Jennifer Balkcom and Old Mountain Democrats

 

The Spectrum TV interview with newly minted congressional candidate Jennifer Balkcom in the 11th District of NC will go down as one of the most amazing political face-plants I've ever seen. The interview was filmed in September, shortly after Congressman Chuck Edwards got censured in the House and resigned. Balkcom had just been picked for the ballot in his place. She was clearly unprepared. And she's been widely mocked for her performance. But I'm not interested in mocking her.  

The interviewer asks her, Didn't you use to be a Democrat? Yes, she readily admits. Her grandfather was a big influence, and her whole family were Democrats. "But why did you change?" Here she stumbles a moment and comes up with a parable her grandfather taught her. I'm paraphrasing: "My grandfather always said Democrats were like the donkey that pulled the plow, did the hard work to help others, and I believed all my life that Democrats were people who helped other people. But that changed." What? She leaves us hanging. When did Democrats stop trying to help others? In fact, aren't they usually accused of spending too much on the poor?

She was deflecting. And who knows what really changed her positive evaluation of Democrats as the-donkeys-pulling-the-plow? For a lot of old mountain Democrats, the national party got caricatured as crazy for gays, snooty to God, and conspiring about guns. If the old bloodlines of mountain Democrats go all the way back to the Civil War, you might expect some echoes of racism. She admits that it was in 2016 that she started studying various topics hard and decided that she wanted to become a Republican -- without noticing that was coincidentally the same year as the advent of DJT.

She was careful to say that her particular family was middle-class mountain and that she had always believed it her duty to help people in need. On two obviously favorite topics, Hurricane Helene relief and the need for better health-care services in Western NC, she sounded like a cautious Democrat. More money, more aid, more help. She admits that the Federal response -- that would be the Federal response under DJT -- had not been good, and that the state government, which she's been a part of for two terms in the NC House, had done "more than it was required to do" -- though much more had to be done, more money had to be spent. Rural hospitals were closing, and she well knows the pain and the panic of being an hour or more from medical help. She's not a deep thinker. She would never connect DJT's Big Beautiful Bill with the crisis in North Carolina's rural health care, nor notice that his administration has put FEMA in shut-down mode and is forcing more of the expenses of national disaster-recovery onto individual states.

But the DNA is still in her to pull the plow, I think. She's just aligned herself with the wrong horses.

She deflects through the entire interview. When asked what she would do to ease the prices of everything, she quickly punted: "I have a couple of ideas, but I'm not ready to say which one I like best." There were a whole host of things she wasn't prepared to talk about. "It depends" became a kind of hilarious, repeated dodge. Along with "I'm kind of a details-oriented girl, and until I know all the details I can't tell you if I'm in favor of a policy position or not" -- said in an interview that is almost completely devoid of details.

 

NCGOP Puts Out Halloween Candy for a Sugar High

 

Burger/Hall made sure that three sugary treats would be at the bottom of the North Carolina ballot this November 3rd, three proposed constitutional amendments: 

1. Voter ID Requirement

2. State's Maximum Income Tax Rate, lowered to 3.5%

3. Changes to Property Tax Laws (specific details still being "worked out"). This one really is a pig in a poke.

"Those should stir up our base," thought Burger/Hall. And maybe they're right. Maybe all Republicans, plus any number of Unaffiliateds and some Democrats, will fall right in line with the march off the blind bluff of amendments 2 and 3. Those items have a hidden stinger in their tails, because when you continue to make life as cushy as possible for the wealthy by starving state services, you just make local counties and cities shoulder the burden of taking care of the public's welfare. And the education of their children. And that is probably the ultimate point of the three amendments: The more the weight of government bears down on mainly Democratic cities and a few Democratic counties -- the better! Let the liberals who cluster together pay more taxes, not us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karma Knock--Knock-Knocking on Buck Newton's Door

 

Senate District 4 -- Wayne, Wilson, and Greene counties -- is rated by the Civitas Partisan index as R+3, which is exactly in the sweet spot for a flip if there's a genuine wave. Buck Newton, the Republican incumbent, made something of a name for himself, especially during the whole "Bathroom Bill" uproar, as an obnoxious anti-gay crusader. Jess (Jessica) Rivera, an ex-Marine and lesbian barber shop owner who's married to a woman, is putting up quite a fight to oust Buck Newton. I got alerted to her just this morning by Blair Reeves, whose Carolina Forward operation has endorsed her. If Blair is enthusiastic, then I'm enthusiastic. (Rivera has earned a raft of other progressive endorsements.)

Newton famously gave up his safe NC Senate seat in 2016 to run against Josh Stein for Attorney General. Newton earned a good deal of negative attention that year by yelling "fight to keep North Carolina straight" at a campaign rally, and he has consistently seemed to equate any species of queer with "predator," fanning fear of The Gay in rural precincts. Stein beat him for A.G. by a hair. Newton regained the Dist. 4 Senate seat six years later, in 2022, and has held it since. He won reelection in 2024 by 10 points over his Democratic opponent. 

 

 

Newton has been indelibly defined for me by a post on a Facebook thread in 2016, written by someone who was a fellow student with Newton in AppState's political science program:

I knew Buck Newton when he was in college. He was always very opinionated, angry, looked down on others, always saw things in simple terms, always quick to jump to conclusions, always claimed things were "common sense". He was always very judgmental and used bully tactics on others to make his opinion appear correct. He was always full of confidence based on simple, black and white views of the world. Several of us thought he was an idiot because of his lack of ability to see and understand what was beneath the surface of issues. This bill/law [HB2] sounds exactly like something college-kid Buck would do. Apparently, he has not grown much. There are many smart and wise people in North Carolina who see God's creation as it truly is - a very complicated marvel, so it is absolutely shocking that such a person of low understanding could rise to such power based on such a superficial foundation. Shocking. At one point in time, the earth being flat was "common sense", blacks being inferior was "common sense"... And, here we are... again.

 

Jess Rivera

 

Now comes in 2026, Jess Rivera, the 40-something ex-Marine with combat experience, to potentially clean Newton's clock. Jess Rivera, by all appearances (and you know how shallow I am!) looks to be running a truly muscular campaign. On her website she identifies herself as the oldest of six kids from a Mexican-Irish, working-class family. She says she had to go to work at 13 to bring home money to the family. At 15, their home was foreclosed on. At 17, Rivera joined the Marines:

It wasn’t just a decision to serve, it was a decision to survive. The Corps gave me structure, discipline, and a way to carry myself through the world with purpose. It also taught me when to speak and when to listen. And that both matter equally. 

After her Marine hitch ended, Rivera trained in cosmetology and hair-styling, and about four years ago opened the Garrison Barber & Parlor in downtown Wilson -- "a place where people can feel proud to walk in, and even more proud walking out. A place that says we all matter .... I’m running for State Senate because I know what it’s like to fall through the cracks. And I know how much it matters when someone reaches out and says, 'I see you'.”

She's effective in live reels on her Facebook feed, talking straight and with some color about the sham laws that Buck Newton and his boys in Raleigh passed, like the stuff put into the budget that made all General Assembly members owners of their own (formerly public) records -- now rendered private and protected from view. Not only that, the GA members can sell their records, if they so please. ("And what am I bid for Senator Mugstomp's love notes?") In one video, Rivera mocks the "one ... two ... three" attack postcards -- over-sized and flamoyant with screaming color -- that either Buck sent out or some PAC looking to save him from the dangerous lesbian -- 3 in one week! (That was the sort of attack barrage the monied Right used to unseat Cullie Tarleton in HD 93 in 2010.) I like Rivera's cool dismissal of those vicious over-sized postcards with their screaming attack lines as worthless dustballs churned up by a genuinely spooked incumbent. The thought of losing to a lesbian if you're Buck Newton!

Man! I'd like to be at the Rivera victory party on November 3.

I don't know about Rivera's fundraising. Third Quarter reports aren't due to the SBOE until the 27th of this month. For the 2nd Q, she reported less than $50,000 raised or on-hand. I wouldn't even go look at Buck Newton's 2nd Q. He has all the money he needs to send three big flaming attack pieces against Rivera every week until the election.

It's All About Rural Culture

 

The new TV ads from both Jamie Ager and Jennifer Balkcom in the 11th Congressional Districts are pretty brilliant, really. The Balkcom ad has gotten more exposure for its previously unknown candidate -- it's being talked about all over the district, and that's what some smart person in her campaign intended -- but Grayson Barnette has made a name for himself as campaign manager for Ager. Barn Dance is perfect. And so is Balkcom's Mom, which I guarantee you every rural person in the 11th District who sees it, says approvingly, with the right touch of sentimentality, "My mother [or my granny or some other blood relative] was just like that!"

Political Science prof Chris Cooper used some hyperbole after he saw the ads -- "said he thinks the NC-11 race is more interesting than the other 434 congressional districts combined."

 

Intercepted Email: "Dear Elections Director"

 

This is the email that a Watauga County voter living abroad wrote to the local Board of Elections about his difficulties in navigating new voting rules:

*          *          *

I hope this email can be passed along to anyone involved with North Carolina Absentee and Military Voting.

My wife and I have voted from overseas for decades. We taught and then retired overseas.

We voted in the Dominican Republic, Japan, and Thailand.

This year was an absurd series of hoops. I counted more than 100 steps before I could attach and send in ballots via email.

Option 1, the “portal” did not work. It did not recognize our social security numbers or N.C. addresses.

Ironically, even though those were rejected, the portal posted our voting record for each time we have voted since we moved to N.C.

My 2nd best choice was to fill out the documents by hand, turn them into PDFs, and attach them to an email.

Physically mailing ballots via DHL or some other courier from Thailand would cost almost 100 USD.

The Thai postal system has suspended standard and first class mailing to the US because of tariffs.

Many other countries have done the same.

I taught computer programming. If I had not, I would have quickly given up.

Supposedly only 3 percent of Americans living overseas vote. I predict it will now be a tenth of that.

The directions in the 9-page form for submitting the documents and pages needed were often vague.

You had to guess…a lot.

Please pass this along to someone who might react.

I'll be emailing our ballots in tomorrow and crossing my fingers.

Nothing on you, just reporting.

Thanks,

[name withheld]

 

It's the Romantics Who Move the Ball (Though Their Visions May Fail)

 

Henry David Thoreau

 

I've been reading about Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, the 19-year-old, fabulously rich French aristocrat who defied his king and his own family, bought a ship, and raced to America to support and participate in the revolution. On board ship, as he approached the New World, he wrote his wife Adrienne,

"The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of mankind. She is destined to become the safe and venerable asylum of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, of equality, and of peaceful liberty .... Night coming on obliges me to stop, for I have lately forbidden the use of lights about the ship." 

Said like a 19-year-old in love with his own heroic image -- who was also not an idiot about self-preservation. When he was preparing to sail to America, with the Atlantic crawling with British men of war determined to intercept any French commerce going west, including war materiel, Lafayette let it be known that if fired on by British cannon, he would rather die than give up the ship. He vowed to blow it up himself. That's a romantic for you. Imagining his own theatrical death for the Great Cause. The romantic is willing to act as though the best future is already here, if he can only grab it. Lafayette sails toward an America that exists first in his imagination: virtuous, tolerant, equal, peaceful. And by gawd he goes and puts his body, money, reputation, and military training at risk for that imaginary America.

Rick Aktinson in Volume 2 of his Revolution Trilogy suggests that Lafayette was meticulous about building and maintaining a vivid public image. All of France knew he was planning to sail west and join the Americans' rebellion -- he was a trained military officer at 19 -- and though the King and his government absolutely forbade any French officer joining with the Americans, Lafayette was determined (and determination backed by great wealth will get you a far distance). He was brave, perhaps dangerously brave. And an odd figure -- a French aristocrat taking up the banner of resistance to aristocracy. He fired the enthusiasm of the very French citizens who would soon be executing French aristocrats. Non-romantics probably thought Lafayette had marbles in his head. Napoleon called him "just another nitwit."

The cynic in me, reading that letter he wrote to Adrienne about the prospects for America, can see the nitwittery, assuming that we, the descendants of the revolution, are supposed to be essential for "the happiness of mankind." 'Cause look what time and decay have coughed up. Are we the happiness of mankind in 2026? Or a persistent stinging nettle? Lafayette promised his pregnant wife that America would be a "venerable asylum of virtue," which under the present regime becomes one of the funniest conjurings ever of the word asylum. 

Romantics have the gene to risk themselves for a cause. The Cause gets bigger as the risk escalates. Romantics can also make the impossible seem possible by their own doing, which is how movements get started. Change rarely happens without a movement. So what if the Lafayettes of this world tend to mistake their hope for reality?

Thomas Jefferson was a romantic and he decisively moved the ball of history. But “all men are created equal” was pure romanticism, asserted as reality before reality remotely conformed to it. It's the romantic's way to imagine a future that does not yet exist, behave as though it might exist, and thereby bull his way through the obstructions. Never mind that their animating vision turns out to be partial, naïve, contradictory, or downright dangerous.

Getting women the right to vote was a long political movement waaay before it became a reality. It became a reality through the gritty determination of women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Anthony's willingness to violate the law by voting in 1872 is very Lafayette-like. The romantic acts out the future before the future has been authorized. And is more than willing to go to jail for it.

Obviously, romantics can be remarkably grounded in present reality -- Lafayette's knowing he had to sail blacked-out at night -- while carrying the idea of freedom like a torch. Those suffragist women made historical change and could still cook cabbage and tend to the sick. I think of Henry David Thoreau, withdrawn to the woods to get his head straight. In 1846, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax because he opposed slavery and the Mexican-American War. He was arrested and spent one night in jail in Concord. Someone—apparently his aunt Maria—paid the tax, and he was released the next day. Isn't he a quintessential romantic? He took an abstract moral conviction and turned it into a physical act that put himself at risk. He was saying in effect, “I believe in the America that ought to exist, so I'm refusing to cooperate with the America that actually exists.”

Lenin and Mao belong in the story, too. Both imagined radically transformed societies and possessed the romantic conviction that the existing order could be swept away and something fundamentally new built in its place. They moved the ball enormously. The fact that the resulting societies produced coercion, famine, terror, and enormous human suffering doesn't make them less romantic. It makes the warning in my title real.

I think civilization advances because some people are insufficiently constrained by their knowledge of what is possible.

 

The Uphill Fight for House District 20

 

Tim Merrick

 

I'm not always convinced of the wisdom of adopting a visible trademark, especially if you're a candidate running for office. A gimmicky trademark can attract mockery, like John Fetterman's hoodie and shorts or Marco Rubio's heeled boots or Kristi Noem's cowboy get-up. Tim Merrick's hats are not a recent affectation. His attachment to pork-pie hats apparently goes back years into his long career as a chiropractor and well before he ever ran for office. The hat's a distraction to me, but maybe they work for him. They seem to fit his sometimes smart-ass personality, which can also work for a candidate. (If you want to see just how devoted he is to the style, see his reel posted on Facebook. He speaks to the camera backed by rows of pegs on which hang eight of his collection. That's kind of fetching.)

Tim Merrick was the owner of Alive & Well Chiropractic in Wilmington from 1991 to 2017 and has over 40 years of practice behind him. He retired and promptly ran two years ago for a contested seat on the New Hanover Board of Education. It was a narrow win, and now he's set his sights on the open seat for NC House District 20. Civitas rates it R+4. Merrick was endorsed by Carolina Forward in its second round, and he touts the endorsements of several other progressive orgs.

Dane Scalise, New Hanover County Commissioner and a lawyer, is Merrick's Republican opponent. Scalise is a veteran of politics -- much more so than Merrick -- having won county-wide as a commission candidate. He was first appointed to his seat in 2023, was elected to his own 4-year term in 2024 and became vice chair of the commission. He obviously has civic heft. He serves on the UNC Wilmington Board of Trustees and Cape Fear Community College Board of Trustees. As of June 30, Scalise had raised $327,233, nearly twice Merrick's $170,189. The next quarter reports should be available early in October. I suspect it's gotten more lopsided for Merrick.

If you don't have the money, you have to hustle, and Merrick says on one Facebook post back in May that "we" have knocked 3,200 doors in the last 6 months, which is an impressive start. He posted again about door-knocking in June, showed himself walking solo. What I miss seeing is evidence of a volunteer force behind him. I don't see that energy in Merrick's social media.

Dane Scalise is younger than Merrick and presents a friendly, self-deprecating image in some of his Facebook reels (especially his bloopers while trying to film a commercial). He certainly has no MAGA vibe about him, no feverish lusting after the embrace of DJT, but he did ape one feature of the Trump administration's politics: animosity toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. He pushed to dismantle the New Hanover County's Office of Diversity and Equity, calling DEI "ideology." Gosh. Has being kind and fair fallen ill in Republican hearts? 

It's gonna be epic if Merrick wins. It will take that rumored wave sweeping over the northern part of New Hanover, which stretches from the coast to the alarmingly polluted Cape Fear River.

 

Claire Kempner Could Flip HD 9

 

This campaign looks much healthier on the ground than her campaign bank account would lead you to expect. Claire Kempner is running in House District 9 (Pitt Co.), her second attempt to unseat Republican incumbent Tim Reeder, ECU emergency physician, who's frankly rolling in the dough. In her entire 2024 campaign against Reeder, Kempner raised $42,008 to his $556,287. She spent about $30,155; he spent about $426,963 and beat her with a 5,000-vote margin. This year, according to 2nd Q reports, Reeder has roughly eighty times Kempner's reported contributions, but sometimes piles of money don't mean much if the tectonic plates are shifting against you. Though she lost badly in 2024, has almost no money compared with Reeder, yet she is behaving like somebody who has every intention of making Reeder work for the seat.

Dist. 9 is rated by Civitas as R+3, "Lean Republican," which is well within striking distance for a flip if there is a wave.

Kempner has a real campaign underway, having learned some voter contact lessons from 2024. She says on her Facebook that she's been canvassing neighborhoods all summer. She has established an email/text volunteer recruitment operation along with an organized phone bank, with training on the campaign's script and voter-contact system. She appears to have a well-organized door-knocking operation with training and pairing inexperienced volunteers with experienced ones. 

Claire Kempner is a Pitt County mother of three, married to Greg Kempner. She was long described as a stay-at-home mom, but she now works as a Demand a Seat Recruitment Lead for Everytown for Gun Safety, which trains grassroots volunteers to run for office. She's also served in several volunteer and organizing roles with Moms Demand Action, including regional data work. She has served as secretary of the Pitt County Democratic Party and has been active with the Humane Society, United Way, and a maternity home for unhoused women and their children. She is, in other words, one of those people who apparently cannot be persuaded to sit still, especially when there is a need for action.

She's attracted the attention of the progressive community, earning endorsements from Lillian's List, 
Down Home NC (which brings more volunteers for door-knocking, phone banking, and canvassing), Equality NC, and Planned Parenthood. The Progressive Turnout Project has a paid campaign-fellow position specifically for “Claire Kempner for NC HD 9.” She made the second wave of Carolina Forward endorsements.

In other words, she's working it hard and could win.

Jen Wiles, Building Community Among Fellow Working-Mom Candidates

 

Jen Wiles

 

Two days ago I wrote about working nurse Jen Wiles running to unseat 7-term Republican House member Donny Lambeth in eastern Forsyth County (Dist. 75). I was alarmed at how little money she had reported raising back at the end of the 2nd Q. The next campaign finance report is due after September 30, and apparently Wiles has done exceedingly well in the 3rd Q. She is running a disciplined campaign with a "robust" field operation. She's been knocking a lot of doors.

I received an email from her yesterday announcing that she's raised enough money to carry out the rest of her campaign plan and has money left over to donate to other working-mom candidates like her who are struggling to get traction: "They are working parents, community advocates, and small business owners taking on immense stress with zero personal gain just to fight for their hometowns." She names several. I'll be profiling one of them later today.

Wiles is paying it forward and deserves great credit for sharing in an age that seems to always elevate selfishness.