Vincent just sent the following email to our email list. (If you're not on our email list, be sure to sign up on the green bar above.)

Laurin --

This morning I opened up The State newspaper and read that Lt. Governor Andre Bauer recently compared poor people to "stray animals":

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.

I am disgusted by Mr. Bauer's comments and call on him to apologize to South Carolina's unemployed workers and their families.

You're sick and tired of being embarrassed by elected leaders in South Carolina, and I am too. But words like Mr. Bauer's don't just embarrass me -- they make me fear for our state's future. We have to stop electing leaders who are so out of touch with regular people: We have to demand new leadership.

In our stump speeches, we candidates talk and talk about creating jobs and growing the economy, but we must never lose sight that our failure to do so will continue to hurt our state's most vulnerable citizens -- our children -- and our future. Those are the highest stakes of all.

According to statistics collected by the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, our state ranks 45th in overall child wellbeing today.

• 26% of children under the age of 6 years old lives in poverty.

• 1 in 10 children live in extreme poverty.

• In 2006, 38% of babies were born to mothers who lacked adequate prenatal care.

These statistics should keep us up at night. We should share a collective outrage that any child in South Carolina ever has to go to bed hungry. It's not just their problem -- it's our problem. We must accept a sense of community responsibility and take action both in our policymaking at the State House and at a local level, working with our churches and civic organizations to stock our food banks and soup kitchens.

In my family, one of the strongest values that was impressed upon me growing up was a tradition of giving a hand up to folks in need. My great-grandfather ran a grocery store in Camden, and he worked out a payment plan for those who had fallen upon hard times and always made sure that babies had milk to drink. These are the kinds of family values that I’ll take to the governor's mansion because I believe that every child in South Carolina should have the opportunity to succeed that my children have.

I ask you to join me today in demanding an apology from Lt. Governor Bauer to South Carolina's unemployed workers and their families and in demanding better for our children and our future.

Very truly,

Vincent