Shared Without Context or Comment

 

 

Sunday Brunch

 

 

Jen Wiles & family

 

We wrote about Democrat Jen Wiles challenging seven-term Republican State Rep Donny Lambeth (HD 75, Forsyth), and characterized the contest as "Working Class v. Aristocrat," impressed as I was by the energetic campaign Wiles was running in spite of being a working mom with two small children and a demanding job (nurse practitioner), running in an impossible district for Dems. After Wiles surprised a bunch of prognosticators and beat Lambeth last Tuesday, Lambeth confessed to Edwardo Medina of the NYTimes that "the Republican House caucus had repeatedly told him that he was in a 'safe' district and that he did not need to spend 'any money' but rather give as much as he could to the caucus .... Unfortunately, I took their advice,” Lambeth said. “Mistake on my part.” He lost by about eight percentage points in a district he had won by nearly 14 points in 2024.

 

Footnote to Lost Glory:

"The most successful congressional stock trader of 2025 was Rep. Tim Moore, R-North Carolina, whose portfolio gained 52% that year, according to Quiver Quantitative." (USA Today)
 

Not Quite Gone Department (and he suddenly has opinions on a bunch of stuff): 

About to be ex-Sen. Thom Tillis, who all of a sudden can't keep his mouth shut, told Jake Tapper that the promotion of Stephen Miller to DJT's chief of staff was "the worst possible choice! ... It is a colossal mistake, and the last thing we need 72 hours after the a-whooping we got on Tuesday.

 

No to Chuck Schumer

Tuesday brings us the ineffable prospect of having Chuck Schumer as Majority Leader of the new Senate. (I'll leave Hakeem Jeffries and the U.S. House to carp about for another day.)

Schumer has headed the Senate Democratic caucus since 2017. On November 4, he was already telling reporters that his reelection as Majority Leader was assured. But five newly elected Democratic senators have publicly said they will oppose him: Adam Hamilton of Kansas, Juliana Stratton of Illinois, Troy Jackson of Maine, Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan. Five votes won't be enough to unseat Schumer, but they do make the prospect of a challenge more than idle speculation.

El-Sayed has endorsed Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland for the job. Van Hollen, however, has said he isn't seeking it; he's considering a run for president in 2028. (Why?) Someone on Twitter just moments ago floated Elizabeth Warren, and we know that's going nowhere—though Warren's guts, stamina, and economic righteousness would be fabulous. But dealing with that bunch of male egos...

Whoever might emerge as Schumer's rival, the returning members of the Democratic caucus should remember March 2025, when Schumer decided that the Republican-written government funding bill—with its assault on federal agencies and public services—was preferable to a government shutdown. So the Continuing Resolution passed the Senate 54–46 with Schumer and a handful of other Dems voting for it. It kept the government open only through September 30. Schumer had surrendered his leverage against MAGA without first testing how much pressure Republicans could withstand. Grassroots Democrats were furious. Progressives were especially vocal about Schumer's timidity, his paralyzing caution (he feared Democrats would be blamed for a shutdown), and what they saw as his fecklessness in the face of MAGA's accelerating cruelty.

As September 30 approached, Schumer seemed chastened on the whole subject of confrontation. He took the unmovable position that the next Continuing Resolution must include an extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. John Thune, the Republican Majority Leader, and his caucus said no. The government shut down on October 1, 2025.

Schumer and the Democrats held out for weeks (some 42 days). Then, on November 9, eight senators broke with Schumer and voted to advance a compromise negotiated with Republican leadership: seven Democrats—Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, and John Fetterman—and Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. The agreement contained several concessions, though its most consequential promise would prove hollow:

• It reopened the government and funded most federal agencies through January 30, 2026.

• It provided full-year funding through September 2026 for veterans' services and agriculture, including SNAP and WIC.

• It reversed shutdown-related federal layoffs and blocked further mass layoffs through the end of January.

• And it promised a Senate vote in December on extending the enhanced ACA subsidies.

That last promise was a poison pill. Everyone knew how a vote in a Republican-controlled Senate was likely to go. Sure enough, on December 11, 2025, the Senate failed to advance a clean, three-year extension of the enhanced ACA subsidies. The measure received 51 votes—four of them Republican—but fell nine votes short of the 60 needed to overcome the procedural hurdle. The subsidies subsequently expired.

Schumer voted against the compromise his eight colleagues had agreed to advance. He chose to stand firm on a foundation of silt. And here's the thing about knowing when to hold 'em: in the March crisis, Schumer avoided confrontation before testing John Thune's cojones; in November, he went down with the ship—only it was a ship already abandoned by its crew, including his first mate, Dick Durbin. (The incoming Democratic majorities in both chambers say restoring the enhanced ACA subsidies will be an early priority in the new Congress.) 

Schumer seems not to understand the point of strategic confrontation. I don't know when he's likely to give away the store, or when he'll court irrelevance because he hasn't gotten his own people behind him.

 

They Didn't See Her Coming: Lakesha Womack Whips Tim Moore, That Master of Self-Dealing

 

Tim Moore

 

Tim Moore was Republican Speaker of the NC House and in that powerful position managed to have the new Congressional District 14 drawn just for him in 2024, which he won that year. Going into yesterday, he was trailing a long tail of questionable corruption:

1. One of his earliest documented self-dealings involved obtaining $62,000 in public economic-development grants to renovate a historic bank building in Kings Mountain that he owned and intended to use for his private law practice. 

2. Moore used his legislative influence to advance legislation benefiting 751 South, a controversial 166-acre development near Jordan Lake in Durham County. The legislation overrode Durham officials' opposition to extending water and sewer service to the project. Subsequently, developer Neal Hunter, a financial backer of the project, hired Moore for legal work. Hunter's pharmaceutical startup, KNOW Bio, paid Moore $40,000 in legal fees in 2017. 

3. Moore received $10,000 from the North Carolina Bail Agents Association for legal work involving a dispute with a competing organization that wanted to provide training for bail agents. Shortly afterward, legislation surfaced that would give the association exclusive authority to provide that training. The legislation passed, but state judges subsequently threw it out as unconstitutional.

4. An investigation by WRAL found that Jennifer Gray, who was then Moore's fiancée, was the only applicant considered for two state government positions after Moore's office forwarded her résumé.

5. In 2013, Moore's company, Southeast Land Holdings, purchased an abandoned poultry-processing plant in Siler City for $85,000. The property had environmental problems involving underground fuel-storage tanks. State environmental regulators issued a violation notice in 2014. According to emails obtained by a government watchdog, Moore intervened with the Department of Environmental Quality to obtain additional time to resolve the violations. The agency granted the extension. The company subsequently sold the property in September 2016 for $550,000, more than six times its purchase price.

6. The watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability examined campaign-finance disclosures and found at least $69,300 in payments from Friends of Tim Moore to Tim Moore Attorney at Law. The payments were described as campaign-office rent, but the building was also Moore's private law office, which he personally owned.

7. Moore wanted his former chief of staff and close political associate, Clayton Somers, to become chancellor of UNC Wilmington. Holly Grange, a Republican former state representative and member of the university's Board of Trustees, supported a different candidate. After Grange resisted Moore's preferred choice, legislation was introduced removing her from the board before her term expired.

8. During his first year as a new Congressman, a November 2025 Charlotte Observer investigation reported that:

• Moore made more than 150 stock trades by mid-September 2025.

• He failed to disclose certain trades within the STOCK Act's 45-day reporting deadline.

• He purchased Intel stock shortly before the Trump administration announced a major federal investment in the company.

• He bought shares in health-insurance companies Centene and UnitedHealth after voting for legislation that substantially cut Medicaid spending.

  
  

Who do we thank for ridding us of this chud? 

Womack

 

LaKesha Womack is a Charlotte-based consultant, entrepreneur, community organizer and ordained minister who was born and raised in Evergreen, Alabama. She attended the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1999 with a degree in political science. Her campaign biography says she is pursuing a Master of Legal Studies at Vanderbilt Law School. Womack founded the Womack Consulting Group, which advises small businesses, nonprofit organizations, faith-based groups and community leaders on strategy, leadership, and organizational development. 

Shortly before the election, Tim Moore publicized that Womack had a felony charge from 2019 against her for failure to return a rental car valued at more than $20,000, a Class H felony in North Carolina. A criminal summons was issued January 14, 2020, and returned unserved in February 2020. It was reissued and served on Womack on October 11, 2026, in Polk County. Womack has acknowledged that she did not return the rental car on time. She has said that she was homeless with her young son after a medical emergency, had no stable address at which to receive the summons, and believed she had resolved the rental-car problem. She also acknowledged owing the rental company money.

They Didn't See Him Coming: New NC Congressman Paul Barringer

 

Barringer

First-term Republican Congressman Brad Knott was also defeated last night by first-time candidate Paul Barringer. The winning margin was over 7,600 votes. Knott earned his law degree from Wake Forest University in 2012. During law school, he clerked for North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby and subsequently worked briefly in the administration of Republican Governor Pat McCrory. He also got his DJT endorsement in 2024 and was probably settling into what he imagined would be a safe and secure seat to last him into his dotage.

Paul Barringer, a healthcare consultant, attorney, entrepreneur, and Lee County tree farmer, grew up on a farm and attended local public schools before graduating from Episcopal High School in 1985. He earned a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Davidson College in 1990, a law degree from the University of North Carolina in 1995, and a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, also in 1995. He has spent more than 20 years working at the intersection of healthcare, law, technology, and government, with particular emphasis on improving Medicaid and other public programs. His professional experience includes work as a healthcare attorney, consultant, entrepreneur, and business executive. He also manages his family's timberland, developed a Made-in-America clothing brand called Mill & Mountain, and provides pro bono legal representation to people with disabilities seeking Social Security benefits. An Eagle Scout and Appalachian Trail thru-hiker, Barringer has also been active in prison literacy and reentry efforts. In his campaign, he emphasized healthcare affordability, fiscal responsibility, government accountability, public education, and the need for an independent Congress willing to exercise its constitutional oversight responsibilities. He presented himself as a practical problem-solver interested in bipartisan cooperation rather than partisan confrontation. Barringer lives in Lee County with his wife, Marcea, and their two children.

They Didn't See Him Coming: New NC Congressman Cyril Jefferson

 

Among the total surprises yesterday was Democrat Cyril Jefferson's 6,000+ vote margin over first-term Republican Congressman Addison McDowell in the 6th Congressional District. McDowell could brag about his hunting jaunts with Donald Trump Jr., and his endorsement in '24 by DJT, but little else.

Cyril Jefferson, the 34-year-old Democratic mayor of High Point (let's praise young North Carolina mayors!), earned his bachelor's degree from North Carolina A&T and "has built a career at the intersection of education, business, and public service." He began his political career with his election to the High Point City Council in 2019 and was elected mayor in 2023, becoming both the youngest person and the first Black man to hold that office. Before entering government, he worked as an educator, youth-development consultant, and education policy fellow. He also founded Change Often, a social innovation firm focused on addressing social and economic problems through collaborative initiatives; the firm was subsequently acquired by Stratagon, where Jefferson became director of the higher-education practice. As mayor, he emphasized affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization, small-business development, and efforts to combat food insecurity. Among his initiatives was a $40 million Housing Impact Fund, reportedly leveraging $38 million in private investment against $2 million in public funding. He has also been involved with the United Way, the NAACP, the High Point Chamber of Commerce, and numerous other civic organizations. Married to Raven Jefferson, he is the father of two sons. 

His life just changed dramatically. 

 

Rout

 

Charlie Wallin

Trying to get my sleep-deprived head around the enormity of the ass-whupping the GOP suffered in North Carolina yesterday -- let alone the whole nation. It's going to take days to fully appreciate that Democrats (or progressive independents) swept 71 of 120 seats in the NC House, including Dist. 93, where Charlie Wallin edged out Republican Ray Pickett by 228 votes. There are several hundred provisionals in that race yet to be cured. Dems also conclusively broke the Republican super-majority in the NC Senate.

OMG ... Virginia Foxx! Are you kidding me? Just 99 votes separate apparent winner Chuck Hubbard, so there'll no doubt be a recount. But ... still! Virginia Foxx! Her battle axe broke its handle.

Equally delicious was Tim Moore's defeat in the 14th CD, the district he drew for himself. Was electoral comeuppance ever more devastating? A long grifting history brought to a sudden end.

Ojeda over Richard Hudson was sweet, but who even imagined the defeat of 1st-termers Brad Knott, Addison McDowell, and Tim Moore? Truly astounding. Thank you, North Carolina voters!

  

Democrats Better Find a Star To Run Against Him!

 

O hell no! Say goodbye to Chief Justice Paul Newby in 2028, just to have the junior Berger in his place?

 

WRAL -- North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr., a Republican, has filed paperwork indicating that he is preparing to run for chief justice in 2028.

An amended statement of organization received by the North Carolina State Board of Elections on Oct. 22 shows Berger changed the office sought by his campaign committee, Berger for Justice, to "Chief Justice - NC Supreme Crt."

Berger, who was elected to the Supreme Court in 2020 and took office in 2021, announced in September that he wouldn't seek reelection to his current associate justice seat when his term ends in 2028, leaving open the possibility of running for chief justice instead.

The chief justice position is currently held by Republican Paul Newby, whose term also expires in 2028. Mandatory age limits for North Carolina judges and justices would prevent Newby from completing another eight-year term.

I Watched the Real Thing, and This Satire Seems Right

 

 

Yesterday, outside Trump International Hotel in NYC

 

 

An Upset Brewing in the 5th CD?

  

The Cook Political Report has moved NC-05 from Solid Republican to Likely Republican.

• The district's Cook Partisan Voting Index is R+9.

• Virginia Foxx won her last general election with 59.5%.

• Democrat Chuck Hubbard has raised approximately $863,000, according to the October 14 FEC reporting.

• Foxx had raised approximately $2.19 million by that reporting date.

Cook's rating categories mean:

• Solid Republican: Not considered competitive.

• Likely Republican: Still a clear Republican advantage, but an upset is possible.

   

Dirty Tricks in the Alaska Senate Race

 

“Mistah Kurtz—he dead.” 

--Joseph Conrad, Part III,  Heart of Darkness

 

The two Dan Sullivans: The Senator on the right

 

Kellen Browning's outing of the Peltola campaign this morning in the NYTimes is first-rate reporting. The Alaska Senate candidate's top aides, working with "a mysterious Midwestern operative," apparently participated in a scheme to get someone else named Dan Sullivan on the ballot to confuse voters and draw votes away from the actual Dan Sullivan, Republican Senator (though on the Alaska ballot, the sitting senator is identified as "Incumbent").

See, Alaska has a system of allowing the top four finishers in the state's primary -- no matter their party -- to be on the fall ballot, because they also use ranked-choice tabulations. There are actually three registered Republicans to choose from for Alaska's US Senator on November 3rd, along with one Democrat, Mary Peltola. It appears that the mysterious political operative from Ohio, who used the state's "buckeye" nickname in his email address, was responsible pretty much single-handedly for recruiting both of the other Republicans. It's obvious that splitting the Republican vote among several candidates -- two of them with the same name -- can only help Mary Peltola, and the latest odds right now are on Peltola's winning this race.

The mysterious operative has a name, Jerid Kurtz, and an employment history. He was once upon a time former Congressman Tim Ryan's press secretary. He then went to work for the Ohio Democratic Party as communications direction, and he eventually went professional as co-owner of Wingspan Strategies, a political consulting firm whose Google presence seems to have vanished. Kurtz comes off in Browning's reporting as not only the idea man for packing the ballot with multiple Dan Sullivans but also the on-the-ground chameleon seducer who sought face-to-face meetings in brew pubs with the chumps being targeted for recruitment. Kurtz used aliases when he approached prospects (to one man he was "Zane"). Kurtz was charming and persuasive, encouraging a potential recruit into thinking they were special and moreover needed. He also promised valuable (though unspecified) campaign support, and there was a Peltola-allied super PAC that was willing to throw a little money toward boosting name-recognition for anyone who might divide the Republican vote. For his very successful efforts -- until, that is, this all got reported -- Kurtz brought home some $87,000 for Wingspan Strategies. The Peltola-allied super-PAC 49th State PAC paid the bill. 

Kurtz looks like a late-arriving Nixonian dirty-trickster. Either this scandal will kill his future as a political strategist or it will catapult him into a higher bracket. These days ambitious people enjoy skillful underhandedness. The scandal of course taints Mary Pertola and is upsetting her applecart just 5 days from the election. Talk about October surprises. Also looking bad in all this is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which pushed Kurtz on the Pertola people. Elisa Rios, Peltola's campaign manager at the time this scheme went into effect, was fired in August. She spilled all the beans about Jerid Kurtz and the ballot-stuffing to reporter Browning -- seeking revenge, I suspect, for her firing. She's also Browning's chief source about Mr. Kurtz, so her characterizations of him as a hustler and performative braggart might ought to be taken with a salt chaser.

Browning reports that not only did Kurtz recruit two other Republicans to run in the primary, he also helped lean on another Democrat, David Leslie, who had finished in the top four in the primary and would presumably dilute the Peltola vote: "That Democrat, a progressive named David Leslie, quickly faced calls from his party to withdraw. One of those callers, Mr. Leslie said in an interview, was Jerid Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz met with Mr. Leslie in person, at a cafe in Fairbanks, according to a person familiar with the exchange. Mr. Leslie soon agreed to drop out." 

When Leslie dropped out, that left room for the second Republican, Gerald Heikes, who had finished fifth in the primary. Heikes, a drywall contractor, told Browning that he was recruited to run “by a guy from the Midwest.” Heikes had already thought about running for office and evidently thought the call from the mysterious guy from the Midwest was really the voice of God, calling him to service. Kurtz knew how to pick his victims.

 

Seems Like a Longshot. But Worth a Shot

October 20, 2026: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and the Nevada State Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the Trump administration from threatening state election officials with criminal prosecution during the 2026 midterm elections. The plaintiffs assert that the Trump Administration is supporting an “effort to unlawfully federalize elections” and threatening state officials that “they will all go to jail for a long period of time” if they do not comply with the Administration’s demands. Plaintiffs allege that intimidating state officials violates Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs ask the court to bar the administration from threatening election officials and from directing states to remove registered voters from the rolls, withhold their ballots or refuse to count ballots they have cast. 

Oct. 23, 2026: Plaintiffs filed a motion for expedited discovery.

Oct. 26, 2026 (yesterday): Plaintiffs filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. 

COMING UP NEXT 

Oct. 29, 2026 (Thursday this week): The court will hold a hearing on the plaintiffs motion for expedited discovery.

The Elias Group is representing the Democratic plaintiffs. 

A Stunning Reminder That This Bunch Always Gets Away With It

 

WASHINGTON Sept. 2025 -- The Justice Department shut down its probe into allegations that Trump border czar Tom Homan accepted a Cava restaurant bag containing a $50,000 cash bribe last year.

The alleged payment to Homan was made as part of a sting by undercover FBI agents during the Biden administration, with the G-men presenting themselves as businessmen seeking border security contracts with the federal government. Homan allegedly promised he'd use his influence on their behalf.

In dismissing the investigation, the DOJ reasoned that since Tom Homan wasn't a Federal employee at the time, no foul, no problem.

Maybe next Tuesday will slow down the open corruption. It won't stop it, at least not for two more years, but slowing it down would be welcome. Hauling a few people in for a dressing down in Congress. For what good that will do, since DJT owns the Justice Department as his dual hit squad/shield from accountability, and will most likely continue to own it until January 20, 2029, I don't look for a lot of actual justice calling the most egregious malefactors to account, like Jared Kushner, the son-in-law who became an international negotiator for "peace" and who, just incidentally, has certainly been taking a piece: Some of his financial relationships are documented, notably the $2 billion Saudi investment in Kushner's private equity firm after he left the White House. The new book by Matthew Cole (Princes and Thieves) alleges that foreign leaders -- mostly potentates in the Middle East -- provided billions through secret accounts for Kushner's personal use and to influence diplomacy. 

Tom Homan was on the make. Kushner's been on the make. They're all on the make. It's grotesque. It's got to end.

Signs of the (End?) Times

 

Balkcom

 

The Trump super PAC No Going Back, an offshoot of Trump’s Super PAC, MAGA Inc., created to help Republicans retain the majority in the U.S. House, has canceled more than $1 million in planned television ads supporting Jennifer Balkcom, the party’s candidate in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. The cancellations represent about $918,200 in lost advertising revenue for WLOS and at least $155,150 for WYFF (in Greenville, SC).

The move indicates Balkcom is now dependent largely on her own ability to raise money and attract attention through campaign events and media interaction.

[Asheville Watchdog]

Laurie Buckhout, the Republican nominee for North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, is backed by Leading The Future, a super PAC funded in part by AI industry leaders, which has committed $140 million to Buckhout's win. Through its affiliate, American Mission, Leading The Future spent $500,000 supporting Buckhout during the Republican primary.

Buckhout is trying to unseat Democrat Don Davis in a district recently gerrymandered (again!) to make it easier to beat Davis. Her campaign has been limping, especially after it came out that Kalshi, an online prediction market, suspended her for placing bets on her own election campaign.

[Cardinal & Pine]  

 

Republican Rep. Richard Hudson has since 2024 led the National Republican Congressional Committee, responsible for finding sure-fire winners to run in open districts. In a real sense, Hudson is a head-hunter. Suddenly, the hunter has become the hunted. The NRCC which Hudson oversees recently began funding ads to help Hudson, who won six of his seven previous races by double digits. This year, Hudson’s Democratic challenger is Richard Ojeda, who in at least one poll had pulled within 4 points of Hudson.

[WRAL]

Hudson began using a new campaign photo, dressed in hunting camo and cradling a rifle. Some wag on X commented about the sharp crease in those khakis, and Democrat Ojeda mocked the image, saying: “Richard Hudson is sweating through his off-the-rack camo.” Ojeda concluded that Hudson had looked at the polls, panicked, and “grabbed the company credit card” -- that is, ordered the group he chairs to spend money on him.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early Voting Update of Particular Interest

 

This morning, Carolina Forward tweeted: "Democrats continue to dominate early voting, with a particular strength among low-propensity voters."

The Unaffiliated vote in Watauga is up to 44% of the total, the highest turnout ever in any mid-term since 2018 and including 2018. Right now, Democrats account for 36% of the total vote so far. Republicans, 20%. Carolina Forward's Turnout Tracker. 

Tomorrow dawns the first day of the last week of early voting. Don't nap.

 

Hype for Bodnar in Montana

 

I don't have a lot of connection to Montana, so I haven't been following the US Senate race out there ... until today. There's an Independent in the race, Seth Bodnar, who's coming on strong and pulling even with the Republican candidate in at least one poll. There's also a Democrat on the ballot, polling at about 17% (more on her below). Here's a Bodnar campaign video that I especially liked:

 

 

Seth Bodnar is a Green Beret, former GE Transportation executive ("chief digital officer"), president of the University of Montana for the last eight years -- and a very sudden political rising star. I've examined his issues page -- surprisingly extensive and often specific on details -- and he rarely deviates from what I'd call progressive political ideology. He's not a liberal on guns, but consider the state he's seeking to represent: "He opposes a federal assault weapons ban, a new universal background check mandate, and a federal red-flag law," according to his website. He's pro-choice and a pretty fierce defender of Montana's public lands, vowing to oppose any sale or transfer of any acerage. He also -- along with the Republican in the race -- takes a hardline about new data centers.

That Republican in the race, Kurt Alme, is a Harvard-trained attorney and longtime veteran of government work, directing Montana's Department of Revenue, serving as Montana's U.S. attorney under DJT, and working as budget director under Gov. Greg Gianforte. The seat is open because its current inhabitant, Sen. Steve Daines, announced he wouldn't be running for another term literally at the last minute of the open filing period, and Kurt Alme walked in, like, a minute later and filed for the seat. Clearly, they had hatched a plan for the hand-off. Alme has the blessing of the GOP establishment in Montana, and the resentment of some rival camps in the party who were blindsided by Daines's sudden retirement.

The Democratic candidate, Alani Bankhead, served 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. Her assignments included counterintelligence and human-intelligence operations, work in Iraq, and protective security for senior Pentagon officials. After military service, she became a life coach. Running in the Democratic primary against four others last June, Bankhead surprised the field, getting 46% of the vote. The political action committee Progressive Vet spent millions promoting her candidacy. They stopped supporting her after the primary, perhaps flummoxed by not one but now two distinguished veterans running for the same office. And the DCCC also announced it wouldn't be sending any support, and prominent Democrats, like Sen. John Tester, began endorsing Bodnar as the more viable candidate, and it seems likely that Sen. Chuck Schumer was part of the pressure campaign on Bankhead. In an October 9 Washington Post op-ed, Bankhead squealed on a sitting but unnamed Democratic senator who had allegedly offered her a job, which she presumed was conditional on leaving the race. Then about a week later, in an interview for Montana's PBS, Bankhead said she had been offered a made-up position at the DNC -- again, a particular job that would require her giving up her Senate campaign. The DNC denied any such offer. And Bankhead has steadfastly refused to end her campaign, while polling puts her consistently under 20% support.

I have my doubts that Bodnar can win with Bankhead splitting the Democratic vote. 

Friday in Salisbury

 

Students at Livingstone College in Salisbury, an historically Black college founded way back in 1879, chose yesterday, Friday, for their show of strength and civic duty. Photo lifted from the Rowan County Democratic Party Facebook feed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second NC A&T March to Early Voting

 

NC A&T students -- denied an early voting site on campus which they had in 2024 -- staged a second march to the polls yesterday in Greensboro, and we hear it may have been even bigger than the first one.

Photo Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lynn Bonner reported that the students organized the 40-minute walk from campus to an early voting site, "partly to do their civic duty and partly as a show of strength." Here's video shot by Bonner.

 

The Clown Show and the Resistance

I want to meet the Republican political strategist who got all the important people in Washington together a few weeks ago and said okay everybody we're just going to send him out there to hallucinate in public, tell racist jokes, and talk about how hot he thinks certain guys are.

--Seth Abramson 

 

 

The greatest recent moment of self-owning came yesterday in the White House. With JD Vance sitting beside him, the president, found guilty 34 times of falsifying business records, announced that he was launching something called the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program. Mermaidmama had fun with that: 

 

 

Notable statistic from first days of early voting: Turnout among unaffiliated voters has risen even faster than their share of the electorate. In raw numbers, their votes increased 88%, from 133,683 in the first five days of 2022 early voting to 251,891 this year, according to the Center for NC Politics substack run by Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer. 

(That's wave material right there. That's what that is.)

 

Turnout for Early Voting in Watauga Remains Strong on Day 3

 

Some 1,229 votes were added yesterday, Monday, Oct. 19, to the Watauga County early vote total. Though a little below the turnout on opening day last Thursday, those high numbers have been holding steady since last Friday. 

Below -- Turnout in Watauga County by party on Monday, October 19 (from the John Locke Foundation vote tracker). Also valuable and brand new, the Carolina Forward Turnout Tracker, more inventive and insightful than John Locke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Youth Are Voting in NC; So Are the Medicare Crowd

 

This is the John Locke Foundation's Vote Tracker chart for turnout by age during the first two days of early voting in Watauga County. I note the spike in the youth vote, the steady high numbers among the elderly -- with between them, the big depression of the 30- and 40-somethings:

 

1st Day of Early Voting

 

Huge turnout on the first day of early voting Thursday! More than 201,000 voters cast ballots statewide, up 47% from the same day in 2022. 

In Watauga, Democrats and Unaffiliateds tied on first-day turnout, 42% apiece. Republicans showed up as 15%, down almost 13 points over first-day EV 2022. Dead man walking.

This was the scene in Greensboro Thursday, as students from North Carolina A&T marched from campus to vote downtown. They marched an hour. Because the local elections board decided to remove their polling place from campus. 

It Seems to be Going Well

 

First day of early voting, Chatham County.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tanks for the Memories

 

This is brilliant satire, because Mermaidmamamaggie is using all the actual words spoken by DJT's new Press Secretary, Katie Zacharia. Plus Zacharia has also been outed for claiming (falsely) that she was an attorney.

The Romance and the Reality of This Vote

 

A recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that among those who say they are extremely motivated to vote, Democrats lead 59 percent to 35 percent. 

--WashPost, Oct. 12, 2026 

 

AppState's Student Union during early voting

 

Counting today, just three more days before I get to mark a ballot. Man, it's been a lonnnng time coming! A kind of dark night of the soul. Won't voting feel like a cleanse?

Haven't these two years exhausted all our emotional reserves? Our energy for being outraged -- angry at open corruption, at defiance of normal ethics, at the gleefulness of low-lifes while they loot our good faith along with the public purse -- it's drained our very juice. 

The fount of all that head-slapping graft and greed flows directly from DJT, who has enriched himself reportedly many times over in just these two years. His lessons in amoral taking of advantage are of course trickling down to mere pikers at pilfering. Like Don Junior's former girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Solicited a bribe. The intended bribee confessed everything. Kimberly may lose her ambassadorship but otherwise get away with it. Just watch. 

Every new revelation of self-dealing and cronyism is like ethical dark matter, sucking at our very will to scream into the wind. The two oldest Trump boys, Don Jr. and Eric, happen to have stakes in more than a dozen defense-technology companies that just happen to be getting very lucrative government contracts. That's fucking outrageous, but it gets by us now without a whimper. ProPublica documented another "investment" of Don Junior's in a North Carolina company, Vulcan Elements. Someone at the White House and in the name of the White House (whoever that may have been; looking at you, Peter Navarro) intervened to get Vulcan Elements to the front of the line and on a fast track for a $620 million Pentagon loan. 

Not that our vote on Thursday will punish, or even stop, the corruption of the public trust. You have to remember that John Roberts and those black-robed guys said DJT couldn't be prosecuted for crimes. And anyhow, the prez already has Todd Blanche running Justice, both another shield and a willing hit-man. Who's gonna charge the con-man, or any of his spawn, for the next two years? Maybe Congress, but only if Dems take the Senate too. There has to be a conviction in the Senate. 

Even after he's out of the White House (but probably not out of our consciousness -- he'll be like a brain-worm, painful and insistent), it will take years -- some wise people predict decades -- to rebuild what has been lost from the modern American social contract. My vote on Thursday will be a hobbling step toward stopping the momentum. I'll be satisfied with stopping the momentum.

 

Jennifer Balkcom and Old Mountain Democrats

 

The Spectrum TV interview with newly minted congressional candidate Jennifer Balkcom in the 11th District of NC will go down as one of the most amazing political face-plants I've ever seen. The interview was filmed in September, shortly after Congressman Chuck Edwards got censured in the House and resigned. Balkcom had just been picked for the ballot in his place. She was clearly unprepared. And she's been widely mocked for her performance. But I'm not interested in mocking her.  

The interviewer asks her, Didn't you use to be a Democrat? Yes, she readily admits. Her grandfather was a big influence, and her whole family were Democrats. "But why did you change?" Here she stumbles a moment and comes up with a parable her grandfather taught her. I'm paraphrasing: "My grandfather always said Democrats were like the donkey that pulled the plow, did the hard work to help others, and I believed all my life that Democrats were people who helped other people. But that changed." What? She leaves us hanging. When did Democrats stop trying to help others? In fact, aren't they usually accused of spending too much on the poor?

She was deflecting. And who knows what really changed her positive evaluation of Democrats as the-donkeys-pulling-the-plow? For a lot of old mountain Democrats, the national party got caricatured as crazy for gays, snooty to God, and conspiring about guns. If the old bloodlines of mountain Democrats go all the way back to the Civil War, you might expect some echoes of racism. She admits that it was in 2016 that she started studying various topics hard and decided that she wanted to become a Republican -- without noticing that was coincidentally the same year as the advent of DJT.

She was careful to say that her particular family was middle-class mountain and that she had always believed it her duty to help people in need. On two obviously favorite topics, Hurricane Helene relief and the need for better health-care services in Western NC, she sounded like a cautious Democrat. More money, more aid, more help. She admits that the Federal response -- that would be the Federal response under DJT -- had not been good, and that the state government, which she's been a part of for two terms in the NC House, had done "more than it was required to do" -- though much more had to be done, more money had to be spent. Rural hospitals were closing, and she well knows the pain and the panic of being an hour or more from medical help. She's not a deep thinker. She would never connect DJT's Big Beautiful Bill with the crisis in North Carolina's rural health care, nor notice that his administration has put FEMA in shut-down mode and is forcing more of the expenses of national disaster-recovery onto individual states.

But the DNA is still in her to pull the plow, I think. She's just aligned herself with the wrong horses.

She deflects through the entire interview. When asked what she would do to ease the prices of everything, she quickly punted: "I have a couple of ideas, but I'm not ready to say which one I like best." There were a whole host of things she wasn't prepared to talk about. "It depends" became a kind of hilarious, repeated dodge. Along with "I'm kind of a details-oriented girl, and until I know all the details I can't tell you if I'm in favor of a policy position or not" -- said in an interview that is almost completely devoid of details.

 

NCGOP Puts Out Halloween Candy for a Sugar High

 

Burger/Hall made sure that three sugary treats would be at the bottom of the North Carolina ballot this November 3rd, three proposed constitutional amendments: 

1. Voter ID Requirement

2. State's Maximum Income Tax Rate, lowered to 3.5%

3. Changes to Property Tax Laws (specific details still being "worked out"). This one really is a pig in a poke.

"Those should stir up our base," thought Burger/Hall. And maybe they're right. Maybe all Republicans, plus any number of Unaffiliateds and some Democrats, will fall right in line with the march off the blind bluff of amendments 2 and 3. Those items have a hidden stinger in their tails, because when you continue to make life as cushy as possible for the wealthy by starving state services, you just make local counties and cities shoulder the burden of taking care of the public's welfare. And the education of their children. And that is probably the ultimate point of the three amendments: The more the weight of government bears down on mainly Democratic cities and a few Democratic counties -- the better! Let the liberals who cluster together pay more taxes, not us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karma Knock--Knock-Knocking on Buck Newton's Door

 

Senate District 4 -- Wayne, Wilson, and Greene counties -- is rated by the Civitas Partisan index as R+3, which is exactly in the sweet spot for a flip if there's a genuine wave. Buck Newton, the Republican incumbent, made something of a name for himself, especially during the whole "Bathroom Bill" uproar, as an obnoxious anti-gay crusader. Jess (Jessica) Rivera, an ex-Marine and lesbian barber shop owner who's married to a woman, is putting up quite a fight to oust Buck Newton. I got alerted to her just this morning by Blair Reeves, whose Carolina Forward operation has endorsed her. If Blair is enthusiastic, then I'm enthusiastic. (Rivera has earned a raft of other progressive endorsements.)

Newton famously gave up his safe NC Senate seat in 2016 to run against Josh Stein for Attorney General. Newton earned a good deal of negative attention that year by yelling "fight to keep North Carolina straight" at a campaign rally, and he has consistently seemed to equate any species of queer with "predator," fanning fear of The Gay in rural precincts. Stein beat him for A.G. by a hair. Newton regained the Dist. 4 Senate seat six years later, in 2022, and has held it since. He won reelection in 2024 by 10 points over his Democratic opponent. 

 

 

Newton has been indelibly defined for me by a post on a Facebook thread in 2016, written by someone who was a fellow student with Newton in AppState's political science program:

I knew Buck Newton when he was in college. He was always very opinionated, angry, looked down on others, always saw things in simple terms, always quick to jump to conclusions, always claimed things were "common sense". He was always very judgmental and used bully tactics on others to make his opinion appear correct. He was always full of confidence based on simple, black and white views of the world. Several of us thought he was an idiot because of his lack of ability to see and understand what was beneath the surface of issues. This bill/law [HB2] sounds exactly like something college-kid Buck would do. Apparently, he has not grown much. There are many smart and wise people in North Carolina who see God's creation as it truly is - a very complicated marvel, so it is absolutely shocking that such a person of low understanding could rise to such power based on such a superficial foundation. Shocking. At one point in time, the earth being flat was "common sense", blacks being inferior was "common sense"... And, here we are... again.

 

Jess Rivera

 

Now comes in 2026, Jess Rivera, the 40-something ex-Marine with combat experience, to potentially clean Newton's clock. Jess Rivera, by all appearances (and you know how shallow I am!) looks to be running a truly muscular campaign. On her website she identifies herself as the oldest of six kids from a Mexican-Irish, working-class family. She says she had to go to work at 13 to bring home money to the family. At 15, their home was foreclosed on. At 17, Rivera joined the Marines:

It wasn’t just a decision to serve, it was a decision to survive. The Corps gave me structure, discipline, and a way to carry myself through the world with purpose. It also taught me when to speak and when to listen. And that both matter equally. 

After her Marine hitch ended, Rivera trained in cosmetology and hair-styling, and about four years ago opened the Garrison Barber & Parlor in downtown Wilson -- "a place where people can feel proud to walk in, and even more proud walking out. A place that says we all matter .... I’m running for State Senate because I know what it’s like to fall through the cracks. And I know how much it matters when someone reaches out and says, 'I see you'.”

She's effective in live reels on her Facebook feed, talking straight and with some color about the sham laws that Buck Newton and his boys in Raleigh passed, like the stuff put into the budget that made all General Assembly members owners of their own (formerly public) records -- now rendered private and protected from view. Not only that, the GA members can sell their records, if they so please. ("And what am I bid for Senator Mugstomp's love notes?") In one video, Rivera mocks the "one ... two ... three" attack postcards -- over-sized and flamoyant with screaming color -- that either Buck sent out or some PAC looking to save him from the dangerous lesbian -- 3 in one week! (That was the sort of attack barrage the monied Right used to unseat Cullie Tarleton in HD 93 in 2010.) I like Rivera's cool dismissal of those vicious over-sized postcards with their screaming attack lines as worthless dustballs churned up by a genuinely spooked incumbent. The thought of losing to a lesbian if you're Buck Newton!

Man! I'd like to be at the Rivera victory party on November 3.

I don't know about Rivera's fundraising. Third Quarter reports aren't due to the SBOE until the 27th of this month. For the 2nd Q, she reported less than $50,000 raised or on-hand. I wouldn't even go look at Buck Newton's 2nd Q. He has all the money he needs to send three big flaming attack pieces against Rivera every week until the election.

It's All About Rural Culture

 

The new TV ads from both Jamie Ager and Jennifer Balkcom in the 11th Congressional Districts are pretty brilliant, really. The Balkcom ad has gotten more exposure for its previously unknown candidate -- it's being talked about all over the district, and that's what some smart person in her campaign intended -- but Grayson Barnette has made a name for himself as campaign manager for Ager. Barn Dance is perfect. And so is Balkcom's Mom, which I guarantee you every rural person in the 11th District who sees it, says approvingly, with the right touch of sentimentality, "My mother [or my granny or some other blood relative] was just like that!"

Political Science prof Chris Cooper used some hyperbole after he saw the ads -- "said he thinks the NC-11 race is more interesting than the other 434 congressional districts combined."

 

Intercepted Email: "Dear Elections Director"

 

This is the email that a Watauga County voter living abroad wrote to the local Board of Elections about his difficulties in navigating new voting rules:

*          *          *

I hope this email can be passed along to anyone involved with North Carolina Absentee and Military Voting.

My wife and I have voted from overseas for decades. We taught and then retired overseas.

We voted in the Dominican Republic, Japan, and Thailand.

This year was an absurd series of hoops. I counted more than 100 steps before I could attach and send in ballots via email.

Option 1, the “portal” did not work. It did not recognize our social security numbers or N.C. addresses.

Ironically, even though those were rejected, the portal posted our voting record for each time we have voted since we moved to N.C.

My 2nd best choice was to fill out the documents by hand, turn them into PDFs, and attach them to an email.

Physically mailing ballots via DHL or some other courier from Thailand would cost almost 100 USD.

The Thai postal system has suspended standard and first class mailing to the US because of tariffs.

Many other countries have done the same.

I taught computer programming. If I had not, I would have quickly given up.

Supposedly only 3 percent of Americans living overseas vote. I predict it will now be a tenth of that.

The directions in the 9-page form for submitting the documents and pages needed were often vague.

You had to guess…a lot.

Please pass this along to someone who might react.

I'll be emailing our ballots in tomorrow and crossing my fingers.

Nothing on you, just reporting.

Thanks,

[name withheld]

 

It's the Romantics Who Move the Ball (Though Their Visions May Fail)

 

Henry David Thoreau

 

I've been reading about Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, the 19-year-old, fabulously rich French aristocrat who defied his king and his own family, bought a ship, and raced to America to support and participate in the revolution. On board ship, as he approached the New World, he wrote his wife Adrienne,

"The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of mankind. She is destined to become the safe and venerable asylum of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, of equality, and of peaceful liberty .... Night coming on obliges me to stop, for I have lately forbidden the use of lights about the ship." 

Said like a 19-year-old in love with his own heroic image -- who was also not an idiot about self-preservation. When he was preparing to sail to America, with the Atlantic crawling with British men of war determined to intercept any French commerce going west, including war materiel, Lafayette let it be known that if fired on by British cannon, he would rather die than give up the ship. He vowed to blow it up himself. That's a romantic for you. Imagining his own theatrical death for the Great Cause. The romantic is willing to act as though the best future is already here, if he can only grab it. Lafayette sails toward an America that exists first in his imagination: virtuous, tolerant, equal, peaceful. And by gawd he goes and puts his body, money, reputation, and military training at risk for that imaginary America.

Rick Aktinson in Volume 2 of his Revolution Trilogy suggests that Lafayette was meticulous about building and maintaining a vivid public image. All of France knew he was planning to sail west and join the Americans' rebellion -- he was a trained military officer at 19 -- and though the King and his government absolutely forbade any French officer joining with the Americans, Lafayette was determined (and determination backed by great wealth will get you a far distance). He was brave, perhaps dangerously brave. And an odd figure -- a French aristocrat taking up the banner of resistance to aristocracy. He fired the enthusiasm of the very French citizens who would soon be executing French aristocrats. Non-romantics probably thought Lafayette had marbles in his head. Napoleon called him "just another nitwit."

The cynic in me, reading that letter he wrote to Adrienne about the prospects for America, can see the nitwittery, assuming that we, the descendants of the revolution, are supposed to be essential for "the happiness of mankind." 'Cause look what time and decay have coughed up. Are we the happiness of mankind in 2026? Or a persistent stinging nettle? Lafayette promised his pregnant wife that America would be a "venerable asylum of virtue," which under the present regime becomes one of the funniest conjurings ever of the word asylum. 

Romantics have the gene to risk themselves for a cause. The Cause gets bigger as the risk escalates. Romantics can also make the impossible seem possible by their own doing, which is how movements get started. Change rarely happens without a movement. So what if the Lafayettes of this world tend to mistake their hope for reality?

Thomas Jefferson was a romantic and he decisively moved the ball of history. But “all men are created equal” was pure romanticism, asserted as reality before reality remotely conformed to it. It's the romantic's way to imagine a future that does not yet exist, behave as though it might exist, and thereby bull his way through the obstructions. Never mind that their animating vision turns out to be partial, naïve, contradictory, or downright dangerous.

Getting women the right to vote was a long political movement waaay before it became a reality. It became a reality through the gritty determination of women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Anthony's willingness to violate the law by voting in 1872 is very Lafayette-like. The romantic acts out the future before the future has been authorized. And is more than willing to go to jail for it.

Obviously, romantics can be remarkably grounded in present reality -- Lafayette's knowing he had to sail blacked-out at night -- while carrying the idea of freedom like a torch. Those suffragist women made historical change and could still cook cabbage and tend to the sick. I think of Henry David Thoreau, withdrawn to the woods to get his head straight. In 1846, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax because he opposed slavery and the Mexican-American War. He was arrested and spent one night in jail in Concord. Someone—apparently his aunt Maria—paid the tax, and he was released the next day. Isn't he a quintessential romantic? He took an abstract moral conviction and turned it into a physical act that put himself at risk. He was saying in effect, “I believe in the America that ought to exist, so I'm refusing to cooperate with the America that actually exists.”

Lenin and Mao belong in the story, too. Both imagined radically transformed societies and possessed the romantic conviction that the existing order could be swept away and something fundamentally new built in its place. They moved the ball enormously. The fact that the resulting societies produced coercion, famine, terror, and enormous human suffering doesn't make them less romantic. It makes the warning in my title real.

I think civilization advances because some people are insufficiently constrained by their knowledge of what is possible.

 

The Uphill Fight for House District 20

 

Tim Merrick

 

I'm not always convinced of the wisdom of adopting a visible trademark, especially if you're a candidate running for office. A gimmicky trademark can attract mockery, like John Fetterman's hoodie and shorts or Marco Rubio's heeled boots or Kristi Noem's cowboy get-up. Tim Merrick's hats are not a recent affectation. His attachment to pork-pie hats apparently goes back years into his long career as a chiropractor and well before he ever ran for office. The hat's a distraction to me, but maybe they work for him. They seem to fit his sometimes smart-ass personality, which can also work for a candidate. (If you want to see just how devoted he is to the style, see his reel posted on Facebook. He speaks to the camera backed by rows of pegs on which hang eight of his collection. That's kind of fetching.)

Tim Merrick was the owner of Alive & Well Chiropractic in Wilmington from 1991 to 2017 and has over 40 years of practice behind him. He retired and promptly ran two years ago for a contested seat on the New Hanover Board of Education. It was a narrow win, and now he's set his sights on the open seat for NC House District 20. Civitas rates it R+4. Merrick was endorsed by Carolina Forward in its second round, and he touts the endorsements of several other progressive orgs.

Dane Scalise, New Hanover County Commissioner and a lawyer, is Merrick's Republican opponent. Scalise is a veteran of politics -- much more so than Merrick -- having won county-wide as a commission candidate. He was first appointed to his seat in 2023, was elected to his own 4-year term in 2024 and became vice chair of the commission. He obviously has civic heft. He serves on the UNC Wilmington Board of Trustees and Cape Fear Community College Board of Trustees. As of June 30, Scalise had raised $327,233, nearly twice Merrick's $170,189. The next quarter reports should be available early in October. I suspect it's gotten more lopsided for Merrick.

If you don't have the money, you have to hustle, and Merrick says on one Facebook post back in May that "we" have knocked 3,200 doors in the last 6 months, which is an impressive start. He posted again about door-knocking in June, showed himself walking solo. What I miss seeing is evidence of a volunteer force behind him. I don't see that energy in Merrick's social media.

Dane Scalise is younger than Merrick and presents a friendly, self-deprecating image in some of his Facebook reels (especially his bloopers while trying to film a commercial). He certainly has no MAGA vibe about him, no feverish lusting after the embrace of DJT, but he did ape one feature of the Trump administration's politics: animosity toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. He pushed to dismantle the New Hanover County's Office of Diversity and Equity, calling DEI "ideology." Gosh. Has being kind and fair fallen ill in Republican hearts? 

It's gonna be epic if Merrick wins. It will take that rumored wave sweeping over the northern part of New Hanover, which stretches from the coast to the alarmingly polluted Cape Fear River.