Natasha Marcus Lets Fly on the Republican Incumbent

 

Natasha Marcus

The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC), a venerable and actually pretty powerful state workers org (46,000 state employees and retirees), endorsed the incumbent Republican Mike Causey for Secretary of Insurance. (SEANC endorsed in all 2024 Council of State races, leaning decidedly Democratic in all contests except Insurance and Agriculture. Some can't imagine life without Steve Troxler. Most can't imagine life with Mark Robinson.)

I would have thought that Causey endorsement appropriate, given his Boy Scout reputation as the public official who wore a wire for the FBI to catch the CEO of an insurance empire in a case of bribery (bagged the Chair of the NCGOP at the time too, Robin Hayes). That move branded Causey something of a class traitor to the Republican hierarchy in the General Assembly. And there were new irritations. In April of 2023, Republican Causey came out publicly against "the corrupt deal that was pushed through the legislature this session to allow Blue Cross to raid its reserves and put the money in a new for-profit entity" (description, accurate enough, out of The Daily Haymaker). Bottomline: Phil Berger and Tim Moore make it possible for Blue Cross to transfer assets into a parent holding company able to move money with little oversight. Other Bottomline: HB 346 passed both chambers and was signed into law by Gov. Cooper. Causey's lone voice warning that permissive restructuring would be a time-bomb for policy-holders meant little. He was ignored, but as far as I'm concerned, he was the stand-up-to-tyranny fellow you want to see in public office, doing the honorable and ethical thing.

But that fellow, it turns out, is not all of that fellow.

Just bare minutes after he was elected in November 2016, he was playing games with Cannon Surety, a shady insurance company that underwrites bail bonds. A month after his election, December 2016, he was allegedly cooperating in a planned high-dollar fundraiser that Nick Ochsner uncovered for WBTV. A fundraiser, Ochsner conclusively demonstrated, that would have been illegal under NC law. After that exposure, said fundraiser dissolved like an Alka-seltzer in spring water, with everyone quickly denying knowledge or participation in any such fundraiser, legal or illegal.

In January of this year, a team of News & Observers reporters exposed a much darker portrait of Causey as an adept at cronyism. Democrat Natasha Marcus, the other candidate for Secretary of Insurance, is now using cronyism as an attack against Causey. I've reported on two of the crony examples below. Here's one. I've not heard before of Mendy Greenwood.

The Corruption on the NC Supreme Court Is Right Out in the Open

 

Daddy Dearest, with Junior

RALEIGH North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. will not be recused from two high-profile cases involving his father, the Republican Senate leader. 

The court’s Republican justices denied Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s motion requesting Berger Jr.’s recusal on Friday, writing that the Senate leader was involved in the case in an official capacity only — not a personal one. 

“We believe that Justice Berger can and will execute his responsibilities in this case fairly and impartially,” the majority wrote. 

Rather than deciding on recusal himself, Berger Jr. referred the motion to the full court to consider. 

In a dissenting opinion, the court’s two Democrats noted that the Code of Judicial Conduct makes no distinction between family members acting in their official capacity and personal capacity in its rules around recusal. Justice Allison Riggs, who authored the dissent, noted that Justice Berger previously refused to recuse himself in another case involving his father that challenged the state’s voter ID law. 

“To achieve the desired outcome in this case, members of this Court who typically ascribe to a strict textualist philosophy are eager to add words to the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Riggs wrote. “... I suspect the reason we have not changed these rules is simple — the optics of overhauling existing ethics standards to accommodate Justice Berger and Senator Berger are problematic, to put it mildly.” 

In both cases, Cooper is challenging laws passed by the General Assembly that strip him of his appointments to various boards and commissions. One of those laws, which is currently blocked by a lower court’s order, would drastically restructure state and local election boards and give all appointments to legislative leaders — including Berger Jr.’s father, Senate leader Phil Berger, who is named as a defendant in both cases....

(Kyle Ingram)

Council of State Team

 

Mark Robinson, Singing the Blues

 

Indebted to S.V. Date for exposing this fundraising email sent from the Mark Robinson for Governor campaign.

Size Ain't Everything, Except To Donald Trump

 

The crowd last night in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention:

The crowd last night, same time as above, in Milwaukee, for a Harris/Walz rally. Kamala addressed both crowds, and a huge TV audience, simultaneously:

President Obama alluded to Trump's obsession and the actual reality of the matter:

The Action in HD 105: Cotham v. Sidwell

 

A 501.c.4., Majority Rising North Carolina, put out a smart mailer hitting turncoat House member Tricia Cotham as a Judas, whose 30 pieces of silver came in a tiny poke of power. Republican Speaker of the House Tim Moore, totally smitten with her, killed a fatted calf to welcome Cotham into his fold.

Majority Rising has obvious strong ties to the progressive side of the North Carolina Democratic Party, listing former Wake County DemsParty Chair Mack Paul, House member and progressive lion Rick Glazier, and Obama's former body man and native of Charlotte Reggie Love among its board members.

Tricia Cotham's rap sheet

She defected to the enemy. She gave the Republicans their veto-proof super-majority in the House, and quickly voted with her new pals to chisel away at abortion rights and open a bigger pipeline to funnel public education money into private schooling where accountability doesn't matter.

She was serving -- still is until people vote on Nov. 5th -- HD 112, a majority Democratic Mecklenburg district which she was never going to win again as a Republican. So Destin Hall and his committee obligingly drew Cotham's home into a new District 105, which is said to be 51.3% Republican vs. 46.5% Democratic and 2.2% "Other" (Dave's Redistricting). 

Sometimes a newly adopted political party doesn't trust the turncoat any more than her old political party, and the flyer above does a pretty good job of raising the issue of trustworthiness.

Democratic candidate Nicole Sidman is said to be outraising Cotham, so she's got the money to pile on against Cotham with the same message aimed at the 2.2% Other group, and at those suburban "soft" Republican women. The Sidman campaign is low-key so far, though I see that her team has been holding weekly canvasses, and she's got vols. on the phones. She's teamed up for boots on the ground with overlapping NC Senate candidate Woodson Bradley, and the energy seems as pumped there as it is everywhere else. I'm feeling more confident about Democratic prospects in HD 105.

 

Robinson, Wrapped Around the Axle

 

“I have not changed my view about abortion, but I’ve changed my approach to it.” 

--Mark Robinson, candidate for Governor, on WBT's “Good Morning BT with Bo Thompson & Beth Troutman”

"I have not changed my mind about eliminating humanity, but I've changed my approach to it. No thunder or lightning."

--Jehovah, to Noah

"The trick is not to approach at all." 

--Abbie Hoffman 

With Trump's calling Kamala Harris a communist, and now Mark Robinson's saying he's sorry for preaching too much and too loudly on abortion, the 2024 Blue Wave is looking more formidable by the day. Especially so, when men like Robinson attempt empathy and display only a creepy paternalism and condescension toward women:

“I've changed my approach to [abortion] because I really believe that if I’m a person who is seen as an individual who’s standing on a stage pointing down at a young woman saying, ‘You can’t have an abortion,’ that is not the right approach. The right approach is to come down off the stage, embrace that young woman, and tell them about the reasons why I believe she should choose life, and then ultimately leaving it up to her based on the laws that we have on the books.”

Yeah, that's the ticket, Mr. Robinson, mansplaining to a young woman, who knows her own mind, how you of all humans available to her know what's best.

Zero Degrees of Separation

 

Roy Cohn with
Joe McCarthy

Trump is calling Kamala Harris a "communist" and sometimes a "Marxist."

I did a double take, then let out a vocal display that could only be called a chortle, because the 1950s and '60s ain't dead -- they're living in Trump's genius brain.

But after all, the connection between Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who said he saw communists almost literally everywhere in government, and Donald R. Trump, who's clearly running out of his particular brand of gas, was one lawyer named Roy Cohn, who taught both men at opposite ends of his career how to be truculent (savage, abrasive, amoral) and remain unrepentant. Take no prisoners, slander at will, and never take any of it back.

Meet the Public School Teacher Challenging Sen. Ralph Hise: Interview with Frank Patton Hughes

 

I invited Frank Hughes, 38, to my back deck to discuss his candidacy this year for the NC Senate seat held since 2010 by the very powerful chair of both NCSenate Appropriations and Redistricting, Ralph Hise. I heard Frank coming from some ways off. His '04 Subaru with broken shocks, peeling paint, one missing headlight, and a muffler that doesn't deserve the name could be heard for a quarter-mile. When he pulled into my driveway, I commented, "Now that is the automobile of a public school teacher!" And he laughed that full-throated laugh of a man who loves irony.

"Don' worry!" he said. "The frame may break, but that motor is never going to quit." He knows, because he's the master car mechanic who keeps it running. He knows cars. He knows greasy and hard work, a public school teacher who didn't go to college until his late 20s, who had by then spent years working with his hands and his wits, as a roofer, a landscaper, a roust-about, a maker-do of limited means but with boundless optimism.

He learned how to work from his Methodist minister father, who was something of a wizard at motivating his son. Frank told me how his father bought a power mower when Frank was seven, took him outside, said, "Now, let me show you how you prime this." Frank was flattered to be treated like an adult. The lesson went on: "Now, let me show you how you start it. Here's the throttle, like this, and this is how you push it. You take it a round and see how it feels." Frank took it a round, while his father disappeared inside, and Frank was suddenly, as slick as that, forever in charge of mowing the grass.

I asked, "So did you start mowing other lawns for money?" Frank's laughter boomed. "No, no, I'm kind of 'money averse.' If something promises to make me money, I probably won't do it." Take school teaching, for example, especially public school teaching under the regime of Mr. Hise and his fellow Republicans, who have been busily re-appropriating the money from public education and shoving it at private schools.

Frank is what anyone who knows him for five minutes would describe as a happy warrior. He's got a broad smile, even when he's not laughing at the vicissitudes of modern life, an engaging and open personality that it would be awfully hard to dislike, let alone hate. He's singularly appealing as a fellow human being who understands struggle.

Frank was diagnosed at age seven with A.D.D., attention deficit disorder, and was put on two daily doses of Ritalin for years. The drug "dulled me down" with a relentlessness that he now describes as not feeling "sober," but it did focus him in an often unpleasant way. On Ritalin, whatever caught his attention would hold his attention for hours of not quite manic but not quite normal activity. "I constructed a lot of model cars!" While he was being controlled by Ritalin and in the 7th grade, his parents divorced, and Frank began a long period of "ping-ponging" between different households in many different places in North Carolina. The divorce caused a new and intense connection to his two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, who were sort of thrown into being each other's best friends. The divorce also forced Frank to become much more independent -- that, and a new step-father who practiced a "be prepared for anything" kind of tough love that Frank both resisted and learned from. The step-father was ex-CIA. Frank thought him needlessly mean, but now he appreciates the lessons he learned -- "You've got to look out for yourself, and be prepared for anything!"

After high school, Frank chose to go cold turkey on Ritalin, used marijuana for a time to even out the inevitable cascade of withdrawal, went to work in construction, met his future wife and moved in with her, and married her when he was 21. She was a college graduate and urged him to go, but it was several years of working the furniture market in High Point and putting roofs on high-end construction projects (look at the roof on St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Boone. Frank did that) before he enrolled in Caldwell Community College, got his associate's degree, then attended Appalachian State as a history major and earned his teaching certificate. Both his mother and his maternal grandmother had been teachers. It was in his heritage, and he always had a knack for instruction, showing his younger brother the moves to survive the step-father, for example, and he had taught all his friends the chessboard and its classic strategies. He cites Dr. Tim Silver of the history department at AppState as a major influence on his appreciation of historic perspective and thinking critically. 

WataugaWatch: I mean no disrespect, but what possessed you to take on one of the most powerful Republican senators in a district with a Republican lean of 61.9%? 

 

FRANK PATTON HUGHES:What’s funny is that I don’t think about him in that way. I view Ralph Hise as a danger to our public schools, and therefore this is a cause worthy of a fight. I understand that the district is heavily Republican, but I feel that having strong public schools is a non-partisan issue.

 

WataugaWatch: New and apparently some experienced public school teachers appear to be leaving the profession in significant numbers. Can we blame the attitudes and the poor budgeting on the NC General Assembly?

 

FRANK PATTON HUGHES: Yes, we can blame the General Assembly. They have ignored public school teachers and staff who have been wanting a pay increase for 20 years. The increases we have received have been small and were negated by our loss of Master’s pay, loss of free healthcare, increasing workload, and increasing class sizes.  In short, those issues, and the General Assembly's ignoring research-based knowledge on the negative impact of class size --it  adds up to disrespect, even contempt.

 

Frank Hughes has been a dedicated and apparently effective high school teacher for about a decade, and his philosophy of teaching is based on his own memory: "I didn't like going to class in high school. I was often bored, and I found it a stifling environment." He connects now with students who are just like he was, the "veering off" ones and the already lost ones, the kids who've never had their native abilities challenged and appreciated, like young Frank Hughes with that new mower.

Frank and I talked about being "a P.K.," a preacher's kid. I went to a Southern Baptist college in West Texas with a sufficient number of them, and I knew them as usually the first offenders, if there was any prohibited activity afoot. Frank tells me, "On my 18th birthday, my dad sent me down to go register for the draft. Said, 'If you ever get arrested, don't call me.' So I kept my nose clean. Though the people who knew me in Avery might dispute that."

He also talked about the differences between the Methodist Church and the Southern Baptists, the dominant themometer of the political heat in Western North Carolina: "The message for Methodists was more often about helping one another, being a good person, learning how to stay humble. I went to a Baptist church once. They talked an awful lot about going to hell."

 

WataugaWatch: Your opponent Ralph Hise is acknowledged as one of the most powerful Republicans in the General Assembly. Can you sum up his career, and its effect on Western North Carolina, in one sentence? Or go ahead and use a paragraph!

 

FRANK PATTON HUGHES: Hise is a legislator who doesn’t visit his district and passes unwanted legislation, including unnecessary redistricting. To put it another way, he is not a representative. He does what he wants or what the party asks him to do with little regard for his constituents. I don’t believe the voters know what Ralph Hise is doing, because he’s not present. There are many in the district who have attended certain functions at the General Assembly and tried to speak with Hise, only to be ignored.

The decision Frank made last December to go into the Avery County Board of Elections office, pay the filing fee, and sign up to run against Ralph Hise in 2024 was actually prompted by Hise's own dark arts for gerrymandering legislative districts, numerous county school boards, and very recently the districts for the Watauga County Commission. Frank lives in Avery, which was not in Hise's Senate district, but teaches down the mountain in McDowell County, which is. Frank had heard Hise talk about the terrible evils of the mysterious "critical race theory," and he wanted to understand what that is "so I could avoid it." Frank called Hise's office numerous times, asking for an explanation. He called repeatedly, leaving messages with Hise's legislative assistant. But Hise never called back. Total silence, which seemed like total arrogance.

Then suddenly and very recently, Hise moved Avery County into his own District 47, along with Watauga County. Frank had become in the meantime the chair of the Avery Democratic Party, and he had been preaching to his flock that people needed to step forward as Democrats and run for office. Someone said back to him, "How about you?" Good point, as it turned out. Frank went down on the very first day and put his name on the ballot next to Hise's to represent all the school teachers and the students they teach and the parents who want their schools public and not private. Frank is running hard, knocking doors, going to where the people are, and next week he'll be back in the classroom with hundreds of other seriously under-appreciated public school teachers.

No worries, says Frank. I can do this, because someone has got to.

NOTE

Frank Hughes is but one of several new blue-collar candidates who have emerged in Western North Carolina to defy the odds and carry the banner of fairness and community values -- Darren Staley in Wilkes, running in Senate Dist. 36; Jon Council, running for one of the gerrymandered Watauga County Commission seats; Tanya Robinson, running for a Commission seat in Ashe. They make me thankful to be a Democrat. And hopeful.

Consensus Is ... "Weird": Reading Notes

 

“Every type of white man that gets a hasty ‘swipe left’ on his dating profile was in attendance,” wrote Salon’s Amanda Marcotte about a Vance event in Philadelphia, including “glowering loners staring at the two women under 40 like cats watching birds out a window.”

The Trump campaign appears to think angry men can send him back to the White House. Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt at the Republican National Convention. Trump went on professional wrestler Logan Paul’s podcast and joined UFC boss Dana White ringside. At an event on Aug. 3, Trump told the crowd how his wife hates it when he groans and moans onstage, pretending to be a girl struggling to lift a barbell.

--Dana Milbank, WaPo

 

“I work with JD Vance,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told the Philadelphia crowd. “And I’m here to confirm that he is a seriously weird dude.” 

When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had been on Harris’s list of potential running mates, mentioned that Vance is “not exactly off to a good start,” the crowd responded with an impromptu chant: “He’s a weirdo!”

Tim Walz delivers a message on abortion rights — “There is a golden rule: Mind your own damn business” — and says not to believe Trump “when he plays dumb” about Project 2025 and its plans “to restrict our freedoms, to rig the economy to help the super rich.” Walz then dispatches Vance as an elitist: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.” Walz concludes: “These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell.”

A Little Cloud About the Size of a Man's Hand

 

Finally the seventh time, his servant told him, “I saw a little cloud about the size of a man's hand rising from the sea.” Then Elijah shouted, “Hurry to Ahab and tell him, 'Climb into your chariot and go back home. If you don't hurry, the rain will stop you!' "

--I Kings 18:44-46 

A week or so ago, we published Jack Yordy's report, "Election Excitment," because I take seriously any on-the-ground, in-the-trenches reports on "Democratic performance" upcoming, i.e., enthusiasm for voting and getting other people to vote. "Enthusiasm" can be gauged by registration drives, door-knocking, phone-calling, lit drops, and other voter out-reach -- all of which takes numerous volunteers willing to spend their time on a cause.

I'd like to get more such reports, especially from Democratic parties in Franklin, Nash, Vance, New Hanover, Buncombe, and Cabarrus counties, where the great Chance of 2024 seems to lie, the Democratic goal of breaking the veto-proof Republican majority in both NC House and Senate. I've done some looking at specific county DemsParty websites and their social media presence, and done the inevitable but odorous comparison to the WataugaDems website/media.

Some counties have far more to look at than others -- more info, more evidence of activity, more links for volunteers. Not so surprising that some county parties offer no detailed calendar, or only anemic "events" pages. Watauga's, for example is skimpy and clearly not up to date. Doesn't look like much going on, but here's what you have to realize if you're judging voter enthusiasm by a county party's outward appearance: Some counties, like most certainly Watauga, do not share their ground-game activities outside the bubble of the volunteer base.

Another reason for skimpy info/evidence of life: Most Dem web masters and social media admins are volunteers, whose other lives often limit their daily postings for the Party, or they don't think strategically about PR.

Any county party, especially in this Year of Our Lord 2024, should always have more going on than meets the eye, mainly because of what Party Chair Anderson Clayton (the great) identified as her goal, which ought to be our side's motto: "I don’t want anybody to see me coming." In glaring contrast, we see very clearly the Trump mechanism coming for us, like a D-10 dozer. But we have ways to take the tracks off that  contraption. And we benefit from seeming a mere blur of rainy weather on the distant horizon.

Senate Dist. 11: Do-Gooder Retired Army Colonel vs. a Sweat-Shop Owner

 

Civitas rates Senate District 11 as D+1, statistically a "toss-up." So on paper, at least, it looks like a good prospect for a Democratic flip, and all the Democrats need to break the Republican super-majority is one additional seat. Dave's Redistricting rates it an even 50% Democratic to 48.5% Republican.

James Mercer, Democrat

He's a retired Army Lt. Colonel. There's a big-gun Democratic push behind him (he's been endorsed and aided by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, and Gov. Cooper campaigned with him), but he's up against a popular Republican woman legislator, and this may prove to be a tough slog.

His LinkedIn account says he's Director of Military Studies at NC Wesleyan College, and he's got a history of expertise in emergency management. He spent a year in Iraq in 2003-'04. In 2017, he founded the Mercer Foundation, Inc. (for which he serves as the President and CEO ), "a non-profit and social enterprise providing a children’s feeding program, an emergency rental and utility assistance program for low-income individuals/families and a transitional housing program for homeless veterans in Nash and Edgecombe County, NC." (website). "We equip disabled veterans with the necessary tools, education and vocational training and provide balanced meals for children in high risk environments" (Mercer Foundation website). The foundation is a high-minded operation, and commendably Mercer pays himself zero out of its funds. Charity Navigator gives the foundation a score of 61.

Mercer has been on the Nash Community College Board of Trustees for six or seven years and was named  chair of the board in 2023. He's worked for the community college in the Continuing Education Department for three years, teaching public safety and emergency management classes, rescue, and Firefighter I and Firefighter II classes.

Demographically, Senate Dist. 11 is 36.6% Black.

Lisa Barnes, Republican (incumbent)

First elected in 2020, she is completing her second term in the Senate. I wrote about her in 2020:

She previously served a couple of terms as a Nash County commissioner and then moved up to the NC House (District 7) in the elections of 2018, defeating incumbent Democrat Bobbie Richardson in the rare blue-to-red flip that year. It didn't take her long to opt for further advancement when Rick Horner announced his retirement. She's clearly a rising star for the NCGOP.

She's also clearly somewhat out of step with other North Carolina Republicans because she nowhere plays the Trump card and she doesn't parade the label "conservative." She strikes a much more moderate tone and is clearly more interested in economic development for her rural district than she is in conservative social hot-buttons (she's pushed the expansion of broadband in rural areas). That does not mean, however, that she's ever shown any interest in bucking her Republican caucus in the NC General Assembly.

She's still keeping a muted presence on social media. She hasn't posted to her Twitter feed since her win in 2020, and her anemic Facebook page is dedicated to community boosting. She doesn't go near MAGA. She and her husband own a corporate farm (the husband is listed as sole owner, but still) growing mainly sweet potatoes. In March of this year, the farm was fined $187,000 because of the heat-related death of a Mexican worker: "The Department of Labor said Barnes Farming violated three worker safety rules, including not providing breaks, not having adequate access to water and not having adequate emergency response procedures." "Although a 10-gallon water cooler was available to the workers, no cups were provided. Employees were forced to put their heads under the spigot and open their mouths to get water" (NCVoices).

Seems like a potent campaign issue. Will James Mercer seize it? Don't see any evidence yet.

Lisa Barnes did vote to override the governor's veto of the new 12-week abortion ban in the state, but if Democrat Mercer has a contrasting stance on abortion, he doesn't state it on his website. So I doubt he'll campaign against her on that issue.

Shootout in New Hanover's Senate Dist. 7

 

NC Senate Dist. 7 (New Hanover County, including Wilmington, minus the mainly Black neighborhoods of Wilmington that were gerrymandered away and shoved over into Senate Dist. 8*) is rated by Civitas as R+2, by Bryan Anderson as R+5. and by Dave's Redistricting as 51.3% R to 46.1% D. The latest Republican gerrymander that took away those Black and working class precincts was an obvious bid to blunt any Democratic uprising against the Berger/Moore dictatorship in Raleigh, but this is going to be a Democratic year, and partisan leans plus wicked gerrymandering can't always overcome the fury of the people. UNC-Wilmington, for just one factor in turnout, should be on fire to vote.

David Hill, Democrat

In the old South, physicians were often regarded as the local aristocracy. David Hill is a pediatric specialist who's now building a career as a speaker and podcaster on children's health ("Pediatrics On Call"). He currently works as a hospitalist pediatrician for Goldsboro Pediatrics in Wayne County. He's also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the UNC School of Medicine.

This is from his consulting service webpage, not his campaign's:

Dr. Hill traces his comfort with public speaking back to middle school, when he was the voice of Snowden Junior High’s morning announcements. Since then he has honed his speaking style in his four years as president of his medical school class, ten years as a commentator on National Public Radio affiliates WUNC and WHQR, and three years as Program Director in charge of the AAP Council on Communications and Media’s academic offerings. Dr. Hill loves to entertain when he informs, and he has trained with Wilmington comedian Brooklyn Green and workshopped with Chicago’s Second City Theater to ensure that his talks are as entertaining as they are informative. [Comedian Brooklyn Green held a virtual fundraiser for him in July.]

You go, Dr. Hill!

He developed an expertise in the health effects of media on children and adolescents and speaks on that topic often. (On his professional webpage you can find one 30-second spot on children and cell phones that seems sensible.)  Plus he's an author of books on parenting, because he himself "has been a working dad, a stay-at-home-dad, a married dad, a single dad, and a blended family dad. His first book, Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro, draws on all of these experiences. His most recent book, Co-parenting Through Separation and Divorce: Putting Your Children First, helps parents work through the challenges of dividing a family. As a speaker he brings expertise, empathy and humor to the mission of helping families unlock the potential of parenting in all its forms."

In other words, this guy's got energy and talent and maybe some communication know-how to engage a large audience of voters in New Hanover.

Curiously, David Hill's campaign has no Twitter but it does have an active Facebook page where you can see his first TV ad and get info that no campaign website can ever adequately illustrate -- how much activity, how much voter enthusiasm, where's the candidate going, who's he seeing? Social media can be a gauge of a campaign's health. Also a kind of shield. But Hill appears to have a ground game going, and that's what it will take. Because....

Michael Lee, Republican incumbent

...Michael Lee is rolling in the dough. According to Peter Castagno in the Port City Daily, the NC Senate Caucus and the NCGOP generally have promised to pump in over $2 million to keep Lee in his seat. And according to Castagno, Lee is also a darling of the casino gambling industry. He received at least $38,000 from them.

That campaign largess is clearly visible on Lee's campaign website, with lots of professional video and splashy graphics emphasizing how moderate and concerned Lee is, how interested in "compassion and inclusivity" he is, how not a trumpist nor playing to the MAGA hoard. But Governor Roy Cooper called out Lee for his hypocrisy in campaigning in 2022 on keeping the 20-week abortion ban, then promptly voting for the new 12-week ban. His campaign themes now all have to do with taxes -- Republican pabulum, and as far away from hot-button MAGA obsessions as he can get.

His Twitter feed puts you in mind of an affable Democrat who doesn't want to offend anyone, "committed to prioritizing civility, finding common ground, and fostering cooperation to address the needs of our community." He's very concerned about water safety and holding polluters liable, especially because the pollution of the Cape Fear by the Chemours Corp. with "forever chemicals" is a big local issue. But who does he vote with, always? Why, the Republican super-majority in the Senate. That's the proof in this pudding.

Lee makes his living as a development attorney in his own Wilmington-based law firm, Lee Kaess.

*About which I wrote on this blog, "This Right Here Needs To Be a Federal Lawsuit."

Love This Midwesterner!

 

You think J.D. Vance would ever cuddle a piglet?

House Dist. 115 in Buncombe -- Gerrymandered by Rs, Still Winnable by the D Incumbent

 

House District 115, Buncombe County

In 2022, when Democratic freshman Lindsey Prather won this open seat, it was rated comfortably Democratic. But Prather got targeted last year by the evil wizards of Destin Hall's Republican Redistricting Committee, and now her District 115 wraps itself almost completely around the city of Asheville on its more rural western, northern, and eastern sides. Bryan Anderson calls the new district a Trump +9 seat, while Civitas sees it as R+2, or "lean Republican." A Blue Wave could just as easily make it lean D.

Lindsey Prather, Democrat

Prather was for six years a public school teacher (teaching Special Education, Civics, and U.S. History) and then finished a Master's in Public Affairs at Western Carolina. She now works as an admissions counselor at UNC-Asheville. She herself attended and graduated from UNC-Asheville, going there as a freshman with an NC Teaching Fellows grant.

She claims the mantle of working class: "I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck, and it’s critical that we keep working-class voices like mine in the General Assembly. But it isn’t easy running for office, and it certainly isn’t cheap." On that note, and according to Bryan Anderson, Prather has been a prolific fundraiser. She entered July with nearly $210,000 in cash, while her Republican challenger had just $26,000. (Which is why, O my brethren, the NC House GOP Caucus is funneling some $436,500 into Republican Ruth Smith's campaign, trying desperately to topple Prather.)

Prather points out that only 4 precincts from her old House district still remain in her newly gerrymandered district. "The district, I feel, was drawn by Republicans for very partisan reasons. It was not drawn to accurately reflect voters in Buncombe County. It was drawn, specifically, to put a Republican back in the state legislature from Buncombe County.”

Prather basically supported the aborted Republican attempt to pass a medical marijuana bill although she was critical of the narrowness of who could access the drug and who could not: "It doesn’t cover nearly enough conditions, particularly some major conditions that other states cover, like lupus and chronic pain,” Prather said. “It’s also limited in who is able to participate in that economy. There’s a pretty high cost for entry, so I think that it definitely skews towards the larger companies.” (Buncombe Senator Julie Mayfield said at the time the bill was written that it wouldn’t allow for any North Carolina company, even those with experience in the hemp industry, to participate.) 

She's also been outspoken in denouncing the new Republican laws on legislative transparency and public access. "Under the new law, current and former members of the General Assembly are free to sell, destroy, withhold or disclose communications as they see fit. Discussions about redistricting are also no longer public records." (Anderson Alerts) That's a travesty, committed against the public trust.

There's a plan advancing from the Republican run Department of Education to reward teachers for "student performance," shifting away from seniority-based compensation (this plan hasn't yet and must be approved by the General Assembly). Prather told the Smoky Mountain News,“There are so many problems with performance-based pay that I don’t know if the drive to Raleigh gives us enough time to talk about them all." Prather wants pay increases across the board, including cost-of-living increases and Masters pay. She’s also calling for greater investment in teacher training and education programs in colleges and universities and is concerned about the increasing role of counties being left on the hook to compete against each other — and other states — with the supplemental pay system in place.

Ruth Smith, Republican

A lawyer. Graduated UNC Law School 1999. She worked for several different firms in quick succession, finally freeing herself in 2010, going solo with her own practice in Asheville where she focuses on personal injury litigation. Didn't want to say it, but she looks like an ambulance chaser. She makes a strong statement on that subject: 

“I like being right,” she says. “If I’m representing someone and making an argument, I want to be correct and say, ‘You’re entitled to this money. You’re entitled to having your claim accepted and get this medical care from your employer.’ On the other side, it’s the opposite. Those lawyers know what the facts are, they know what the outcome should be, and they’re just trying to manipulate ways to get out of it. We don’t represent people who are not legitimately hurt.” (Law firm website)

In 2002, she met her future law partner, Bruce Elmore, while representing families of some of the inmates killed in a tragic Mitchell County jail fire. Smith and Elmore later joined up together in 2019 to create the Elmore and Smith Law Firm. She brags now at the 6-figure settlements she gets for clients.

She appears to be a single parent of a boy who's a student at North Buncombe High School. I can't find much presence on social media (she does have an anemic FB page), so it's hard to access her fealty to Trump and MAGA World. Maybe she'll use some of the 400 grand she's getting from the Republican House Caucus and do some video.

It's Tim Walz!

 

Terrific choice!

Election Excitement

 

By Jack Yordy, Guest-Posting:

Democrats are finally excited and it is showing.

During a canvass training last weekend, two people showed up separately asking how they could donate to Kamala Harris’s campaign. Another arrived while I was making phone calls for volunteers a few days later looking for signs for Kamala Harris. On one of our canvasses, we got to pet a pig while we discussed local and national issues with its owner. She was unaffiliated but was steadfast in her commitment to voting for Harris, as she has two daughters and is excited about a potential first female president in her lifetime.

Our Voter Registration training sessions are filling up quickly. We had our first training on Wednesday of last week and volunteers were asked how they were feeling about the election. The words “excited,” “energized,” and “determined” were their top descriptors, and the energy in the room was very positive.

Social Media platforms have seen an explosion of enthusiasm around the 2024 election. As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz put it, “that’s my canary in the coal mine,” suggesting that the online shift in energy precedes a far more difficult campaign for Trump. There are new hilariously popular and positive memes about Kamala Harris, including the "coconut tree" and "brat summer," which are essentially descriptions of Harris’ vibe and expressions of excitement about her as a candidate. Discussions and excitement about the election on social media point to a big cultural shift around the election. No one wants to post or consume content about something boring, depressing, or even scary. People do, however, take an interest in excitement and hope, and that’s what Harris has brought to the table.

Volunteers are coming to us and those that we reach out to are much more interested in volunteering than before. Harris’s campaign has reinvigorated the Democratic base and is bringing new people in. This is especially important to Watauga’s issues as well. With a referendum for fair County Commission maps and three important school board races on our ballot in November, we need to be able to reach as many Watauga voters as we can. With this kind of energy and enthusiasm, we can. 

Jack Yordy is president of the AppState College Democrats and Canvassing Director for the Watauga County Democratic Party.  

Judge Bob Orr Joins the Kamala Harris Campaign

 

Donald Trump broke the Republican Party for former Republican NC Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr. Orr was a John Kasich delegate from NC to the 2016 Republican National Convention. He left the convention early rather than witness Trump's coronation but not before commenting to a WRAL reporter that Donald Trump was “singularly unqualified to lead this country.” In fact, Orr said, "Trump is a danger to the country." Orr finally broke formally from the GOP, changing his registration to Unaffiliated in 2021.

Aside from having served as the appointed District Attorney serving Watauga County and the rest of the 24th Prosecutorial District in 2014 (to finish the term of DA Jerry Wilson), Orr had already built an impressive record of service. He was appointed to the NC Court of Appeals by Republican Governor Jim Martin in 1986. He won election to the NC Supreme Court in 1994 and served there for ten years. He ran for governor in the Republican primary of 2008, losing to Pat McCrory. He believes in our Constitution, and he clearly thinks that Trump is out to trash it.

And now he's been chosen to lead an effort to organize independents and moderate Republicans in NC for Kamala Harris. “As we approach the final days of this election, there has never been a more important time for Republicans, former Republicans and unaffiliated voters who lean Republican, to come together and put country over party by working to elect Kamala Harris and stopping Donald Trump,” Orr said in a statement.

The Wrath of Women

 

After the Dobbs decision, we believed the sudden end of a right women had counted on since 1973 would energize the vote for Democrat Joe Biden in 2024. But that strike-back energy on the left slowly dissipated even as the image of Joe Biden deflated. By just a few weeks ago, it didn't seem like woman power could save him.

Things are different now.

There are goddesses among us, and they are by gawd NOT going to be disrespected. The disrespect, rising in some extreme bros as outright hatred, is embodied by nobody better than J.D.Vance, who has made the case repeatedly that women are primarily breed stock, and Vance is connected through the psychic umbilical cord to that other man, Donald J. Trump, who in May 2023 was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, that trial but a substitute for all the other accusations against Trump by other women. The goddesses don't forget this shit.

The goddess Taylor Swift begins to resemble Winged Justice as she gets more and more politically involved with voting rights (she urged young people to register and vote in 2018 against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee and endorsed Democrats in down-ballot races); racial justice (she supported Black Lives Matter); gun reform (in 2018 she supported the March For Our Lives campaign, a series of marches organized by the survivors of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas H.S.); anti-discrimination (gave a surprise performance in 2019 at New York’s Stonewall Inn for Pride Day); and #MeToo (Swift became one of the founding signatories of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for survivors of sexual battery, and donated to its legal defense fund). She's also apparently single-handedly responsible for destroying professional football.

In rallying her ... several supporters to vote for Democrats in 2018 in Tennessee, Swift wrote a public statement: “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.” She also excoriated Republican Senate hopeful Marsha Blackburn as an enemy of gender equality and LGBTQ rights based on her legislative record. [Miles Klee]

Taylor Swift as avatar warrior for women aside (I'm no Swiftie and pay little attention to celebrity news), the unification of millions of women (let alone the men) behind Kamala Harris,  -- I hate to overstate things right in the middle of a fulmination of passion for justice that ain't nowhere near reaching its zenith -- something monumental is underway and is literally the hope for saying our system.

The MAGA majority are doing their part to add fire to the wrath of women. The whole MAGAverse, it seems, is taking its cues dutifully from Trump and making a big cry about Kamala Harris as "a DEI hire." The message to America (and believe me, the women get it) is that only white men are really eligible for office. Harris has a top notch education, spent years as a prosecutor, was California's attorney general, a U.S. Senator (where her grilling of Brett Kavanaugh became instantly famous), and finally won election to the vice presidency of the United States. The lack of respect for any of that is only a barometer of how badly the enlightened women of America want to punish that viewpoint.

I found great inspiration is what a woman said in Atlanta at that enormous rally Kamala held very recently, about whether what's happening in 2024 resembles the 2008 surge for Obama: “It’s similar in terms of the happiness and the hope that we have, but it’s different because it’s a woman,” she said. “And so I can look at you, you can look at me, and we’re two women, and we get it. I’m telling you something. I go on my walks in the morning, I see women of color, and we just look at each other. And we just smile like, yeah, sis, we got this. We got this.” [Michelle Goldberg]

We all got this.

A Debate I'm Sorry I Missed

 

Jeff Jackson vs. Dan Bishop, both running to be Attorney General of NC, held at the Charlotte Convention Center on Friday, June 21, 2024 (reported on by Steve Harrison, WFAE)

 

The tenor of the debate: Bishop saying Jackson is a soft-on-crime liberal, while Jackson called Bishop an extremist who isn’t fit to be attorney general.

--Steve Harrison

 

 

Bishop warned that Jackson might use the attorney general’s office to further his own political agenda, and compared current Democratic Attorney General Stein and his predecessor, Cooper, to Letitia James, New York’s attorney general who has been after Donald Trump (successfully).

 "She vowed in her campaign to use every power at her disposal to pursue and destroy one particularly despised political enemy,” Bishop said. “That is the end of the law in this nation if that is permitted to continue.”

Jackson immediately fired back.

“Speaking of the end of law in this nation, all of that big speech was just given to you by someone who voted against certifying the last election,” Jackson said. “He was a lawyer. He knew better. He decided to pander to the people who stormed the Capitol. So let’s start there.”

Much of the debate is preserved in a Tim Boyum "Tying It Together" podcast. 

 

I can find no recent polling on this race, which is as crucial as any other race in the state, including governor, because would-be top cop Dan Bishop considers himself the whip of God, which speaks to his cruelty and his selfish view of the law. I want none of that running the attorney general's office.

What can I say about Jeff Jackson. I've watched him for years. I think he's honest, unaffected, sincere to his bones, and he's the best communicator, next to Anderson Clayton, that the North Carolina Democratic Party currently has. He's good at explaining the jungle rhythms of the U.S. Congress, and I dig his wide-eyed surprise at the weirdness of the present moment.

House Dist. 37 Features What Ought To Be an Endangered Republican

 

Civitas rates NC House District 37, a big chunk of far southeastern Wake County -- R+3. Dave's Redistricting sez 45.4% Democrat, 51.9% Republican, with 2.6 Independent. Those numbers alone suggest that a Democratic insurgent will need to do aggressive voter registration and reach out to the Unaffiliated.

Erin Paré, Republican incumbent

Paré, according to Bryan Anderson, "is one of her party's most effective messengers and has become somewhat of a rising star in conservative circles. Through [gerrymandering], the GOP gave her added protection, moving her from a Trump +3 district to a Trump + 7."

She's only been in Raleigh since the election of 2020, when she beat Sydney Batch by only .06% of the vote. The Libertarian candidate took 3.15% in 2020, which was also determinative for Batch's loss. Paré did better in her reelection in 2022, winning comfortably with almost 53%.

In August 2023 she made an announcement that she would be running for Congress in Dist. 13, and she was putting some effort into it:

In her video campaign announcement, which includes images from protests and riots, Paré says she is “everything the far left fears the most” and calls herself a “conservative wife, mother and business owner.” A news release said Paré was putting $400,000 of her own money into the campaign as it begins. (AP)

But in November 2023, she backed out of the Congressional race. Said nevermind, I'm running for my House seat instead.

In a past life, she was a military spouse with a career military husband for 12 years, then did a 7-year stint on Capitol Hill as a lobbyist for something called the Regulatory Improvement Council, which "advocated for the improved use of transparency, sound science, and cost-benefit analysis in the federal regulatory decision-making process." She looks Junior League and clearly appeals to upscale Republican women who don't cotton to Trump. You certainly don't find any sign of Trump or of trumpism on her Facebook and Twitter feeds. She may be one of those suburban women who'll secretly go for Kamala Harris.

Safiyah Jackson, Democrat

She's been endorsed by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and by Emily's List. Her Twitter feed stopped operating after March. She's doing more on Facebook, posting frequent video talking-head spots about her campaign.

I like her bluntness: "Safiyah is the granddaughter of a domestic worker and the daughter of middle-class parents. Raised in a close-knit church, school, neighborhood, and family environment, stable and nurturing communities have shaped her foundation."

Some 20 years ago, she left a corporate marketing and sales role with Ford Motor Company. Since then, she has focused her policy-set on "early childhood education" and the support that young families, often single-parent, need from institutions including government.

Her linked-in page says this about her: "Champion for the quality of life for infants and toddlers: Systems, Strategy, Policy, Implementation, Evaluation, and Communication." But what does she do? According to NewPolitics.org, "she serves as Chief Strategy Officer with The North Carolina Partnership for Children, a nonprofit that supports a network of early childhood organizations (The Smart Start network)." She's clearly sharp and can talk like a master of the class, and she's clearly "professional" enough for the Republican women of House District 37.

Just In the Nick of Time

 

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) filed articles of impeachment against Vice President Harris on Tuesday, July 2016.

Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-N.C.) informed us in his email newsletter that Speaker Johnson "didn’t want that to get filed -- and he won’t let it come to a vote -- but he couldn’t hold back one of his members who wanted to capture the media attention for being the first member of Congress to formally call for her impeachment."

Ogles, than which you don't get any more conservative, claimed he was an "economist," a bold lie based on his work as an anti-tax lobbyist with Americans for Prosperity.

Did you get the attention you needed, weirdo?