Chronicles of the CD 6 Republican Primary, 2024

 

CD 6, Republican Primary Players

Lead Roles

Addison McDowell (got the Trump endorsement)

Bo Hines (thought he deserved the Trump endorsement)

Mark Walker (the preacher who can't catch a break, let alone an endorsement)

Supporting Roles

Mark Robinson (will he endorse in this race?)

Christian Castelli (Green Beret also running, ran before for the same seat in 2022) 

[A Washington super PAC, First Freedoms Foundation, recently claimed Castelli had been endorsed this year by Robinson, but that was exposed as false.]  

Trump's endorsee (because, reportedly, Addison McDowell has become a close hunting buddy with Donald Trump Jr., and Junior convinced Big Daddy to endorse Addison McDowell, which he did) -- anyway, McDowell put out a Twitter video of himself holding (no lie!) a pitchfork and wearing what's supposed to be work clothes vowing to protect guns and zyns. Zyns are nicotine pouches sold in tins and used like snuff. You can see the video here. Apparently, "They're coming for our Zyns!" and this sagging bag of new potatoes, with its pitchfort, is going to save us. He wrote a post on Twitter to accompany the video:

This might trigger a few liberals, but I won’t let them come for our #guns, our #zyns, our #bbq, or our Cheerwine. Our freedoms and our way of life are worth fighting for, and I’m ready to take the fight to Washington. #freezyn #stopchuck

Cheerwine? This ad triggered sustained laughter. And ultimately the puzzlement at the decision-making that went into this staged-in-a-barn video presentation of a slacker who likes his nicotine and can't keep the hair out of his eyes. Is this knowing self-irony -- a pitchfort? like half the duo in American Gothic. Is this self-parody or just laziness because he doesn't respect the voting public? 

Did I say Mark Walker can't catch a break? He's seeing high-level Republican endorsers either rescind their endorsements, like Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, or deny they ever made them, like Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin.

To recap the downward trajectory of Mark Walker: Was a congressman for the 6th CD (2014-2020); decided not to run for reelection when his district became heavily Democratic; ran instead for US  Senate in the Republican Primary of 2022, against Ted Budd who got the Trump endorsement; announced in 2023 for Governor, then switched to the 6th CD after the Republicans gerrymandered it back to solid Republican.

He suffers from widespread disrespect.

I Bet McHenry's Got a Sweet Gig Lined Up for His Post-Congressional Career. Hell, He's Already Doing the Work!

 

Liz Zelnick, tracking the out-going Congressman from North Carolina, who knows a favor when he gets one:

House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Financial Institutions Subcommittee Chair Andy Barr (R-Ky.) have together taken over $1 million from just the 10 largest banks still charging overdraft fees (Accountable.US analysis).

So not surprisingly, McHenry and Barr are quick, like well-oiled quick, to denounce a new proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to limit overdraft fees to as low as $3—a reform expected to save American families at least $3.5 billion a year. "One quarter of American consumers have been hit with an overdraft or non-sufficient fund fee in the past year," amounting to billions for the big banks. [Liz Zelnick]

New reporting in Politico Influence revealed earlier this week that “portions of a press release issued” by McHenry and Barr bore “a striking resemblance—and in several cases used identical phrasing—to a top banking trade group’s talking points about the overdraft rule.”

McHenry and Barr’s relationship with their financial industry mega donors is so close that they’re now literally copying and pasting talking points from banking lobbyists and trying to pass it off as their own.

 

"No More Rewriting History -- Or Else!"

 

In my 37 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream.

--Federal Judge Royce Lamberth, D.C. Circuit, 

Senior Judge Lamberth, appointed to the bench in 1987 by Ronald Reagan, has had it with Trump and his followers and the massive effort to rewrite what happened on January 6th. Had it up to here! In tacking on two more months of confinement for an NC trespasser at the Capitol because the man not only refused to take responsibility for his actions but has also been spouting the Trump lies on social media, unrepentant and defiant. Lamberth gave him another couple of months to think about it. Whether it was a wise judgment or not, it was certainly a futile one.

But the additional sentence is maybe less shocking that what Judge Lamberth wrote in his order:

“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness. I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion’ like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted January 6 defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or even, incredibly, ‘hostages.’ 

“That is all preposterous,” the judge wrote. “But the Court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.

“This was not patriotism; it was the antithesis of patriotism,” Lamberth said. “And the rioters achieved this result through force.”

Tillis: Bowing To Trump "Is Immoral"

 

“I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy. It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

--Sen. Thom Tillis, Thursday, Jan. 25

As of yesterday, the White House and a bi-partisan group of Senators including Thom Tillis of North Carolina had reached a deal on a border security bill which will crack down on asylum requests and make other reforms the Republicans have wanted, thus unlocking foreign aid spigots for both Ukraine and Israel. The Biden administration went far to compromise on the border, motivated much by the crisis in Ukraine.

But also as of yesterday, Mitch McConnell, who's actually been a supporter for getting the border deal, told his Senate caucus that this particular border deal probably has zero chance of getting passed by the House, as Trump doesn't want it passed, because he intends to run on immigration horrors, so McConnell thinks it unlikely that House Republicans will buck the capo and vote for the very reforms they've been screaming about. "So you guys probably don't want to push it right now."

Thom Tillis flew mad. He urged his colleagues "not to make it all about politics at the behest of a candidate." Sen. Mitt Romney was more direct:

“The border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem — because he wants to blame Biden for it — is really appalling .... Someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’

 So to be clear, Tillis opposes Trump for the best reason -- "It is immoral." As he continues his current trajectory out of the MAGA embrace.

Trump's Man in CD 6

 

“There is no mistaking the job Addison McDowell woke up every morning to perform. He was a lobbyist fighting for the special interests of Big Insurance .… He represented the very specific, very uncompromising, very determined mission of a big insurance company.”

--Alfredo Rodriguez, Green Beret Col. Christian Castelli’s political consultant, in a written statement to McClatchy

Addison McDowell 

Okay, I'm about to beat, if not dead horse, at least a limping one in the person of Addison McDowell, the out-of-nowhere Raleigh lobbyist whom Trump also out of nowhere endorsed for Congress in the formerly Democratic 6th CD. A made man, McDowell upended the hopes of young Bo Hines, heir apparent to Madison Cawthorn who thought he was scheduled to get the Trump blessing. Trump's endorsement of McDowell also didn't exactly help poor Mark Walker, who's ping-ponged all over the higher offices sniffing for an opportunity to get back to some handhold on power, but he's becoming the Joe Btfsplk of North Carolina politics.

A fundraiser for McDowell in Raleigh last week reportedly gathered together a power base of Republican General Assembly honchos including Phil Berger and Destin Hall and the young lobbyist who until very recently tugged at their lapels and tried to urge them toward what his employer really really needed. His employer incidentally was Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. About which, opinions vary.

Interestingly, the political consultant for a rival Republican for the 6th CD seat, the obscure military man named Christian Castelli, actually blew the whistle on McDowell's milking of the whole corporate culture of big-time insurance and made those comments directly to a McClatchy reporter. The press on this probably won't hurt McDowell. He's going for a MAGA base that absolutely admires influence peddling and doesn't read newspapers any more.

The Chronicles of Jeff Jackson

 

Roll Call file photo

I like an email from my Congressman (except, he's not my Congressman at all) that begins like this: "I’m at the airport, waiting to board, trying to escape the snowstorm they say is about to hit D.C. I’ve got drill this weekend with the National Guard, so I can’t afford to get stuck here."

For pacing, for narrative tension, for sharp characterizations and all the other narrative skills of a good story-teller, Congressman Jeff Jackson of the 14th CD could moonlight profitably as a chronicler of his times, a historian in the eye of a historical storm, who just incidentally has the talent to 'splain the inexplicable.

The email I got last Friday detailed the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson as he sweated to pass the third budget extension of this current Congress -- with half his caucus, not just the Freedom Caucus, but some hundred+ Republicans opposing the budget extension Johnson had negotiated with Democrats. Johnson was close to losing a majority of his own caucus, when Jackson says this happened:

(Notably, one member of the majority did the Speaker a favor by switching his vote from no to yes at the last possible moment just so the Speaker could claim that a majority of his party voted for it. I watched the guy get the signal from a member of leadership to change his vote. Then after he switched he got a pat on the back and a fist bump.)

Jackson wrote that the 100+ Republicans who abandoned Mike Johnson knew that every Democrat was voting for the extension and that it would therefore pass without their participation. "They had the luxury of taking the messaging high-ground," wrote Jackson, "voting against it, and casting stones. An age-old political tactic."

Jackson unpacks the education of the Speaker, from Freedom Caucus soldier denouncing the last Speaker for being too weak, to the guy who is the Speaker now and negotiated with Democrats. I consider this piece of Jackson's writing pretty solid political science as well as good story-telling:

The Speaker, as you’d expect, voted in favor of the extension. Because of course he did. He’s the one who brought it to a vote. He understands why it’s necessary, what a shutdown would mean, and the political reality of divided government.

But let’s wind the clock back to our first budget extension vote. The one from last fall. The one that got the old Speaker fired.

We heard a very different tune from our current Speaker on that vote. Not only did he vote against it, but he gave a big speech on the House floor surrounded by other members of the right-flank in which he said… all the same stuff they’re now saying about him.

So either he has suddenly become a completely different person -- he’s not a “fighter,” not willing to make “hard choices,” not “standing on principle,” and all the other stuff he’s being accused of -- or he simply no longer has the luxury of fantasy.

He has actual power, which comes with actual responsibility, and he’s chosen to respect that enough to break with his old buddies and not shut down the government.

"With actual power comes actual responsibility."

 Gonna miss this writer in the Halls of Congress!

The Saddest Fringe of the NCGOP

 

One of the rarest sightings in North Carolina, a former Republican governor, has decided to make regular appearances as an opinion writer for the Raleigh News & Observer. Former Gov. Jim Martin's first column appeared last Saturday.

In it, he summed up the dilemma of the Trump/Biden binary for moderate Republicans like him:

They [a vague "many Americans"] abhor Trump’s belligerent swagger and lack of integrity, yet fear Biden’s social policies and competence as much. Neither showed any fiscal responsibility. Both parties seem stuck with candidates almost as old as I am (87).

I take the they to be Martin himself and the kinds of Republicans he represents, educated, fundamentally scientific in approach, never extreme. (Martin himself holds a Ph.D. in chemistry.) Despite what Trump has done to his Party, Martin is still a Republican, with conservative Republican values that include actual morality. He argues that the Trump juggernaut has balsam wheels and offers numbers to downplay what Trump won in Iowa -- "surprisingly, Trump barely won 51% of the Republican caucus and 20 of Iowa’s 40 apportioned delegates." Martin still believes, perhaps hilariously, that Trump can be stopped by a more acceptable Republican. Which one of the surviving flavors? DeSantis or Haley? Martin was coy. Haley or DeSantis? He doesn't care which one, just as long as there's one and not two for all the not-Trump voters looking for union, just so some acceptable and actual Republican beats Trump for the nomination. Martin seems to think it's possible -- a faith that passeth understanding. (That faith is put to the ultimate test today in New Hampshire, with DeSantis out and Haley facing Trump solo.)

Correctly, Martin sees the Unaffiliated vote as potentially decisive in any Republican Primary, if only someone would launch a really good organizational campaign and quickly whip all those Unaffiliated voters up into a bloc. If only someone. If only those who are registered Unaffiliated (some 2,736,775 persons of voting age in North Carolina) could see it as their "duty" (Martin actually uses that word) to pull a Republican ballot on March 5th and vote for someone besides Trump to save the Republican Party from itself.  

Reading Gov. Martin's essay, I went rummaging for my copy of Tom Eamon's The Making of a Southern Democracy: North Carolina Politics From Kerr Scott to Pat McCrory, because I remembered only vaguely when Jim Martin won the governorship in 1984, and went on to reelection in 1988, the first Republican governor ever to serve two full terms. I wasn't following North Carolina politics at that time and certainly not North Carolina Republican politics.

Jim Martin as a Congressman,
after he served as governor

So I wouldn't have known probably that Jim Martin (along with that other moderate Republican governor Jim Holshouser) had "frosty relationships with the Jesse Helms wing" of the NCGOP. Martin and Holshouser favored incumbent Republican Prez Gerald Ford over the insurgent Ronald Reagan in the 1976 presidential primary in NC, a preference which was out of step with the hardcore Helms base, and the two former and distinguished governors were blatantly denied credentials as delegates to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City as punishment.

Historian Tom Eamon:

At first, Martin was not sure whether he was a Democrat or Republican. He was a progressive with conservative instincts and supported the tenets of capitalism. His decision to become a Republican rested partly on the premise that the long-entrenched Democrats were the party of the status quo in North Carolina. Moreover, the fledgling Republican Party seemed more welcoming to the young and ambitious.

Love those last two sentences. This I do remember, that the "long-entrenched Democrats were the party of the status quo." But which party has changed most since those days 50 years ago when a Republican governor could be a "progressive Republican" and Democrats were sometimes more conservative than Republicans are now.

Schroeder Grants Injunction Against Part of S 747

 

The lawsuit against part of S 747, "Same-Day Voter Registration," which the Watauga Voting Rights Task Force initiated (background here) was finally concluded late yesterday when Federal Judge Thomas Schroeder issued an injunction against the mail verification part of that law -- until the General Assembly fixes it by giving a voter "notice and an opportunity to be heard" for why their legitimate vote should not be thrown out.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and those persons in active concert or participation with them, are HEREBY ENJOINED from utilizing the procedures of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-82.6B(d) to remove from the official count the votes of the ballot of any voter who has provided contact information in the registration process and whose first notice required under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-82.7(c) is returned by the Postal Service as undeliverable before the close of business on the business day before the canvass, without first providing such voter notice and an opportunity to be heard, and, only to this extent, Voto Latino Plaintiff’s motion (VL Doc. 44) and Party Plaintiff’s motion (DNC Doc. 6) are GRANTED. This injunction shall remain in force until such time as a procedure for notice and opportunity to be heard is implemented in accordance therewith.

The judge was obviously moved by the examples provided by Watauga County of valid voters who same-day registered and voted but who did not receive their mandated verification mailing because of clerical or post office error and through no fault of their own. The new law would have canceled their vote and their voter registration with no provision for notifying the voter and allowing them to confirm their true address.

Humdinger of a Republican Primary!

 

Republicans must decide on March 5th between Catherine Truitt, the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction (and a total weak-kneed RINO to some of the MAGA crowd), and Michele Morrow, failed school board candidate and Scourge For God who intends to return Christian and Nationalist "morality" to the school system. The winner of this primary will face the winner of the Democratic primary (about which, more later) this November.

Catherine Truitt

The crowd over at DailyHaymaker.com hate her guts because she's never sufficiently denounced diversity, equity, and inclusion in education -- don't ask me for specifics; my eyes glaze over at the first mention of DEI, CRT, IDGAF, with never any collaborating detail -- just disproportional anger about vague happenings at school because little blond-headed Johnny came home supposedly hating his own skin for the sins of history his teacher implied he needed to repent.

Truitt seems a lot less liberal than Brant Clifton alleges. I'd say she's standard-issue Republican, the weakest tea on the whole philosophical proposition that a country must educate all its children. She takes money from the people she's supposed to regulate, namely out-of-state, for-profit charter schools, and has refused to challenge the credentials or record of such companies as American Leadership Academy Monroe, recently approved for a new charter (after two previous failures over issues like "conflicts of interest in the school’s governance, rapid expansion of [the home company] into North Carolina without sufficient evidence of academic success, and drawbacks of giving public tax dollars to an out-of-state corporation").

Truitt is being challenged for the nomination by the candidate who will bookend perfectly with Mark Robinson.

Michele Morrow

She made quite a spectacle running for seat #9 on the Wake County School Board in 2022 (getting just under 36% of the vote against the winner's almost 56%). Though the Wake School Board technically runs without party labels, everybody usually knows, and Morrow was endorsed by the Wake Republican Party. She was also endorsed by Moms for Liberty.

Morrow, 53, a former nurse, has home-schooled all five of her children, and has been an effective spokesman for her side because she can be non-kooky and makes perfect sense on some issues, like the need for more trained school nurses, yet the extreme views she's learned to dampen in public came out in the open after she established herself as a flashpoint presence on social media, famously labeling public schools “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers” and urging people not to send their children to them. During a candidate forum in September 2022, she said, “I think the whole plan of the education system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people.” (There's always a conspiracy, no?) She also pushed conspiracy theories on 2020 election fraud and COVID-19 vaccines and posted about “taking out” the enemies of her people. She hates "social activism" in school. Social activism apparently belongs entirely over the barrier at Capitol Hill: Morrow took her oldest children to the January 6th Capitol riot, said on a live Facebook feed that she was there to teach her children "a lesson about citizens’ role in a democracy," but also claimed later that she had tried to dissuade rioters from pounding on and breaking windows.

Watching her current video introduction for Superintendent of Public Instruction, we see a very nicely turned out candidate -- lovely, really -- saying some pretty standard stuff at first about guaranteeing a good education for every child. Then things change, perhaps when she wields the word conservative, and here they come, the dreaded spew of ominous initials -- DEI, CRT -- as she drills down into the horrors of children coming to hate their own white skin because of confronting unpleasant facts in history. Morrow's game is barely contained fright. And make no mistake: Morrow is the Iron Woman who is gonna put a stop to all of it, reinstating "the true history of our great nation." She's intense under a surface of apparent calm, rigid in posture, animated in face, remembering to smile on key words. You can almost hear her gritting teeth.

Here's Morrow in action in front of the Wake County School Board on June 6, 2023: