote against her. 

There were some questions about how Reece would fare, particularly after another Senate committee voted not to advance McMaster’s pick to lead the newly formed Department of Public Health — former DHEC head Edward Simmer — in a contentious vote earlier this month.

Some, like Charleston Democratic Sen. Ed Sutton, took issue with the line of questioning around climate change, inviting everyone on the committee to visit his district in-person to see the impacts of sea level rise firsthand before denying the problem’s existence.

“You can’t solve a problem without looking at the cause of a problem,” Sutton said.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Climer said he believed Reece deserved a fair hearing, saying that if he wanted to kill her nomination, the committee “wouldn’t have brought it up at all.”

But he still had concerns. He criticized her “evasiveness” under questioning, saying she did a “delightful” job of “telling people what they want to hear” without actually following through. 

He cited concerns about her regulatory regime, though he did not name any specific regulations enacted by her agency that went egregiously beyond regulations already put in place by the federal EPA.

Climer also criticized her department’s balance of conservation with the rights of property owners — a concern shared by multimillionaire activist Rom Reddy, who has vocally opposed Reece’s nomination after her agency fined him nearly $300,000 last fall for an illegal seawall he built on his property.