Senate hopefuls split over job outsourcing

The Senate race in conservative South Carolina has become a referendum on outsourcing, pitting protectionist Inez Tenenbaum, a Democrat, against free-trader Rep. Jim DeMint, a Republican.

Mr. DeMint supports trade policies that critics blame for the loss of more than 50,000 jobs in this overwhelmingly Republican state since President Bush took office.

The debate could not have gotten starker than it did earlier this week when reporters discovered that Mrs. Tenenbaum was using a company that hired foreign workers to handle her conference calls with reporters.

“This lady comes on the phone and she sounds French, so the reporters start asking her all these questions,” said one person who was on the call. “It turned out, she was in Montreal.”

Mrs. Tenenbaum, the state’s popular superintendent of education, swiftly fired the company — BellSouth — and apologized for the mistake.

“Outsourcing is real and we were the victims of it,” said Tenenbaum spokesman Adam Kovacevich. “We thought we were working with a local company, and they were outsourcing their jobs abroad.”

The next day, news broke that Mr. DeMint’s campaign T-shirts were sewn in Honduras. But there was no apology from his campaign.

“The cotton in that T-shirt is from South Carolina,” DeMint spokeswoman Kara Borie said. “It was sewn in Honduras. You can’t do it without outsourcing certain jobs.”

DeMint campaign officials defended not only their campaign, but also Mrs. Tenenbaum’s for hiring the Canadians.

“She is missing the point about globalization,” Ms. Borie said. “Just because a company is outsourcing doesn’t mean that it’s not helping workers here in South Carolina.”

She said 136,700 South Carolinians work for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, a number Mrs. Tenenbaum’s campaign did not dispute.

“If you asked those workers about globalization, they would say that their paychecks depended on it,” Ms. Borie said.

By firing BellSouth, she said, Mrs. Tenenbaum took her business away from a company that has thousands of South Carolinians on its payroll.

But the Tenenbaum campaign wasn’t about to defend hiring foreign workers.

“Jim DeMint thinks outsourcing is great,” Mr. Kovacevich said. “It’s a wonder he hasn’t called here for the number of our conference call company.”

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