Discussing Effective Lawmaking with South Carolina State Senator Katrina Shealy

Alan Wiseman (00:00:09): 

I’m the Associate Provost of Strategic Projects and a Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and along with Craig Volden at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, I also co-direct the Center for Effective Lawmaking. In today’s version of our Conversation with Effective Lawmakers video series, we are delighted to welcome Senator Katrina Shealy, who served in the South Carolina Senate from 2012 to 2024, where she represented the 23rd Senate District, which includes Lexington County. Her first election to South Carolina Senate was particularly notable for a couple of reasons. First of all, she won her Senate seat as a petition candidate. And second of all, when she entered the Senate in the 2013-2014 legislative session, she was the only woman serving in the South Carolina Senate at that time. During her time in the Senate, Senator Shealy served as chair of the Senate Family and Veteran Services Committee, becoming the first Republican woman to chair a standing committee in the South Carolina Senate. And across her time in the Senate, she developed and advanced an expansive policy agenda on a wide range of topics, including dealing with matters pertaining to mental health and cognitive health, including suicide prevention, the rights of domestic abuse victims, tax reform, and children’s health and well-being. Now, upon entering the Senate during her first legislative term in the 2013-24 session, or 2014 session, pardon me, Senator Shealy was immediately successful at advancing her sponsored bills through the legislative process, and ultimately into becoming law. In fact, according to our data at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, she was among the top 10 most effective lawmakers in the South Carolina Senate, even though it was only her first term in the chamber. This pattern of legislative success continued in subsequent legislative sessions, where she was consistently ranked, according to our data, among the top 10 most effective lawmakers in the South Carolina Senate, including the 2017-2018 legislative session, where our data place her as the most effective lawmaker in the South Carolina Senate. Senator Shealy, thank you so much for joining us for a Center for Effective Lawmaking interview. You know, as I said a little bit earlier, we’re going to be asking you a series of fairly general questions. And we’d really love to hear from you, just drawing on your own experience and your own personal insights about the ways in which you’ve engaged with the legislative process and lawmaking and politics during your time in the State Senate. Oh, it sounds like you’re a little bit muted right now.

Katrina Shealy (00:02:44):

Well….

Alan Wiseman (00:02:47): 

There you go. If you just go a little… speak a little louder, get a little closer. 

Katrina Shealy (00:02:50): 

Okay, maybe I just need to get a little closer. But, um, thank you for having me. You know, I’m glad to be here. I’m always excited to talk about things that happen in South Carolina, but especially, you know, in politics, and things that we accomplished while we were there, and things that hopefully they can still get done. So, um, I’m happy to talk to you.

Alan Wiseman (00:03:10): 

That’s perfect, and very consistent with lots of things we’re excited to talk with you about. So let’s just dive into things. What I’d like to do, and I know Craig is going to be asking a similar spirit of questions, is we’d like to take a step back to get a sense about how your background, and by that I mean before you entered electoral politics or legislative office, how’d that shape your approach to lawmaking? And on that point, you know, how did working in the insurance agent—pardon me, insurance industry—for more than 30 years influence your decision to run for the Senate, as well as what you were hoping to accomplish upon being an elected official?

Katrina Shealy (00:03:44):

Well, I’ve got to tell you, when I was in the insurance business, I never really thought anything about going into politics. That was never on my radar. You know, when I was young, I got in the insurance industry because my father owned an insurance agency, and you know, you kind of do what your dad tells you to, at least in the South you do. And, so… That’s what I always thought I’d do, but I went into the insurance industry in a kind of a… a field that most people don’t go in. I was in the forest industry, and I worked with Lloyd’s of London. So, already, I was in a field that most women don’t get to break into, you know? There are very few, if any female underwriters for Lloyd’s at that time because they didn’t even let women go into Lloyd’s at one time. And, being in the forestry industry, that’s a very male-dominated business, so I was used to working, you know, in a strange industry, so… And I was used to dealing with people that weren’t used to dealing with people like me. So, but, so I found that ground, and I really enjoyed it. Now, like I said, I wasn’t even interested in politics, but my dad was interested in… he… my dad was a staunch Republican, and so he was just interested in getting me out there doing something, so I just got involved in the party politics, you know. He’d just go to the meetings, and so I got involved with the Republican Party, with the women, and, you know, just doing things to make him happy. His one goal was to have one of those backwards Bill Clinton watches. I don’t know if y’all remember those, but, you know, he had plenty of money he could have bought himself, but he wanted me to buy it for him, so… I still have it, by the way, in case, you know, anybody wants to bid on that, I’ll be happy to sell it to him. But that’s how I got started in politics, but it wasn’t a dream to become some great, you know, political leader or something. But once I got started, then, you know, you kind of get that burning fire, you know, you want to do this, and you want to do that, you want to see things get done. And I saw that it didn’t get done quite as fast as I like for it to get done. So, I think that’s, you know—where the insurance industry helped me was the fact that I wasn’t afraid to talk to people that didn’t necessarily always agree with my ideas, or didn’t necessarily look like me or act like me, you know, I’d just say what I thought.

Craig Volden (00:06:13): 

Yeah, that background is super helpful to us, and then we think about, right up to the time when you entered the legislature, and I’m just kind of wondering what were those first days like? Did they have much in the way of, you know, an orientation to set you on your way? Or, you know, are there things that you would tell new members now that you wish you had known when you first started out?

Katrina Shealy (00:06:35): 

Well, I think back when I came in, I think we got more of an orientation then than they actually do now, because the first couple weeks before they brought us in, you know, they told us about what it’s going to be like to pick your seats, what it’s going to be like to pick your office, because everything in the South Carolina Senate is by seniority. So, you’re nobody when you come in. You’re, like, it’s by seniority, and then it’s by, um, the alphabet. So, when I came in, there were 10 of us. There were 10 freshmen when I came in, and my last name’s Shealy. So, you know, those S’s, we’re kind of… fortunately, there were 3 people, there were 2 T’s and a Y. So, you know, I wasn’t at the bottom, but I was number 43 out of 46. So, I was really low on the totem pole. But they did tell us, you know, one thing I learned, and I’ll… this is the best advice I ever got. Freshmen should be seen and not heard. Because you sit back, and you listen, and you learn something. And a lot of people now don’t do that. They think they should be heard, and, you know, everybody should hear what they got to say, and they don’t learn anything. But… I wasn’t seen at all, because I was the only woman in the chamber for a long time. For 3 years, there were no other women there until, Senator Pinckney passed away, and Marjorie Bright Matthews came. But they would forget I was there completely, because when they… the Senate in South Carolina is very formal. And we would come in every day, and, you know, the president marches in with the sword, and we do all this, you know, fancy stuff, and they would say, gentlemen of the Senate, please rise. Well, I didn’t know if I was supposed to get up or not. So, finally, after about 6 months, they remembered I was there. And instead of saying, you know, members of the Senate, please rise, or ladies and gentlemen, because they’re what… they would say, lady.

Craig Volden (00:08:42): 

Uh-huh.

Katrina Shealy (00:08:43): 

And gentlemen of the Senate, please rise. Well, let me tell you, that’s worse. I’d rather just say, gentlemen, please rise, because then everybody’s looking around for the lady, and I’m just a little short girl from Red Bank, South Carolina, so no, everybody’s looking around to find that lady in the Senate. But… So that’s one thing I wish had never happened, but I think… I didn’t know what it was gonna be like. You know, because I had never been in politics. I hadn’t been in anything. I hadn’t been in the school board, I hadn’t been in the House. A lot of people come from the House to the Senate. But here I am in this body that has so much power. And I’m just there. A lot of people that, first year in the Senate, they’ve been in the House before.

Craig Volden (00:09:30): 

Yeah. 

Katrina Shealy (00:09:30): 

Or they have been on some kind of other thing, and I’m thinking, what have I gotten myself into? But then I said, well, if you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it right. So, I hadn’t figured out what I was going to do.

Craig Volden (00:09:42): 

I’m intrigued by what you were saying before, of your pre-Senate time, you were thinking, things aren’t getting done fast enough. And then when you first arrive, you kind of want to sit back, but at the same time, things aren’t getting done fast enough, so did you feel that sort of tension?

Katrina Shealy (00:09:59):

Well, here’s what I looked at, because, you know, everybody campaigns on this. Every Republican, I don’t care what state you live in, campaigns on lower taxes, I’m gonna fix our roads, because every state legislature thinks their state has the worst roads. They’re gonna fix the roads, they’re gonna lower taxes, and they’re gonna improve education. Every state legislature. So that’s what you campaign on, just to get in. You know, so… because if you’re a Democrat, you campaign on, you’re gonna get the, you know, better, resources for families and children, and you’re gonna, you know, social issues, so… Well, I campaigned on lowering taxes, fixing the roads, and better education, you know, we’re gonna do all that. Well, when I got in, I said, everybody else campaigned on that, but nobody’s taking care of children. Nobody’s taking care of the elderly, nobody’s taking care of veterans, because there are no women in here. Nobody cares about these things. Well, somebody needs to do that. So I decided, well, guess what? I’m gonna do that. So, when I started doing it. There was a whole lot to be done. And I just took over that and did it, and I did it by myself. So then there was a lot of work to do. And so, I just worked really hard and got it all done, and so that’s why I stayed busy, really, really busy. And I had to… I had to recruit a bunch of people, but they weren’t there. And I think that I got real compassionate about seeing children and families, and the DSS thing, the Department of Social Services issue became a real serious matter. And I had to work a lot with my Democrat friends then, because the Republican friends were over there lowering taxes and, you know, fixing the roads. And I couldn’t find anybody to work with me on those issues.

Alan Wiseman (00:12:04): 

Now, that’s a really interesting observation or point regarding you just recognizing a bunch of issues that your party, or at least members you’re most familiar with, weren’t engaging with. I mean, I want to highlight to our viewers, related to the point you were just raising, that your efforts to reform South Carolina’s Department of Social Services actually led to your recognition as the Legislator of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers in 2015, so it was very clear that when you start to embrace these types of issues, you’re diving all in on those. I guess related to that point, you know, our research at the Center for Effective Lawmaking demonstrates that the most effective lawmakers tend to organize their agendas around a few specific issues. And as you noted, you know, once you got there, you just recognized there were so many different issues that weren’t really being dealt with, but were clearly important for a bunch of different aspects of South Carolinians’ lives. So I guess, you know, one question that I’d have for you is, you know, frankly, how do you decide when you’re faced with so many issues that are clearly important that aren’t being addressed, that you as a legislator or the legislature can actually engage with? You know, how did you decide which issues to prioritize, and what sorts of issues did you decide to set aside, just because, you know, as you noted, there just simply weren’t enough resources, or time, or both? Sound… having a little difficulty hearing you.

Katrina Shealy (00:13:30): 

Okay, I think… Can you hear me now? I think that you have to decide what issue’s most important to you. Like, I had worked with the children in the Department of Juvenile Justice before I became a legislator. I had volunteered with them. I was the chairman of the Friends of Juvenile Justice, and I had seen children suffer, so I knew that children played a part in what I was going to do. Well, then when I got there, I found out how bad the Department of Social Services, the… the… issues that they had, that so many children were dying in South Carolina. Now, I think the men in the Senate care, but they care more about things that are going to help them raise money. And I know that that’s… it sounds like I think they don’t care about children, but you can’t put money in your campaign account working with children’s issues and working with elderly. Because there’s no big lobbyist out there that’s gonna help you raise money for children and families and women abused by domestic violence, so somebody’s gotta do it. So I said, well, I didn’t get elected to get re-elected. I got elected to see what I could get done, because everybody kept saying, you’re a one-term wonder anyway, so, you know, get what you can get done in that one term. And so, that’s what I was gonna do. I was gonna see how much I could get done in 4 years. And I said, I’m gonna help children, and I’m gonna help families. And the elderly, those were my things, because I hadn’t got off on my veteran kick yet, because there’s only so much time in, you know, 4 years to do things, so I started out with the children’s issues. In that time, I formed a foundation to help kids in foster care. I did all those things that I thought would help children, and that included DJJ and the Department of Social Services. And we had some big battles. I mean, we fought a lot of fights with the Department of Social Services, but we did get reform. We actually—in one session, we formed the Department of the Child Advocate, which is like a miracle to get a bill that big passed in one session. I mean, one year. Not a… not a two-year session. In one year, we passed a bill. And … Because when I fought, I fought hard. And I didn’t fight by standing on the floor. And you know, this is what a lot of legislators think. They think you gotta stand up and talk about it. You gotta go to the well, and you gotta stand up, and you gotta make everybody miserable by talking all day long. That’s not… filibustering is not the way to win a fight. The way to win a fight is to walk across the aisle and go sit down by somebody’s desk and talk to them, and tell them what the bill’s about. And when you tell them what it’s about, and whose life it’s gonna affect, or whose life it’s gonna save. I mean, we had kids dying by getting beat by their, you know, foster parent, or getting beat by their aunt, or their mom’s boyfriend, and we were taking them and putting them in some hotels. Kids were getting in 5, 6, 7 foster homes. And when you go explain that to somebody, and you touch their heart, and you say, this bill’s got a big cent. They’ll vote for it. I don’t care if they’re a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. But don’t stand up on the floor and make them feel dumb, like, you know, call them out. You go explain it to them. And people want to hear that. If you get up and tell a story and make it sound good, you know, they’ll vote with you, but don’t call them out about it.

Craig Volden (00:17:16): 

Yeah, so it sounds like, at least on that particular issue, and many that you’ve been tackling, it wasn’t so much that there’s strong resistance on the other side, or in the legislature, it’s just there was no advocates until you came along. Is that the best way of thinking about this?

Katrina Shealy (00:17:32): 

That’s what it was, there was nobody pushing it.

Craig Volden (00:17:35): 

Yeah, how do you think about, kind of, the strategic element? Like, do I talk to absolutely everybody in the chamber? Do I talk to folks on the key committee first? And then, you know, it might die when it goes to the other chamber, so how did you think about all of that?

Katrina Shealy (00:17:54): 

Well, if I could get it through the Senate, and most of my bills, if you go back and look at—

Craig Volden (00:17:58): 

Oh, I’ll need you to lean in again.

Katrina Shealy (00:18:01): 

Most of my bills, when I pass my… When I passed my legislation, can you hear me now?

Craig Volden (00:18:07): 

Yeah, that’s perfect.

Katrina Shealy (00:18:09): 

Most of my legislation, when it passed, if you look at the numbers, passed 40-something to zero. I mean, you know, when I passed it, everybody was on my side. So then, I did worry when it would go to the House, because it would get bogged down in committee. And that would always worry me, that… because they… their committees are not like Senate committees. They have, like… on judiciary, they’ll have a family law committee, and … just a regular judicial committee, and a something else committee, and so no telling where it’s going to end up. So you had to make friends with whoever the chairman of the Family Law Committee was, so you could get your bill before their committee. And if you could ever get your bill before their committee, you could guilt them into doing the right thing, because most of my legislation Was the right thing. I mean, you don’t want to be voting against keeping kids from getting killed by their mama’s boyfriend. I mean, who wants to vote against that?

Craig Volden (00:19:13):

Right, it’s more, does it actually get on the agenda at all? Does it move through?

Katrina Shealy (00:19:16): 

Right. If you get it on the agenda, you’re going to usually get it, but it’s just got… in the House, there’s so many more of them, and it’s getting it on the agenda. And so many bills come through. You know, you got hundreds and hundreds of bills that come up every year. And if you can have a year that you get… you know, a lot of people get one bill passed a year, but if you got a bill that you got 24 bills passed, I mean, you’re, like, rockin’ it. So….

Craig Volden (00:19:46): 

Yeah, that’s fascinating. And, you know, I also love the perspective on, I’m only here for 4 years, but you weren’t there just for 4 years. Can you tell me about—

Katrina Shealy (00:19:53): 

No! I was there for 12.

Craig Volden (00:19:54): 

Yeah, how that all played out, and, you know, how does effective lawmaking connect with re-election?

Katrina Shealy (00:20:02): 

Well, I never had a year I didn’t have somebody running against me, so I can’t tell you what it’s like. Those people that breeze through, God bless them, but …Re-election is always… it’s like you’re in the middle of something, you gotta stop, you know, because you gotta get out there and work. So it does kind of hamper what you’re doing a little bit. And I think this, you know, my last re-election bid I lost, but I think that, you know, I know what I did was right, I knew it was going to cost me probably my election. And … But I always did what I thought was right. And it takes away from your time working on your legislation. I put out there everything I wanted to do, and I even had an agenda for the next year, what I was going to work on. And I had people that I gave it to when I left. I said, you know, this is what you need to work on. So, you know, not a lot of it’s gotten done, because they’ve got… not gotten a lot done since I left. But running for re-election is tough, you know, and people that think about term limits think, oh, term limits are great. Well, term limits are only, you know, should be at the ballot box, especially in state office. Because it’s, um, if somebody’s doing a good job, you want to keep them, because it would be like it is now in the South Carolina Senate. If you’ve got term limits, you got a bunch of new freshmen every year that are there for the wrong reasons. You know, a lot of people are there… if you’re in South Carolina Senate and think you’re going to make money, then you’re there for the wrong reason, because the $10,400 a year salary is not the reason to be in the Senate, but—to make money. But it does get in the way. You know, being… running for re-election does get in the way, but you gotta do it. And if you do a good job, people should re-elect you. I thought I was doing a good job, but my one issue was, you know, the abortion issue, and it did cause me heartache, but I think I did the right thing.

Craig Volden (00:22:11): 

Yeah.

Alan Wiseman (00:22:13): 

Senator, I want to turn or pivot the conversation a little bit to some points you raised about the difficulty in lawmaking or legislative success, thinking about moving from the Senate to the House, and just different institutional setups. You know, and more generally, it seems like some state legislatures, broadly speaking, tend to be structured or governed in a way that seems to move more smoothly than others. You know, as you know, there’s a ton of variance in terms of how many days different legislatures are in session, you know, as you just alluded to a second ago, the scope of legislator pay, how committees work, majority or supermajority rules, amount of legislative staff. You know, speaking as someone who’s in the South Carolina Senate for 12 years, you know, from your vantage point, do you feel the South Carolina legislature is well-structured to address the state’s public policy challenges, or do you think there’s some reforms that you’d advocate for, some tweaks that you think would even enhance the ability of the Chamber or its members to engage with the challenges that South Carolina deals with?

Katrina Shealy (00:23:16): 

I think the South Carolina Senate right now is really struggling because of the makeup, because of the way that it’s structured, because the way it is right now, you know, the… the majority party has all the control. I mean, they… they have all the seats for chairmanships, because seniority means… rules everything in South Carolina, you know, which it works out if you’re in the majority party, because you… you’re chairman of everything. I think right now there’s, what, … 34 Republicans and 12 Democrats. There’s almost no need for a Democrat to try and push any legislation. Because unless it’s something the majority party wants, it will never get a hearing, because the… I mean, the minority party. If the minority party wants a piece of legislation, they’ll never get it, because the majority party, they can put it in a drawer. It’s never even going to get a hearing. And, I mean, that’s what, you know, one of my good friends is in the minority party. One of the two women left is in the minority party, and she won’t say, you know, can’t… why should I put anything out there? Because they’re not even going to give it a hearing. And… So it’s… it’s kind of like… Why even go to session? Because you can’t get anything done. You can’t stop anything. You can’t pass anything, you’re just kind of there. So I think the structure of them not being able to have… you can’t stop a bill, you can’t… you used to could stop a bill with a minority report, but you can’t even do that now, because they changed all the rules. All the rules are in favor of the majority party. Now, like I said, if you’re in the majority party, yay! But even the majority leader said to me the other day, we’ve got so many people in the majority party that it’s to our disadvantage. Because, you know, in the majority party right now, you have part of the majority party that believes one way, and a part that believes the other way, so you really don’t have a majority party anymore. You’ve got the Freedom Caucus, which we all know that they’re very far to the right, and then you’ve got the majority party that’s like it once was. So you really can’t accomplish anything, so it’s kind of like we’re at a standstill.

Craig Volden (00:25:50): 

Interesting. So the party got so big that it started splintering apart.

Katrina Shealy (00:25:54): 

Right, it’s kind of broken apart itself, so it’s really not a successful way to be when you’re so big. When I first came into the Senate, it was almost… I think it was 2018. But you had enough that you could… you had to have all of the majority party vote in the same way. You had to have everybody believing the same way. Now you don’t even have to have that, because it’s a supermajority.

Craig Volden (00:26:25): 

So, you’ve talked a little bit about the evolution during the time that you were there, in terms of party, but, you know, you also, and we’ve mentioned the gender balance, such as it is or is lacking. You know, I’d love to hear more about, kind of, how did it evolve as you were not just the only lady there, but there were more, and… You know, what are your… what are your feelings about the role of men and women as lawmakers today?

Katrina Shealy (00:27:00): 

Well, you know, when I first started, there were none, then there was me. Then we got two, and we worked all the way up to six. That was the most women ever. Well, when we had four, that was the most women ever. We actually had a celebration. The most women ever in the South Carolina Senate was four, and… but we got all the way up to six, and… But then this last election, we got back down to two, because it was their goal to get rid of all the Republican women because of our stance, you know, on the life bill.

Craig Volden (00:27:32): 

Yeah.

Katrina Shealy (00:27:33): 

And … the role of women in the Senate is balance. We cause them to be balanced in the Senate. Now it’s like the Wild West in there again, where, you know, everything’s just gone awry. You know, I was like everybody’s mama, and that’s truly how I felt. One of the Democrats, when I lost, he stood up and said, y’all lost your conscience. You know, when you… it was all right that I lost, because he lost too, and he said, it’s okay that I lost, but when you lost Senator Shealy, you lost your conscience. He said, because now y’all, it won’t be the same. He actually cried when I lost, not when he lost. I said, don’t do that, because, you know, I’ve been fine with me losing. But, you know, it’s like things have just gone wild. But women take up different issues. You know, they support different issues than the men do, and it’s not… it’s like I said earlier, it’s not that men don’t agree with you, they just don’t take those issues up, like the issues of children and families and veterans and the elderly. They take up other issues, which are… need to be taken up, too, you know. The energy issue and the, you know, the economy issues, but they just don’t take up the other… the social issues.

Craig Volden (00:28:54): 

Right, so, and you were doing that all by yourself initially, but as there were more and more women, you know, was the work being spread around fairly evenly on the…? 

Katrina Shealy (00:29:03): 

Well, they wouldn’t—they didn’t sponsor them as much, you know, they wouldn’t be the lead sponsor, because they felt like if I was the lead sponsor, I would… more people would jump on board. If I was the lead sponsor, I could get more people to sign on to the bill because my passage rate was so good. Well, if you sponsor it, more people will co-sponsor it. So, and then we’ll get more traction in the house, so if I would be the lead sponsor, then we could get it passed.

Craig Volden (00:29:34): 

Yeah.

Katrina Shealy (00:29:35): 

So….

Craig Volden (00:29:36): 

And was that also true? You were mentioning a good friend Democrat who maybe wasn’t able to move their own legislation. Would they look to you to sponsor some of that from time to time?

Katrina Shealy (00:29:47): 

They would. And, you know, what if it’s good legislation? I would do whatever I could do. I’d co-sponsor with them, or whatever. Just, if it’s good legislation, it needs to pass, regardless of whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. And a lot of times, you know, the Democrat might not get a subcommittee hearing, where, you know, we could work together to get a subcommittee here. And there’s been times that I would go to the subcommittee chair… I mean, to the committee chairman and ask them to give a hearing. But we don’t have, you know, they don’t have that kind of relationship right now. But, you know, hopefully that’s gonna come back. I mean, you know, we can always hope.

Alan Wiseman (00:30:31): 

Yeah. I’m curious, taking a step back and thinking about South Carolina as a state, and the ways in which you and others who you’re close with personally and professionally engaged with some particular policy problems that are specific to the state. It also seems, you know, on issues pertaining to social services, children’s health and well-being, for example, that the issues you were advocating for, or you had to engage with in South Carolina, are the same types of issues that were and are being raised by other neighboring states in the South, and really across the entire country. And I’d be curious, you know, especially thinking about South Carolina and some of these more citizen-oriented legislatures where the pay is relatively low, and the scope of staff might be somewhat limited. You know, how did you, as a senator, or other advocates of policies that you cared about, how did you learn about the early experiences of other states? And likewise, how’d you share your knowledge or experiences of your successes in South Carolina with other states who are facing similar problems?

Katrina Shealy (00:31:37): 

Well, I became active in a lot of, like, Southern Legislative Conference and NCSL, so I could share… find out their knowledge, what they were doing, for one thing. Because I like to, you know, find out what somebody else is doing, and get copies of their legislation, and share my legislation with other states because you know, that always helps see… see how they’re, what they’re writing. And, you know, maybe that would help me change what I’m doing. But I think when you share your knowledge with somebody else, that always helps, because they might be doing it a whole lot better than I am, and I can sneak some ideas from them, but I think South Carolina does a lot of things right. You know, we’ve done a lot of things right over the last 10, 12 years. But we’ve also done some things wrong, and we’ve learned from that, you know, like… like our juvenile justice programs, you know. One of the Democrat senators, that was his big push, is to change juvenile justice. Well, we… we changed some of that, and we, you know, we’ve still got a long way to go, but… Both of us are gone now, so I don’t… there… I don’t think anybody’s working on that right now, so our juvenile justice system’s gonna just sit back there and flounder. So we need to see what other states are doing. That was always a big thing for me. Let’s go to Utah, or somewhere where they’re, you know, find some state that’s doing it right and copy what they’re doing, or see what they’re doing. You know, go someplace that’s doing it right and see what they’re doing different than we’re doing. Or if somebody thinks we’re doing it right, you know, if our Department of Social Services, you know, we went to Tennessee, they had Mike Leach, we went and found out what he was doing, and then we stole him and took him to Columbia. You know, you go and find somebody that’s doing it right, and you, you know, garner their knowledge. And that’s, you know, that’s the way to make it work.

Craig Volden (00:33:35): 

And you found that NCSL was helpful in identifying what was going well. Other… was it organizations, or just kind of word of mouth about what’s working well?

Katrina Shealy (00:33:43): 

Well, I think you talked with the, you talked with the leaders at the, like, SLC or NCSL, but you also talk with the legislators that are there. You know, you get to meet a lot of different legislators, and I think that always helps, finding out what they’re doing in their state. And, like, through those organizations, you can, you know, they post the information, you know. You can read on their websites, you know, different legislation from different states. Or, you know, if you’re smart enough and want to go look it up yourself, you can go to, like… North Dakota’s website, or whoever, and find out what they’re doing about, you know, child safety, or, you know, domestic violence, or… you know, because we were, like, number one in domestic violence, and number three in, you know, in the top 10, which is a horrible place to be. You don’t want to be in the top 10 with domestic violence for years, and we finally kept chopping away at that to get us in a better place. 

Craig Volden (00:34:43): 

So I’m interested in, you know, you gave an example early on of a bill that moved much more quickly than you would have expected, and it became law after a year, and then you’ve talked about some policy areas that are, no one’s picking them up, they’re going to flounder for a while, and others still where we chipped away at it over time. I’m interested in kind of that role of persistence, or perseverance, or sticking with things to make it better and better over time, or even if you have a legislative defeat, you try again next year. Can you tell me what your experiences were along those lines?

Katrina Shealy (00:35:18): 

Well, that’s… that happens a lot. Now, like, if you take something. For instance, we had a constituent that wanted a boating safety bill because his son was killed in a boating accident. And we tried for years, and we had one legislator in the House. We’d get it through the Senate, he’d stop it every year in the House because he was a big boater, and he didn’t want anybody telling him what to do, you know. And so he’d stop it every year, and we kept on and on… every year, we’d get it through the Senate, and this man and his family was so persistent. And the girl that was in the boat with him, she came, and I think her… Her mom or something got killed in the boat. I can’t remember the exact story, but… She stood up and testified, and I think that we kept… we kept on until my last year. We finally got that bill passed, and that was like, you know. You know if you keep on long enough, you’re gonna get something done, and these people… this is an older couple that lost their son, and he was… This man was so happy. It was worth everything you did all these years, like, 10 years worth of putting this bill up there. And finally, you get it passed. And, you know, those kind of victories are great victories. Then you’ll have the one that you’ve been working on forever, and you never, you know, you leave and it’s still not passed. And then there’s some you try and pass, and you know it wasn’t a good idea in the first place, but you did it because your constituent really wanted it, but you don’t really, you know, you know it’s not going to pass. So, after 2 years, you know, you might not work on that, but then that one that you pass, because it’s such a good idea, it passes in the first year, you know, that’s a real victory. So….

Craig Volden (00:37:08): 

Of the ones that were taking a while or still having to accomplish, what’s the biggest roadblock?  Is it moving from House, Senate to House, or is it committees, or, you know, what was getting in the way?

Katrina Shealy (00:37:20): 

It’ll be one person that’s got… like, we had one about domestic violence, and it was a gun issue. And you know, in South Carolina, that’s a big issue, and, you know, they were afraid they were going to take guns away. If they’d read the bill, you know, they didn’t want to read the bill because it had the word gun in it, you know, because they thought they were going to have gun restrictions. So you’ll have, like, one senator, or two senators, or two House members, or 10 House members. In the House, you can have 10 of them, but it’ll be one-ish part of that bill that everybody else agreed with, but if 10 people want to stop it, they can stop it. Or if one senator keeps on, unless you can get the majority leader to put it on special order, and you can bypass all that, and they can only do that so many times, and unless they really like your bill, you know. That’s not gonna happen.

Craig Volden (00:38:20):

Okay.

Alan Wiseman (00:38:22): 

I mean, putting all these points together, Senator, I mean, given your role as an effective lawmaker, both when you were relatively, you know, fresh to the chamber, as well as several terms later, you know, you undoubtedly have some insights regarding what factors really contribute to legislative success and lawmaking effectiveness. And in addition to some of the points we’ve already touched on, you know, I’d be curious to hear your perspective about what do you feel are the keys to being an effective lawmaker in South Carolina. Or perhaps more generally, if we think about legislative politics in other parts of the country, or maybe even Congress. You know, to what degree do you think policy expertise and/or grassroots support might actually influence one’s ability to advance their agenda? Or really just any other thoughts you have beyond the items that we’ve already touched on? I’d really love to hear your perspective on this.

Katrina Shealy (00:39:14): 

I don’t think it’s policy expertise as much as it’s having good people that work for you and no policy expertise. I think it’s being very persuasive with… and believing in what you’re doing. Because you know, I’m not a policy guru on everything I work on. You know, I can’t know everything about everything. I think it’s having passion for the job, and caring enough about it to be persistent.  I think it’s… When you talk to somebody, don’t think… don’t act like you know more than they do. I think people that are…  I don’t want to use the word cocky, but, you know, you go with somebody like, I’m smarter than you are, and, you know, I know what’s right for you. I think being humble and kind is always the best way to win somebody over. And… When you try and sell somebody something, you’ve got to act like you really care about it.: Because… It’s the same way it is with life. If I care about it, I can get up and tell a story. I can tell you it’s… Find something that relates to somebody on a real heart level and you can sell it. You don’t have to be… Right now, I’m in brain health. Do you think I… would you let me operate on your brain? No. If you say yes, I’m gonna say there’s something wrong with you. I know enough about it because my husband has Alzheimer’s. I bet I could make you believe whatever I’m gonna tell you because I’m compassionate about it. I can tell you what it’s like about domestic violence because my sister was a victim of domestic violence. I can tell you what DJJ’s like, because I spent 10 years volunteering at the Department of Juvenile Justice. I can tell you what the foster care system’s like, because I went out there and I found out. But I’m not a scholar on any of those things, so I think you have to be passionate about what you want, and then you find you a really good staff member. That’s a law student, and let them do that work, but you have the passion and the fire to want to do it, and you look at that person that’s got that problem, and you promise them you’re going to help them, and you’ll do it because you don’t want to break a promise.

Craig Volden (00:41:47): 

Yep. Well, that idea of a passion, and then I’m drawn back to the idea of being the conscience of the Senate, and so on. I imagine that you’ve told these stories in many ways, but is there anything further you’d like to share about how difficult it was to make those stands on the abortion issue?

Katrina Shealy (00:42:11): 

The abortion issue to me was probably, you know, I was raised a good Southern Baptist girl, and, you know, I’ve been told that I’m a baby killer, that I am a terrible person, but I’ve also seen in my work through DSS. I’ve seen a 10-year-old get pregnant because she was raped. And then I’ve heard people tell me that she should still have to have a baby, that she should have to ruin her entire life and have that baby, because that’s God’s will. And I stood before the chamber and said, that’s not God’s will, because it wasn’t God’s will for some… for her 13-year-old brother to rape her and her have to ruin the rest of her life for that. And I’ve had people tell me how terrible I am, and then I’ve had people tell me that I was right. I know, in my heart, I can still go to sleep at night. But knowing that little girl would give up her entire life, she’d never be able to have children again, she’d never be… you know, all these things, I think there are exceptions. Do I believe an abortion is a cure for birth, you know, should be used for birth control? No. But I believe there’s exceptions to every rule, and that’s the reason I lost my election. It was over that one bill, because that’s the only thing they had, because I’ve never… I mean, there’s nothing else. And, you know, that’s what they used to take me out of office. I mean, there were billboards everywhere, and they marched in front of my church with signs with cut-up babies, and they shot out my tires. I got a wind in my house I still haven’t fixed where they shot it out, because I think it sounded like a glaring statue of what you put up with. But, you know, things like that. I’m… I’m proud of what I stood up for, because I stood up for the right thing, and I would do it again. I would do the exact same thing, because people say, well, are you sorry you didn’t do what the party wanted you to do? No, because I did the right thing. And I don’t think you should live by what a party tells you to do. You should do what’s right, and I would do it all over again. And like I said, I didn’t go up there to get re-elected, I went up there to do what was right for the people of South Carolina, the people of the country, because I think somebody had to stand up for the right thing.

Craig Volden (00:44:44): 

Thank you, really appreciate that.

Alan Wiseman (00:44:45): 

Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on that with us, Senator. You know, we want to be mindful of your time, but at the same point, because of the fact that the Center for Effective Lawmaking is jointly situated at Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, we’re wondering if you have any further particular advice or insights that you’d be willing to offer or share with college students today, especially given that we know these videos are often incorporated into classroom settings.

Katrina Shealy (00:45:13): 

Well, you know, college students, you have a great opportunity to learn and, you know, be yourselves. Just be mindful of, you know, what you learn and what you share, and take all that knowledge in. Like, you know, I’m working at the University of South Carolina right now, and I see so many college students that are just soaking it all in, and—but, you know, be… be careful what you do and what you learn, and, you know, your… I went to what… I guess it’s… Darden, to Darden, and took some political, uh, insight courses up there. They got the Darden School of Business and do… offer the political classes. And, you know, I think you learn a lot by just listening to people who’ve been there, people who know, but don’t be influenced by what other people tell you. You know, think about… be your own conscience, you know? Let somebody else, you know, do their thing, but you be your own conscience. If you can go to sleep at night and not worry about what you did that day, because there’s a lot of people out there right now, especially in South Carolina, that are having to worry about what they did yesterday. And I think there are people all over the United States, Washington, D.C, they’re having to worry about what they did. So, I think that if you can be your conscience and sleep at night and help other people while you’re doing it, I think that’s the best thing.

Craig Volden (00:46:46): 

Well, we’d love to conclude by thanking you for sharing your time and your insights, but also thank you for your public service and the issues that you’ve tackled. Before we conclude, is there anything we didn’t ask you about that you wish we had, or any other thoughts to share?

Katrina Shealy (00:47:03): 

Oh my gosh! You didn’t ask me about my donkeys, you didn’t ask me about my dogs… yeah, I’m kidding, but… No, if you ever need anything, just let me know. A good trip to Virginia is always wonderful. I’ll be happy to come speak to you sometime.

Craig Volden (00:47:18): 

Terrific, we would love that. Thank you so much!

Katrina Shealy (00:47:21): 

Okay, thanks, y’all have a great day.

Alan Wiseman (00:47:23):

Take care, Senator.

Katrina Shealy (00:47:24): 

Bye-bye.