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A Historic Exhibit of Gov. Riley's Career The South Carolina Political Collections of the University of South Carolina Library organized a special historic exhibit of Gov. Riley' career. The exhibit included many interesting videos, cartoons, campaign material, and other important documents from Riley's service to South Carolina and the nation. These materials and others are available to scholars and the public at the Library. |
His Place in South Carolina History
By Dr. Lacy K. Ford, Jr.
The first person in history popularly elected to two consecutive four-year terms as Governor of South Carolina, Richard W. "Dick" Riley emerged as the model of the modern "New South" Governor who valued education and human capital as well economic infrastructure and incentive packages, who sought merit and expertise over patronage and cronyism in state government, and who was determined to manage the state in a fiscally prudent yet progressive fashion.
Known for his fairness and integrity, and his commitment to racial inclusiveness, Dick Riley and the late Sen. Isadore Lourie, founded the New Democrats movement (then SC Democratic Leadership Council) in South Carolina to help promote an agenda of educational improvement and economic progress that left no South Carolinian behind, regardless of race or place.
Educated at Greenville High and Furman University (class of 1954), Dick Riley served in the United States Navy before graduating from USC law school and returning home to Greenville to practice law with his father and brother in 1959. In 1957, he married Ann "Tunky" Yarborough, now his wife of fifty years, and they later had four children. In 1962 he was first elected to the South Carolina legislature, serving in both the House of Representatives and the Senate between 1962 and 1976. During his years in the legislature Riley quickly emerged as a leader of the "Young Turks," a group of young progressive reformers, largely from urban areas, who steadily pushed a progressive agenda, which included greater autonomy for local governments (home rule), judicial reform, legislative openness, revision of the state constitution, and the "modernization" of state government generally.
In 1976, Riley served as the South Carolina Chairman of the Carter for President campaign, and in 1978 he declared himself a candidate for governor. Though polling in single digits during the early stages of the campaign, Riley's tireless campaigning, straight talk, and progressive reform message propelled him to an impressive primary win over the incumbent lieutenant governor Brantley Harvey. In the general election, Riley trounced the Republican nominee Ed Young, garnering nearly 60 percent of the vote.
During his first term as governor, Riley fought hard for and won approval of merit selection of public service commissioners, greater openness in government, a constitutional amendment creating a state reserve fund to bring stability to the state budgeting process, limiting the storage of nuclear waste in South Carolina, and, most importantly, a state constitutional amendment allowing a governor to serve two consecutive terms in office. Taking advantage of approval of the latter amendment in 1980, Riley ran for re-election in 1982, winning nearly 70% of the vote in an impressive re-election bid. During his second term as governor, Riley focused like a laser beam on much-needed improvements in public education and state economic development policy.
The crowning achievement of Riley's two-terms as governor was the passage of the Education Improvement Act in 1984, arguably the most important piece of education reform legislation ever approved by the South Carolina legislature, and one of the most comprehensive education reform packages ever passed by a state. To win approval of this proposal, Riley built impressive grassroots support from teachers, parents, community leaders and key elements of the business community to counter opposition from vested interests opposed to funding education improvements. The EIA, which called for competitive merit pay for teachers, smaller class sizes, an ambitious school building program, and a serious of rigorous accountability measures and secured funding for these reforms through a one cent increase in the state sales tax (an increase dedicated to funding education), established South Carolina as a model for education reform not only in the South but in the nation and won Riley the reputation as one of the leading champions of public education in the nation.
After leaving office in 1987, Riley joined the prestigious law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough, served as a trustee for the Duke Endowment and remained active in the civic life of South Carolina. But when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he named Dick Riley as Secretary of Education, a position Riley held for a full eight years. As Secretary of Education, Riley pushed for increased federal aid to needy children, increased direct loans to college students, encouraged parental involvement in public schools, fought off Republican efforts to abolish the Department of
Education, and designed a program for setting national education standards and then providing students and teachers with incentives to meet them. By the end of his tenure as Secretary of Education, Riley had established the importance of federal support for education improvement in the United States without diminishing the historic centrality of state and local governments in providing education for their citizens.
As Riley prepared to leave Washington, respected nationally syndicated columnist David Broder gave Riley perhaps the highest compliment of all, calling him "one of the most decent and honorable men in public life."
South Carolinians will long remember Dick Riley as a leader who talked about education and job skills and improving human capital two decades before the challenges of globalization forced the state to realize that to compete in the modern global economy, South Carolinians must work not only harder but smarter, that cheap labor is not as important as an intelligent work force, and that creativity and knowledge drives the new economy. As Dick Riley predicted when he signed the EIA into law in 1984, the new economy, and the new South Carolina that must rise to succeed within it, could not be built with "bricks and mortar" but would be built with "minds."
Dick Riley put South Carolina on the road to education improvement and economic competitiveness in the 1980s, just as the new knowledge economy that was beginning to take shape. In the ensuing twenty years, the Republican party took control of first the governor's mansion and then the legislature, and in their ideological pursuit of shrinking government, cutting taxes and attacking public schools, they have allowed South Carolina's journey to competitiveness languish.
South Carolina's New Democrats stand committed to replacing the stagnation of failed ideology with the energy of a new solution-oriented realism and to reviving the central mission of Dick Riley: that of giving all of the state's citizens the knowledge and the skills necessary to compete successfully in the global economy of the twenty-first century.
