in  shealy worked on the campaign of state senator catherine ceips tom davis the former chief of staff to mark sanford was expected to announce that he would be running against ceips davis house was being painted at the time ceips chief of staff randy bates arrived at the house and spoke with josias mirales ayala who claimed to be an illegal immigrant hired to paint davis house shealy subsequently submitted a photograph of ayala to associated press reporter jim davenport and explained that he was an illegal alien davis condemned the action saying "i call on ms ceips to fire rod shealy and randy bates the two operatives who carried out this dirty trick"