What I'm Thankful For

 

Watching Trump pick the people who'll help him loot the treasury and subvert the Constitution could -- and actually does -- depress the hell out of the sunniest Little Mary Sunshine, but Watauga County said no to Trump in a resounding way. Kamala Harris won Watauga by almost 2,000 votes. In fact, every Democrat on the statewide ballot won easily in Watauga, from the more than 7,000-vote winning margin for Josh Stein to the 338-vote margin for Sarah Taber, that astoundingly qualified woman who ran for Agriculture Commissioner. Congresswoman and Elevator Monitor Virginia Foxx lost her home county (as usual!) by over 2,800 votes.

It was a clean sweep for Democrats in Watauga. Seeing that blue dot in northwestern North Carolina on statewide voting maps is a framable memento to hard work and progressive vision.

The only offices Republicans could win here were Republican judges running unopposed and the three Watauga County Commission seats. The winning Republican commissioner candidates had big, corrupt help from Boss Hogg Hisownself, Ralph Hise, who obligingly gerrymandered the living hell out of our commission so that Republicans could take all three seats. If you're on a low-salt diet, you might want to avert your gaze from the salt those three are about to rub into that wound: For those three products of gerrymandering get to appoint the other two members of the commission (no kidding). That's what a Ralph Hise power-grab looks like.

But note this well: A local referendum to restructure the county commission back to something approaching fairness passed with over 71% of the vote, which was a massive rejection of Hise's gerrymandering. Hise took care of that in advance, putting a clause into his local bill that no changes can be made to his scheme until at least the next national Census.

And incidentally, Ralph Hise lost his senate race in Watauga by 1,700 votes. It was the other counties in his senate district that reelected him. Blame them.