Sen. Tillis Clutches His Pearls

 

"She is dragging our brand down."

--Sen. Thom Tillis, about Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Oh please! Your "brand," Senator? You've already promised to support your party's nominee this November, which in this present case [checks notes] is Donald J.Trump. Trump has BRANDED you all, which includes you and Marjorie Taylor Greene and any number of other substantial lunatics including the current lunatics who are running to take over the state of North Carolina (Mark Robinson), its justice department (Dan Bishop), its school system (Michele Morrow), and protections for its labor force (Luke Farley). Farley ran in your branded Republican primary in March on the slogan "Let's make elevators great again!" because he promises to put his picture in every one of them should he win in November. 

If this were Texas, the branding iron for the Republican Party would be a curliqued Low T.

There have been moments during the last few months when Tillis showed encouraging signs of independence from the Trump brand, but like most cowed Republicans afraid of the rabble that's taken over their party, he'll fall in line come November, especially if the partisans on the US Supreme Court decide that Trump has limited immunity which will need to be argued and litigated past any chance that he'll be on trial before November.

I don't know what to tell you, Senator, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is not your problem.

Graig Meyer, A Democrat With Some Guts

 

NC Senator Graig Meyer is noticeable as per the headline above, because Democrats are so predictably and eternally gutless in so many ways. Meyer posted and shared a powerful video about the inequities in the endorcement of marijuana laws -- and pinned it at the top of his Twitter feed -- to try to move his fellow members of the North Carolina General Assembly to lead on the issue of decriminalization of marijuana and its legalization in NC and stop being silently in support but publicly gutless.

Good for him!

The leading proponent of a medical marijuana bill in the General Assembly is a Republican. Democrats remain essentially and timidly quiet. Like ... what if Great Aunt Tilly finds out I'm soft on drugs!

The Judge Gets It

 

RALEIGH -- A federal judge on Monday struck down a North Carolina law that criminalized voting for people with felony convictions. 

In a 25-page order, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs wrote that the law, which was originally passed in 1877, “was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters.” 

Biggs’ ruling does not affect the rules regarding voter eligibility for people with felony convictions. North Carolinians convicted of felonies are still ineligible to vote until they have completed their sentences. 

The case dealt with a separate law that made it a Class I felony for anyone with a felony conviction to vote before their citizenship rights had been restored.

[Kyle Ingram]

Trouble Sufficient Unto the Day

 

https://ncnewsline.com/2024/04/22/dhhs-cites-nonprofit-operated-by-lt-governors-wife-for-recordkeeping-discrepancies/

You shut down a highly profitable business, draining Federal dollars, not because of an accounting error.

Of Course They Kept the Students Out

 

Students waiting unsuccessfully for admittance
to the BOG committee meeting in Winston-Salem.
Photo Kaitlin McKeown for NandO

Korie Dean for the NandO: "Students from UNC-Chapel Hill say they were kept out of the building where the UNC System Board of Governors — a public body — met Wednesday .... The board’s University Governance committee unanimously voted ... to approve a policy targeting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, jobs and efforts at all public universities in North Carolina. That committee, along with several other board committees, met throughout the day in a theater at the Alex Ewing Performance Place on the UNC School of the Arts campus in Winston-Salem." (Emphasis added)

They didn't want pesky, alert students watching them begin the process of doing away with diversity, equity, and inclusion, a few things generally high on an idealistic student's bingo card. So they claimed there were no seats available in a theater for a handful of UNC-Chapel Hill students, and by that glorified logic, they also kept the students out of the entire building.

These guys on the Board of Governors are all conservative appointees by a General Assembly which has been crushing democracy every chance it has, and it's had many chances, going after ballot access, voting rights, and crippling the Democratic governor's power while enhancing their own. Just naturally, the BOG is following the same path of squelching democratic inclusiveness and cracking down on dissent.

Sorry, no seats in the theater for you whining students!

The Holy Man Said

 

Most interesting sentence from this Christian nationalist: "I'm not telling you to vote for him...."

That's a crack. That's a small cloud the size of a man's hand, which could bring a flood. Pardon me while I remember the Bible verses of my youth:

1 Kings 18:44

The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’ ”

Ahab's on trial, and the Pharisees don't like it.

AppState Chancellor Resigns in the Middle of the Semester

 

AppState's PR office announced yesterday that Chancellor Sheri Everts is resigning. Her last day will be this coming Friday. 

It's a sudden and unprecedented leave-taking by an administrator who was reviled, high and low. Well, maybe not in the highest places in Raleigh, but most of the AppState faculty had come to distrust her. Along with the students. In recent weeks she had been the target of repeated campus protests.

North Carolina System President Peter Hans will announce an interim chancellor before April 19.

Back on April 3rd, The Appalachian student newspaper published an editorial complaining about Everts' ill-advised initiative to buy a big building in Hickory and expand the AppState campus to that satellite location. The editorial was prophetic about her jumping ship:

Have you ever heard the expression “jump ship”? When things are getting bad so you run to another thing to escape? How about the billionaires that are attempting to leave Earth and live on another planet because Earth is becoming a toxic wasteland? See the connections yet? Everts is jumping ship, running away from the problems she caused at App State.

She continues to ignore student complaints and push back, causing chaos on the main campus, while painting everything as good. Then, she continues to put money into the Hickory Campus, advertising it as though it is as good as App State, hoping to gain more money and more students, because App State’s main campus can not hold more students.

In its coverage of her resignation, the News&Observer was more comprehensive in detailing the push-back against her at AppState:

Everts’ time as chancellor was not without controversy. In August 2020, amid the then-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the university’s Faculty Senate passed a vote of “no confidence” in Everts, citing a lack of competency, transparency and concern for the wellbeing of students. 

Everts was “frequently isolated from and unable to effectively communicate with faculty, and has failed in her basic tasks of strengthening institutional finances, providing goals, operating in a transparent fashion, embracing shared governance, and pulling the university community together in a common mission,” the faculty’s no-confidence resolution stated. 

More recently, Everts drew the ire of students and alumni for her decision to “upgrade” the university’s “expression tunnels” — officially, the Rivers Street tunnels — by removing the art, paint and other designs in the tunnels and adding brighter lighting and cameras to monitor the area. 

She also faced criticism by student groups, including the Appalachian State College Democrats, for a variety of actions they called “attacks on free speech and expression.”

The Difference Between New Mexico and North Carolina

 

The 2018 Farm Bill that President Trump signed into law legalizes the growing of hemp and the production of hemp products -- as opposed to marijuana, though both hemp and marijuana are essentially the same thing, cannabis plants, so the distinction in the law is almost invisible to a non-expert. The law mandates that legal hemp cannot contain more than 0.3% THC, the compound that gets you higher than a laundry line on a windy day. In North Carolina CBD oil and other products are legal under the Farm Bill, but clever scientists have learned how to extract Delta-8, Delta-9, and Delta-10 from hemp -- all still legal under the Farm Bill -- and Delta-9 especially can produce a high much like the high from straight marijuana. So for all practical purposes, in North Carolina recreational drugs are legal though our General Assembly still piously refuses to legalize marijuana even for medical treatment of debilitating illnesses. 

In New Mexico, where I am currently camping, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the Cannabis Regulation Act into law in 2021. Adults are legally permitted to purchase and possess up to two ounces of marijuana and/or up to 16 grams of cannabis extract from licensed retailers. The law also permits adults to cultivate up to six mature plants for their own personal use. The personal use provisions took effect on June 29, 2021. Retail sales began in April 2022.

From all appearances, it's a thriving business, and New Mexico hasn't experienced any end-of-world after effects that are immediately apparent to the naked eye. New Mexico is decidedly blue. It voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in seven of the last eight presidential elections, including in 2020. Its state legislature has Democratic super majorities in both chambers, and all seven of its statewide executive officers including governor are Democrats.

Make of that what you will. North Carolina's law-making is firmly in the hands of some of the most conservative and self-serving politicians in the country, some of whom saw the dollar signs flashing over casino gambling but can't see any benefit in a green new deal.

All Hail the Arizona Supreme Court

 

Progressives do have their cracked pots, or crackpot ideas, but you can't beat the current crop of American conservatives for their new levels of lunacy.

The Arizona Supreme Court voted 4-2 today to restore a total abortion ban -- okay, almost total, but I see very little difference -- that was in effect from 1864, from well before Arizona was even a state of the union, but the Arizona Supremes have decided that the law is still in effect. The ban provides that "anyone who administers an abortion could face a mandatory prison sentence of two to five years. That ban could compel Arizona’s licensed abortion clinics to ramp down dramatically or shutter — though it’s unclear how the decision will be enforced."

Kris Mayes, the Arizona Attorney General, has already declared she won't be enforcing this wacko decision.

Meanwhile, abortion rights activists have apparently gathered enough signatures to get a guarantee of legal abortion on the November ballot as a citizen initiative. The voters who care about women's rights are going to be thoroughly stirred up in Arizona this year.

Meanwhile, Trump if twisting around his own axle trying to figure out how to temper his own promises -- not to mention performance of his boys (and girl) on the Supreme Court -- because someone has finally managed to convince him that his policies are sheer poison to American woman and their male friends. So he says it should be up to the states. His former BFF Lindsey Graham didn't like that at all and criticized him for giving up on being a hardliner on life, and Trump blasted Graham in turn as trying to single-handedly lose the election for Republicans.

These are truly bizarre times. And thanks to the Supremes' Dobbs decision, all Republican apple carts are currently upsidedown. Where they belong.

Money Isn't Everything But It Beats 2nd Place

 

Kudos to the youngest Democratic party chair in the nation. Anderson Clayton deserves much of the credit for excellent fundraising, as she has brought a new energy and a bright vision, and she seems downright indefatigable criss-crossing the state, holding events, cheering on the troops especially in formerly neglected counties where Democrats have in some cases just given up all hope.

Colin Campbell reported:

So far this election cycle, the state Democratic party has raised $5.26 million for its state and federal campaign accounts. The state Republican Party, meanwhile, has raised over $3.34 million across its accounts.

As of the latest campaign finance reports in February, the N.C. Democratic Party had $2.44 million on hand, while the NCGOP had $871,000.

This success is naturally driving MAGA mad. Anderson's personal mantra of "outwork, out-organize, outlast" has them rattled, and they are trying to tear her down. Someone even posted that she looked a lot older than 26, implying ... what? That she's a 50-year-old political ringer brought in to impersonate a vivacious and successful political organizer in her mid-20s who refuses to accept that the North Carolina Democratic Party was finished after the election of 2020. Suck it, GOP.

Clayton will be holding an April 14th fundraiser for the Watauga Democratic Party at Ski Mountain resort between Boone and Blowing Rock. You can get tickets to come see and hear her rousing message of rock-'em, sock-'em for 2024 here.

Folwell Won't Endorse Robinson for Governor

 

NC Newsline Report:

State Treasurer Dale Folwell declined again on Tuesday to endorse Republican Lt. Governor Mark Robinson in North Carolina’s closely watched gubernatorial contest.

Folwell, who lost the GOP nomination race to Robinson in the March primary, has refused since that time to endorse Robinson in his general election showdown with the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Josh Stein. On a Tuesday call with reporters, Folwell reiterated that he won’t be doing so.

“I’ll say what I’ve said before,” Folwell said. “I’m not going to waste my vote going forward in my life on anyone.”

It’s up to the Republican nominee to prove himself to the voters why he’s the best person for the job, Folwell said.

Year of the Independent Candidate?

 

I was impressed when an Unaffiliated candidate for Watauga CoCommish, Jon Council, qualified to be on the November ballot as an independent. He was required to gather 4% of the registered voters in his district to meet the threshold. He got way more signatures than he needed.

Shelane Etchison

It's a much higher threshold for an Unaffiliated candidate seeking to run for a US House seat, but Shelane Etchison far exceeded her required 7,460 petition signatures to get on the ballot as an independent in the NC 9th Congressional District. She gathered over 12,000 signatures, which is actually damn impressive.

I first heard about Etchison from political analyst Thomas Mills, who also happens to be advising her campaign. I trust Mills's judgment in most things, and while Etchison is probably far more conservative than a lot of Democrats. But according to Mills, "she became disillusioned with a [Republican] party that espoused support for liberty and individual freedom but opposed women’s rights to reproductive health. Overturning Roe v Wade solidified her break with the GOP." Congressman Richard Hudson, the Republican incumbent in CD9, adheres to the current GOP orthodoxy on denying women their rights.

Mills breaks down the partisan makeup of CD9 as 35% Unaffiliated, 35% Republican, and 30% Democrat. The Democrat who filed against Hudson, Anson County probation officer Nigel Bristow, is a novice in his first run for office and on the surface of things the newly gerrymandered 9th CD looks pretty impossible for a Democrat, especially an unknown with little base support. It would take a sizable portion of the Democratic minority to abandon the Democrat candidate and support Etchison, even if she was able to motivate the great majority of the Unaffiliated voters in the district. Etchison might just pull that off. It's a district with Ft. Liberty, the former Ft. Bragg, with many active and retired military, and Etchison's biography, as portrayed by Mills, will impress many:

She was in high school when the country was attacked on 9/11 and felt called to serve. She joined ROTC in college and commissioned into the army in 2008. In 2011, she became one of twenty women attached to the 75th Ranger Regiment, providing support on direct combat operations in Afghanistan.

According to a Fox News report, “During the Afghanistan War, special operations forces hunted high-value Taliban and al-Qaeda targets. But the all-male teams weren't allowed to speak with women and children due to cultural norms, causing the U.S. and Afghan militaries to lose out on critical intelligence. As a result, the all-female Cultural Support Team was formed. Before long, the women proved themselves and won over not just the Rangers Etchison was embedded with, but top brass at the Pentagon.” Etchison also served in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

 

Without Her Easter Bonnet, With All the Frills Upon It

 

NC Senate and House Districts Targeted by the DLCC

 

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) was formed in 1992 by then Democratic National Committee Chair David Wilhelm to target and win races in state legislatures -- because Republican majorities in state legislatures were more than eager to gerrymander districts to their advantage and suppress the voters they didn't like. The DLCC brings with it money to targeted races but also some expertise in ground games, tactics, and overall strategy. NC board members on the DLCC, who no doubt influenced the targets below, are NC Senate leader Dan Blue and NC House leader Robert Reives.

The DLCC has announced its North Carolina targets for 2024. The goal: Break the Republican Supermajorities

Senate District 7, New Hanover Co.: Defeat Republican 4-term incumbent Michael Lee. Elect Democrat David Hill, a pediatrician. Civitas Partisan Index rates it R+2.

Senate District 11, Franklin, Nash, and Vance: Defeat Republican incumbent Lisa Barnes (in her 2nd term). Elect Democrat James Mercer who founded a non-profit to help kids and veterans. Civitas rates it D+1.

Senate District 13, Wake: Elect Democrat Lisa Grafstein, a labor and civil rights lawyer, who's running for an open seat against Republican Scott Lassiter. Civitas rates it D+1.

Senate District 18, Granville and Wake: Elect Democrat Terence Everitt, currently a member of the NC House, running for an open seat against Republican Ashlee Adams. Civitas rates it R+1.

Senate District 42, Mecklenburg: Elect Democrat Woodson Bradley, businesswoman and prolific volunteer, running for an open seat against Republican Stacie McGinn. Civitas rates it D+1.

House District 24, Nash and Wilson: Defeat 1st-term Republican Ken Fontenot. Elect Democrat Dante Pittman, an assistant town manager in Wilson, NC. Civitas rates it D+2.

House District 25, Nash: Defeat 1st-term Republican Allen Chesser. Elect Democrat Lorenza Wilkins, a non-profit activist. Civitas rates it D+2.

House District 32, Granville and Vance: Defeat 1st-term Republican Frank Sossamon. Elect Democrat Bryan Cohn, a member of the Oxford Board of Commissioners. Civitas rates it D+4.

Lindsey Prather

House District 35, Wake: Elect Democrat Evonne Hopkins, a family law specialist, who's running for an open seat against Republican Mike Schietzelt. Civitas rates it R+3.

House District 37, Wake: Defeat 2-term Republican incumbent Erin Pare. Elect Democrat Safiyah Jackson, an early childhood advocate. Civitas rates it R+3.

House District 73, Cabarrus: Help reelect 1st-term Democrat Diamond Staton-Williams, a registered nurse, running against Republican Jonathan Almond. Civitas rates it R+3.

House District 98, Mecklenburg: Elect Democrat Beth Helfrich, a career public school teacher, running for an open seat against Republican Melinda Bales. Civitas rates it R+1.

House District 105, Mecklenburg: Defeat Republican turncoat incumbent Tricia Cotham. Elect Democrat Nicole Sidman, who won a 3-way primary in March. Civitas rates it R+2.

House District 115, Buncombe: Help reelect 1st-term Democrat Lindsey Prather, public school educator, running against Republican Ruth Smith. Civitas rates it D+7.

Except for the one House seat in Buncombe County, it's plain to see that the DLCC writes off western North Carolina. You can't have everything. We can be thankful that the 50-state DLCC sees an opening for loosening the total power the NCGOP has over abortion rights and ballot access. I'll be digging into at least some of the personalities mentioned in the list above in the coming weeks/months.

AppState Chancellor Under Fire for Suppressing the Queer Community on Campus

 

The Appalachian State University Graduate SGA has produced a string of accusations against Chancellor Sheri Everts alleging that she is behind the suppression of "Pride Week," the banning of drag shows on campus, and the actual firing of "at least four (4) Queer & Trans Staff and Faculty" without explanation (and presumably without cause). The document actually names names of those shown the door.

Other student groups have joined the out-cry against Everts (including the ASU College Democrats, which produced its own statement of solidarity). The student groups want Pride Week restored.

Aside from their condemnation of the AppState administration (principally Everts), the students don't raise the questions that immediately come to my mind ... that perhaps Everts is merely carrying water for the Republican-heavy Board of Trustees and the even-more-laden-with-cultural-conservatives Board of Governors, who have shown some eagerness for clamping down on what they consider the too-liberal university system. Everts has seemed all too willing to please those powers and not at all susceptible to the pleas and arguments of her own student body and faculty.

She's been highly unpopular on campus for a long time. The ASU Faculty Senate passed a "no confidence" resolution about her back in 2020, but nothing much about her style of authoritarian administration has changed.

The Newest Chair of the NCGOP

 

Jason Simmons

Following Trump's elevation of Michael Whatley to the chairmanship of the national GOP (and also to holding Lara Trump's handbag), the chairmanship of the NCGOP stood open for an election by the state's executive committee -- which happened last night. The winner of a contested race was the state party's executive director Jason Simmons, handpicked by Whatley and endorsed by Trump. The vote was decisive despite a spirited challenge from the ultra-conservative Jim Womack, head of the "NC Election Integrity Team" who thinks far too many people are allowed to vote in this state.

Womack is a big deal in Lee County -- chair of the local GOP and a former county commissioner -- and something of a serial loser. He ran for the chairmanship of the NCGOP twice before, unsuccessfully, and usually with collateral damage. The ultra-MAGAs supported Womack last night and had made plenty of noise leading up to the vote about the failings of establishment Republicans like Thom Tillis and Whatley himself, who nevertheless remain in control of the NC org.

Womack's supporters are naturally furious. They consider themselves "the real Republicans" as opposed to  the Thom Tillises, who are really just part of a "Uniparty" made up of Democrats and country club Republicans who protect the status quo for their own profit. The ultra-MAGAs have baroque theories to explain why Trump won North Carolina in 2020 despite widespread fraud to elect Biden: “Donald Trump may be happy with NC because he didn’t lose in 2020, but it is my belief he didn’t lose because the Uniparty didn’t need him to lose since the fraud in the other states with unexplained pauses in vote counting was adequate to secure his defeat. Letting Trump win protected the Uniparty in NC” (former Republican state Sen. Fern Shubert, in a comment here).

Letting Trump win NC's electoral votes protected the "Uniparty"? I'm truly stunned by that logic.

If Mark Robinson, Michele Morrow, or Dan Bishop lose their statewide races in November, Jason Simmons will be blamed. We have a sympathy card ready to go.

The Wray of All Flesh

 

Rodney Pierce and Michael Wray

Conservative Democrat Michael H. Wray had a good 20 years legislating in Raleigh before he was taken out in the March primary by Rodney Pierce (profiled here back in February). After the recount, Wray lost his seat by a mere 34 votes. Pierce will be going to Raleigh next January because there is no Republican candidate. It's a safe Democratic House district, and Wray often had no Republican challenger in his reelections though he often had Democratic primary challengers. Rodney Pierce finally had the juice to beat him.

He was unpopular among Democrats for being so popular with the Republican majority in the House. He was said to vote with the Republicans over 80% of the time, most notoriously for Dan Bishop's hated "Bathroom Bill" and more recently for the last Republican budget, choosing to override Gov. Cooper's veto.

He was and is a nice man, people say, at a time that Democrats needed a little more steel in tribal spines. Wray was sweet enough to Republicans that Speaker Tim Moore elevated him to a senior chairmanship on the powerful House Finance Committee way back at the start of the current session in January 2023. Moore was trying to woo Wray to change parties. Moore also wooed Tricia Cotham, who obligingly tumbled in April 2023.

No one said it was illegal to turn your coat. But there are consequences, especially among those who made the coat and expected you to wear it with the right side out.

Mark Robinson Is Nothing If Not Gratuitous

 

Mark Robinson popped off on Brian Kilmeade's radio show: "I'm not interested in anything that Thom Tillis has to say. As far as I'm concerned, Thom Tillis has abandoned the base of our party.”

Thom Tillis, who sometimes amazes us with his willingness to defy the MAGA majority, responded to the Robinson insult to Huffington Post reporter Igor Bobic, "The feeling's mutual."

What's holding the NCGOP together? A couple of strings of baling twine and a little dry-mouthed spit?

Just in case you've forgotten, Tillis endorsed Bill Graham over Mark Robinson in the recent Republican primary for guv.

About the dyspepsia in the NCGOP, Democratic commentator Gary Pearce tweeted, "Senator Thom Tillis and the reliably Republican NC Chamber distance themselves from NCGOP's MAGA candidates. Pass the popcorn."

Comedy in the Age of Trump

 

"The reason 'conservative comedy' never manages to go mainstream is that it's all fundamentally based on punching down at vulnerable people for no reason but sheer meanness. But in the Trump era, that's what some people want. Cruelty for the lols."

--@forwardcarolina, January 17, 2024

P.J. O'Rourke, the author and the subject of Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O’Rourke, could be very funny. He was a satirist, especially of sitting-duck bleeding hearts. It takes a true sense of humor to write satire, and real intelligence.

I speculate on O'Rourke, who's been dead since February 2022, in trying to guess the connection between intelligence and humor and the failure of "conservative comedy" mentioned above. The MAGA wing particularly, who depend for their world view on carefully curated information that blots out evidence not congenial to their hero worship, seem to enjoy cruel put-downs and juvenile insults above all other forms of "humor." When we were ignorant farm kids, we might actually laugh at physical deformity or disability, but as we aged, we sometimes were lucky or persistent enough to learn humility and perspective and some history of humanity.

Teenage girl cyber-bullying belongs to a particular age group for a reason. Like MAGA, they seem to believe any victim deserves it for being weak.

Jon Council, Testing the Power of the Unaffiliated in Watauga County

 

He's a construction worker living with his wife Peden in a reclaimed barn, with four dogs (Hannah  Jack, Bear, and Matilda), and 15 ducks on the Watauga River Road in Watauga, because it was the only available and affordable housing that Jon and Peden could afford in a super-expensive vacation destination like Watauga County. 

Jon Council just became a rare unaffiliated candidate for a Watauga County Commission seat (Dist. 3), "certified by petition" for the November ballot. No Democrat had filed for the seat against incumbent Republican Braxton Eggers. Council knocked doors to get the signatures he needed to qualify for the ballot because he believes that there should always be a choice of candidates and because he believes he can provide an important voice for working people in his district. Council may be the first unaffiliated candidate in Watauga County history to complete the petition process. He's certainly unusual in North Carolina.

Council has always been unaffiliated, and like many people who do not register as either Democrat or Republican, he sometimes has not voted in elections where he felt his interests were not being represented. Political scientist Chris Cooper at Western Carolina Univ. did research and found that some 261 unaffiliated candidates met the requirements and ran in North Carolina between 2010 and 2022. Almost all of them lost -- badly. During those years, 33 unaffiliated candidates (out of those 261) actually won their races, and frequently they were running for county commission seats. Can Jon Council beat the odds and join that rarest of rare winners' circle?

Unaffiliated voters now out-number both registered Democrats and Republicans in the state of North Carolina. And they out-number Democrats and Republicans in County Commission Dist. 3 of Watauga County, which includes the precincts of Watauga, Laurel Creek, Beaver Dam, Shawneehaw, Beech Mountain, and a portion of Brushy Fork. Here's the partisan breakdown of that district:

D 1,695

R 2,921

U 3,445

(Explains why no Democrat filed to run in the district.)

The Jon Council Story

Photo by Sophie Mead

Have you ever tried to live in the structure you're also trying to renovate? Carry on life while you add a kitchen and wood heat and a composting toilet to a structure that never had any of those "necessaries"? You may have to cover the bed with a tarp to protect it from falling construction debris and cook on a single-burner Coleman set on a desk. That's what Jon and Peden went through to have an affordable place to live, while (big irony here) Jon got up early every morning to go to work maintenance at a high end country club. Now he slings a hammer on construction jobs building summer places that he also can't afford. He's a keen observer of the realities around him -- a well informed, smart, and practical thinker who understands how the economy grinds working people. The crisis in affordable housing is a particular flashpoint for him. In a Barn Raiser online magazine interview last October, Jon pointed out that "development" in a mountain county is "just another extractive industry":

We’re in a place that’s got heavy tourist traffic at different times of the year with ski resorts and other recreation industries. We’ve seen a lot of single-family homes that have been turned into Airbnbs and short-term rentals, which makes it difficult for working-class people to find places that they can afford to live and work. Because we’re a pretty low-income community, we’ve seen how easy it is for outside interests with a lot of money to come in, buy up land, parcel it off and develop it, not for the people who live here, but for second homes or for short-term rentals for people that are living elsewhere.

That struggle for a decent place to live is coupled for Jon with a personal determination to heal and reclaim the two and a half acres of mountain hillside that he and Peden were able to afford in 2018. The land had been neglected for years, sprayed periodically with herbicides and pesticides to keep the scrub from taking over, but blackberry canes took over anyway.

Jon Council is characteristic of any number of smart and determined young people (he's 32), for whom college didn't click, which makes him not a candidate for a white-collar type job but worthy of respect for the struggle to live reasonably in a society that does not value physical labor and native smarts nearly enough. Jon and Peden have learned "make-do" -- living "on the cheap" -- but knowing the benefits and pleasures of a vibrant community of similarly struggling working people who help one another and understand barter/borrow. For Jon, duck eggs, which are significantly higher in both fat and cholesterol than chicken eggs and also higher in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, have become a valuable side enterprize. He's sold up to 200 duck eggs at a time to chefs for special event dinners featuring locally sourced ingredients. Jon and Peden trade and barter with other local small farmers for fresh vegetables and other produce during the warmer months. Jon told Barn Raiser, 

Jon and Peden's home. Photo Sophie Mead 

A lot of our friends are craftspeople. My wedding ring and my wife’s wedding ring were made by a friend, a woman we know in the community, which we traded for barter. There’s a lot of that.

Though Jon left college -- sampled but unfinished -- he's become skilled in a number of life-hacks, not just carpentry and renovations but also the nurturing of native plants and the health of the soil (not to mention the precious water). "I didn't do well in college. But I love to learn," Jon says, "and I'm often moved by novelty." So Jon is a deep reader widely curious about the world. He lights up when talking about favorite books and mentions the work of Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac), Peter Heller (a longtime contributor to Outside magazine), Craig Childs (The Secret Knowledge of Water), and Wendell Berry, whose Unsettling of America holds a special spot in Jon's library. He's a deep thinker on the ways and means that economic power gets wielded against the labor that sustains it, and the Barn Raiser interview quotes him at length on the failures of the two dominant parties.

Jon found a new local community organization, Down Home North Carolina, a member of the People's Action Network, dedicated to finding common ground with blue-collar working people and engaging them in action. The Watauga chapter was building a petition to the County Commission about affordable and fair housing (Watauga County has no minimal housing standards). Jon was also motivated by the repeated raw sewerage spills from a mega-student apartment complex on the west side of Boone. Those spills end up in the Watauga River drainage system, which runs it directly past Jon and Peden's homestead. Jon became an activist. He understands the cost-benefits for the corporate owners: They've been repeatedly hit with fines, "and they just pay the fine and everything still goes back into the watershed. And then it happens again, and they pay the fine." An endless loop of abuse.

He told Barn Raiser about what door-knocking and porch-sitting for Down Home taught him about human community:

When you can talk to somebody face-to-face and say, “Hey, man, we share a watershed,” or, “We rely on this mom-and-pop business up here that’s in danger of being run out by outside corporate interests,” I think you find that people are willing to cooperate with one another. People don’t have to agree on everything. But if we take care of one another, especially within a small community like this, it benefits everyone.

He told me, "Look, I'm not like a vigilante do-gooder. It's doing the simple stuff like helping someone get firewood or picking up trash on the road on a Saturday morning." Helping out. Building community. "Common Sense rules the day" is Jon's motto.

Down Home's petition for the county to enact minimum housing standards went nowhere, and that was under a Democratically dominated County Commission. So this unaffiliated activist is testing whether an amorphous non-party can also elect a representative to the partisan office of County Commission. 

An Unaffiliated Candidate Qualifies for Watauga CoCommish

 

The Humiliations Continue To Pile Up on Mark Walker

 

Trump himself announced the news that he'd completely destroyed any self-respect that Mark Walker might still cling to. Walker lost to Trump's designated patsy Addison McDowell in the 6th CD Republican primary last week by only two points, and Walker had previously talked tough about continuing to fight against McDowell in a run-off. The deadline under NC law to request a runoff was today at noon, but there will be no runoff and McDowell will be going to Congress next January because there is no Democrat in the race.

Trump himself put out the announcement: “I’ve asked Congressman Mark Walker to join my campaign team to work with faith groups and minority communities, and he has agreed to immediately do so,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

According to Anderson Alerts, "Walker said in a statement that he spoke with Trump about the position Tuesday afternoon and plans to serve in the Trump administration if the former president wins in November.

“Yesterday afternoon, I was honored to hear from President Trump asking if I would take the lead position as the Director of Outreach for faith and minority communities effective immediately,” Walker wrote. “I’m delighted to accept this position and after the Biden administration is defeated in November, I’m grateful for the offer to continue our work with President Trump in the White House.”

What "work" will be involved in convincing the Christian Right to vote for Trump, since that group long ago started worshipping the golden ass.

The NC Chamber of Commerce Fears Michele Morrow

 

On March 6th, the day after the primary that saw Republican incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt get kicked out by Republican voters (after one term) and replaced by an ideological wrecking ball named Michele Morrow, a home-schooler and very determined enemy of public education as it has evolved in the 21st Century. Morrow will be on your ballot come November to run the Department of Education, up against Democrat Mo Green.

On March 6th, the day after that thunderbolt of Truitt's defeat -- unexpected -- unimaginable, really, that a moderate professional like Catherine Truitt would get bumped off the ticket by someone considered a nut -- the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce put out an astounding official statement warning that the primary win of Michele Morrow was a threat to the state's "business climate" (and if you immediately flash on Dan Bishop and those people passing the Bathroom Bill in 2016 and costing the state billions in moola and years of bad press and worse memories, you would be right). Gov. Pat McCrory signed the Show Us Your Gender Act in March of 2016 and the stars fell on North Carolina in a media catastrophe that lasted until they repealed the law a quick year later in 2017.

The Chamber evidently thinks that Michele Morrow is another bathroom bill waiting to metastasize. 

"When both parties move to the opposite ends of the political spectrum," wrote the Chamber's political director, "it erodes the quiet, bipartisan work necessary to move our state forward. Moderating voices in each caucus will be replaced with partisan ideologues that cause division and create controversy."

Division and controversy -- very bad for business. 

Here's a video of Morrow interviewed by Bill O'Neil for WXII. She complicates the political equation by sounding reasonable (there has been indeed an explosion of gender fluidity, but whether you can blame the schools for that and not pop culture seems debatable). She scapegoats the teaching of history for daring to admit the historic evidence that white people have made some bad choices for owning Black people and squeezing Indians into the corner. And Morrow can get fairly giddy about sending more tax dollars to private academies and thus starving public education. And incidentally, she took some of her kids to the January 6th siege of the Capitol, though she says she never went into the building.

She says that in addition to banning books that lean too far into any kind of sexual awareness, she wants books about "traumatic experiences" also banned from school libraries. "But couldn't a book bring some comfort to you to know you're not alone?" asked O'Neil. "No," sez Morrow, decisively, as though the word "comfort" had triggered an odd antipathy.

Her persuasiveness coupled with her calm demeanor make her seem a kind of coherent culture analyst. She has noticed some blatant blunders by education bureaucrats that areactually blatant blunders. But it's how far backward you're willing to go to balance the scales that gives one plenty of pause about Morrow. There is on-line an extended video of her laying out her platform (and incidentally her personality) in a Zoom presentation to the Pasquotank PAC. (The Pasquotank PAC, named for the county, "promotes Republican and Unaffiliated Conservatives in Northeastern North Carolina." Lord help me but I find her persuasive, and I can see her appeal. She talks well and without visible notes and makes sense of things for the MAGA crowd who want everything razed to the ground.

In other words, she has to be stopped.

Maurice "Mo" Green, Democrat

Mo trails behind him a distinguished career in education: Executive Director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation from 2016-2023. More than seven years as superintendent of Guilford County Schools. Before that, general counsel of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, then chief operating officer and then deputy superintendent. He began his career as a lawyer in private practice after doing two United States judicial clerkships. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics and a law degree, both from Duke University. (Indebted to PamsPicks for the details.)

He's about as establishment as you can get. And Morrow is a disestablishmentarian. The clash alone ought to give you the willies when it comes to deciding if our public education will teach inclusiveness as part of the fabric of our Republic.

BREAKING: 3-Judge Panel Strikes Down Law To Remake the Boards of Election

 

S 749, the Republican grand scheme to take away the governor's power to control the Boards of Elections in every county and replace what we have now with 50-50 splits guaranteed to produce grid-lock and dysfunction -- that law was just stuck down as unconstitutional by a three-judge panel of Superior Court judges, two Republicans and one Democrat.

Unanimously struck it down.

"In a seven-page order released Tuesday [today], the judges wrote that the Republican effort to remove Cooper’s power to appoint members of state and county elections boards clearly “infringes upon” the governor’s constitutional duties, and marked “the most stark and blatant removal of appointment power” since previous cases over appointment powers like McCrory v. Berger and Cooper v. Berger." (NandO)

It's likely that Republican leaders will appeal to their BFF, the state's Supreme Court, which is guaranteed to be far more receptive to allowing the General Assembly anything it wants.

For Czar of NC Agriculture, It's Good Ole Boy vs. Brainiac Innovater

Sarah Taber, Insurgent Democrat

The most popular campaign photo of Sarah Taber is the one copied here, which is a studied pose, yes, but she looks to me like someone who knows farm work and heavy work at that. The look is especially crucial when you're a woman running with the boys, not to mention against a very popular incumbent Commissioner of Agriculture.

Did I say "running with the boys"? 

The boys should be so lucky to keep up with this woman, or any farm woman for that matter. Taber published an amazing little essay in The Nation in January of this year and did some woman'splaining to the men about the importance of her gender on farms: 

"We’re the ones who balance the family books, take outside jobs, handle invoicing, and turn raw crops and livestock into goods ready for people to buy. We are the business backbone that makes farm country work." 

Her personal background sounds raw enough to trust and real as dirt: "I grew up working on farms. I got good at chores, sure — but I also got good at the livelihood part of agriculture." She built a business being expert in aquaculture and aquaponics and greenhouses. She started her consultancy in 2006 to help farms and farmers transition away from traditional crops like tobacco and toward non-traditional but highly lucrative forms of agriculture -- growing food under glass or in water. She has a justifiable brag: 

...growing vegetables in greenhouses [is] a great livelihood if you get it right—but if you get one detail wrong, you’ll lose your shirt. I’m proud to say every single one of my farm clients is still in business. Altogether, they’re now worth $4 billion. [The Nation]

She alludes to a cascade of bad practices and bad decisions that some big (and a few small) farmers have engaged in, struggling to make lucrative what often has not been lucative: "Rural poverty causes radicalization. So does pollution from farms. Farm radicalization isn’t just a local problem. Farm outfits that hire undocumented workers put serious money behind hard-right legislators and sheriffs who pledge to collaborate with ICE. That means local country politics can get ugly. And those ugly politics don’t stay local. They can undermine democracy for the whole state." 

Taber holds a doctorate in plant medicine from the University of Florida. In her case, education has sparked an imagination for big agricultural projects that could actually save the planet, like the idea of turning abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico into seaweed-growing operations that could cleanse Gulf waters of their pollution.

On sarahtaber.com, her professional consultancy site that's disappeared from the Web in favor of taberforNC.com, she self-identified as "crop scientist and writer." Regrettably (for me at least), she decided to highlight in her campaign lit her academic credentials a little more than I think can help her with a population used to good ole boys who are careful not to act too smart. Very first words of autobiography on her website: "Dr. Sarah Taber." Because I R also an overeducated "Doctor" and happened to have been close to lots of farmers growing up and heard their jibes, I tend to wince when I hear someone describe themselves as Doctor So-and-So. Might as well go ahead and parody yourself as "Perfesser So-and-So" for the country folks, cause that's what they're thinking. When is the flashing of higher education ever not off-putting as a social class marker?

Nevertheless, for her obvious smarts and practical wisdom, not to mention her vision for expanding and improving vegetable production in North Carolina, Taber is revolutionary as a candidate, but she'll have to be more than that to pull anywhere near even with the popular Republican incumbent.

Steve Troxler, Incumbent Commissioner of Agriculture (since 2004)

Photo Joseph Bradley, for The Assembly

Here's Troxler's history of election margins, making him often the most popular Republican on the ballot below President:

2004 -- his 1st election, he won by 2,287 votes or 50.3%

2008 -- won with 52% of the vote

2012 -- won with 53% of the vote

2016 -- won with 55.56% of the vote

2020 -- won with 53.86% against an unconventional woman, Jenna Wadsworth

His popularity rose steadily after his first election but dipped noticeably in 2020 and possibly because his Democratic opponent came at him from a novel direction. Sarah Taber will be his second time up against an accomplished, out-of-her-traditional-womanly-lane candidate who may come off a little more electable than Wadsworth was.

Plus Taber is going squarely at Troxler as corrupt, the single biggest factor -- if it's true -- known by political science to motivate significant shifts in the vote. Sarah Taber herself summed up the Troxler era in her piece for The Nation, "Why I'm Running for Commissioner of Agriculture":

We’ve had the same commissioner of agriculture for 20 years, despite a series of fumbles and corruption scandals on his watch. He presided over the largest crop insurance fraud ring in US history. His department tipped off meat plants suspected of animal abuse before a “surprise” inspection. His greatest success was encouraging China to buy North Carolina-grown tobacco—only for Trump, for whom the incumbent helped raise funds and votes, to destroy that market with a trade war. 

Meanwhile, Taber claims, Troxler and his aides "misspent taxpayer dollars on high-end lodgings and dining."

So why is ole tobacco-farmer Troxler so popular? Says Taber, he's actually quite unpopular with an increasing number of farmers. Her evidence is partly anecdotal: 

I’m struck by how eager North Carolina’s farmers are for change. It’s not hard to see why. After you account for inflation and population growth, North Carolina’s farm economy has shrunk by 19 percent in the last 20 years. Our farmers and ranchers feel it. And they know what the problem is: corrupt leadership. One hog farmer put it to me this way: “Politicians are a bit like piggies. They’re frisky when they’re little. But then they discover corn and become hogs.” He paused and went on. “Maybe it’s time to put this one in the smokehouse.”

But her best evidence that Troxler's popularity may be illusory is numbers:

In 2020 several North Carolina farm counties voted for the Democratic candidate for commissioner of agriculture [Jenna Wadsworth], and not by a little: Anson. Bertie. Northampton. Hertford. Vance. Hoke. Chatham. Watauga. Halifax. Warren. Edgecombe. Our incumbent doesn’t win because of the farmer vote .... In 2020, hundreds of thousands of suburban North Carolinians voted for both Joe Biden and a Republican commissioner of agriculture who’s wildly unpopular in much of our actual rural farm country.

Why would our suburban brethren, who only look at meat when it's under cellophane, stick with Troxler? Explains Taber, "Because he looks and sounds like what suburbanites think a farmer should look like."

Looks are important, O my brethren, especially in politics. If this is the year the progressive resistance rises up against the corruption of Trump and the extremism of Mark Robinson, Michele Morrow, Dan Bishop, at al. then constant pounding of the message of Troxler's corruption might wilt that big bushy mustache.

Michael Whatley Selected To Be the Doormat

 

Photo Robert Willett, News & Observer

Last Friday, Trump's hand-picked yes-man Michael Whatley got installed as the new chair of the Republican National Committee, replacing Ronna McDaniel who had ceased to please Trump. During the "Stop the Steal" furor following the 2020 election, McDaniel had been wary of joining Trump's 65 lawsuits aimed at overturning the election, plus she appears to have pushed back about emptying Republican bank accounts to pay Trump's legal bills.

Whatley will be joined as co-chair by Trump's own daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who's made it clear that anyone not sufficiently loyal to her father-in-law will be purged from the party, and she's guaranteed to ensure that Trump will get all the money he wants to pay for his chaos.

Whatley will be handmaiden, pregnant with every Trump whim. And he'd better carry them to term!

Trump has been impressed with Whatley's own PR campaign to convince the boss that he is a true believer that the election was stolen and that the only reason North Carolina didn't go for Biden in 2020 was Whatley's own "election integrity" plan to "guard the vote" against imaginary hoards of illegal immigrants and Black felons and Deep State election officials. Whatley was full of shit then, and it'll fairly squeeze out of him now like toothpaste.

Whatley has no apparent personal integrity beyond pleasing the big man, which makes him singularly suited to lead the GOP in the Trump era and provide a square space for Trump to wipe his shoes.

Democrat Braxton Winston Now Has a Republican Opponent for Secretary of Labor

 

BRAXTON WINSTON

I've been following Winston's trajectory into politics since he won his seat on the Charlotte City Council in 2017. He promises to be a Democratic star attraction on the fall ballot. Winston was born in North Carolina into a military family, was recruited by Davidson College to play football, earned a degree in anthropology, coaches football part time at Providence Day School, and became an accidental but powerful symbol for Black Lives Matter in Charlotte following the September 20, 2016, police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. That killing prompted several days of street protests. A chance photograph of Winston by the Charlotte Observer’s Jeff Siner went viral (see below) and catapulted Winston into local fame. He's 40 years old.

On September 20, 2016, Winston was on his way home after coaching a middle school football game. He was driving Old Concord Road past the Village at College Downs apartments, where a ruction was going on. An angry crowd was gathering the way a crowd gathers after a shooting, and Winston pulled over to find out what it was.

Winston actually makes his living as a cameraman -- videographer -- who films home games for the Charlotte Hornets as an independent contractor. He began live-streaming the aftermath of the Keith Lamont Scott shooting to his Facebook page.

A Charlotte cop on the scene told Winston to leave. Winston didn't, and the cop left him alone. The cop already knew Winston as a good man from a previous incident. In November 2015, Winston called the cops to help a Hispanic woman being severely beaten by her husband. There was a big commotion, involving neighbors and a little boy running around crying. Winston grabbed up and hugged the boy to him. With his mother going to the hospital and his father to jail, the little boy didn’t want to leave Braxton's arms, "so Braxton went with us to the hospital. He stayed the whole night, trying to make sure the little boy was OK as he clung onto Braxton...” (according to CharlotteMeck PD Officer Shannon Finis). A year later the same cop allowed Braxton to stay on the scene at College Downs apartments.

Student reporters for The Davidsonian, after several interviews, concluded this: "Winston had never been involved in any protest movement. He thought of tear-gas or potential injury as 'the price I got to pay to speak up on behalf of my children, [on] behalf of myself, and [on] behalf of what I believe in and what the world should look like.' ”

According to Olivia Daniels and AJ Naddaff, "tension between police and civilians escalated. Winston removed his shirt to cover his mouth from tear gas. He approached a line of police in riot gear and thrust his fist in the air in an act of civil disobedience." Jeff Siner took his picture.

Later, after things died down, Winston became a community spokesman, first calling for the resignation of CharlotteMeckPD Chief Kerr Putney and then meeting face-to-face with him and apparently reaching an understanding that there had to be a change in methods for interacting with segments of Charlotte that feel over-policed and under-served. When eventually the police officer who killed Keith Lamont Scott was exonerated because department policy leans way over backward to absolve the government from responsibility when the police kill people without due process, Braxton Winston acknowledged that police followed policy in letting the cop off. But after he was elected to the Charlotte City Council, he worked to reform procedures.

Braxton announced he was planning to run for Secretary of Labor in April 2023 after six years on the Charlotte council (and attaining the distinction of Mayor Pro Tem). He is also a labor activist -- a professional videographer but also, as a stagehand and grip, a union member, in "our region’s robust sports television and entertainment production community" (Winston website).

LUKE FARLEY

On Tuesday this week, Farley bested three other Republican candidates for the nomination to run in this race, taking over 30% of the vote and thus avoiding a runoff. 

His website makes him seem like a deeply unserious person. A white-on-red banner on his homepage proclaims "Make Elevators Great Again," an allusion to the former Republican holder of this office, Cherie Berry (no friend of labor), who has endorsed him (that endorsement also loudly proclaimed on his home page). I have my instant doubts about any candidate who begins his introduction, "I am a Christian...." That tells me everything and also precisely nothing about this guy's character.

His main policy obsession appears to be mandated COVID vaccine shots, which he naturally opposes.

He's a lawyer in private practice, specializing in OSHA rules, which on the face of it, in my view, makes him also instinctively anti-labor.

Primary Results -- Other Races

 

Allison Riggs

Supreme Court Associate Justice, Seat 6

Democrat Allison Riggs took over 69% of the vote statewide, running for reelection to her seat against Judge Lora Cubbage.

NC House Dist. 60

Frequent Democratic defector from Democratic policy, incumbent Cecil Brockman squeaked past his insurgent opponent James Adams by a mere 83 votes (according to the NCSBE website). There will surely be a recount. Brockman had been marked for elimination by fellow Democrats because of his frequent votes with the Republican super-majority. (Contest profiled here.)

NC House Dist. 82

The Republican primary featured first-termer Kevin Crutchfield trying to hang on to the seat he just won in 2022 against man-about-town Brian Echevarria, a camera hog who may think he's awfully cute. This race was called the most competitive Republican primary for the General Assembly -- and was coincidentally also the meanest -- and indeed Echevarria took out the incumbent by a very close margin, 171 votes.

NC House Dist. 27

Conservative Democrat Michael Wray, who often voted with the Republicans to override Cooper vetoes, finally may have been picked off (if the current vote totals hold through the counting of provisionals and the inevitable recount). Wray appears to have lost to Rodney Pierce by 42 votes.

NC House Dist. 105

Nicole Sidman slid to victory in a three-way race where she took over 57% of the vote. She is the winner to take on the tall quest to unseat turncoat Tricia Cotham in November. I've experienced nervous exhaustion worrying about the outcome here.

NC House Dist. 62

Former legislator and often thorn in the Republican majority's side, John Blust won a 5-way contest with 34% of the vote, thus avoiding a runoff. I wrote about "The Return of John Blust" back in February.

NC Senate Dist. 13

Scott Lassiter, who became "Famous for the Wrong Reason," beat his Republican competitor in that side's primary. Lassiter will face Democrat Lisa Grafstein in November. He tried once to get her barred from the ballot.

Primary Results, Watauga Board of Education

Adam Hege

Very right race for the top five finishers. A total of six candidates will go through to the November ballot:

Marshall Ashcraft 4,765 

Adam Hege 4,347 

Chad Cole 4,208 

Charlotte Mizelle Lloyd 4,204 

Alison Carroll Idol 4,128 

Tom Ross 2,039

Ashcraft, Hege, and Lloyd are Democrats. Cole, Idol, and Ross are Republicans. Anything can happen, come November. All these candidates were researched and written up by PamsPicks. Appears that the two most radical candidates were eliminated.