COLUMBIA– The Senate’s game of musical chairs Wednesday ended well for one of the four women in the Legislature’s upper chamber.
State Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, was elevated to chair of the Senate General Committee, filling a leadership post left open when Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, resigned his Senate seat to fill a vacancy in the lieutenant governor’s office.
Shealy said she is the first Republican woman to chair a standing Senate committee.
Shealy was elected to the Senate in 2012, ending a four-year period when the legislative body had no women members. Shealy now is one of four women in the Senate, the most women ever in the Legislature’s 46-member upper chamber at the same time.
Stocked with many of the Senate’s newest members, the General Committee is less prestigious than the powerful Judiciary and Finance committees. But a General Committee panel, including Shealy, did oversee a recent high-profile investigation into failings at the S.C. Department of Social Services.