Primarily (Dragging My Ass)

 

Keith Kidwell

 

 

My excuse for not being johnny-on-the-spot about what just happened in North Carolina and then Texas yesterday -- I couldn't research nor write anything about that amazing primary primarily because my laptop was in the hospital getting updates and add-ons.

The first thing of note locally came to my attention a couple of days ahead of E-Day, and this local trend turns out to have been true and steady throughout the state. This info goes under the heading, "Enthusiasm Gap":

Some more quick numbers: Watauga County compared to statewide in early voting through yesterday (Friday):

 

-- Statewide 42% cast a Republican ballot during early voting. In Watauga only 25% cast a Republican ballot.

-- Statewide 29% of voters were Republicans. In Watauga 17% were Republicans.

 

Youth vote (18-30) represents 19% of the early vote in this Primary election. That is a significant increase from 11% in 2022 Primary.  

The enthusiasm gap means different things to the two major parties. For the Democrats, enthusiasm seems particularly generational in its vision of the future -- young people are showing up as serious candidates and some of them outstandingly have prospered, and because the future looks both younger and more progressive, candidates out-of-step with the majority are no longer tolerated. Carla Cunningham, Nasif Majeed, Shelly Willingham -- those three Democrats had voted with the GOP to override Gov. Stein vetoes, and all went down to defeat in their primaries. Michael Wray, a former Dem House Member who made a habit of defying both Gov. Cooper and his caucus, lost his bid to take back the seat he lost in 2024 from the man who beat him.

What does the apparent lack of enthusiasm mean for Republicans? You tell me. The main connective thread I see is possibly just a sudden surge of hatred for encumbents of whatever stripe, for both mean-eyed old Keith Kidwell, head of the NC House Freedom Caucus; and a Phil Berger, a corporate establishmentarian if I've ever seen one, who's in it for himself and his brazen family. Somehow 2026 has turned into a dismal year for Republican honchos. Someone soon will have calculated just how much each vote cost Phil Berger and his web of big money. I see totals calculated above $10 million. Berger got just a third of the votes in his home county of Rockingham -- that's worse than what Virginia Foxx's home county thinks of her -- while it was the portion of gerrymandered Guilford in his newly drawn district that got him within two votes of actually tying Sam Page. Oh the humiliation.

Colin Campbell lists at least four more Republican incumbents, some with longish records, who didn't survive their primaries. Why? I would love to hear informed opinions.

And meanwhile, Texas was almost feverish with heat.

More later (but I have to tell you, Brethren, I'm outside in the garden most of the time).

 

Trump and Facebook, Sitting in a Tree

 

I've been reading an insider's book about the peculiar brand of selfishness and narcissism at Facebook -- Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and on down the ranks of upper management -- written by Sarah Wynn-Williams: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (published just last November). According to John Walters, Facebook management tried to suppress it, "which in fact only increased its sales."

No wonder Facebook felt a fit of censorship. Wynn-Williams's title for this takedown of a media monster -- Careless People -- comes from The Great Gatesby, a passage the author quotes as an epigraph: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

There's no doubt that Facebook had a huge hand in unleashing Donald Jethro Trump in the election of 2016. In fact, according to Wynn-Williams, Facebook staff worked collaboratively with Trump's campaign to mastermind the "single best digital ad campaign" that several experts in mass communications had ever seen. Wynn-Williams gets into some graphic detail:

A Trump operative named Brad Parscale ran the operation together with the embedded Facebook staff, and he basically invented a new way for a political campaign to shitpost its way to the White House, targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages....

...Facebook and Parscale's combined team microtargeted users and tweaked ads for maximum engagement, using data tools we designed for commercial advertisers. The way I understand it, Trump's campaign had amassed a database, named Project Alamo, with profiles of over 220 million people in America. It charted all sorts of online and offline behavior, including gun registration, voter registration, credit card and shopping histories, what websites they visit, what car they drive, where they live, and the last time they voted. The campaign used Facebook's "Custom Audiences from Custom Lists" to match people in that database with their Facebook profiles. Then Facebook's "Lookalike Audiences" algorithm found people on Facebook with "common qualities" that "look like" those of known Trump supports. So if Trump supporters like, for example, a certain kind of pickup truck, the tool would find other people who liked pickup trucks but were not yet committed voters to show the ads to.

Then they'd pair their targeting strategy with data from their message testing. People likely to respond to "build a wall" got that sort of message. Moms worried about childcare got ads explaining that Trump wanted "100% Tax Deductible Childcare." Then there was a whole operation to constantly tweak the copy and the images and the color of the buttons that say "donate," since slightly different messages resonate with different audiences. At any given moment, the campaign had tens of thousands of ads in play, millions of different ad variations by the time they were done. These ads were tested using Facebook's Brand Lift surveys, which measure whether users have absorbed the messages in the ads, and tweaked accordingly. Many of these ads contained inflammatory misinformation that drove up engagement and drove down the price of advertising. The more people engage with an ad, the less it costs. Facebook's tools and in-house white glove service created incredibly accurate targeting of both message and audience, which is the holy grail of advertising.

Trump heavily outspent [Hillary] Clinton on Facebook ads. In the weeks before the election, the Trump campaign was regularly one of the top advertisers on Facebook globally. His campaign could afford to do this because the data targeting enables it to raise millions each month in campaign contributions through Facebook. In fact, Facebook was the Trump campaign's largest source of cash.

 

DCCC Involves Itself in a North Carolina Primary

Jamie Ager
Photo Katie Linsky Shaw

On February 23rd (yesterday!) the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added Jamie Ager and the NC 11th Dist. to its “Red to Blue” program, "a merit-based designation for Democratic challengers or open-seat candidates the DCCC believes have a real chance to flip a Republican-held district." In other words, an arm of the National Democratic Party is doing what has previously been frowned on -- endorsing a primary candidate, one of five in Ager's case, thus putting the Party's thumb on the scale in hopes of controlling the outcome. That is supposedly verboten for county Democratic parties and for state party officials, though you may have noticed that both Roy Cooper and Josh Stein have made primary endorsements.

The Jamie Ager case is interesting for several reasons. Five people are running. I read through the transcript of a very revealing candidate forum published by Asheville Watchdog. All five candidates were there and spoke. But the questioning was designed to disarm and reveal. Retired investigative reporter and questioner Tom Fiedler pulled some stunning honesty out of them, and several are frankly more interesting than front-runner Ager. A working-class woman named Zelda Briarwood, who admitted to a prior drug addiction and talked about her path to recovery. Paul Maddox, with a strong country accent, called himself a "hillbilly scientist" -- born in the hills but educated to the hilt, with advanced degrees in science that make him tough on bullshit: "I’m a cancer researcher and I solve problems, that’s what I do. And you take the hillbilly and the scientist and put them together, ain’t no problem we can’t solve." Richard Hudspeth, a medical doctor and a family physician who ran Blue Ridge Health Care, a very large community health center. Hudspeth is probably Ager's chief rival.

Jamie Ager comes from Democratic Party nobility in Buncombe County. He is the grandson of Jamie Clarke (James McClure Clarke), famous for trading the 11th CD seat back and forth with Republican Bill Hendon in the 1980s. Both Ager's father John and brother Eric either served in the past (John) or is now serving (Eric) in the NC House. Jamie runs Hickory Nut Gap Farm, the very large operation started by his grandfather. In other words, Jamie Ager comes from a family steeped in politics who seem to know how to do it, and he's got access to beaucoup money through his business and family associations.

He's a good old boy. He seems almost apolitical. But when you introduce yourself to a political audience as "fourth generation in these mountains," I wince. Pulling rank. What I hear, Mr. Fourth Generation, is "I'm entitled." So I find myself wondering what sort of congressman Jamie Ager will be, whether he's got actual philosophical principles about social justice and the power of great wealth, whether he's got a spine or is too accustomed to going-along-with, which can metastasize into damnable passivity. In one of Ager's responses to Fiedler's questions, he signals "moderate Democrat" ("just a country boy"), but the image of the straddle unnerves me a little:

...the political divide gets wider and wider and wider. I feel like I’ve been straddling this divide my entire life, since I’ve been involved in agriculture and I’ve been involved in the meat business, which turns out most of the people are not generally Democrat....

Ager will win the primary. But will he win the general? There's a good chance, according to the DCCC. And I wish him the best for becoming a well-informed and effective legislator. Not another Heath Schuler, please.

 

We Need To Think of Impeachments as Room Fresheners

 

"The first Attorney General to go to prison [John N. Mitchell] did so because he convinced himself that the ends justified the means and that the law was pliable in his hands. Pam Bondi should take that to heart, if she has a heart."

--Rick Wilson

And the way you consolidate and perpetuate power is by so thoroughly demonizing opponents — by blasting so much contempt at them — that your own failures, corruption and cruelty become irrelevant. You needn’t answer for your fatal thuggery in Minneapolis if you can render its casualties sufficiently contemptible. You needn’t answer questions from a “washed-up, loser lawyer” or a “failed politician” at all....

Pam Bondi opted for contempt. It’s the Trumpian way. But is it the American one? Has the country sunk quite this far? I don’t think so. She and her fellow insult mongers aren’t owning the libs; they’re beclowning themselves. And it’s a repellent circus.

--Frank Bruni 

“I don’t think Pam Bondi has confidence in Pam Bondi. She wasn’t confident enough to engage in anything but name-calling in a hearing. And so no, I don’t have confidence in her.”

--Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky 

From where I was sitting, it looked like the attorney general pretty much invited the United States Congress to impeach her.

--John Stoehr, Raw Story

 

Joey Osborne Goes Foxx-Hunting

I've paid little attention to Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's primary opponents. She always has 'em. She always beats 'em. They're like the mayflies of politics, so I don't invest much time in them. But I may have missed the boat with Joey Osborne, a millionaire entrepreneur running in the 5th District Republican primary with two others, Roman H. Chad Williams II and Steve Girard, all three diluting each other's potential solo strength against Foxx if, say, Joey Osborne had the Foxx opposition to himself. 

Joseph "Joey" Osborne got his start as an entrepreneur growing a family business in mosquito control into the largest mosquito control company in the US, headquartered in Hickory, with some 500 locations across the nation. He says on his Linked-In page, "I've created more than 50 business models for myself and others. Businesses that I've founded have generated more than half a billion dollars in revenue, creating more than 100 millionaires in the process." Some of those businesses: BizLab, 10X Innovations, Mainline Brands.

He's a very rich entrepreneur conservative who tells us he's conservative in the Calvin Coolidge mold, and I believe him. Old Cal was an honest man. There was not one ounce of greed in him, none of the me-first ethos of later times. Osborne talks intelligently about Coolidge in a 5-minute video titled "What My Conservatism Actually Looks Like," in which he makes the implicit comparison to trumpist politicians who grab and grow rich in office rather than actually practicing conservative values. "I don’t believe leadership should enrich the officeholder. I believe it should serve the public." Who has enriched herself the most in office if not Virginia Anne Foxx? She's known as one of the most high-volume stock traders in Congress, and it makes you wonder. (I can't copy Osborne's 5-min video here but you might want to watch it here.)

I looked deeper into Mosquito Authority and was pleased to read this about the ingredients in his spray: "We utilize all-natural, plant-based mosquito solutions with alternative botanical ingredients. The ingredients in our essential oil blend have been used for centuries to keep mosquitoes away." "Alternative botanical ingredients" sound delicious, but I'd like to know more. I'm naive about what else may be in his spray that I wouldn't brag about, but I take note that Osborne developed it to protect his three little girls who liked to be in the yard past dark on summer nights, and it doesn't seem likely to me that he would expose his daughters to toxins. He's not a greed-ass.

He seems more than merely intelligent -- actually downright bright (you can see it in his eyes) -- and calm and reasonable (even if I'm going to disagree with him on everything else, from abortion to well fare), with the inherent good sense of a practical man looking to make things work. He hinted in a most cryptic way that he was a solution-seeking moderate back in 2020 when he and 10 others ran in the Republican primary for the NC-11 seat. Osborne came in seventh. Lynda Bennett and Madison Cawthorn went to a run-off, which Cawthorn-of-Blessed-Memory won. Anyway, in 2020 Osborne said this to a reporter from the Asheville Citizen-Times: "I would never say that I would compromise my principles, but I think there always is a space between the divides.” I like the way he thinks, if I understand what "space between the divides" means.

The Berger/Page Meet-Up

 

I found the time to watch the Phil Berger vs. Sam Page "town hall." The event was hosted by the Rockingham Co. Republican Party on Feb. 5th and featured an odd format: the two candidates had been given four questions -- some of them pretty sharp and specific about negative advertising -- and both Berger and Page got to read aloud what they had written -- essentially, canned talking points (and Berger's much better at that than Page) -- so there was nothing alive or spontaneous about their "joint appearance" -- except my getting to witness Phil Berger, seated not two feet from his nemesis and looking like death, hear without wincing Sam Page blame him for the repeal of the Bathroom Bill. The repeal. So Sam Page wants to bring back the Bathroom Bill.

A high point for me was when Berger read his accusation that the Democratic Party was actively meddling in the primary. "They want Sam Page to win because I'm so effective in the Senate." That's a paraphrase. And it's the absolute truth. I don't know a Democratic operative who wouldn't applaud a Berger loss. If Berger collapses ... is grist for fantasy.

But Sheriff Sam Page? He presents as kind of a clown to be honest. With Berger beside him in "business casual" (no tie), Page shows up like he's playing an 1890s Utah sheriff, in red plaid shirt overlaid by a grey outdoorsman vest, the ensemble topped by a big black Western hat. Page takes himself very seriously. His white handlebar mustache added just the right splash of light under the dark brim of that cowboy hat.

They both touted their devotion to Trump and their closeness to trumpism, though Sam Page actually implicated the president for offering a bribe. The President called me, Page said, and I was very appreciative of the call. He actually offered me a high level job in his administration. 

Give the sheriff credit for not taking the bribe.

Josh Stein Still Fighting for Control of SBOE. Bless Him!

 

Dallas Woodhouse

Gov. Josh Stein is suing the GOP-controlled General Assembly over its last-minute seizure of the State Board of Elections, which they gave lock-stock-and-barrel to their new bestie, Dave Boliek, the brand new State Auditor and conservative fan boy. ("There's no fanatic like a new convert.") The General Assembly pulled off the blatant power grab between Josh Stein's landslide victory over Mark Robinson on November 5th, 2024, and the swearing in of Josh Stein as our 76th governor on January 1st, 2025. Now that's hustling for any deliberative body (maybe not so much for one in lockstep like the Berger/Moore congregation was).

Very shortly after Stein whupped Robinson, GOP lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 382, cleverly attaching Hurricane Helene relief to their plan to sneak in provisions stripping the governor's control of the State Board of Elections, among other things. (They also took powers from Attorney General Jeff Jackson and other members of the Council of State.) Gov. Cooper, still in office, vetoed S 382. Republicans overrode. Immediately, the new czar of elections, Dave Boliek, hires extreme partisan Republican hit-man Dallas Woodhouse to "teach" local county boards of election how best to suppress the vote. The very recent elimination of three university polling sites testifies to Woodhouse's malign presence. 

Of course Stein took it to court, and he won at the trial court level. A panel of three superior court judges agreed that the section of S 382 taking powers from the executive was unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals -- dominated 12-3 by Republicans -- quickly stepped in and blocked that ruling, allowing the law to take effect on May 1st.

Stein is right now back in court asking a new panel of Appeals Court judges to overturn previous court orders that allowed Boliek to take over elections board appointments last spring.

Kyle Ingram was there in court February 10th -- yesterday -- to hear the arguments, and he captured the essential gist:

Attorneys for Stein argued that the power shift — which transferred appointments to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek — sets a dangerous precedent for separation of powers, wherein the legislature can consistently reassign responsibilities to whichever executive office holder agrees with their policy preferences.

“The legislative position is that there are no limits on their power to assign executive duties on the Council of State,” Eric Fletcher, a lawyer for Stein, said. “They say that they can assign, tomorrow, election administration to the Commissioner of Agriculture. That they can send agricultural policy to the Commissioner of Insurance. And they can assign road-building to the Superintendent of Public Instruction.” 

Attorneys for legislative leaders argued that it was within the General Assembly’s duty to reassign executive powers as they please, so long as the powers in question are not explicitly assigned in the constitution.

The three judges hearing the arguments: John Arrowood (D), Valerie Zachary (R), and April Wood (R). Wanna guess how invested in partisanship those two Republican judges are?

Fire Sale

 

“In a country that amended the Constitution to ban beer… then fixed it when we realized it was dumb… surely we can amend it again to say corporations aren’t people and money isn’t speech.” 

--Pete Buttigieg, 16 January 2025, LaCross, Wisconsin town hall

Analyst Brian Allen said Amen! 

"We corrected Prohibition. We can correct Citizens United. Democracy shouldn’t be for sale."

Hubbard and Creekmore Face Off in an Appstate Town Hall

 

Jack Yordy, guest-posting:

On Thursday, I attended an event hosted by the College Democrats of Appalachian State University with special guests Chuck Hubbard and Kyah Creekmore: the Democratic candidates for the 5th congressional district of North Carolina.

I’ve known of Mr. Hubbard since his run for Virginia Foxx’s seat in 2024. While somewhat awkward initially and slow to talk about himself, he struck me as a well-meaning man interested in serving the people of this district. The first time I met him, he told me about his daughter and her wife, and about how worried he was for them in the post-Roe vs. Wade America. Chuck didn’t strike me as a progressive but certainly not as a centrist ideologue or ‘do-nothing-democrat’ either. Over the last two years I’ve watched him evolve as a candidate, building out his operation and beginning to grow into what might be a unique campaign brand. Though there’s a lot he could do to improve, I would be happy to see him win our blood-red district. He’s never failed to show up for us in Watauga and at App State when asked, and it’s clear to me that he cares about the people of this district.

Kyah I had not known until very recently, when he showed up uninvited to a town hall for Chuck Hubbard late last semester after apparently ignoring prior outreach by the App College Democrats. My first impression of Kyah was, therefore, not great, but I am not one to rule out ambitious young people who make mistakes. After checking out his social media and website, I reached out to him to express my disappointment and let him know that I felt his actions reflected poorly on other young people attempting to run for office. He apologized and explained that he had not ignored the College Democrats outreach, rather that he had unfortunately missed their correspondence and had made the assumption, upon seeing the College Dems’ post about a town hall with Chuck, that they were deliberately leaving him out. He expressed regret for making this assumption and resolved to do better.

I was skeptical, especially when I saw “Democratic Socialist” in his bio on Instagram. Though I lean toward that side of the party, after his assumption that there was some kind of establishment plot by the App State College Democrats to leave him out of their event, I worried that he might take a hostile (and unnecessary) posture toward local parties and auxiliaries. I was very glad to see him return to App State in a different context Thursday evening. Some candidates might have decided their efforts would be better spent elsewhere after a bad first impression, but not Kyah.

Leading up to the discussion between the two candidates, I was open-minded. I think Chuck Hubbard is a good man, and that he would be a good congressman who would contribute to the progressive agenda. I think Kyah is a highly passionate, unique, and intelligent communicator, and though he’s a bit of a wildcard, I believe we need more young progressives running for office. I was wondering if tonight, he would show me he’s the kind of young person we need winning those races.

The event was a success. The College Democrats achieved the highest turnout I’ve seen at a meeting at least since 2024. The participants were very engaged and asked questions for nearly an hour. The discussion by the candidates was in-depth, respectful, and interesting. I was very surprised by Chuck Hubbard’s performance. My frank expectation was that Kyah would outflank him by speaking to the progressive moment, and while Kyah is no doubt the most progressive candidate in the race, Chuck looks like a pragmatic but passionate progressive. The only issue I took with Chuck was his support of Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the House, though he lambasted Chuck Schumer and stated emphatically, “He’s got to go.” Kyah brought the typical young left-wing energy and analysis. His communication style and some of his novel policy proposals, while perhaps over-ambitious or even extreme, impressed me and, I think, the room. I walked out of the event feeling grateful that we have two strong, progressive candidates running in this race. I will keep my voting intentions private, and while I have thoughts on who the stronger candidate to beat Virginia Foxx is, I would be happy with either of these gentlemen representing the 5th district in Congress.

Below are my unedited notes from the town hall:

Did Virginia Foxx kill her neighbor?

Kyah: She’s a Karen, annoying, riled up, snitch, bad neighbor - not someone you want to be in community with. Policymaking: she sides with predators and billionaires in Epstein files

Chuck: Virginia didn’t let neighbor cross her property. Road had not been fixed and neighbor had a 4-wheeler accident. We’re supposed to look after our neighbors and be good neighbors, she isn’t. She was fired from App State. Helene- Virginia damaged FEMA

Criticism of Democratic Party: low integrity, not aggressive enough pushing back against GOP. Do you guys have the confidence to maintain a strong integrity while playing aggressively against GOP?

Chuck: If you don’t have integrity you don’t have much. You have to be able to believe what I say, that’s important to me. Also, we are too passive and we need to fight GOP. I spent my whole career in journalism promoting the truth.

Kyah: Integrity is absolutely pivotal. We have two parties full of people who could care less about integrity. Grandstanding on LGBTQ+ and abortion but no ideas on how to fix it or make stronger legislation to safeguard our rights. They didn’t do roe v wade protection or Medicare for all--Obama got nothing done. Centrist Democrats block legislation. Israel-- we send our money to bomb children and centrist Dems vote for that but never for healthcare or helping Americans. We can do so much more as a minority. Force impeachments. Stand for something! Fascist collaborators.

Labor Unions and Workers Rights

Chuck: Pro labor, endorsed by AFL - CIO - largest labor union in the US. NC is tough for labor, 2nd least organized labor state in America. We must improve that. Union wages are living wages. Protect labor

Kyah: Largest reforms we’ve ever seen have come through a strong labor movement. Our country has gutted labor unions. “immigrants taking our jobs,” no -- corporations cutting jobs. Replacing with AI. Creating a workers constitution: Guaranteed worker rights. Breaking up monopolies.

Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker?

Chuck: Yes. He’s served his time, done his time. He’s going to be speaker, I don’t necessarily like everything he does, but I respect him and the time he’s put into congress.

Kyah: He’s a joke. He’s the reason Trump is doing what he’s doing right now. We need people that actually want to fight. Where is his presence? Ro Khanna would be a better leader as an example. Chuck Schumer also has to go. We need new leadership.

Chuck: Chuck Schumer is a different matter. He needs to step down. Cory Booker is fantastic and becoming a central voice for the party.

Abolish ICE?

Kyah: We should abolish and prosecute every lawless, murderous ICE agent. Make sure they never get roles in government again.

Chuck: First we need to take away their money - $50 billion is larger than the FBI. Dismantle ICE. Fund a new agency under proper rules or rebuild it constitutionally. They’re Trump’s private police - Nazi Germany parallel. It’s a priority for me to deal with ICE and create a pathway to citizenship that is not cruel.

Kyah: ICE budget larger than most countries entire militaries. We need to also redirect those funds. Criticism of high military spending-- redirect toward social programs. For-profit prisons.

Reproductive rights

Chuck: Completely pro-choice. Absolutely determined to codify roe vs. wade.

Kyah: The demographics in congress is 53+ older, senate is 63+ older - menopause. Women and Men in congress do not know what’s going on there and it does not affect them. Health proposal: People’s health and rescue act. 3 free abortions a year.

3rd trimester abortions

Kyah: I’ve had to experience an abortion. It was hard but I understand people have abortions out of necessity- just like crime. They’re doing this because it’s in their best interest and in the best interest of the baby. The woman should get to choose.

Chuck: Third trimester abortions are extraordinarily rare.

Question for Kyah: As a minority, what does it take to be the next representative of this district?

Putting yourself out there and realizing the importance of the message. Friend passed away and told him not to be afraid. Trying to represent the right ideas, values, and principles.

What does a pathway to citizenship look like?

Chuck: make sure that people who are here undocumented already have a humane way to apply for asylum first and citizenship later (instead of having to leave the country first). We need secure borders but also a pathway to citizenship

Kyah: We need some kind of reform. At one point we didn’t have borders and we were very safe, we didn’t used to have a wall. We need a very fast immigration process-- less than one year. We have a lack of judges and lack of funding. That funding could come from ICE’s budget. My grandma was on a green card and it took her so long, maybe decades, to get citizenship -- it has to be faster.

Democratic Primary in NC-03 (What's Up, Doc?)

Thomas Mills published something today that perked me up: "If 2026 becomes a big Democratic wave year, both NC-01 and NC-03 could be Democratic after the votes are counted." I've looked more at NC-01 because of the travails of Democrat Don Davis, trying to hang on to the seat that Republicans gerrymandered anew and at the behest of Donald Jethro Trump just to get rid of him. So I'm a little surprised to hear NC-03 mentioned so optimistically. Republican Greg Murphy's historically very safe seat, immediately next door to Don Davis's, had to become just a little less Republican in order to torture Davis. Mills is alert for surprises, like what just happened in a special election in Texas for a state senate seat. The Democrat beat the Republican there by 14 points, in a district that Trump won in '24 by 17 points. In Texas!

I felt called to educate myself a little about the Democrats running in the NC-03 March primary.

Raymond E. Smith Jr.

Raymond E. Smith Jr.

He's an impressive candidate on paper, a former member for two terms of the NC House representing Wayne and Sampson counties and a member at large of the Wayne County Board of Education. He likes to go by "Dr. Raymond E. Smith," displaying a degree he earned the hard way. He's proud to have earned actually three degrees from North Carolina HBCUs -- Bachelor’s Degree in Supply Chain Management, a Masters in Public Administration, and a Doctorate in Education Leadership. Leadership and civic service runs in his family. His father was a Marine and served with distinction, and his mother was herself an 18-year veteran on the School Board. Raymond Jr. is a decorated Gulf War combat veteran, former military policeman, and a statewide transportation planner for the NCDOT. Among other impressive things.

He recently got a huge boost. The Congressional Black Caucus in DeeCee endorsed him, which means more than just money -- and the money ain't nothing to sneeze at -- for there's tactical support as well. “It means access to resources. It means that our base can be energized by the thought that they have a legitimate candidate in this race,” Smith said.

Smith filed to run on December 15, some two weeks after the opening of filing. Was he recruited by the Congressional Black Caucus?

I looked closely at his record and found a couple of things he doesn't go into on his website.

2018 -- 1st election to NCH-21, took 52.65% of the vote.

2020 -- reelection, took 53%.

2022 -- did not run for reelection to NCH-21 but elected to run for NCS-4 in the Democratic primary against incumbent Democratic Senator Toby Fitch. Fitch got 54.5%; Smith, 45.5%.

2023 -- ran for Mayor of Goldsboro and lost by six votes. That's the kind of loss that can actually energize and count as a kind of moral win.

Allison Jaslow

Beginning my research into Jaslow, I immediately encountered a very disturbing sentence in a press article (which I certainly hope is a misprint). This passage appeared in Reflector.com and prominently featured the Republican opinion that the Democrats are whistling Dixie if they think they can win NC-03, so I'm wary of a bias here:

Democrat Raymond Smith, a U.S. Army veteran and former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives from Goldsboro, filed to seek the seat on Monday. Then on Thursday, the party fielded Allison Jaslow, a former Army captain and Iraq War veteran who touted her military background in an announcement. Jaslow currently has Cary and and Washington, D.C., addresses, but her campaign said she will relocate to District 3.

"The party fielded Allison Jaslow"? Holy crap. If that's true, then someone important considers Smith a loser (perhaps based on his last two outings? or who knows what else?), for Jaslow is pretty much a star in her own right, a combat veteran with two tours in Iraq, a chief of staff on Capitol Hill to a congresswoman, served in the Obama administration as part of the White House communications team, and is currently CEO and spokeswoman for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). She's been on CNN and MSNBC panels numerous times and handles herself well. The fact that she doesn't -- or didn't -- have a residence in NC-03 also strongly suggests some third-party recruitment. Dunno, but I'm suspicious.

Jaslow is clearly a ball of fire, an accomplished political operative, and extremely confident of herself. Whatever the outcome in less than a month, I'm going to be following up.

I'm All About Bruce

 

Bruce Is Angry. So Are We All!

 

He wrote the song on Saturday, the same day they shot Alex Pretti 10 times, and released it yesterday.

Kyah Creekmore Wants To Beat Virginia Foxx. I Want To Help Him

 

I stumbled across the candidacy of Kyah Creekmore, the 24-year-old former Target re-stocker who wants to replace Virginia Foxx in the US House. I was looking at the sample ballot for the 5th Congressional District Democratic primary and noticed that veteran candidate Chuck Hubbard had someone running against him. Kyah Jordan Creekmore. Who?

I went looking. First, his website, which features some sharp, clear, urgent writing which impressed me (as few home-grown candidate websites do), and then I discovered his YouTube channel and his TikTok and his Instagram, on which he has posted many enhanced talks about what the hell has happened to this country. I made up my mind that this is the kind of intelligence and youth and commitment to working-class needs that I want as a candidate carrying the Democratic banner -- even if it's a hopeless cause against the likes of Virginia Anne Foxx. The message can still live and grow, and I hope Kyah Creekmore has a long life of activist engagement ahead of him.

I talked to Kyah on the phone, and the interview that follows became the result. I've also contributed a modest amount to his campaign. I'm a fan.

Check him out:

https://kyahcreekmore.org/

https://kyahcreekmore.org/

https://www.instagram.com/kyahforcongress

https://www.youtube.com/@KyahCreekmore

https://www.tiktok.com/@kyahforcongress

https://bsky.app/profile/kyahcreekmore.bsky.social

https://x.com/kyahcreekmore

Interview with Kyah Creekmore

Q. How old are you anyway?

I'm 24 years old. For context, I'm literally more than three times younger than Virginia Foxx, who is 82. That contrast matters, because this race is about whether Congress reflects the future or clings to the past.

Q. You talk a lot about economic realities that working-class Americans face every day, and I've heard you say that Democrats lose elections because "we don't have a message that speaks to lived experience." What is your message?

My message is simple: working people have been lied to and extracted from for far too long.

Our entire economic and political system is built by and for the wealthy and corporate interests. There is very little incentive to do right by the American people when there is so much personal and corporate enrichment to be gained instead. Meanwhile, working people are struggling just to survive.

A 22-year-old man named Cole Schmidt recently died because he had to choose between paying rent and buying his inhaler. He chose rent. Five days later, he had a fatal asthma attack. That is not an anomaly. That is the everyday reality for millions of people.

While Americans are dying over basic necessities, our government is distracted by absurd priorities, talking about annexing Greenland or spending trillions on endless military expansion instead of fixing problems here at home. I say enough.

We will take care of our people. We will focus on increasing life expectancy, lowering costs, and restoring dignity to working families. We will redirect massive public resources toward Americans, and we will hold accountable the politicians and corporations that have profited while costing people their lives. We deserve leadership willing to sacrifice comfort to make that happen.

Q. You have a sharp head for analyzing economic realities and a political system that has become warped by privilege. Did you have mentors who helped you realize who you are, helped you find your voice? Or what writers have most influenced your thinking?

I did not have traditional political mentors or a formal pathway into politics. Most of what I know, I learned in the last year by relentlessly asking questions about everything I did not have a good answer to.

Once I started taking the idea of running for office seriously, I became obsessive about understanding how systems actually work. Every day, during work and outside of it, I was asking questions, reading, watching long-form video essays and documentaries, digging into history, and connecting past decisions to present outcomes. I used every tool available to me, including modern technology, to interrogate power, economics, and governance.

Bernie Sanders helped early on by giving language to things I already felt about inequality and corporate power. Around the same time, I fell deep into Hamilton and became fascinated not just with the story, but with Alexander Hamilton himself. I was drawn to how elite writing, persuasion, and systems-level thinking allowed someone from an unlikely background to build structures no one initially believed in. That realization stuck with me. Systems do not change because they are inevitable. They change because someone understands them deeply enough to force a new reality.

My voice was not handed to me by an institution. It came from urgency, pattern recognition, and refusing to accept that suffering is normal or permanent. I learned because I needed to, and because people do not have the luxury of waiting decades for leaders to catch up.



Q. I've heard you say that none of us are "worried enough about this government." What do you mean by that?

What I mean is that our government almost never works for everyday people, and that failure has been normalized by design. People have been economically, mentally, and emotionally tapped out so thoroughly that they no longer believe engagement matters. They are taught to think this is just how life is supposed to feel.

Most people do not realize that nearly everything shaping their lives is political. Life does not simply “suck” by accident. Policies were written, often before people were even born, that determined who would struggle, who would thrive, and who would have no realistic way out. Education was stripped of systems literacy. History was whitewashed. Schools were redesigned to produce compliant workers instead of critical thinkers. Misinformation became routine.

At the same time, people are told constantly that there is no money for healthcare, housing, education, or wages, while billions can be sent overseas in an instant. They are brutalized economically and politically, then told to remain calm and grateful. Their rights are legislated away and they are instructed not to be upset. Laws are written to protect corporate profits, not human health or dignity.

Other countries have mass strikes when conditions become unbearable. The United States has not seen a true general strike in decades, not because it would not work, but because people were never taught that it does work. Knowledge is power, and that is exactly why schools are underfunded and teachers are underpaid. When people learn how power actually functions, they stop accepting suffering as inevitable.

So when I say we are not worried enough, I mean we have been conditioned not to be. Democracy only works when people understand the system well enough to demand accountability. My campaign exists to break that conditioning, raise urgency, and remind people that government either works for us, or it does not deserve our consent.

Q. Okay, but it's blunt reality time: You're young, you're inexperienced, you're a first-time candidate trying to break in at a high ballot level -- while the larger crowd of Democrats who vote in primaries in CD 5 don't know you from Adam's cat. And it's just a fact that "native smarts" are not necessarily a golden ticket in these United States. So have you thought through an Act 2 for yourself -- and for us who have become fans -- if you fail this time?

Act 2 is not a backup plan. It is part of the same mission.

I have thought seriously about that question, and the truth is that my work does not begin or end with one election.

What first pulled me into politics was not ambition, but curiosity. Through Hamilton, I realized how compelling and powerful American history actually is, and how intentionally inaccessible it has been made for most people. History is often whitewashed, sanitized, long-winded, or misleading by design. If it is boring, people do not read. If it is misleading, people do not learn. And if people do not learn, power gets to shape the narrative however it wants. What is the story of the fish if it's always told from the eyes of the shark?

That realization changed how I see everything. Our history rarely centers the voices of the oppressed, the working class, or those most harmed by policy decisions. Their pain, resistance, and perspective are erased. Before I fully entered this race, I was already working on a book series that walks through each era of American history in a way that is honest, engaging, and emotionally real, written for people who were never taught to love reading or history. My goal is to help build a model for how history can be taught in a way that creates critical thinkers instead of passive consumers.

Alongside that work, I plan to invest deeply in political education and content creation aimed at young people. Too many young Americans are disengaged not because they do not care, but because they were never given clear, truthful explanations of how power works or how change actually happens. I want to help people connect the past to the present and understand that their frustration is rational and actionable.

So if I lose this race, the work continues. Writing, educating, organizing, and building civic awareness are not consolation prizes. They are how movements are built. Whether through office or outside of it, my goal remains the same: to help this country heal from the damage caused by neglect, misinformation, and intentional ignorance, and to bring people back into democratic life with clarity and purpose.

If I win, I bring that work into Congress.

If I lose, I keep building it until the country catches up.

Students Sue for Restoration of Campus Polling Sites

 

Democracy Docket:

A group of North Carolina students sued Republican state officials Tuesday to restore early voting sites on three college campuses across the state, including at the United States’ largest historically Black college.

The lawsuit comes just over two weeks after the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) rejected the early voting sites in a 3-2 vote along party lines....

In the lawsuit [brought by the Elias Law Group] the students allege that the board’s removal of voting sites at Western Carolina University (WCU), the University of North Carolina–Greensboro (UNC-G), and North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T), the largest HBCU in the country, violated the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways.

They argue that the removal unduly burdens the right to vote in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments by forcing students, who often do not have reliable transportation, to travel long distances off campus in order to cast their ballot....

The elimination of on-campus sites violates the 26th Amendment by targeting student voters, particularly young Black voters, the lawsuit argues.

Taken together, the three campuses serve over 40,000 students, including thousands of Black students. NC A&T has a current enrollment of over 15,000 students.

“For many of these students, voting in college is their first opportunity to exercise the franchise — a milestone in their civic engagement and a connection to the generations of Black North Carolinians who fought for the right to vote,” the lawsuit reads.

The students, who also sued the Jackson County Board of Elections and many of its members, are seeking a court order to block the elimination of the on-campus early voting sites for the upcoming 2026 primary.

Since Republicans took control of the NCSBE in May, it has taken several steps to restrict voting in the state.

A Saturday Morning in the Days of Trump

 

Not Going Away

 

The thing in the closet is the reason for the Greenland Gambit, a major distraction.

Awareness

 

Assisted Living

 

Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.

The power of the less power starts with honesty.

Talarico, Shaking Things in Texas

 

I've written about Texan James Talarico, the young Christian progressive running as a Democrat in the primary for US Senate, the John Cornyn seat. Talarico charmed even Joe Rogan. Rogan said to him on air, "You ought to run for president."

So I got a kick out of the Talarico campaign making hay out of something Cornyn said that was supposed to ring alarm bells. It's an old campaign trick to take your opponent's negative jibe and make it a positive.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Is Gonna Crap in Watauga's Hat (and in every other county's hat in the state)

The "One Big Beautiful Bill" is one of the most significant unfunded mandates and one of the largest shifts of administrative and economic responsibility that our state and our counties have seen in generations.”

-- Kevin Leonard, executive director of the N.C. Association of County Commissioners

Paige Masten reminds us today what an "unfunded mandate" can do to state and local government.

One major piece of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress last year, made big changes to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), both of which are largely administered through local government, especially county commissions that control social and educational programs. The new law has Medicaid work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks. Masten: "Those requirements create new administrative burdens and challenges. The state will have to hire and train more staff, update technology and create data systems to handle the new processes." Counties too.

The bill also contains the largest-ever cut to SNAP funding, forcing states to bear more of the financial and administrative responsibilities of administering the program. It also will require states to pay a percentage of the SNAP benefit costs if they make too many payment errors. According to ProPublica, North Carolina will likely have to start paying out an estimated $420 million annually in SNAP benefits under its current error rate. That means that the share of the state budget required to fund SNAP could rise by 352% in North Carolina, an analysis from the Georgetown University Law Center estimates. 

 It’s a mess....

Masten on the obvious and most likely political fallout:

Politically, it’s going to be a particularly big mess for Republicans, who will bear responsibility for any potential disruptions to, or termination of, benefits. That’s primarily the case for congressional Republicans who voted for the legislation. Some Republican members of Congress have a higher percentage of constituents who rely on Medicaid and SNAP, so any loss of benefits could affect their districts deeply.

 

 

 

The Enemy Is Both Lethal and Stoopid

 

If you say that someone is "in the soup," you mean they are in trouble.

--Google A.I.

"We're in the soup... We've got to do 1914 over again."

--H. G. Wells, Holy Terror

Yeah. That's where we are. But those aren't white potatoes and carrots floating around us. Those are members of an armed, secret fucking army of men prone to violence with a broad license from the president, exhibiting total, even fanatical loyalty to Trump (and a notable hatred for the people they brutalize -- "Fucking lesbian!"). It's just a fact that Trump is willing to send that thug force into cities and states that have offended him, and when that frontal attack doesn't work to silence opposition, he sics the blond in the Department of Justice on his enemies.

Suspending the elections this year ain't just his little "sarcasm." It's an idea a-borning. He has the army to perfect it. It's all about the intimidation. They want us afraid. People like Renee Macklin Good aren't afraid. And she didn't see Jonathan Ross coming.

Trump's handmaids like the three on the State Board of Elections (Four Eggers et al.) are eager to help. Where there was a chance to snuff out Sunday voting for Black folks, Eggers & Co. seized it. They also completed Dallas Woodhouse's scheme to squelch the youth vote. Local Republican-controlled boards of elections in several university counties wanted to eliminate established on-campus Early Voting sites at places like Western Carolina, NC A&T, and UNC-Greensboro -- undoubtedly part of Dallas Woodhouse's private "training" of just the Republicans on local boards. Naturally, Eggers & Co. sided with the Republican majorities on Early Voting plans.

For every attempt to make his enemies afraid and cowed, Trump is always capable of stepping on his own dick, looking weak and pathetic and needy, like the little boy whose father never loved him -- so very devastatingly small.

Can he stop the tide that's building?  Maybe not, but they sure as hell can try to baffle the impact of that wave. The assault on Early Voting plans for the March primary is just one example. Think what they'll try to do to Early Voting plans as we approach November.

Their Gestapo cosplay isn't wearing well and has served best to make the people angrier and more determined to resist. The resistance will be our votes, but in the intervening eight months before we get there, we may be called on in other ways to put our bodies on the line, our breathing into the danger zone, and our rest and quiet to rack and ruin. I have my whistle.

Nomenclature

 

They're calling it "Mar-a-Lago Face," the consequences of too much exposure to the divine.

The Democratic Primary in Congressional Dist. 5

 

It both hurts my heart and thrills me a little to see bright young people without a political base nor financial backing file to run for high-level Federal offices that they probably can't win. I'm studying today on the example of Kyah Jordan Creekmore, running in a primary against second-time candidate Chuck Hubbard for the nomination to take on Virginia Foxx next fall.

Creekmore's polished website features some very motivational writing. He has a firm grasp on what has happened and continues to happen to our politics, our transformation under the oligarchy of billionaires into a permanently unequal administration of benefits and laws. The puny and feckless politicians who should rein in the oligarchs are too often wholly subservient to them. Kyah projects defiance and a penetrating intelligence with no patience for bullshit:

Most politicians — Democrat & Republican — won’t like me because their loyalty is to big money, not the voters who sent them to Congress. I will call them out. I will hold them accountable. They’re like roaches. They scatter when we shine the light on them. They’ll hate when their AIPAC checks and lobbyist donations go viral, when their votes against their own constituents get exposed for what they are. They posture as moral saviors, but the truth is they care more about campaign ads and donor checks than the people in their districts. That ends when we start shining a brighter light.

Kyah tells a tale of being born to a 15-year-old single mother who nevertheless, through remarkable grit and determination and holding down three jobs simultaneously, managed to get her first-born son through NC A&T.

We moved almost every two years. By graduation I had gone through nine schools. Some had broken trailers for classrooms. Others had shiny new facilities. That constant shifting showed me how unfairly opportunity is divided by nothing more than ZIP code.

He sees the same grinding inequities that (in fairness) motivated many a working-class MAGAite in past elections:

I worked corporate retail jobs that drained my time and dignity. They demanded everything while paying barely enough to scrape by. Those jobs did not just show me hardship. They showed me how a system designed to grind people down really works.

He is preaching solid working-class economics and the crying need for reform:

No one should wake up wondering if they can afford insulin, their child’s medicine, or rent.

No student should be learning in a trailer while politicians cut school budgets.

No worker should clock in full shifts and still need food stamps while CEOs brag about record profits.

Housing is not a luxury. It is a human right. Clean air and safe water are not bargaining chips for corporations. And poor families should not be blamed for conditions they did not create.

This is not abstract to me. It is lived reality.

Creekmore lives in Greensboro, where the most recent outrageous gerrymander of Foxx's district wrapped in some Black precincts in Guilford (with an awkward protuberance that looks like a satyr's broken hoof) -- not to help Foxx but to dilute the Black vote in CDs 6 and 9.

But Creekmore points out that the gerrymander raises the population of college students in Foxx's district to some 63,000 potential voters, not just at AppState but also at NC A&T and at UNC-Greensboro. I don't know about that statistic, and I also don't know if Kyah has the resources and help to actively campaign for those 63,000 before the primary.