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.