Keeping Up With the Slow Death of Titan

 

I always learn stuff from Bryan Anderson's reporting, like the basic statutory process for recounting votes in the Berger/Page upset election in NC Senate Dist. 26:

State law and historical precedent calls for a machine recount first. After that, the trailing candidate has 24 hours to request a partial hand recount for a random sample of about 3% of primary day precincts, early voting sites, or both. If the partial hand recount produces results that indicate a different outcome in the race, a full hand recount would be triggered.

 

Yesterday (Wednesday), Berger asked the State Board of Elections (SBOE -- majority Republican) to alter that schedule slightly, to also do a hand recount on any ballots that the machine recount identified as "undervotes" (where voters picked no candidate in the race) or "overvotes" (where voters picked both candidates). Those numbers are already known: 217 undervotes and 3 overvotes out of the 26,000 votes cast in Rockingham and Guilford counties. 

 

Berger wanted yesterday those 220 ballots examined during the machine recount. The SBOE declined Berger's request, perhaps because those three Republican SBOE members are quite aware that the whole state is watching them very closely in this particular instance, on high alert for any finagling. So SBOE Chair Francis DeLuca (as dependably and consistently partisan a conservative as any GOP wet-dream could conjure and put in control of North Carolina elections) sounded like a slightly shocked Aunt Polly about Berger's request: “We follow the law! If it’s in the statute, we follow it. But there was nothing in that request that went by statute.” 

Berger intends ultimately (and mysteriously) to "determine the voter's intent" behind those 220 undervotes and overvotes, and I reckon those assumed intentions end up being at least one of the arguments in the eventual law suit. Berger only needs to find 24 of those under-voters and get them to swear in an affidavit that their votes would have/should have gone to Berger. If I were one of those people, I would play it safe and claim that I was on prescription drugs that day and didn't mean to skip that race and would have voted enthusiastically for Mr. Berger had I not been in a not-unpleasing drug haze). 

 

The machine recount in Rockingham is happening right now at this hour. The machine recount in those precincts of Guilford that are in S 26 happened yesterday, resulted in minus-1 vote from both Berger and Page, so no change in the outcome. All eyes on Rockingham today.

Ain't No Simple Thing To Steal an Election

 

BREAKING NEWS from Laura Leslie: 

North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) has called for a recount in his District 26 primary contest against Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, who holds a narrow lead in official county totals.

According to the final canvasses in Rockingham and Guilford counties last week, with 26,249 votes cast in the race, Page has 23 more votes than Berger, a margin of 0.08%. That’s well within the 1% margin in state law for a losing candidate in a non-statewide race to request a recount....

Because the district covers more than one county, the State Board of Elections has jurisdiction over the recount process, but the actual recounts are still conducted at the county level. The state board sent detailed instructions to Guilford and Rockingham counties on March 14. 

 

I'm not normally (yip!) conspiracy-minded, but in an age when massive theft is on plain view and actually unashamed to be seen in its native garb, if there was a moment for election theft, it would be now rather than later. And don't you wonder what those "detailed instrux" said? 

It's a machine recount, but in both Rockingham and Guilford, there's a paper-trail. Voters fill in a paper ballot that they then feed into a tabulator (Rockingham County uses the DS200 Vote Tabulator). Could the innards of the DS200 be jiggered to flip the election? Dunno, but I bet it would be hard, but totally within the skill set of the people who run elections now and who owe their jobs to Phil Berger. Just sayin'.

But even then, any substantial change in vote totals from the machine recount would trigger a second hand-eye recount, and that's when those paper ballots would presumably furnish the truth. 

What Would Mark Twain Say about Donald Jethro Trump?

 

I've been reading and savoring Ron Chernow's new and massive biography of Mark Twain. The book's so fat and heavy it's made reading in bed, which I favor, almost impossible. Dropping the book on my face could be fatal, or at least disfiguring.

Mark Twain was a complex, sometimes infuriating, easily duped genius. He made many disastrous business alliances based on misplaced trust in men who were essentially conning him for his money, so it's tempting to think he might have been taken in by the orange bunco artist, but ... naw ... Mark Twain was too genetically alert to pompous windbaggery and loved deflating it. After all, it was Mark Twain who coined the defining term for the times -- "the Gilded Age" -- and attacked the robber barons savagely.

I found this passage in Chernow's book most enlightening for understanding Mark Twain's politics and for guessing how he would have viewed Jethro in the White House:

After campaigning for Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 and James Garfield in the 1880 presidential races, Mark Twain seemed, at least outwardly, to have become a stalwart of the Republican Party .... But, an iconoclast to the core, he was not cut out for strict party allegiance, telling a reporter between those two elections: "I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat -- for any length of time. Vacillation is my particular forte." He identified with the Liberal Republican wing of the party, which detested political bosses, favored civil service reform and free trade, and endorsed clean government. These Republicans stressed morality rather than ideology in political matters and clung to the belief that character was the foremost criterion for public office, not a candidate's partisan agenda. 

Needless to remind readers that both the Democratic and the Republican parties of the 1880s were very different animals than they are now. The Democratic Party was harbor for white supremacists who either excused slavery or actively defended it. The Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and on the whole the liberals of their day. 

Mark Twain was born essentially a Southerner in Missouri, in a family -- let alone a region -- where slavery was the practice, never seriously questioned after the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The future writer's own father owned at least one slave, but Mark Twain was bright enough to see the humanity in people of all stations and conditions. After all, he created the character Jim, the runaway slave that Huck Finn teams up with and who is the noblest character in that book. Huckleberry Finn was banned all over the South because of its dangerous liberalism (and then -- different story -- it got banned all over again in the North in recent years because of its dangerous use of the n-word, and thereby hangs the alluring and sweetly stuffed pinata of opinion about how most white men, even one as smart as Mark Twain, will never be completely shed of their racism). 

Mark Twain's transformation into a Yankee Republican did not kick into high gear until he married a rich Connecticut girl from an abolitionist family. He always wanted to please Olivia, and she ruled him (at least while he was at home). He even gave up his whiskey and 15-cigars-a-day habits when he and Olivia first set up housekeeping, but that abstemiousness didn't last. He once admitted to a friend that he couldn't write without a cigar in his hand to steady his concentration. So seems pretty obvious that his "liberal" attitude toward Blacks after the Civil War was maybe also strategically cosmetic, to please the wife he loved and doted on, and that he was always essentially just a rough country boy who used the n-word without thought or -- in fact -- ill will. 

I like complicated people.

 

The Interesting Political Climate of 2026

 

The closeness of the Phil Berger/Sam Page race is a reminder that, even in an era of nationalized politics, state legislative primaries can still turn on local dynamics. Relationships and local turnout patterns—what political scientist V.O. Key once called “friends and neighbors voting”—still matter, and occasionally they decide who holds power.

--Christopher Cooper, Old North State Politics

 

 

Sam Page, currently 23 votes ahead

 

 

The fact that Phil Berger couldn't win even with the Trump endorsement -- that he couldn't nationalize his importance to the voters of NC Senate Dist. 26 by tying himself to the Trump -- suggests to me that the MAGA base -- at least, portions of it, particularly in rural areas -- are actively trying to look away from Trump like you might drop your eyes or turn away your head when you see your friend embarrassing himself. Country people are always embarrassed for the swaggering braggarts in their own families. So a local candidate tied to what is in so many countless ways a walking ineptitude was of no particular help to Phil Berger on March 3rd. His obvious corruption in trying to force a gambling casino on the good Christians of Rockingham County brought him down. Trump couldn't save him because Trump is now a spectacle of badly staged policy swerves. War? Poorly calculated distractions featuring bad and un-capable people, even though the Noem woman is gone.

 

The lesson for Democrats might be: Find the local, fly the local flag, defend the local. Don't forget that the biggest local issue might, in fact, be the Republican incumbent's own character, his/her votes, his/her trumpian odor, his/her public corruption for the sake of power.

 

The Cowboy Calf-Ropes the Leader of the Pack

 

Sam Page, March 3, 2026. Photo Bryan Anderson

 

 

That sharp tack Jeffrey Billman, the best investigative reporter in the state IMO, has just published a deep primer on Phil Berger* and how the President Pro Tem of the NC Senate got himself into such career-ending trouble with the voters of Rockingham County, who have voted Berger out and replaced him with the county's high sheriff and drugstore cowboy Sam Page.

Billman recounts the entire career, the scandals we've read about and partially misremembered, the iron grip on policy-making in the NC Senate, that paint a portrait of a stunning level of political corruption. And some new factoids I had previously missed:

The Assembly reported in August that, months after Illinois-based RedSpeed deposited $220,000 into House and Senate Republican coffers, lawmakers passed a bill that could make the company millions. The News & Observer reported in October that lawmakers spent $15 million to help a Mooresville developer after his politically connected project manager donated $132,000 to key lawmakers, including more than $17,000 to Berger. 

When you control as much as the Berger family controls, you're never satisfied. And it's like Phil Berger foresaw a time when he'd need to control the vote-counting process itself:

After the 2024 election, Republicans tucked a provision into a disaster recovery bill that transferred control of the state elections board from the Democratic governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor. 

The auditor, Dave Boliek, appointed the local and state officials who would oversee a recount. Boliek also endorsed and campaigned for Berger, and his chief of staff and spokesperson previously worked for Berger in the General Assembly. 

Boliek, a turn-coat Democrat, has already refused Sam Page's demand that he recuse himself from any recount process.

 

* If you're not a subscriber to The Assembly, what in the world is the matter with you?

 

The Perils of Phileen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dennis Draughon is on Bluesky. 

 

Primarily (Dragging My Ass)

 

Keith Kidwell

 

 

My excuse for not being johnny-on-the-spot about what just happened in North Carolina and then Texas yesterday -- I couldn't research nor write anything about that amazing primary primarily because my laptop was in the hospital getting updates and add-ons.

The first thing of note locally came to my attention a couple of days ahead of E-Day, and this local trend turns out to have been true and steady throughout the state. This info goes under the heading, "Enthusiasm Gap":

Some more quick numbers: Watauga County compared to statewide in early voting through yesterday (Friday):

 

-- Statewide 42% cast a Republican ballot during early voting. In Watauga only 25% cast a Republican ballot.

-- Statewide 29% of voters were Republicans. In Watauga 17% were Republicans.

 

Youth vote (18-30) represents 19% of the early vote in this Primary election. That is a significant increase from 11% in 2022 Primary.  

The enthusiasm gap means different things to the two major parties. For the Democrats, enthusiasm seems particularly generational in its vision of the future -- young people are showing up as serious candidates and some of them outstandingly have prospered, and because the future looks both younger and more progressive, candidates out-of-step with the majority are no longer tolerated. Carla Cunningham, Nasif Majeed, Shelly Willingham -- those three Democrats had voted with the GOP to override Gov. Stein vetoes, and all went down to defeat in their primaries. Michael Wray, a former Dem House Member who made a habit of defying both Gov. Cooper and his caucus, lost his bid to take back the seat he lost in 2024 from the man who beat him.

What does the apparent lack of enthusiasm mean for Republicans? You tell me. The main connective thread I see is possibly just a sudden surge of hatred for encumbents of whatever stripe, for both mean-eyed old Keith Kidwell, head of the NC House Freedom Caucus; and a Phil Berger, a corporate establishmentarian if I've ever seen one, who's in it for himself and his brazen family. Somehow 2026 has turned into a dismal year for Republican honchos. Someone soon will have calculated just how much each vote cost Phil Berger and his web of big money. I see totals calculated above $10 million. Berger got just a third of the votes in his home county of Rockingham -- that's worse than what Virginia Foxx's home county thinks of her -- while it was the portion of gerrymandered Guilford in his newly drawn district that got him within two votes of actually tying Sam Page. Oh the humiliation.

Colin Campbell lists at least four more Republican incumbents, some with longish records, who didn't survive their primaries. Why? I would love to hear informed opinions.

And meanwhile, Texas was almost feverish with heat.

More later (but I have to tell you, Brethren, I'm outside in the garden most of the time).

 

Trump and Facebook, Sitting in a Tree

 

I've been reading an insider's book about the peculiar brand of selfishness and narcissism at Facebook -- Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and on down the ranks of upper management -- written by Sarah Wynn-Williams: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (published just last November). According to John Walters, Facebook management tried to suppress it, "which in fact only increased its sales."

No wonder Facebook felt a fit of censorship. Wynn-Williams's title for this takedown of a media monster -- Careless People -- comes from The Great Gatesby, a passage the author quotes as an epigraph: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

There's no doubt that Facebook had a huge hand in unleashing Donald Jethro Trump in the election of 2016. In fact, according to Wynn-Williams, Facebook staff worked collaboratively with Trump's campaign to mastermind the "single best digital ad campaign" that several experts in mass communications had ever seen. Wynn-Williams gets into some graphic detail:

A Trump operative named Brad Parscale ran the operation together with the embedded Facebook staff, and he basically invented a new way for a political campaign to shitpost its way to the White House, targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages....

...Facebook and Parscale's combined team microtargeted users and tweaked ads for maximum engagement, using data tools we designed for commercial advertisers. The way I understand it, Trump's campaign had amassed a database, named Project Alamo, with profiles of over 220 million people in America. It charted all sorts of online and offline behavior, including gun registration, voter registration, credit card and shopping histories, what websites they visit, what car they drive, where they live, and the last time they voted. The campaign used Facebook's "Custom Audiences from Custom Lists" to match people in that database with their Facebook profiles. Then Facebook's "Lookalike Audiences" algorithm found people on Facebook with "common qualities" that "look like" those of known Trump supports. So if Trump supporters like, for example, a certain kind of pickup truck, the tool would find other people who liked pickup trucks but were not yet committed voters to show the ads to.

Then they'd pair their targeting strategy with data from their message testing. People likely to respond to "build a wall" got that sort of message. Moms worried about childcare got ads explaining that Trump wanted "100% Tax Deductible Childcare." Then there was a whole operation to constantly tweak the copy and the images and the color of the buttons that say "donate," since slightly different messages resonate with different audiences. At any given moment, the campaign had tens of thousands of ads in play, millions of different ad variations by the time they were done. These ads were tested using Facebook's Brand Lift surveys, which measure whether users have absorbed the messages in the ads, and tweaked accordingly. Many of these ads contained inflammatory misinformation that drove up engagement and drove down the price of advertising. The more people engage with an ad, the less it costs. Facebook's tools and in-house white glove service created incredibly accurate targeting of both message and audience, which is the holy grail of advertising.

Trump heavily outspent [Hillary] Clinton on Facebook ads. In the weeks before the election, the Trump campaign was regularly one of the top advertisers on Facebook globally. His campaign could afford to do this because the data targeting enables it to raise millions each month in campaign contributions through Facebook. In fact, Facebook was the Trump campaign's largest source of cash.

 

DCCC Involves Itself in a North Carolina Primary

Jamie Ager
Photo Katie Linsky Shaw

On February 23rd (yesterday!) the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added Jamie Ager and the NC 11th Dist. to its “Red to Blue” program, "a merit-based designation for Democratic challengers or open-seat candidates the DCCC believes have a real chance to flip a Republican-held district." In other words, an arm of the National Democratic Party is doing what has previously been frowned on -- endorsing a primary candidate, one of five in Ager's case, thus putting the Party's thumb on the scale in hopes of controlling the outcome. That is supposedly verboten for county Democratic parties and for state party officials, though you may have noticed that both Roy Cooper and Josh Stein have made primary endorsements.

The Jamie Ager case is interesting for several reasons. Five people are running. I read through the transcript of a very revealing candidate forum published by Asheville Watchdog. All five candidates were there and spoke. But the questioning was designed to disarm and reveal. Retired investigative reporter and questioner Tom Fiedler pulled some stunning honesty out of them, and several are frankly more interesting than front-runner Ager. A working-class woman named Zelda Briarwood, who admitted to a prior drug addiction and talked about her path to recovery. Paul Maddox, with a strong country accent, called himself a "hillbilly scientist" -- born in the hills but educated to the hilt, with advanced degrees in science that make him tough on bullshit: "I’m a cancer researcher and I solve problems, that’s what I do. And you take the hillbilly and the scientist and put them together, ain’t no problem we can’t solve." Richard Hudspeth, a medical doctor and a family physician who ran Blue Ridge Health Care, a very large community health center. Hudspeth is probably Ager's chief rival.

Jamie Ager comes from Democratic Party nobility in Buncombe County. He is the grandson of Jamie Clarke (James McClure Clarke), famous for trading the 11th CD seat back and forth with Republican Bill Hendon in the 1980s. Both Ager's father John and brother Eric either served in the past (John) or is now serving (Eric) in the NC House. Jamie runs Hickory Nut Gap Farm, the very large operation started by his grandfather. In other words, Jamie Ager comes from a family steeped in politics who seem to know how to do it, and he's got access to beaucoup money through his business and family associations.

He's a good old boy. He seems almost apolitical. But when you introduce yourself to a political audience as "fourth generation in these mountains," I wince. Pulling rank. What I hear, Mr. Fourth Generation, is "I'm entitled." So I find myself wondering what sort of congressman Jamie Ager will be, whether he's got actual philosophical principles about social justice and the power of great wealth, whether he's got a spine or is too accustomed to going-along-with, which can metastasize into damnable passivity. In one of Ager's responses to Fiedler's questions, he signals "moderate Democrat" ("just a country boy"), but the image of the straddle unnerves me a little:

...the political divide gets wider and wider and wider. I feel like I’ve been straddling this divide my entire life, since I’ve been involved in agriculture and I’ve been involved in the meat business, which turns out most of the people are not generally Democrat....

Ager will win the primary. But will he win the general? There's a good chance, according to the DCCC. And I wish him the best for becoming a well-informed and effective legislator. Not another Heath Schuler, please.