Get This Partisan Embarrassment Off the NC Supreme Court

Justice Paul Newby

Yesterday, NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Paul Newby (who's made a serial spectacle* of himself since 2012--see below) pitched an injudicious fit that he wasn't the one chosen by Governor Cooper to become Chief Justice of the Court.

* Like his 1st Supreme Court election in 2004, running as the only NC GOP-endorsed candidate at a time when judicial elections in NC were officially non-partisan 

* Like showing up in 2005 at a rally against gay marriage, not the first or only time Newby has shown his bias on issues likely to come before him on the bench 

* Like getting reelected in a tough 2012 contest against Sam Ervin IV on the strength of big-bucks dark money coming from Big Tobacco, Big Insurance, and "a Washington-based group described as providing direct technical assistance to the North Carolina Republicans who drafted the [new and highly gerrymandered] legislative maps" 

* Like failing to recuse himself from sitting in judgment on Republican gerrymandering early in 2013, despite receiving over $1 million in TV advertising from a dark-money group that supported the gerrymandering

Now about the accusations Newby made yesterday...

A. "...Governor Cooper decided to place raw partisan politics over a non-partisan judiciary..."
Funny, coming from the most visibly partisan justice on the state's Supreme Court! And Newby appears to have forgotten that it was his guys in the NC General Assembly who decided to change state law and make all judicial elections partisan.

B. "...by refusing to honor the time-tested tradition of naming the Senior Associate Justice as Chief Justice..."Funny, since there is no such tradition. In 1986 Republican Governor Jim Martin appointed fellow Republican Rhoda Billings to be Chief Justice despite her having served only a year on the court. 

C. "...The Governor's decision further erodes public trust and confidence in a fair judiciary, free from partisan manipulation..."
"Partisan manipulation"? When Democratic Chief Justice Sarah Parker was forced into mandatory retirement in 2014, Republican Governor Pat McCrory appointed Republican Associate Justice Mark Martin to her seat. That's the tradition. A tradition pursued like a July chicken after a junebug by the Republican super-majority in the NC General Assembly ... attempting to manipulate the courts through "retention elections," judicial gerrymandering, seizing the appointment power for themselves, and engineering an entire election for the son of the President Pro-Tem of the NC Senate.

Newby promises to be on the 2020 North Carolina statewide ballot, running (yep!) to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The dude is a veritable cathedral of disqualification.