Checking in on the Most Important Republican Primary of 2026

 

Why, of course I'm trying to follow the developing Republican primary between Phil Berger, paterfamilias to a whole tribe of power-wielders in Rockingham County and statewide and the absolute boss of the NC General Assembly, and current Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, who plays a cowboy-hat-wearing scourge of God. (I've written extensively about Sam Page, especially his crusade against Berger's sudden affection for gambling casinos. Use the search engine above.)

WXII in Winston did some pretty in-depth reporting on this race. Sam Page said that Berger had been in office too long, and he'd lost touch with the people he's supposed to be serving. Berger fired back and may have drawn blood:

"Yeah, so I think Sam Page is probably looking in the mirror," WXII quoted Berger. "He's been the sheriff of Rockingham County for over 20 years. It's no secret that he's spent the last seven or eight years at the border, focused more on things outside of the county. It's no secret that the jail in Rockingham county, because of his failure to look after the job he has now, has deteriorated to the point where insurance premiums for the county have gone through the roof." WXII found out, indeed, that insurance premiums at the jail had increased by 118% and the deductible went up by a factor of 20. That doesn't sound good.

Berger's in trouble for the first time in his career. Really in trouble. He alienated many -- Berger Senior along with his other son Kevin, who runs the Rockingham County Commission -- with manipulations and machinations the Berger junta pursued to get a gambling casino into Rockingham. The strait-laced sheriff Page led the opposition like an angry apostle of the Lord. Sam Page has been reelected six or seven times and is said (by everyone) to be "very popular." Berger's going to do what he can to tarnish that.

Berger runs a machine, a powerful machine that can occasionally get its gears shredded. I don't know how mean the super pious Sam Page is willing to become, but it's going to take mean to defeat Phil Berger.

Actual Dirt Is the Only Vaccination

 

Trump has no philosophy or ideology. His only governing principle is to hurt people he hates. And that’s a lot of people.

--Gary Pearce

Annabelle Hydrangeas. That is not
our garden

For example, the whole state of Maine, because Maine's governor -- a woman, and how dare she! -- said she wouldn't bow to Trump about barring transgender women from sports. She famously also said, and in public, “I have spent the better part of my career listening to loud men talk tough to disguise their weakness.” Trump promised to cut all Federal spending to Maine.

Trump has taken Russia off the leash, and is letting Putin swallow Ukraine, because Jethro can't get over how Zelenskyy refused to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden. A whole nation gets destroyed.

Trump hates Anthony Fauci, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton, who were all important cogs in Trump 1.0, but insufficiently slavish, apparently, and Jethro removed their security details. Pompeo and Bolton have been targeted for assassination by Iran, and Anthony Fauci has more death-threats against him than Tesla.

I could come up with examples of Trump's mean pettiness for hours, but contemplating all that wreckage is exactly what has driven me into my current obsession with gardening. I've been throwing myself into raking out beds, composting weeds and debris, and mulching every blessed inch of the place with well-aged horse manure, and during that labor with dirt and plants I forget Trump 2.0 and its absolute madness and danger.

We have extensive gardens of perennials, shrubs, and trees -- a collector's garden with many rare natives but also plenty of exotics, particularly the Asians (because many of those specimen species are as close to outer space that I'm likely to come). I have two people who help me, not counting Pam, who will eventually have worked her way on her knees through every inch of every bed, lifting and dividing, and discouraging where discouragement is required, and uncovering the over-taken for a new shot at light -- the "editing" that every well-kept garden requires.

I'm an editor too, though old age has made knee-work more difficult. When stooping, I'm reminded that stoop-labor was the curse on Adam (and talk about mean old gods who love to hurt people!). Gardening is order; also chaos; reassuring in its repetition; but combustible with mutation. It's invigorating; also frustrating, rambunctious, and capricious. With invasives and aggressive native weeds, it can seem like Ukraine, losing territory to relentless plunder.

But it's a cold rainy day today, so I'm inside psychoanalyzing myself instead of dividing Annabelle Hydrangeas.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy?

 

The mean eyes of
Keith Kitwell

Republican NCHouse member Keith Kidwell filed H 804 which would outlaw abortion in North Carolina at every stage of pregnancy, but new House Speaker Destin Hall quickly announced that the bill had been assigned to the Rules Committee where it will die a quick death, because Destin Hall is no fool and he knows that another extreme anti-abortion bill could be a killer of Republican careers.

“I don’t think there’s any real desire in our caucus to hear that particular bill, and so, it’s not going to be heard in committee,” Hall told reporters. End of story.

Granted that last year the expected backlash against the NCGOP for reducing the legal window for abortion from 20 weeks to 12 didn't quite materialize, at least not to the point of decisively ending the super-majority of Republicans in the General Assembly.

The meanness of old white guys about women's bodily autonomy gets put in the corner by the good sense of young white Republican men who understand better the political winds, not that he necessarily respects women more.

Wiley Nickel Jumps; Is There Water in the Pool?

 

Wiley Nickel applauding Roy Cooper
in earlier days

Back in January, ex-Congressman Wiley Nickel, who's been itching to run for the US Senate against Thom Tillis, told reporter Bryan Anderson that he wouldn't want to run in a primary against the much better known and frankly more politically formidable ex-Governor Roy Cooper. Don't know what's happened to change that, but yesterday Nickel announced his campaign for Senate, and Cooper is still "considering."

Cooper will be the instant frontrunner if and when he announces a campaign against Tillis. Maybe Nickel is trying to flush Cooper out, but will he graciously step aside when Cooper announces, or will he insist on going through defeat in a primary?

Politico reported:

“I have absolutely nothing but good things to say about former Governor Roy Cooper,” Nickel said. “My focus is Thom Tillis, who is voting over and over with Donald Trump on disastrous policies that are going to harm North Carolina.”

A person directly familiar with Cooper’s thinking granted anonymity to speak about private conversations said the governor is still “actively considering the decision to run” and he’ll decide after he completes his Harvard University fellowship later this spring. “Announcements by other potential candidates will not have an impact on his decision,” the person added.

 

Did NC Somehow Elect a Non-MAGA Republican as Our Treasurer

 

NC Treasurer Brad Briner

Bryan Anderson has the scoop: Brad Briner calls Trump's tariffs a tax that hits us all, with only "bad choices" ahead:

Republican State Treasurer Brad Briner likened the president’s new tariffs to a corporate tax, and he sees more pain ahead. He said the tariffs will result in some combination of three outcomes for North Carolinians: Companies raising prices at consumers’ expense, companies cutting costs (and presumably payrolls) to protect their margins at the expense of workers, or companies accepting lower profits at the expense of investors.

“We don’t know if these tariffs will stick, or which of the three bad choices companies will make as a result,” Briner told The Assembly in a statement. “I also don’t think humpty dumpty can be put back together again. At the very least, countries and companies will be much more hesitant to trust that U.S. policy will remain constant, which slows decision making and lowers economic activity definitionally.”

 

January 6th Participant Becomes Apostle

 

Nathan Baer, Jan. 6th convicted participant

A week ago (April 1st), Kyle Perrotti published the most fascinating report on a pardoned January 6th rioter apostle, Nathan Baer. ("Not a rioter." He tells a fascinating story of being actually led to the front-lines of battle by the hand of Jesus, for the singular purpose of spreading peace.) Baer was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Macon County Republican Women's Club. He spoke for almost two hours -- a tale of his personal journey that had some of those women in tears by the end. 

Perrotti has a hell of a lead:

On Jan. 6, 2021, Nathan Baer stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C. On April 26, 2023, he was arrested in Asheville and hit with numerous charges. On April 5, 2024, he pleaded guilty to one felony and was sentenced to four months in federal prison. On Jan. 21 of this year, he was pardoned by President Donald Trump and released from incarceration. On March 19, he spoke to the Macon County Republican Women’s Club in Franklin. (Smoky Mountain Times)

I come away from the article understanding this man Baer as a visionary libertarian, and not a little paranoid, seeing Jesus in all things and understanding the whole world otherwise as a giant ganging up that must be opposed. Baer told those Republican women that "while he wanted to support Trump, it was also something bigger — it was a sort of calling to take a stand against the cabal he perceives has corrupted the whole political system. His talk, which seemed at some times like an academic lecture and others like a sermon, verged into moral philosophy and religion." 

Baer had become a fairly notorious fugitive before he was finally identified on Feb. 21, 2021, because of indisputable photos with Baer easily identifiable, front and center during the infamous "Tunnel assault" on the West Front of the Capitol. One photo shows him nearly nose-to-nose with Officer Michael Fanone. Another shows him hefting a police shield over his head to pass it forward to the frontline. Identified by a tip that a particular musical performer pictured on a Brooklyn theater's website bore a striking resemblance to Baer. Yep, Baer, an aspiring actor/singer. The FBI didn't arrive to arrest him in Asheville, where he was living with his sister, until June 2023. 

The infamous photo of Baer face-to-face with Officer Fanone

A singer? You bet! Baer apparently has an astounding baritone, "seeming to fill the room as if coming from a surround-sound stereo system." Baer punctuated his talk with resounding, a capella renditions of "America the Beautiful" and "How Great Thou Art," the old George Beverly Shea number guaranteed to put everyone in the right frame to receive the Lord. 

He veered into both the "visionary" and the Libertarian -- Ron Paul is his hero, "who showed me what godly courage means,” Baer said. He also served up a big slice of that inherent paranoia. He said he wasn't so opposed to Obama and Hillary as he was on his guard against the “military industrial complex” (that old warhorse) nefariously running everything, running the bigwigs, running the economy. The reactions of the women: "Some topics, like how Wikileaks leader Julian Assange should be pardoned seemed to receive mixed results; some more obscure topics, like how a corrupt economic system based off the model used for the Bank of London has undermined the United States’ Hamiltonian economic system, seemed off people’s radars entirely."

Baer's saga about his few months' behind bars before Trump liberated him deepens the ambiguities. Perrotti:

There were cliques and gangs. Men would dominate others they perceived as weak. Some correctional officers were crooked and some were territorial. The thing Baer seemed to dislike most about prison was the lack of human connection; even looking someone in the eye is a faux pas worthy of immediate conflict. Callousness is a virtue and loneliness is the byproduct.

He began to teach singing to fellow inmates, making himself useful, fulfilling WWJD.

Every Prick Wants To Rewrite History; This Prick Did

 

Donald Jethro issued one of his ExecOrders late last month directing the Smithsonian Institution to eliminate “divisive narratives.” It's time to whitewash history, boys!

A Washington Post review of websites operated by the National Park Service — "among the key agencies charged with the preservation of American history — found that edits on dozens of pages since Trump’s inauguration have already softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation’s past."

Some were edited to remove references to slavery. On other pages, statements on the historic struggle of Black Americans for their rights were cut or softened, as were references to present-day echoes of racial division. The Post compared webpages as of late March to earlier versions preserved online by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Changes in images, descriptions and even individual words have subtly reshaped the meaning of notable moments and key figures dating to the nation’s founding — abolitionist John Brown’s doomed raid, the battle at Appomattox and school integration by the Little Rock Nine.

An educational page on Benjamin Franklin, which examined his views on slavery and his ownership of enslaved people, was taken offline last month. Mentions of Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, owning enslaved people were removed from several pages on the website of the Stone National Historic site in Southern Maryland. ...

At the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, political appointees directed senior career officials to identify webpages that might need to be changed, according to two Park Service employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution....

For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page began.

Tubman’s photograph is now gone. In its place are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight “Black/White cooperation” in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.

The introductory sentence is gone, too. It has been replaced by a line that makes no mention of slavery and that describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” The effort “bridged the divides of race,” the page now says.

 

Unpaid Protest

 

Posted on Twitter by @herotimeszero. I consider it a masterpiece of the genre:

MAGA is screaming that the anti-Trump protesters are all paid actors.

Just so I’m clear. The guy who was hated by his spouses for cheating, hated by his contractors for not paying, hated by his partners for lying, hated by his staff for being a bully, hated by his first administration, hated by his chiefs of staff, hated by his generals, hated by the intelligence community, hated by his “friends” with Trucker texting "I hate Trump passionately,” hated by Americans for ignoring a pandemic, inciting an insurrection, destroying our government, firing millions of Americans, stealing our retirement, torching our constitution, and crashing our economy, the guy is possibly the most hated man in America, if not the universe, and you think we need to get paid to loathe his vile slithering ass?

 

(Keep Your Thieving) HANDS OFF!

 

Forget the millions who turned out in the big cities yesterday to protest Trump 2.0. Look what was happening in the little towns. Impressive by any standard.

Photo by Donna Lisenby