This Joke of a "Public Servant" Will Have a Credible Opponent Next Fall

She's no prize, that Cherie Berry ... North Carolina's Secretary of Labor, which allows her to put her picture in every elevator in the state because she has jurisdiction over elevator inspections. But she also has jurisdiction over worker safety issues, for which she's amassed a dismal record of non-performance and waaay too cozy a relationship with the businesses she's supposed to regulate. (For specifics, you can start here.)

Following the Charlotte Observer investigative series about her failure to enforce worker safety in the chicken processing industry (linked above), the NC General Assembly appropriated more money to the Labor Department to cover four additional inspectors for chicken-processing plants. Berry immediately declared that she'd take the money but wouldn't use it as intended.

She's a prick.

Charles Meeker

But now she's drawn a very credible Democratic challenger for 2016 in Charles Meeker, the former several term (and highly popular) mayor of Raleigh. Meeker should be able to raise the money to give her a real contest.

It's high time we retired "the elevator lady."