Copyright Charleston Post and Courier
COLUMBIA — For the nearly four years he held the post, former S.C. elections Executive Director Howard Knapp was entrusted with one of the most solemn responsibilities in government: facilitating the democratic process. Today, he stands accused of exploiting that position for personal gain. Early on Oct. 24, the 2008 Citadel alum who’d been fired from his elections job in September was arrested at his suburban Columbia home on eleven separate criminal charges spanning misconduct in office to embezzlement, and exploiting his office for personal financial gain. The brunt of the allegations, according to affidavits produced by law enforcement, centered on habitual misuse of a government-owned car for personal use and filling the tank to the tune of several thousand dollars with taxpayer funds. Other charges emerged from an alleged effort to protect a deputy who sought to eavesdrop on the election body’s governing board, kicking off a media firestorm that has kept the incognito agency in the headlines for weeks. It was a fall for a career bureaucrat whose start in government had begun targeting the very activities he’s now accused of. His first job in public service was working as an auditor for the Legislative Audit Council, tasked with investigating state executive branch entities for fraud, waste and abuse. Since last year, Knapp had been under investigation by both the State Law Enforcement Division and the Office of the Inspector General on a multitude of misconduct allegations, some of which were aired publicly during an Oct. 12 hearing of the same board of elections that voted to confirm him to the post three-and-a-half years earlier. Details emerged around his management style, with commissioners painting him as a toxic office administrator, accusing him of falsifying financial documents and of conspiring to spy on the board’s closed-door activities. Also in the mix was his deputy commissioner, Paige Salonich, who was fired after allegedly placing a recording device to spy on the board as they discussed firing Knapp — a decision that led to her own Oct. 24 arrest on wiretapping charges. Knapp himself was charged with a felony after calling staff in an attempt to remove the recording device from the room, with the alleged intent to cover up the crime. Knapp said little after his initial court appearance beyond comments from his attorney, Joe McCulloch, who maintained his arrest was political. “We look forward to a very public trial,” McCulloch told reporters. “See you there.” Who is Howard Knapp? Knapp took the helm of the elections office under chaotic circumstances. At the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic, longtime agency head Marci Andino had been under siege, facing an ocean of pressure from activists and lawmakers critical of her handling of pandemic-era voting procedures she had put into place during the 2020 elections. When she resigned from the post after 18 years in 2021, Knapp was two years into his tenure at the agency as a lower-level deputy tasked with the technical management of the state’s voting systems. But he was seen as a steady hand and quietly was given the reins of the agency on an interim basis that September. His early employee reviews were positive, with his attention to detail and knowledge of the law cited in a 2021 performance review as an “asset to the agency.” Three months later, he was running the place. It was a big decision. At the time of his appointment, Knapp was only the fifth executive director to lead the agency in the commission's 54 years. His background included a law degree from the Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Fla., and a varied public service career working roles within the S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff as well as the Executive Budget Office, where he served before taking on a similar role as budget director for the state Department of Social Services. At a time of chaos for the agency, Knapp — lawmakers recall — seemed like a bridge-builder. “I do think it's fair to say that he took over after the very difficult relationship the previous director had with the General Assembly,” said House Majority Whip Brandon Newton, a Lancaster Republican who worked closely with Knapp on election integrity reforms at the start of his tenure. “There was a lot of tension. I think it's fair to say that when he came in, he was attempting to fix a relationship that had kind of broken down,” Newton added. From the outside looking in, the agency operated as it should have: quietly. Elections proceeded largely without issue. Legislators paid little mind to its work, largely because there was no need. Knapp was tepidly received by some who described him as slightly rude, or occasionally lost in the job. But he struck others as being hands-on, and was quick to talk with the media and willing to engage with national groups, as he did with the conservative American Enterprise Institute on a podcast ahead of the state’s 2024 presidential primary on national Democrats’ willingness to continue to hold their First-in-the-Nation primary in such a red state. “We do elections really well here,” he told AEI’s hosts. Trouble behind the scenes All was not well behind the scenes, even just a few weeks ago. Knapp, in the middle of a legal battle with the U.S. Department of Justice over the release of individual voter data, was removed from his position suddenly. Election Commission Chair Dennis Shedd later described the work environment under Knapp as “toxic.” Questions were mounting internally about his handling of a $28 million voting machine purchase that had seen significant cost overruns. Personnel records obtained by The Post and Courier through a Freedom of Information Act request offer little to suggest Knapp ever faced reprimand or complaints from staff. His termination letter offers few specifics behind his departure on a 3-2 vote of the board. The situation spilled over with Knapp’s firing with little explanation Sept. 16, fueling speculation about a potential political motivation for the dismissal. That was defused the following day when Salonich — under questioning from agency staff — raised her voice at leadership, yelling she was being “held hostage” at her job in front of agency staff with a member of the news media present in the lobby nearby. The profanity-laden outburst, personnel documents note, left staff “visibly shaken,” according to records released under a Freedom of Information Act request. She grilled Knapp’s chief of staff, Jenny Wooten, accusing her of gunning for Knapp’s job and the Election Commission Board’s chairman, Shedd, of harassing Knapp over text message for months. The outburst was uncharacteristic, staffers wrote. “I know I had never heard Paige use profanity, nor had I ever seen her cry at work,” one employee wrote in an incident report obtained by The Post and Courier. She was dismissed from the agency Sept. 23. Moving forward The fallout from the two former office leaders’ arrest is only beginning. After their release on a combined $100,000 in bond, the two await an initial appearance on the charges in December. Meeting with fellow commissioners by phone in Columbia the day of their arrest, Shedd appeared flummoxed by a number of the charges against Knapp, particularly the alleged embezzlement charges. But he was optimistic, he said, amid the handling of the situation by Knapp’s former chief of staff Wooten, who has been leading the agency as interim director in the weeks since Knapp’s exit from the agency. “I don't think anybody in state government has ever entered an agency the way that you have,” Shedd said over the phone. “You may or may not end up as as the executive director. Who knows? But I just want to commend you for the way you're handling business right now. I am completely more at ease with your transparency and your answer to any questions that I might have than I have been at any time that I've been on the commission.”
