Rep. Destin Hall, who as chair of the House redistricting committee gerrymandered the hell out of Watauga, pulling blue-leaning Blue Ridge precinct out of Ray Pickett's District 93 and adding it as dilution to his own heavily Republican Caldwell County District 87 --
that Destin Hall
appears destined to become the new Speaker of the NCHouse, replacing Tim Moore who has his own eye on a free US House seat that was created specially for him. Destin Hall's biggest rivals, John Bell and Jason Saine, have both dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
We profiled Hall and Bell back in July. We called Hall "slick," which was not meant as praise (and I don't take it back now).
Less corrupt than the previous Speaker? Remains to be seen. Should be easy since Tim Moore set a high benchmark.
https://apple.news/A55Nq2C5QTEicvkkjYNe9HA
ReplyDelete“Through new and expansive assertions of privilege, Republican legislatures around the country are shielding their work on allegedly discriminatory voting maps to prevent the public from finding out how and why they made their decisions.”
Great ProPublica article explains how gerrymandering is avoiding lawsuits- precisely the reasoning behind all the secrecy laws snuck into the recently passed NC budget.