South Carolina

Amber Fulmer: Welcome y’all to the Direct Examination Podcast. My name is Amber Fulmer.

Dane Phillips: I’m Dane Phillips.

Joseph Bias: And I’m Joseph Bias. Guys, welcome back from vacation!

Dane Phillips: (sighs) You know, as an attorney, for non-lawyers out there and for law students, vacation is really kind of returning to the aftermath of…

Amber Fulmer: Double-edged sword!

Dane Phillips: It is a nightmare. It makes you dread vacation a little bit, even though I was trying to spend a couple of hours every night catching up on certain things…

Amber Fulmer: Oh, you’re better than me, I was off the grid!

Joseph Bias: Dane, you went to the beach and you were actually obtainable like we could get in touch with you. Somebody took a private plane to Montana and was off the grid!

Amber Fulmer: No, I would like to correct that! I flew Delta! (laughs) My pilots in Charleston were studying for his medical boards that he takes next week…

Joseph Bias: So you had to slum it?

Amber Fulmer: Yeah, I had to slum it on Delta! Me and my pregnancy donut went through security! (laughs)

Joseph Bias: That’s… I’m really sad that I missed that TSA line! Well, thank you everyone for listening. This is our season finale! We are excited to announce that not only are we finishing Season 2, we will be coming back for Season 3 later this year.

Dane Phillips: Back by popular demand!

Amber Fulmer: Three times!

Dane Phillips: Despite the haters, the doubters…

Joseph Bias: Despite all of the nasty emails that Dane gets! (laughs)

Amber Fulmer: How about y’all just calling out the Free Times?

Joseph Bias: Well, we should! But now that we mention it, even though we weren’t on the Free Times Power 50 list, we still are getting Power 50 guests!

Dane Phillips: Which just further proves that they were wrong and should have included us on that list!

Joseph Bias: Exactly. I’m not saying that this is our most distinguished or biggest guest of all time, but this is maybe the one that I’m most excited about as a lifelong Columbia resident.

Dane Phillips: Mr. Columbia.

Joseph Bias: Yeah, that’s right. Amber, why don’t you go ahead and introduce the guest?

Amber Fulmer: All right. To any resident of Columbia, South Carolina, our guest today needs no introduction. For 20 years, he served as the mayor of the City of Columbia, and it was on his watch that Columbia mainstays like the Art Museum, the revitalization of Main Street and Gervais, the EdVenture Children’s Museum, and the Columbia Convention Center projects were started or concluded. He’s received many awards and distinctions, but he is our first guest to have a plaza named after him: Coble Plaza, which overlooks the Congaree River. He now works as an attorney for Nexsen Pruet, serving as chair of the firm’s public policy and governmental affairs group. And for those of you who recognize the name, we know some of you have already picked up, he also has the honor of being the father of one of our previous guests, Daniel “Boogie” Coble. So please help us welcome Mayor Bob Coble to the Direct Examination Podcast!

Bob Coble: Welcome! Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Mayor Bob Coble: Thank you for having me.

Dane Phillips: Daniel hasn’t made you call him “The Honorable Daniel Coble” yet, has he?

Mayor Bob Coble: Oh, we call him Boogie! (laughs)

Amber Fulmer: I love it!

Joseph Bias: I want to go back to our old show notes and change it to Boogie Coble!

Mayor Bob Coble: And I tried to transition to Daniel just when he became a lawyer, and my wife would have none of it! The other kids would have none of it.

Amber Fulmer: We have to ask now, where did Boogie come from?

Mayor Bob Coble: Boogie came from the lady who was keeping him, just called him… he was boogying around and he’s been Boogie ever since.

Joseph Bias: In my head, I really wanted this to be because of his dance moves! Where, you know, when Daniel gets on the dance floor, he just boogies away! So I’d like to adopt that for that, if that’s okay, sir.

Mayor Bob Coble: Well, that’s the story from now on! (laughs)

Joseph Bias: Judge Boogie! First time I’ll get held in contempt will be for calling him Judge Boogie! Mayor Coble, we are excited to have you on to not only talk about your time as Mayor of Columbia, but also your time now at Nexsen Pruet. Looking through your resume, it looks like you were involved in political-type things even in college and law school. What made that get on your radar? What inside you said, “You know what, this is maybe what I want to do for a career”?

Mayor Bob Coble: You know, when I was at Greer High School as a freshman, they had a program for… they weren’t young lawyers, but if you wanted to learn about being a lawyer. So part of it, we went to the old Richland County Courthouse that has been torn down and is a parking lot now. And Judge Mason, John Mason, was the Richland County Judge. They don’t have those anymore—sort of a combination of Master, Family Court judge, and sort of everything else. And there was one sitting circuit court judge, Judge Grimball. He gave a little speech, and we were in the courtroom, and from that moment on I wanted to be a lawyer and a politician, so it was from there, and I’ve enjoyed it ever since.

Amber Fulmer: Bit by the bug early on!

Mayor Bob Coble: Loved it.

Dane Phillips: So going into law school, that definitely was the trajectory that you were looking at—politics, or lawyer first?

Mayor Bob Coble: Lawyer first. In high school, we were on the debate team with Franny Heiser, who was on City Council, works now with the Burr Forman firm. A distinguished attorney as well as working very hard on various projects. She and I were debate partners, and everyone aspired to going to Carolina and then going to law school. I roomed with Lee Leevines in law school, who really… is probably the nicest man on the face of the earth. You know, Lee Leevines is my best friend, but I also give him credit for making me whatever success I’ve had, by giving me advice at one point when I was putting things off, procrastinating. He said, “Coble, return every phone call every day, and don’t put anything off.” It took a while to sort of process that, but I adopted that and Lee Leevines and I have been very close from law school on.

Dane Phillips: My dad grew up with Lee, and the whole Leevines family, and he’s been a great mentor to me. Just a great guy.

Mayor Bob Coble: He is a great guy, the family is great, a lot of lawyers! His father ran the Wonder Circle, which was like the copy center across from the old law school. All the lawyers, all the judges went over there for lunch, and if you really needed help getting into law school way back then, Mr. Leevines was the guy to talk to! (laughs) That was the in!

Joseph Bias: So at some point you said, “You know what, this law life is great, but I really want to be stressed out with the concerns of an entire city,” and essentially have a city as your client. What made you decide to run for mayor instead of another avenue of politics?

Mayor Bob Coble: Well, I had always been interested in that office from Greer High where I was student body president. The first office I ran for was Richland County Council, and it had just been at-large for the whole county. Both Richland County Council and the mayor’s office are part-time, so I’ve always been a full-time lawyer and a part-time elected official. But the mayor’s office, I ran in 1990 in a real strenuous race against the incumbent and served there for 20 years.

Dane Phillips: That’s kind of the interesting part of “part-time,” but it’s probably more than a full-time job on top of being a lawyer. How do you manage that?

Mayor Bob Coble: Well, first I give all the credit to the law firm Nexsen Pruet. I was a member there for most of that, and they allowed me to be the mayor and spend the time. But also, being an attorney gives you a little more free time. You can schedule things a little different than someone who has a 9-to-5. But it can be stressful. That’s why being organized was very important, not putting things off was critically important to being able to do both.

Dane Phillips: What do you think are some of the life lessons that you’ve learned after 20 years of being mayor, stuff you never would have seen on day one?

Mayor Bob Coble: I think being humble is very important. The proudest achievement I ever had, they called me “Mayor Bob,” and that comes from a John Rizzley radio call-in show on WVOC, and he gave me that name, I think because of being accessible. Being accessible has its pluses and minuses! (laughs) But I found over the years that if you were accessible, nobody ever called to raise cane; it was like, “Hey, you’re here every month, stay as long as you want.” The same thing as an attorney: if you’re responsive, accessible, and polite, it’s just going to be so much easier. Always return that phone call.

Dane Phillips: It’s amazing what a returned phone call can do to chill out unanswered questions.

Mayor Bob Coble: As I knew from being mayor and as a lawyer, you can return a phone call immediately and tell them any bad news. If you wait two weeks, any good news is just… it’s critically important.

Amber Fulmer: When you were mayor, was there an aspect that you enjoyed more than others, or things you got to do that maybe some people don’t know about?

Mayor Bob Coble: Well, I enjoyed neighborhood meetings and things of that nature. I’m most proud of the Convention Center. That was a regional project that people didn’t know whether it would work or not, so pulling that together. Now hopefully we’ll have the Convention Center expansion. As an attorney, the thing I enjoyed very much was working on legislative work for the court, working with Chief Justice Toal, Chief Justice Pleicones, and now Chief Justice Beatty, and the other members of the Supreme Court has been very rewarding.

Joseph Bias: It’s funny you mention the Convention Center because most of our listeners are lawyers or law students, and I know my most harrowing time of my life was at the Convention Center taking the Bar! (laughs)

Amber Fulmer: You have the best times of our life in the Convention Center with Monster’s Ball before they destroyed it, and then you would go and be terrified for three days for the Bar exam! (laughs)

Joseph Bias: So thank you for the Convention Center, but also… (laughs)

Dane Phillips: Considering this will be out next Monday, people are just a week or so away from taking the Bar in the Convention Center!

Joseph Bias: Thank Mayor Bob! As you’ve made a transition away from elected office to private practice, what does your day-to-day look like now?

Mayor Bob Coble: Today I do a lot of legislative work, lobby at the State House. We have a number of clients like Boeing and Google, and thoroughly enjoy that. The difference between being a lobbyist or legislative attorney and an elected official is your name isn’t going to be in the paper every morning, so you don’t have that issue. Do a lot of work with the city and county, working with Mayor Benjamin and Chairman Paul Livingston on economic development projects.

Joseph Bias: Relationships are really key in that work, right?

Mayor Bob Coble: I think part of what helps being a former elected official in legislative work is knowing what an elected official is looking for. When you go in to brief the Mayor of Columbia on a project, you need to be fast. You need to get to the bottom line of what do you need, what is it going to cost. Don’t spend a lot of time explaining why this is the best project ever. Also, close the meeting before it rambles on! But as an attorney, your word is in fact all you have.

Dane Phillips: It’s a small state, small Bar. You burn your credibility and reputation, it spreads like wildfire.

Mayor Bob Coble: No question about it.

Joseph Bias: And we’ve had both Republican and Democratic legislators on this program, and one thing distinguished about South Carolina is that locally everyone has similar goals.

Mayor Bob Coble: I think particularly the lawyer-legislators are like that. I have to give a special shout-out to Chairman Murrell Smith from Sumter, new Chairman of Ways and Means. He has really done more for the judiciary in terms of salaries than anyone else. He helped with the reduction in tuition for law students as well. It’s always great when you see a practicing lawyer as a legislator who knows what needs to be done. Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter McCoy as well, and Todd Rutherford here in Columbia.

Joseph Bias: Were you involved with the recent judicial pay raises?

Mayor Bob Coble: Murrell Smith was the person who did that. Judges had not gotten raises since the 1990s outside of cost-of-living increases. The raise was pegged to a federal circuit court judge, and when you raise chief salaries, all other salaries flow down. It was a substantial raise and well-deserved.

Dane Phillips: If a young lawyer wants to get into lobbying or governmental relations work, what is the best trajectory for them?

Mayor Bob Coble: Volunteering in campaigns is a good start. But I think most prominent lobbyists who are lawyers start out working for one of the committees in the State House. That’s an excellent way to learn the process and understand how laws are made. Also, being an elected official oneself.

Joseph Bias: Any plans to return to politics?

Mayor Bob Coble: No, I’ve done that, enjoyed every minute of it, but being Mayor of Columbia was what I was meant to be, and that was the only political thing I was meant to be.

Amber Fulmer: You did a great job! Speaking of which, now that you’re not mayor anymore, are there projects or things you hope will come to Columbia in the future?

Mayor Bob Coble: The expansion of the Convention Center. It needs to be expanded because of conventions being turned away. We need a Convention Center hotel as well. The Hilton across the street has been very successful, but we need more hotel infrastructure added.

Dane Phillips: Going back to day one as Mayor of Columbia versus today, did you have any idea how the city would change over 20 to 30 years?

Mayor Bob Coble: Most changes are done over time by a team. Kirkman Finley had the vision of The Vista, but you had to get rid of the railroads blocking everything. Main Street took streetscaping on Gervais and Main, getting Mast General Store, and pioneering residential developments from folks like Tom Prioreschi. It takes people from out of town sometimes to see the potential.

Joseph Bias: Mayor Coble, thank you so much for joining us today and for everything you’ve done for our city. If you want to follow Mayor Bob on Twitter, go to @BCoble5GC. You can follow our podcast at @SCLawPod on Twitter and Facebook, @JosephPBias, @SCCrimLawyer, and @RedJudicata.

Amber Fulmer: We also want to give a special thanks to our Season 2 guests: Dakota James, Joseph Dickey, April Sampson, Boogie Coble, Brett Bayne, Donna Strom, Chad McGowan, Jack Swerling, Jamie Smith, Clarke Newton, Jake Moore, Barbara Seymour, Sam Sanders, Leslie Sarji, DeQuan Blyther, AC Parnham, Dennison LaRue, Micah Caskey, Michael Hawthorne, Stacy Thompson, Nikki Davis, Susan Ingles, Chris Kenney, Mike Penea, and Mayor Bob Coble!

Joseph Bias: Thank you everyone for listening to Season 2 of Direct Examination Podcast! We will see you next season!