A walk to your mailbox. Opening up your local newspaper. Or washing out your coffee maker, is easy like Sunday morning. However, keeping your constituents happy, healthy, and hopeful are tough tasks to take on. When Nikki slashed the proviso on the Medicaid reimbursement rate to attempt to save taxpayers’ money on health care, it left many people in dismay. Heck, I watched her sign the bill myself and took it to the clerk’s office to be put into law. I almost couldn’t make it out of the Blatt Building without being abruptly asked by my friend Jolisa who was a legislative aide for Rep. Seth Whipper from Charleston about my support of Gov. Nikki Haley. Jolisa sounded nearly like Pam from the Martin Show (laughs). She told me Gov. Haley was not advocating for the quality of life of all. I told her the bill wouldn’t close many health clinics and it may encourage providers to give more reasonable prices. Furthermore, I fielded a slew of calls from constituents in the governor and lt. governor’s office about people not being able to pay their light bills, find groceries, or get transportation from point a to point b. Our citizenry was covered in commotion. Andre or Nikki couldn’t help each one of these needy citizens out or they would be scraping their pennies together too. President Reagan made a great symbolic gesture by signing a 25 dollar check to give to a welfare mother to cover her living needs for a week. However, that affable action won’t cure the problem of poverty in America. I went to a Title 1 school for elementary school and my mom was an administrator at several. So, I’ve got empathy for what many of these people living under the poverty line are going through. None of the people in my immediate family that I’m aware of have been on food stamps or Medicaid. Hence, my family has been lucky in that aspect to be holding their own living in America. Some people that called Andre or Nikki’s offices were deeply disappointed in their adverse situations and blamed it on ‘Indians owning all the gas stations’ or the government having subpar constituent service. The only things I could tell them to do was to contact a non-profit or a religious center that could help them. Batches of people are highly humiliated at times to ask their church members, community leaders, or family members for a shoulder to gain their balance on when they’re in a predicament. The fact is if people don’t share life’s woes we won’t be able to fix it.
Jordan Thomas Cooper is a 2015 graduate of the University of South Carolina with a degree in History and a 2010 graduate of the Real Estate School of Success in Irmo. He is the first African-American to serve in both the governor and lieutenant governor’s office as an aide and first to serve in the Inspector General’s Office in S.C. (Haley) He is also the first to serve in the top three offices in the gubernatorial line of succession in South Carolina (Haley, Bauer, McConnell). He happens to be the second black presidential campaign speechwriter in American History and the first for a GOP presidential campaign (Bush 2015). He also played football for Coach Steve Spurrier.
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