2nd Primary

Cal Cunningham lost to Elaine Marshall. No surprise.

Machine Gun Tim D'Annunzio lost to Harold Johnson. No surprise.

But Bernie Reeves lost to Bill Randall in the NC-13 Republican run-off, which was something of a surprise to those of us who read Carter Wrenn. Wrenn, who was a major synapse in Jesse Helms's brain trust, had been railing against Randall as a fake, a man who plagiarized and fluffed his resume. We knew Randall as the dude who suggested that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was planned by Barack Obama and BP. Randall was the darling of religious conservatives and tea partiers.

If Carter Wrenn represents in any way the old Republican establishment in NC, then the Tea Party defeated the Republican establishment yesterday in giving Bill Randall the nod to go up against incumbent Congressman Brad Miller in November.