DatelineCarolinaSenators’ families gain the floor

Senators' families may now enter chamber floor

By Paul Bowers
Edited by Halley Nani

In the S.C. Senate chamber, everything is a symbol: The iron stairs to the upstairs gallery, made to be fireproof after the first two wooden State Houses burned to the ground. The state sword wielded by the sergeant-at-arms. The looming, furrowed-brow portrait of John C. Calhoun.

And then there's the rail, "the dividing point between the floor and not-the-floor," as Sergeant-at-Arms Jim Melton puts it.

One of the first resolutions passed by the Senate this year allows senators' family members to come out on the floor, past that bronze rail, for an introduction. It's a minor tweak, but it's just the sort of rule that makes the state Legislature a unique workplace.

The Senate rules – all 27 pages – are about enforcing decorum and making sure the Senate's time is spent in the public's best interest. Brenda Erickson, senior research analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, says the new rule is atypical and that most states have actually been making family introduction rules stricter.

To go on the floor in the Tennessee Senate, for instance, you need a go-ahead from the speaker; in Indiana, no family members are allowed at all.

Sen. Phillip Shoopman, R-Greenville, wrote the South Carolina resolution.

"The main difference between this and most other workplaces is that it's a deliberative body," Shoopman says. "Our work is verbal debate over ideas, and that is the focus, so you want to have as few distractions during that debate as possible."

Still, any job will intersect with family life. Shoopman says he used to formally introduce his wife, Dawn, and two young children during his two-year stint in the House. There, representatives could introduce their families without a vote of approval.

But each chamber has its own rules, and when he joined the Senate in 2009, he discovered it took unanimous consent from the senators to override the rules and allow an introduction. No one ever denied his request, but Shoopman said he thought it would "speak better of the institution" if senators could skip the formality.

Sen. Michael Rose, R-Dorchester, signed on as a co-sponsor in early January.

"It seemed like a rule that didn't make sense," Rose says. "Why can't you introduce them?"

Rules Committee Chairman Larry Martin, R-Pickens, says his three grown children don't visit him in the chamber much anymore, but that they grew up visiting him on the floor. His son Anthony, now 23, used to hang and do back flips on the rail as a child. Martin would get a unanimous vote to introduce them, and no one would stop them from staying beside their father at his desk afterward.

"Their mother, she still has horrors of reminiscences of some of the antics they did," Martin says.

His wife, Susan Martin, says she would take the children into the Senate chamber at least once a month before they started school and that during school a lot of senators' families would visit on spring break.

"The children were so excited, and they were so proud to be down there," she says.

But with children comes noise, and when Senate is in session, the chamber's vaulted ceilings create an echo chamber. The senators have brass-plated speakers at their desks to hear whoever is speaking, but Shoopman says things can still get too noisy.

Martin says he had these things in mind when the Rules Committee added "for the purposes of introduction" to the resolution, limiting the family time to a quick, formal hello. The Senate adopted the resolution Jan. 19.

"You've got to be a little bit cautious in opening that up," Martin says.

Melton, who has been sergeant-at-arms since 1989, says the Senate usually had at least one family introduction a week under the old arrangement.

"I don't see it affecting decorum one way or the other," Melton says.

"The rail's been there for a hundred years, and the rules have changed several times over the years."