They're calling it "Mar-a-Lago Face," the consequences of too much exposure to the divine.
Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Sunday, January 11, 2026
The Democratic Primary in Congressional Dist. 5
Creekmore's polished website features some very motivational writing. He has a firm grasp on what has happened and continues to happen to our politics, our transformation under the oligarchy of billionaires into a permanently unequal administration of benefits and laws. The puny and feckless politicians who should rein in the oligarchs are too often wholly subservient to them. Kyah projects defiance and a penetrating intelligence with no patience for bullshit:
Most politicians — Democrat & Republican — won’t like me because their loyalty is to big money, not the voters who sent them to Congress. I will call them out. I will hold them accountable. They’re like roaches. They scatter when we shine the light on them. They’ll hate when their AIPAC checks and lobbyist donations go viral, when their votes against their own constituents get exposed for what they are. They posture as moral saviors, but the truth is they care more about campaign ads and donor checks than the people in their districts. That ends when we start shining a brighter light.
Kyah tells a tale of being born to a 15-year-old single mother who nevertheless, through remarkable grit and determination and holding down three jobs simultaneously, managed to get her first-born son through NC A&T.
We moved almost every two years. By graduation I had gone through nine schools. Some had broken trailers for classrooms. Others had shiny new facilities. That constant shifting showed me how unfairly opportunity is divided by nothing more than ZIP code.
He sees the same grinding inequities that (in fairness) motivated many a working-class MAGAite in past elections:
I worked corporate retail jobs that drained my time and dignity. They demanded everything while paying barely enough to scrape by. Those jobs did not just show me hardship. They showed me how a system designed to grind people down really works.
He is preaching solid working-class economics and the crying need for reform:
No one should wake up wondering if they can afford insulin, their child’s medicine, or rent.
No student should be learning in a trailer while politicians cut school budgets.
No worker should clock in full shifts and still need food stamps while CEOs brag about record profits.
Housing is not a luxury. It is a human right. Clean air and safe water are not bargaining chips for corporations. And poor families should not be blamed for conditions they did not create.
This is not abstract to me. It is lived reality.
Creekmore lives in Greensboro, where the most recent outrageous gerrymander of Foxx's district wrapped in some Black precincts in Guilford (with an awkward protuberance that looks like a satyr's broken hoof) -- not to help Foxx but to dilute the Black vote in CDs 6 and 9.
But Creekmore points out that the gerrymander raises the population of college students in Foxx's district to some 63,000 potential voters, not just at AppState but also at NC A&T and at UNC-Greensboro. I don't know about that statistic, and I also don't know if Kyah has the resources and help to actively campaign for those 63,000 before the primary.
Friday, January 09, 2026
Police State
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Morality. The only thing that can stop him does not exist in his human makeup. He's shown us over and over that feeling big is his morality, and profiting, just so's he can wet his beak in whatever scheme is afoot, like any successful Capo di tutti i capo, especially a Boss with a private secret police and a cowed congregation of political yes-men and the adoration of enough of those guys of a certain age who love a leader that inflicts pain on others. Kristi Noem, wearing a big cowboy hat like she just finished bartending all night at Bronco Billy's, was part of the applause in the peanut gallery, leading the charge for smearing a liberal white college educated urban woman as a "domestic terrorist."
If the murder of that woman in her car in the streets of Minneapolis -- we all saw it unfold, from several different angles -- if that horrific police-state action by masked and heavily armed men doesn't awaken a moral qualm in you, then maybe Trump threw open your basement door and terrible things have escaped.
He's made his piggy J.D. Vance claim "self-defense" for ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who shot at the Minneapolis woman three times while she was pulling away from him:
ICE officers have no authority to search a US citizen or arrest her (unless there’s probable cause to believe she’s harboring undocumented individuals, not a contention here). A woman surrounded by masked, armed men who have no law enforcement authority over her has every right to try to escape. Video shows her steering wheel is turned to the right, clearly an attempt to leave WITHOUT hitting anyone and steer clear of the officer standing towards the front of her car. That officer had time to step to the side, which is where he was when he shot her.
Even a real police officer would not have the right to shoot at her for trying to flee. This is well-established in the case law; deadly force may not be used simply to prevent someone from getting away. Given that the ICE officers had no law enforcement authority to begin with, AND the video footage shows she was trying to escape a perceived threat, not to kill anyone, the crime is all the more inexcusable.
We have to hope that citizens with their smart phones will always be filming these secret police. We apparently have no video of the shooting of two individuals in Portland last night, and gawd knows what rights were violated.
Napoleon Would Know
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte [h.t. Richard Anderson]
Thursday, January 08, 2026
Wednesday, January 07, 2026
Carla Cunningham May Be in (More) Trouble
House District 106 is majority Black. Carla Cunningham has represented the district in the NC House since the election of 2012. She's often been unopposed for reelection, and when she is challenged in a primary, she rarely takes less than 70% of the vote.
Carla Cunningham, Democratic Incumbent
“I am an ADOS (African Descendant of Slaves), a black American, and an American,” she said. “I support House Bill 318 because it’s time for my unapologetic truth to be shared. It’s not just the numbers of immigrants that matter, but where they come from and the culture they bring. Some come and refuse to adapt, but they must assimilate and respect the laws of the country they wish to live in .... We’ve been naive, exploited, and abused [by illegal immigrants] .... All cultures are not equal.”
Meaning (we take it), "They're not equal to me." An odd thing to hear a Black rep say in the age of Trump. In fact, she seemed to be mimicking Trump's "immigrants are garbage" line of thought.
Cunningham has been half-heartedly apologizing for that floor speech, while simultaneously complaining that it was "those people" who had made her feel threatened and intimidated to the point she blurted out a basically racist rant. Cunningham's feeling the heat.
One of her primary opponents, Vermanno Bowman (see below), sez of Cunningham: "She has a record of voting with Republicans over 80% of the time during the 2023–2024 legislative session, joining Republicans in overriding multiple vetoes from Governor Roy Cooper, and missing 332 votes (43%) in the 2021–2022 session." Being perpetually safe in your gerrymandered seat -- applies to Democrats as much as Republicans -- can make you high-handed and arrogant.
Most recently, Cunningham has signed onto a petition to have Meck Co Sheriff Garry McFadden removed from office, saying he threatened her like a mob boss for her vote on House Bill 318. The threat she alleges happened almost six months ago. If indeed the sheriff threatened her, she didn't mention it to anyone until her reelection primary began to look like her first bad election, because Gov. Stein publicly endorsed...
Rodney Sadler, Dem Primary Challenger
Just this past Monday, Gov. Stein issued this endorsement of church pastor and community activist Sadler: “I am proud to stand with Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler in his campaign to put people first. The people of North Charlotte deserve a representative who will fight for Democratic values, defend our public schools, and keep costs down. Rev. Dr. Sadler will help us build a North Carolina where we can all afford to thrive.” Sadler’s campaign told the Charlotte Observer that he has raised more than $100,000 and has secured endorsements from labor groups and more than 20 local leaders.
Sadler brings impressive academic credentials. He is a graduate of Howard University (1989, B.S. Psychology/Philosophy) and Howard University School of Divinity (1992, M.Div.). He holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Biblical Archaeology from Duke University and has also studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Though he is an ordained Baptist minister, he's also done service in Presbyterian churches and is currently associate professor of Bible and director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Charlotte.
Vermanno Bowman is perhaps headed for that category called "Perennial Candidate," which could make me sad for this ever earnest Gen Z do-gooder who's got an up-by-the-seat-of-his-pants personal story of poverty and struggle. Bowman has run twice before for the NC House, most recently against Carla Cunningham in 2024. He's back in 2026 with little prospect of success. In his first run in 2022 against another entrenched conservative Black Democrat, Bowman didn't quite get to 17% of the vote. In '24 against Cunningham, he took less, 15%.
Vermanno Bowman
Bowman enlisted in the North Carolina Army National Guard and has served as a military police officer for five or six years. He's been an active Democrat in Mecklenburg County, served on the state exec committee, so it must have hurt when Gov. Josh Stein endorsed the other Democrat.
Tuesday, January 06, 2026
Schietzelt Will Breeze Through His Primary
Part of a series examining the candidates recruited by North Carolina Educators on the Ballot (NCEOB) -- progressives running as Republicans to primary incumbent Republicans in the NC House.
The Republican Incumbent in H 35
To look at Schietzelt's website is to see before your astonished eyes a moderate Democrat from approximately 1978 -- affable family man who finds building community and strengthening public schools the greatest virtues of civic life, an ex-Marine who became a lawyer and who is most definitely not into puritanical cruelty and wedge issues, and besides that, he's fun! He once upon a time played in live bands on cruise ships and took his expert horn-playing with him into the Corps, where he became a member of The Commandant's Own Drum and Bugle Corps stationed at the Marine Barracks in Southeast Washington, where he often performed for dignitaries and at special events including burials at Arlington.
But you start looking deeper, and you start going uh-oh, we may be in trouble.
Duke Law School.
Clerked for Chief Justice Mark D. Martin of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Worked for the John Locke Foundation, researching and publishing on issues related to the criminal code.
The first Constitutional Law Fellow of Regent University School of Law's Robertson Center for Constitutional Law.
A Lecturer at Regent, taught courses on the First Amendment and religious liberty.
Schietzelt wrote one of the amicus briefs in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, advocating for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which is exactly what the Supreme Court did.
An intellectual conservative with a theological bent! Churches uber alles. He has argued the rights of churches to fire because of gayness and to preach a political message from the pulpit. Schietzelt is medieval like that.
But I'll give him this (and take note of the conditional phrasing): Schietzelt sponsored a bill that would have increased starting teacher pay to $50,000 and provided a 22% increase in salaries, and that language was actually incorporated into the House budget proposal, which the NC Senate has stubbornly refused to accept, which is why North Carolina is the only state in the nation with no budget.
The NCEOB Primary Challenger
She has started a Facebook group but she has no website nor other campaign infrastructure. She's on LinkedIn as Michele Joyner
The Democrat
Hopkins appears to be well set up to both raise money and to use it effectively in getting boots on the ground to do door-knocking. Attorney General Jeff Jackson added his weight to her campaign launch way back last April.
Hopkins looks strong. In a Blue Wave year, her contrast to Mike Schietzelt's anti-abortion intellectualism should count for plenty.
Monday, January 05, 2026
This Fast-Food King Serves Only Nothingburgers to Western North Carolina
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| Congressman Chuck Edwards |
Western North Carolina pulled into the congressional drive-thru after Hurricane Helene, placed a large order and waited. And waited. And waited.
What Rep. Chuck Edwards finally handed his constituents was an empty paper bag containing a rather large nothingburger — heavy on branding, light on substance and nowhere near the $60 billion recovery order his storm-famished district actually placed.
Sure, Congress served up a whopping $100 billion continuing resolution/disaster relief bill in December 2024 — Edwards claimed authorship — but for some damn reason, the meat of it wasn’t designated for Edwards’ constituents. Estimates put North Carolina’s piece of the pie at between $9 billion and $15 billion. In fast food terms, that’s like asking for a 10-piece McNuggets but only getting one.
Days ago on social media, Edwards claimed he was “fighting for Western North Carolina” and bragged about the $6.5 billion he says he’s dished out; not exactly a supersized Big Mac meal with large fry — more like a few stray ketchup packets, leaving people who’ve lost their livelihoods and homes asking, “Where’s the beef?”
In Swannanoa and within sight of some of those damaged homes, Edwards famously gave Trump a McDonald’s fry cook pin — a fitting gesture from a congressman who owns multiple franchises and seems more comfortable serving up symbolism than substance.
In the end, Edwards has delivered a master class in empty calories. Big branding. Greasy fealty. Zero nutrition. Western North Carolina ordered disaster relief and got a Happy Meal toy and a few napkins instead.
While somebody should congratulate Edwards on his award by offering him a steaming hot beverage from the McCafe menu, technically, no one can — because coffee is for closers.
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| Chuck Edwards town hall, Asheville, March 2025 |
Sunday, January 04, 2026
Dual Party Primaries in Knotty House District 32
Part of a series examining the North Carolina Educators on the Ballot (NCEOB) who are progressives running as Republicans to primary other Republicans in the NC House.
An Open Seat
House District 32 includes Granville County and over half of Vance, directly north of Raleigh. Dave's Redistricting lists it as 53.1% Democrat v. 42.5% Republican. The Civitas Partisan Index rates it as D + 2 "Lean Dem."
Short story: There's a Dem primary underway. Winner will face the winner of the Republican primary, also underway, both to be decided on March 3rd. The Republican primary is complicated by a third progressive, running as an NCEOB-endorsed brand new Republican against a doctrinaire former Republican house member looking to make a comeback. In other words, it's kind of a clusterknot.
The Republican Primary
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| Pamela Ayscue |
Sossamon is being challenged by retired teacher Pamela Ayscue, who's on the same page with all six candidates recruited by NCEOB -- backing "the Leandro plan," a court-ordered plan never enforced for increasing public education spending to deliver to every NC student their constitutional right to a sound, basic education. This case has been dragged through decades of legal blocks and feints since the original lawsuit was filed in 1994.
Pamela Ayscue taught in Vance County Schools, one of the original plaintiffs in the Leandro lawsuit. She also taught in Granville County before retiring and is now working for the state Department of Public Safety (NandO).
Ayscue has a very active Facebook feed which shows that she's politically engaged on several issues, but I found no other campaign infrastructure -- no website, no other social media.
She's up against a strong former House member who already has a formidable base. She can't beat him, but perhaps she can refocus some Republican moderates on the plight of public education in the state.
The Democratic Primary
Melissa Elliott
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| Melissa Elliott |
“I’m going to run a clean race, in spite of all the dirty things they’ve said about me. I’m just going to be Melissa Elliott, and I feel like all of this [past controversy?] was training for me to have super, super thick skin so no matter what people say, I can still fight for people that don’t necessarily fight for me.”
"I’ve been thinking about running for two years. I got sidetracked or derailed with all of the public scrutiny and then I said to myself, you’ve never let anybody or anything stop you before.”
The "dirty things" people were saying about her appear to have turned up in a commissioned survey of city employees about their job satisfaction. I have to conclude that the never specified "allegations made by various individuals" concerning Elliott's role as mayor of Henderson bordered on libel. The law firm that conducted the survey, in a formal letter to the town council, seemed to disavow its own report, sending a full refund of the money the town had already anted up for the work -- which might suggest an admission that the "allegations" against Elliott were, as she said, "unverified statements, opinions, and hearsay, primarily originated from individuals with different political or personal perspectives."
After Elliott won the Mayorship of Henderson, following what must have been a contentious runoff, she was recognized as an outstanding Black woman in politics by her alma mater, St. Augustine University in Raleigh. Receiving the award, she said, "Today, I stand on the shoulders of my African and Jewish ancestors as the first Black Woman to be sworn in as the Mayor of Henderson." Henderson is over 60% Black.
Some of the dirt on Elliott is hidden from me behind local press pay walls. There's something about a shady real estate deal and accusations from fellow council members. All-in-all, not a good look for a political candidate at any level, even in a "Lean Democrat" environment. Maybe especially in that environment.
Curtis McRae
McRae is a former Marine and a member of the Oxford, NC, city council. From his website: "He served 25 years in federal law enforcement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, retiring after a distinguished career that included leadership roles as Associate Warden and Warden at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina." Curiously, the same website is silent on his service in Oxford town government.
Curtis McRae
McRae was first a working member and then an endorsed candidate for DownHomeNC.org, a multi-racial, working-class advocacy group that does "deep canvassing" and surveys rural people. He should have a very good handle on door-knocking and political organizing from that work.
In announcing he wouldn't be running for reelection to H 32, Bryan Cohn, the Dem who beat Frank Sossamon, endorsed McRae, who was also his colleague on the Oxford city council.
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