Christina Jeffrey, a candidate for the fourth district U.S. congressional seat, and Leighton Lord, a candidate for South Carolina attorney general, spoke to the Greenville County Republican Women (GCRW) meeting at the Poinsett Club, Jan. 28.
Dr. Jeffrey, a lecturer at Wofford College, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the seat held by incumbent Rep. Bob Inglis, said, “I am first and foremost a Christian,” and “I believe that a great country is an important asset” for Christians.
Dr. Jeffrey said she hates tyranny in all its forms and that it is the natural condition of human beings. Tyranny flourishes, she said, when people are ignorant and complacent, when you don’t have the kind of freedoms we have. Our founders gave us incredible tools to keep our freedoms, and if we lose some of them, to get them back.
Leighton Lord said he is an Army brat born in Hawaii and joked that “unlike someone we know, I have a birth certificate.”
Lord referred to an essay written by evangelist Billy Graham, “The Moral Weight of Leadership,” in which Graham wrote, “We must not be tempted . . . to divorce character from leadership.”
Lord worked the Ronald Reagan campaigns in the 1980s. After graduating from the Vanderbilt Law School in 1989, he went to Washington to work for four years as the Republican staff council for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in Washington. In this position, Leighton investigated organized crime, gang violence, child pornography and immigration fraud.
Lord spent two weeks on the Mexican border with border patrol agents, and visited the San Diego district attorney’s office to watch the prosecution of criminal aliens. To learn about organized crime, Lord spent days with mobsters and traveled the country with FBI agents. He learned about gang violence by driving the streets of Los Angeles with law enforcement officers.
He took the knowledge back to Washington to contribute to hearings and help draft legislation to make our country safer.
In 1994, Leighton went to work for Nexsen Pruet, the second largest law firm in South Carolina. Four years ago, Leighton was elected managing partner, which has given him executive experience.
Lord said the attorney general should be the chief legal officer in the state and as such should coordinate solicitors, sheriffs and law enforcement officers and help them do their jobs better. He called for a comprehensive crime bill in South Carolina because the state is No. 1 in violent crime and is in the top five in domestic violence deaths and in the top five in DUI deaths, yet South Carolina imprisons more people per capita than any other state.
The meeting was the first conducted by Kathy Davis, new president of the GCRW.
