Here are the 2 candidates running to be SC’s next chief accountant

COLUMBIA — The race to be South Carolina’s next comptroller general pits a certified public accountant in the state agency against the founder of a company that tracks healthcare data.

Democrat Tiffany Boozer and Republican Mike Burkhold are both campaigning on ensuring South Carolina’s financial reports are accurate. Both say they have the experience needed to prevent anything like the blunder that put the normally boring accounting office into headlines. Both also want to expand the office’s online reporting to make state spending easier for the public to understand.

But their resumes differ.

It’s the first time voters are choosing the state’s chief accountant since the discovery of a $3.5 billion accounting error caused longtime Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom to resign in March 2023, just four months after he won a sixth term. His appointed replacement, Brian Gaines, said from the outset he had no interest in running for the job.

The multibillion-dollar overstatements stemmed from years of accidentally double-counting public colleges’ revenue. No actual money was found or lost. And the overstatements did not result in any spending deficit, since the Legislature doesn’t use the comptroller general’s reports for budgeting. But they misrepresented South Carolina’s finances to Wall Street investors, prompting a federal investigation.

The CPA

Boozer said she was hired in January 2025 to help correct the problem.

Her role, as a quality assurance manager, involves strengthening internal checks of the state’s ledgers. If elected to oversee the office, she said, her continued efforts will include using high-tech software for automated checks of the numbers. Artificial intelligence tools can help employees, not replace them, she said.

The errors found in the comptroller general’s reporting stemmed from a chaotic, decade-long transition from the state’s old accounting system to a new one.

“We have to have barriers in place, or even more barriers in place, to make sure that the numbers that are flowing up are as clean as they can possibly be,” Boozer said.

Before joining the comptroller general’s office, she was an internal audit manager at the state Department of Health.

Her main argument is that the comptroller general should be a certified public accountant.

Being the state’s chief accountant is “not red or blue,” said Boozer, who lives in Columbia. Once people “understand what the role is, it’s kind of a no-brainer.”

When no CPA announced a bid, “some office banter turned into a little bit of encouragement, and here we are,” she told the SC Daily Gazette about why she joined the race. She turned in her candidacy paperwork on the last day of filing in March.

In June, she won more than 74% of the vote against Bruce Cole, also of Columbia, to become the Democratic nominee.

The company founder

Burkhold, of Sullivans Island, said the accounting scandal is what prompted him to seek the job. He became the GOP nominee without any primary challenge.

The botched numbers were really an information technology issue, he said. His pitch to voters is that he has the needed expertise in IT and leadership experience from running a company.

The company he founded in 2009, Equiscript, uses technology to track patients’ records and medications to support treatment and help healthcare providers save money on prescriptions. He sold the company in 2019 but remains on its governing board. Tracking millions of healthcare transactions requires an understanding of IT systems, he said.

To increase transparency, he wants to incorporate AI into the office’s online spending records so the public can easily get answers to their questions.

“There should be no mysteries about where our money is,” Burkhold said. “I think it’s really important that the controller’s office be known as the place of monetary truth.

“If people need information, we can just give them the information, and they can rely on it,” he said.

Burkhold says he’ll bring an additional layer of leadership to the job.

He’s put together a “leadership council” of seven business leaders in the state he says are advising his campaign and will function as a board of advisers if he’s elected.

The team includes Ben Navarro, a prominent philanthropist and financier; and Chad Walldorf, a co-founder of Sticky Fingers barbecue restaurants and former adviser to Govs. Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley.

Walldorf told the SC Daily Gazette he signed on to be a “helpful sounding board” for Burkhold in an office that often goes unrecognized.

Beyond making annual reports that close the books on the state’s ledgers, other duties include signing off on the state’s payroll to ensure employees are paid correctly and on time. The comptroller general also sits on the five-member State Fiscal Accountability Authority, a panel that gets the final say on borrowing, purchasing and major improvement projects for all state agencies.

The Nov. 3 election marks the first open contest for comptroller general in 28 years.

In 1998, Democrat Jim Lander replaced retiring Comptroller General Earle Morris, a Democrat who previously held office as lieutenant governor and legislator in both chambers. In 2004, he was convicted of securities fraud related to his role in the HomeGold bankruptcy, then the largest in state history, and sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

In 2002, Eckstrom, a Republican, ousted Lander.

No Democrat has won statewide office in South Carolina since 2006.