Blue Wave or Roy Cooper's Coattails -- Either Will Do Just Fine

 

Mike Schietzelt

 

Democrats are counting on a big Blue Wave, especially in Wake County, to truly put a permanent crimp in the GOP's veto-proof House majority. One of the only remaining Republicans representing any part of Wake, Mike Schietzelt in HD 35, has been targeted for defeat by Democrat Evonne Hopkins, a family law specialist who ran against Schietzelt in 2024 before he was the incumbent and lost to him by only 200 or so votes. Carolina Forward has endorsed Hopkins. I'm very curious how fundraising is going for her, and was frustrated to find that the 2nd Quarter report which was due at the State Board of Elections on July 10th hasn't been posted. Schietzelt also hasn't reported for the 2nd Quarter. Cash-on-hand for the two campaigns, and where the cash is coming from, will tell us a good deal about whether there's grassroots juice rising for either candidate.

Schietzelt is getting big money from the House Republican caucus and plenty of support from Speaker Destin Hall and the whole networked donor base that concentrates on keeping the General Assembly imperious to any Democratic governor. 

Schietzelt is fascinating as a new character in the NC GOP because he eschews culture war and MAGA shit in favor of practical matters that suburbanites actually care about a lot more, like his strong opposition to changing the Capitol Blvd. corridor from downtown Raleigh to Wake Forest into a toll road. Schietzelt appears to be a young and affable but also conservative policy lawyer with a suburban governing style. He's not trying to become a firebrand. He's trying to become known as someone who solves practical district problems.

Evonne Hopkins

 

His first-term incumbency gives him an advantage over Evonne Hopkins. This is her second contest with Schietzelt. She did very well against him in 2024, and some think that loss established for her enough name recognition to overcome Schietzelt's incumbency advantage. I don't know about that. Familiarity can also breed contempt. I hate to suggest it, but I think it's true.

The Civitas Partisan Index puts HD 35 at R + 0, pure tossup, but I actually think Schietzelt has the advantage. It may well come down to how overwhelmingly Roy Cooper beats Michael Whatley in Wake. His coattails may be as potent as any hoped-for Blue Wave.

 

House District 63 Could Be a Red-to-Blue Flip

 

Ian Batutis

 

I've been absorbed all morning in the race for House District 63 down in Alamance County. The seat has been held since the elections of 2022 by Republican Steve Ross, but he decided to retire. The open seat is now rated R+2 by JohnLocke.org. Dave's Redistricting gives it a 52% Republican lean. But the Democrats ended up with a candidate who -- on paper, at least -- is one of the strongest I've seen.

"Ended up with." Ian Baltutis, who is now the Democratic candidate, didn't start out as the candidate. He was appointed by Democratic Party leaders in mid-May to take the place of Whitney Olive, who dropped out. Olive had filed in December and had no primary opposition. She had 15 years experience as a public school teacher, was an activist for LGBTQ, but had never run for office before.

Ian Baltutis had run for office before -- and quite successfully in Burlington, serving from 2015 to 2021 as the youngest-ever mayor.  He was heavily recruited to take Olive's place on the ballot, having just returned to the limelight by winning anew a seat on the Burlington City Council last fall. In 2021, he went back to school and earned his master’s degree in City & Regional Planning and Public Administration. His LinkedIn profile: "Ian Baltutis -- Inventor Innovator Entrepreneur." He helped establish the Burlington Beer Works, and he owns Persnickety Books, a local independent bookstore. Last fall Baltutis said of his purpose in life, “I’ve had my hands in a lot of development that’s going on, really from the standpoint of, ‘what does the community need? What kind of activities, business operations would really bring the community together and help create good, positive engagement and development.' ”

He had me at "independent bookstore owner."

He ran the first time for Burlington City Council in 2013, fresh out of Elon with a degree in business entrepreneurship, with no formal platform, but luckily he was guided by the advice to “go knock on doors.” "This grassroots approach allowed him to learn Burlington block by block, gathering residents’ stories and turning them into the foundation of his campaign." Currently, he owns and manages Vibration Solution LLC, an American product design and manufacturing company that he founded during his studies at Elon. "Baltutis is a strong supporter of American manufacturing. He founded his company around the idea of turning the standard business model upside down and creating a company that is lean, efficient and nimble." (NationalDMO).

From his social media, I get the impression he's a human dynamo of ideas and action. His website and he's all over Facebook.

 

Ryan Moffitt, the Republican Candidate

Moffitt was heir apparent, the pick of Republican Party leaders to succeed Steve Ross in an orderly continuity of Republican control. Moffitt announced his candidacy on the same day Ross announced his retirement. He's a young lawyer on the rise, a first-time candidate, and as whitebread as you could ask.

Also clearly energetic, and I see his doing some walking and talking on his Facebook feed -- always a good sign in a campaign. In Moffitt's favor are several factors: Fresh face with no legislative voting record to defend; well-positioned within the local Republican establishment; attorney with a polished professional profile; benefits from the district's Republican lean.

But Baltutis looks to have the edge: Greater political experience; better-known public record; strong résumé on local government, planning, and economic development; likely to appeal to independents and ticket splitters.

Moffitt has an impressive pile of cash-on-hand as of his Second Quarter filing with the Board of Elections, some $114,000, compared to Baltutis's cash-on-hand of $45,000. That lopsided money advantage for Moffitt is at least partially off-set by the former mayor's much greater name recognition. They both look like go-getters, but I give Baltutis a very slight edge.

Tricia Cotham, "As Vulnerable As She's Ever Been"

 

Ken McCool

 

So said Chris Cooper about the NC House member who used to be a prominent Democrat and who deserted to the GOP to give them their veto-proof majority. I watched Tricia Cotham easily fight off Democratic challenger Nicole Sidman in 2024. Sidman was a novice at politics, had never been a candidate before. Cotham's Democratic opponent this year, Ken McCool, might be a different story. JohnLocke.org rates the district R+0 "Toss Up."

I dug into Ken McCool way back in January:  

McCool ran for Matthews Town Commission in 2019 at the age of 20, came in 7th in a very crowded scrum, but only missed snagging one of six at-large seats by some 14 votes. When a vacancy opened up in February of 2020, the Commission recognized his showing in 2019 and appointed him to fill out the term. He was reelected a couple more times, including earning himself mayor pro tem as the top vote-getter. He and his father own Ken's Sports Cards and Collectibles in Indian Trail, which is a suburb of Matthews. According to LinkedIn, he also does subcontractor painting.

He appears to have been both very active and effective as a pro-development member of the town board. He brags about bringing Acceleration Advanced Manufacturing Campus to Matthews, which plans to occupy a large site on the I-485 loop south of Charlotte. Acceleration looks to be a subdivision of Hendrick Motor Sports, which builds high-performance vehicles among other things. McCool also claims ownership for expanding affordable housing in Matthews, delivering tangibles like a new fire station, and making "the largest investment in parks in a generation."

McCool's message: lifelong Matthews resident, municipal problem-solver, supporter of parks, improver of transportation and housing, armed with small-business knowledge, and a family man (wife, two young kids). In contrast, Cotham is running on a message that she knows powerful people. She touts her insider knowledge of Raleigh and her ability to get favors from Republican leadership.

McCool's been endorsed by Carolina Forward, and Pete Buttigieg came to Matthews to campaign for him. But for a Democrat in 2026 who's in a tossup race with a highly controversial incumbent, McCool's social media presence isn't much, and his website is bare bones. I get no sense that he's got volunteers on the ground knocking doors. And he has never shown his family. I can respect his (and their) desire to stay out of the political spotlight, but the visual absence of support is noticeable. 

I hope someone will message me that the McCool campaign is a raging brushfire not at all visible to us folks up in the mountains. In his July 10th report to the State Board of Elections, his campaign had raised over $130,000 and had some $76,000 cash-on-hand. But Cotham's 2nd Quarter filing lists $153,000.00 cash-on-hand.

 

Because Dallas Woodhouse Wasn't Enough

 

State Auditor and Elections Czar Dave Boliek found and then lost a good hatchet-wielder in Dallas Woodhouse, who once installed as Mr. Boliek's so-called "liaison" to county boards began to break furniture for the sake of limiting voting opportunities for at least two groups, college students and Black voters. Woodhouse recently resigned after his activities came to light, mainly when a Republican Board of Elections member from Jackson County spilled the beans.

This same Mr. Boliek has now grabbed for the new money that the Republican bosses put into the state budget for him, funds to hire 25 new staffers, which Boliek intends to make "at will political" appointees. Boliek notified Senate and House leaders (Messrs. Berger and Hall) on 7/27. That notification starts a clock ticking in the General Assembly. By statute, lawmakers have 30 days to object. If they do nothing, Mr. Boliek's project of surrounding himself with flying monkeys becomes a bigger reality. Boliek will have a total of 50 political drones in his department.

Signs of Life

 

Jamie Ager, in his element

Last Saturday, the State Board of Elections (SBOE) released new voter registration stats covering the first half of 2026:

Unaffiliated up 4,136, to total of 3,113,007

Democrats up 578, to total of 2,316,541

Republicans up 379, to total of 2,327,131

[The Center Square]

Democrats now rank third in registrations in North Carolina. By a hair, only 10,500 voters behind the Republicans. Perhaps ironically or perhaps prophetically, the only party to register fewer new voters than the Democrats so far in 2026 are the Republicans. Obviously, everyone's fate is in the hands of the numero uno Unaffiliateds. And I like them odds.

That 10k Republican advantage over Democrats becomes irrelevant if pollsters are right that an "enthusiasm gap" has yawned between the two (thank you, DJT!). The most recent right track/wrong track polling I've seen from North Carolina was conducted by High Point University in March and April, questioning 800 registered voters (703 of them considered "likely voters"). More of them thought North Carolina was on the wrong track (47%) than on the right track (31–32%), with a whopping 20% "undecided" because they haven't paid attention and don't know what's been going on.

I was just reading in the Asheville Watchdog about the enthusiasm gap that's opened in the 11th Congressional District, where Democrat Jamie Ager is outraising incumbent Republican Chuck Edwards some 9-1. In the heat of Ager's rise -- on September 11, 2025, the Cook Political Report moved the 11th from "Solid Republican" to "Likely Republican"; on June 18, 2026, Cook moved the race again, this time from "Likely Republican" to "Lean Republican" -- Congressman Edwards, lightening ship, sold all his McDonald's franchises. Ager had Pete Buttigieg at a fundraiser out on his farm. One campaign has a funerary aspect; the other pulses with life.

Total registrations by party in the 11th CD (latest numbers):

Democratic 107,989

Republican 180,267

Unaffiliated 164,871

Like I said before, I like them odds.

Guilford Co BOE Nixes Campus Early Voting at A&T and UNC-Greensboro

 

Four Eggers, Member, SBOE

 

Joining the Republican rush to discourage college-student voting in North Carolina, the Guilford County Board of Elections, with its Republican majority (plus one Democrat arrrrg!), passed its early voting plan, which took away General Election early voting sites previously available at North Carolina A&T and at UNC-Greensboro. The meeting was packed with students who remained quiet and respectful (for the most part) through a dirty deed that took less than 30 minutes. One person did yell out during the discussion about campus voting, “You don’t care about these people!” And was escorted out.

The vote of the board was 4-1, meaning one Democrat broke with her fellow party appointee and voted with the Republicans. Because the vote was not unanimous -- a tic in North Carolina election law -- it must now go for final resolution to the State Board of Elections (SBOE), where men like Four Eggers and Francis DeLuca and Bob Rucho will fer shore nix the campuses. The boss of these SBOE bosses, State Auditor Dave Boliek, is already well known as the vote suppressor supreme. It's a perfect circle of life, if life is like an anaconda. The NCGOP now owns access to the polls, an ambition they've had for decades.

The Democrat who voted yesterday with the Republicans is Felita Regina Donnell, a retired revenue agent for the IRS, a graduate of A&T, executive board member of the Greensboro NAACP, past president of the African American Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party, past president of Guilford County Democratic Women, and a former member of the North Carolina Democratic Party's Council of Review. I would call her a big deal in the Party. Who just left a gaping wound in the side of Democracy.

 

Questions Remain About Ray Pickett's Participation in an Expenses Paid "Bourbon Tour"

 

Rep. Ray Pickett

 

WEDNESDAY, April 22, 2026: Four Raleigh lobbyists -- 

Douglas Bowen “Bo” Heath, a lobbyist for McGuireWoods,

Douglas P. Miskew, a lobbyist for Public Sector Group,

David Ferrell, a lobbyist for Maynard Nexsen PC,

Kevin Wilkinson, the president of The Southern Group --

were indicted in Wake County for arranging illegal gifts for Republican members of the General Assembly -- under NC law, misdemeanors. These four dudes are alleged to have invented a "dark money" PAC called Greater Carolina under whose name certain lawmakers were given treats, like all-expenses-paid and no-behavior-barred "Kentucky Bourbon trips." The whiskey tours were covers for a distillery industry's lobbying for favorable legislation. Just today, the Raleigh prosecutor issued a very detailed search warrant of Greater Carolina's finances (Will Doran). The warrant says Greater Carolina spent almost $80,000 on golf outings, a little tickle-dick at strip clubs, and expensive tickets to Carolina Panthers games, but it does not name any lawmakers nor even allege that members of the General Assembly benefitted from any of those activities.

State law bans lobbyists from providing any sort of gift to an elected official, either directly or indirectly.

No current or former members of the General Assembly have been charged with anything. The Bourbon travel generosity of Greater Carolina for members of the House became more widely public because a server at a Kentucky distillery published a "gee whiz!" comment on Reddit, alleging that the North Carolina crew were loud and obnoxious, "being extremely rude, disruptive, not tipping the bartenders and tour guides, and even VOMITING in our bathroom sinks."

Watauga County's House Representative, Ray Pickett of Blowing Rock, was on the 2022 tour, but whether he was a ralpher-in-the-sink remains unknown.

Sen. Tim Moffitt, who went on the 2022 Bourbon tour, actually reported it as a gift on his Statement of Economic Interest (SEI), a form required yearly by the state's Ethics Commission. Moffitt's disclosure led to questions about the other GA whiskey tourists, like Ray Pickett. Did he report it? Here's the relevant questions on all of Pickett's SEI filings since 2022:

14. During 2024, after you were appointed, employed, or filed or were nominated as a candidate, did you

 receive any “gift(s)” exceeding $200 per quarter from a person or group of persons acting together,
 when both you and those person(s) were outside North Carolina,
 under circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to conclude the gifts were given for lobbying?
To answer Yes, all three conditions must apply

☐ Yes ☒ No

15. During 2024, after you were appointed, employed, or filed or were nominated as a candidate, did you

 accept a “scholarship” exceeding $200 related to your public position from a person or group of persons acting
together,
 when those person(s) were outside North Carolina?
To answer Yes, both conditions must apply
A “scholarship” is a grant-in-aid, either direct or indirect, to attend a conference, meeting, or similar
event, including tuition, travel, lodging, meals, and other similar expenses.

☐ Yes ☒ No ☐ Judicial Officer - You are not required to complete this question if you are filing solely because you are a legislator or judicial officer or as a candidate or appointee to those offices

Hmmm. Are there other shoes to drop, and when might we expect that?

 

Maine Man

 

Troy Jackson -- AP

  

Lot of reading to do right now about Troy Jackson, Graham Platner's replacement as the Dems Senate candidate in Maine. (His nomination is not official yet, but every news source is saying Jackson has it sewn up. Four other would-be candidates dropped out and endorsed him. Delegates vote this coming Saturday.) 

Jackson's "Beefeater face"* shouldn't mislead you that he hasn't been both a working man and a man of action. His mother was 16 when he was born, his father a struggling logger like his own male forebears going back three generations. The Jackson men all "went to the woods." Troy made a living loading and hauling cut timber for corporate growers as an employee. The growers got together, changed the haulers from employees to contract workers (the First Shafting), and then in 1998 imported a bunch of Canadian sawyers, who were cheaper labor because of the exchange rate and because they're covered by Canadian socialized medicine. Hiring the Canadians was illegal under U.S. law. Jackson joined others to organize a week-long blockade at the border with Quebec in 1998 to thwart the corporations. Jackson and two other ringleaders got led away in handcuffs, escorted off the property, told they were banned from it for life, and then let go.

Instead of strictly going away, Jackson got catapulted into politics. He first ran unsuccessfully as a Republican, was first elected to office as an Independent, and then joined the Democratic Party in 2004. Deciding that having a hand in law-making was far more useful than protests, Jackson first ran and won a seat in the Maine House of Reps in 2000 and won, switched his focus in 2002 and ran successfully for Maine Senate, held the seat until term limits ousted him in 2008, came back immediately in 2010 to run successfully again for the Maine House, went back to the Maine Senate in 2012 and remained there through December 2024 when term limits once again caught him. The Senate clearly suited him, and he could get stuff done, important progressive stuff like passing statewide free breakfast and lunch for every public school kid in the state, like improving funding for rural hospitals, like protecting union workers, and keeping Maine a pro-choice state. When he was term-limited out in 2024, he had risen in prominence, elected by his peers as Democratic Leader and then President of the Senate. 

He's one determined Yeoman Warder. He ran in the Democratic primary for Governor this year and came in third. Throughout his political career, he has been resolutely progressive, and already the right is braying about Democratic Socialists. Good!

Jackson is described as blunt and sometimes profane (I wouldn't expect anything less from a Mainer!). He's personally well liked across party lines, seen as authentic rather than polished, regarded as unusually knowledgeable about legislative procedure, viewed as "the real deal" on labor issues, and can be criticized for lacking charisma. He can't compare to Graham Platner there.

 

Jackson has to now raise a lot of money to compete with Susan Collins. He's better known out of the gate than Platner was, who had to build a following by showing up everywhere. His combat-ready aura may be enough -- that and the insurgency that Platner ignited -- may be enough to overcome the charisma deficit.

 

*Beefeater face: the jowly, rudy, well-fed look of the Tower of London's Yeoman Warders. 

 

Watauga's Own "Four" Eggers Shuts Down Investigation into Dallas Woodhouse's Voter Suppression Activities

 

Photo Jesse Barber

 

Last Thursday, with Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") presiding over the State Board of Elections (SBOE), Jeff Carmon, one of two Democratic members, spoke about the allegations that preceded Dallas Woodhouse's resignation as Auditor Dave Boliek's enforcer ("liaison") to all county boards, going over and around the actual staff at the SBOE. It had become well established that Woodhouse was behind orders in some specific counties advising the closing of early voting at college campuses and an end to Sunday voting in Black communities.

“Given the seriousness of these allegations and the public attention that they have generated, I believe we have an obligation to establish a complete and factual record,” Carmon said. “At this stage, I believe the board has little choice but to subpoena Mr. Woodhouse so that he may answer questions under oath.”

Eggers was horrified and shut that shit down quickly, refused to allow a vote on a subpoena for Woodhouse, arguing hilariously that it would be inappropriate to go after Woodhouse now because he's resigned his job and is a private citizen. What? When Carmon pointed out that Woodhouse's official actions were the point, not his private behavior, Eggers retreated to a threat, warning Carmon that he'd better "drop it," before the Republican majority called for investigating people who ran the SBOE for Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. (Will Doran, WRAL)

This is the same Four Eggers who secretly directed efforts to suppress the college vote in Watauga in 2013 after his younger brother was installed as the chair of the Watauga BOE. Bertrand Gutierrez scooped that scandal for the Winston-Salem Journal, and I used up a lot of bandwidth writing about Mr. Eggers and his attempt to change the entire landscape of voting in Watauga County. The first meeting of the Watauga BOE after the Republicans took over, August 12, 2013, a huge crowd had been alerted that something bad was about to go down. The meeting room was standing room only, so they moved to the main courtroom. The Republican majority proceeded to pass a dozen or more "resolutions" (changes in policy) that were proven later by digital thumbprint to have been ghost-written by the chair's big brother Four. One of those resolutions closed early voting at AppState. That meeting, with that crowd, became a raucous circus of protest, with cat-calling and boos. The lone Democratic member of the Watauga BOE said damn twice, and it was captured on video. The Civitas people alleged that the Democratic member "cursed through the whole meeting." An exaggeration that nevertheless summarizes adequately the vibe of that day.

That decision to close AppState early voting, on appeal, was upheld by the SBOE, also Republican majority at that time. A non-profit, the Watauga County Voting Rights Taskforce, and individual plaintiffs, sued in Wake Superior Court to restore the student union site. On October 13, 2014, literally on the eve of the start of early voting for the fall elections of 2014, the senior resident judge Donald Stephens issued a sharply worded decision declaring the Watauga BOE's shutdown at AppState "arbitrary and capricious." The next morning, and just as quickly as the judge had ruled, the staff of the Watauga BOE was set up in the student union and ready for early voting. We were first in line. And we've had early voting on the AppState campus ever since because a judge ordered it. (Q. Does a judge's order have a limited lifespan? How is that determined?)

Couldn't do it in Watauga in 2014. But willing to let Dallas Woodhouse do it in 2026. Same "Four" Eggers.

 

The Blimp That Dared the Lightning

 

I've been collecting individual impressions of the Trump speech last night -- because no way am I tuning that shite in, though I can't avoid for long the substance of what the con man sez, just in case. Several have mentioned the lifeless delivery, as though he had someplace to be and had (at long last!) lost interest in the 2020 election. Lucian K. Truscott IV caught the vibe: "Trump didn’t believe a word of it." 

I think that's accurate. He's a man so thoroughly false and fake that all his utterances and gestures can only be understood as parts of a big con, a "patriotic" dumb show of bilkery, a living version of Herman Melville's novel The Confidence-Man, wherein a mysterious stranger boards a Mississippi steamboat and manipulates the passengers by exploiting their trust, vanity, greed, and prejudices [A.I. assist for the summary].

Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani "and the rest of the half-baked half-wits who filed lawsuits challenging the election results in 2020" (Truscott) introduced affidavits ("statements" not taken under oath) alleging (for example) that somebody saw an election worker in Georgia hand a flash drive to another worker. No followup, because, for example in the Georgia instance when someone bothered to ask more questions, the alleged flash drive turned out to be a breath mint. "Somebody heard." "Somebody saw." Mere statements without substance or proof, yet perfect for the Fox News hounds of our Republic who, abandoning all hope, believe what the con man says because all other gods have failed to deliver.

Trump spent much of his 25 minutes telling the folks that he has ordered declassified all the long-hidden secrets about the stuff that happened in 2018 and some stuff that happened in 2019 and then all came to a head in 2020 when all the conspirators succeeded in rigging the election -- for all those years, 2018, 2019, and 2020 -- Trump was president. All the relevant agencies he now wants to finger were under his control, appointed by him. But what do the Fox News hounds know? They peer into those now muddy waters and figger it must have been Biden who done it.

He's so clearly desperate to protect his own ass that he's willing to sic the January Sixth Types, or ICE, or the National Guard on whole communities that are known to detest him and his policies. Everyone expects the worst, come November. While I don't think he's going to discourage a single Democrat or left-leaning Independent -- they'll get themselves to the polls over hot coals, if that's what it takes, through barbed wire barricades and fields of open gunfire, and they'll vote against every Republican on any and every ballot in every county, district, and state. Some Republicans will stay home, either embarrassed past the breaking point by this president or newly uninspired or completely turned off by the Iran War (or any dozen other possible motives for disaffection in trumpland).

He's a mess. Flailing his arms maybe to scatter the odor of his own mortality. But falling asleep, dozing off, checking out when anyone else but him has something to report. How can this great over-inflated Hindenburg not crash and burn?

He Loved Those McDonald's

 

Congressman Chuck Edwards of the 11th CD put out a press release yesterday that he and his wife Teresa have sold all their McDonald's restaurants in Henderson, Transylvania, and Haywood counties to good friends in Asheville who are already McDonald's franchisees. The Edwardses owned seven McDonald's, according to the letter that Teresa addressed to Leslie Boyd, banning her from entering all of them because Boyd was leading a boycott. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the Congressman himself, Teresa Edwards has been essentially the general manager of all the restaurants ever since Edwards was first elected to the NC Senate a decade ago. The demands got very much heavier after Edwards went to Washington in the 2022 elections. The responsibilities Teresa Edwards carried might crush a young person, let-alone a 65-year-old woman who had helped Chuck build the McDonald's empire over four decades. I can see selling out of that treadmill and retiring.

But retiring ain't in the cards right now.

The Congressman is locked in a reelection death-match with good-old-boy Democrat Jamie Ager, with various polls and pundits suggesting Edwards would be suddenly vulnerable in a Blue Wave. Plus bad press has dogged Edwards. Hurricane Helene survivors -- and they are legion in his district -- have not stopped biting his ankles over the paltry Trump admin treatment of the region, and now he's under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for wholly inappropriate contact and interaction with 20-something girl staffers.

Selling a highly profitable and beloved set of restaurants takes on the odor of panic, doesn't it? Beloved? Edwards has talked about how, at the age of 16, he went to work at a McDonald's that he later was able to buy, and he took justifiable pride in the kind of joy he was able to bring to his customers for over 40 years. He has put his bone and blood into building that chain of franchises, so selling out must hurt more than a little. Does he need to juice his campaign budget, because fundraising has been lagging? (Trump doesn't seem likely to chip off a chunk of his gigantic MAGA Inc. fund -- reportedly at least $350,000,000 -- which Trump appears to be hoarding for himself. But of course he would.)

Selling those restaurants at just this time draws attention to itself as something quite extraordinary.

 

High Rage Threshold, for a Monday

 

Gov. Stein signed the budget last week

 

 

Dylan Halper, an intern at The Assembly, went through all 634 pages of the new state budget (so I didn't have to) and highlighted some of the earmarks, many of which don't offend me, like 

$31 million to the North Carolina Museum of History

$4 million to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences 

$4.4 million to the North Carolina Museum of Art

$750,000 to the Museum of the Marine

$100,000 to the North Carolina Pottery Museum in Randolph County

I even smile about highly specific earmarks for very local gigs, like the $20,000 the budget gives to the tiny town of Fremont in Wayne County for its annual Daffodil Festival, which goes back to the late 1950s. I'm for supporting that because it's community-building and it spotlights flowers. This budget originated in the NC Senate. Buck Newton represents Fremont in the Senate. I can applaud Buck Newton if he funneled that measly $20k to the daffodils.

Intern Halper picked up on the tension between state-funded higher education and the GOP powers in the General Assembly and found in the budget what might be an anomaly: "The claws are not out for North Carolina State University. It will receive $20 million for its Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors (CLAWS) Hub, which is researching a type of semiconductor technology that the university says could be more effective than traditional silicon." [italics added]

It's too bad that our Republican government continues to fund crisis pregnancy centers to the tune of $1.5 million. Those places are Christian propaganda mills that have been shown to push "inaccurate information" on desperate girls who don't know what to do. Another $3.3 million is going to a more interesting anti-abortion org with a "continuum of care," which pairs women experiencing unplanned pregnancies with a social worker to “help address the circumstances prompting her to seek an abortion.” On its face, that sounds helpful to me.

I like that there's a million dollars in the budget to protect the OBX wild horses and $50k to support the activities of a non-profit therapeutic horse-riding school. But the $100,000 going to UNC-Wilmington's all-female equestrian club gives me pause, especially after I spent some time on their Facebook page. It appears to be, in very frequent photo arrays, a mainly white sorority with one Black member. That 100k is for horse feed, I suspect -- the club actually owns 8 horses, according to Halper -- but that's still a lot of oats for a social club.

One budget entry that Halper found also stopped me cold: $90,000 for a pickleball court in the town of Godwin, population 128. Tom McInnis (R) represents Godwin in the NC Senate, where the budget bill originated. But Diane Wheatley represents Godwin in the House, and she might have had some influence. According to its demographics, Godwin is an aging, low-income, sedentary community of almost equal numbers of Black and white (over 45% Black), and any space for recreation can be a blessing.

It makes sense to spend $30 million on keeping the Greensboro Coliseum (which now goes under the name of First Horizon) up-to-date and up-to-grade, because of the general economic benefit of Atlantic Coast Conference tournaments held there once a year. 

And I can applaud the $109 million + that goes to expand the medical school at East Carolina State University (which I think probably accounts for the white coats you see arrayed behind the governor at the signing ceremony, photo above) and $15 million to the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine in Fayetteville.

You Think That Rearranging Furniture at the SBOE Absolves It of Corruption? Dallas Woodhouse Still Works There!

 

NC Voices

 

The cover story Dave Boliek put out in September 2025 about hiring Dallas Woodhouse as some sort of State Board of Elections (SBOE) "liaison," whose role, we would soon discover -- to absolutely no one's surprise -- was actually to lord it over county boards of elections and inhibit college-age and Black voters wherever possible. At the time of Woodhouse's hiring, Boliek announced him to county election officials: "[I hired] him to assist in your efforts to ensure election integrity while encouraging maximum participation in our elections." Hahahahaha

The best reporting I've seen on the Woodhouse "reassignment" at the SBOE, the piece below, is thorough and complete. I don't know who wrote it, but thank you!

And if you're a partisan like me and tempted to celebrate the mere rearrangement of furniture at the SBOE -- window-dressing for a corrupt and exposed operation -- I would advise you not to. Dallas Woodhouse is still there at the SBOE, along with his embedded philosophy of might-makes-right, and trailing all that heavy baggage of cut-throat politics. You think the people who hired Woodhouse and who now obviously depend on him to be there have changed their spots? This isn't a victory, but it exposed their corruption. 

RALEIGH -- By WRAL News  A North Carolina Republican operative who was hired by the state auditor to help shape the state’s election boards and early voting plans has been reassigned, and his election liaison position has been discontinued. 

State and county elections officials are beginning to ramp up preparations for the 2026 midterm elections. Mail-in ballots will go out in September, early voting starts in October and election day is Nov. 3.

State Auditor Dave Boliek reassigned Dallas Woodhouse, a former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, NBC News reported Wednesday morning. Woodhouse had served in the role since September.

“Now that we are more than a year past appointments, and board chairs have settled into their roles having worked through a municipal election, primary election, and most of the local boards have passed early voting plans for the general election, the Auditor's Office has discontinued the elections liaison role,” a spokesman for the auditor’s office told WRAL in a statement Wednesday. “The elections liaison was established because the Auditor's Office gained new responsibilities. The position was not meant to be permanent.”

Woodhouse will work on strategic initiatives that relate to constituent services and communications, according to the spokesman.

Republican state lawmakers stripped responsibility for overseeing state and county election boards away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein in 2024 and gave the power to Boliek, a Republican. Under Boliek and Woodhouse, the state board of elections and all 100 county election boards have switched to GOP majorities, and some have begun enacting longtime Republican priorities such as eliminating early voting options on Sundays — a popular day with Black voters and on college campuses. Black voters and students tend to vote Democratic.

According to reporting from WLOS and NC Local, Woodhouse and Boliek were involved in efforts to ensure the new Jackson County Board of Elections would shut down a polling place on campus at Western Carolina University. In the Triangle, the Wake County Board of Elections also recently voted to eliminate a longtime early voting site at N.C. State’s student union, and to move it to a remote part of campus, WRAL previously reported.

Woodhouse was reassigned on June 2, NBC News reported. Woodhouse earns $110,000, according to a database of state employee salaries.

In September, Boliek wrote to some county election officials that “to assist in your efforts to ensure election integrity while encouraging maximum participation in our elections, I have appointed Dallas Woodhouse as my liaison.”

Woodhouse referred a request for comment Wednesday to the auditor’s office.

 

Dallas Woodhouse Causes Embarrassment, But what Dallas Woodhouse Stood For Still Very Much the Philosophy at the State Board of Elections

Big news this afternoon: Dallas Woodhouse, who has a history of trying to knee-cap college students' voting and Sunday voting for African-Americans, has been "reassigned" in the State Board of Elections. Instead of his $110,000 per annum job of "advising" local county boards of elections -- principally, advising the Republican majorities to eliminate campus polling places where possible and stop Sunday voting in communities with large Black congregations, Woodhouse has been reassigned to a desk in another part of the SBOE.

But it's all window-dressing, and it means nothing. The attitude toward suppressing certain voters still reigns in Auditor's Dave Boliek's MAGA brain. Woodhouse had caused Mr. Boliek some very bad optics after he was revealed telling the chair of the Jackson County Board of Elections, "Don't let them have a vote," them being students at Western Carolina University who had become accumstomed to a student union early voting site. There's also evidence that he told the Pasquotank County Bd of Elections chair to eliminate Sunday voting.  Pasquotank County is 35% Black.

The leopards can white-wash their spots, but they're still going to be blood predators.

 

I Guess We're All Communists Now

 

Trump repeated the word Communist so many times yesterday -- with the four granite-faced Presidents above him, averting their eyes -- that you might have thought it was 1950. On February 9th of that fatal year, Sen. Joseph McCarthy held up some pieces of paper in front of the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, and whined in that reedy, unpleasant voice of his, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." Women cringed. One of them fainted. There were dropped salad forks all over the room.

The witch hunt was on!

The suspicion of Communism crept through the American bloodstream, or rather raced like a fulminating virus, fanned into white-hot intensity by the John Birch Society. Birchers were all over the Panhandle of Texas. By the time I was in the 7th and 8th grades in the late '50s, popular fright-sayings about Communists and Communism, preached relentlessly by members of the Society, had reached my level of pre-social-media gossip. The Birchers were particularly good at ferreting out school textbooks with "Communist propaganda." What in particular was Communist propaganda? Any acknowledgement of a struggle for civil rights among America's Blacks.

I was a very religious kid to boot, so I could fall prey to a pamphlet that appeared in 1960 warning of a likely "Catholic takeover" if John F. Kennedy became President. The anti-Catholic thing was closely allied with the anti-Communist thing -- Baptists predominated, and there ain't no Baptists like Texas Baptists. There were plenty of Texans who didn't mind saying out loud, and loudly, as Texans sometimes speak when provoked, that Kennedy was an N-word-loving goddamn Communist. That's why Texans of a gentler nature so rued the terrible event in Dallas. Why did it have to be Texas! Poor dumb, damn Texas.

To the Communist-baiting Texans in the Panhandle, one of the worst things the Catholic President Kennedy did in his short presidency was the diplomatic breakthrough called "the Chamizal Conventions," a land-exchange between the U.S. and Mexico that Kennedy successfully negotiated. The Chamizal "situation" had been a sore point since 1864, when a particularly severe flood changed the course of the Rio Grande and stranded over 600 acres of Mexico on the north side of the river. This led to a history of incursions and takings and dyspeptic relations between countries. Kennedy resolved it quickly, agreeing to give back to Mexico some 366 acres of the original Chamizal tract and an additional 264 acres near the adjacent Cordova Island, while taking for the U.S. the other 193 acres of Cordova Island. That international boundary still stands today.

Kennedy negotiated the agreement, but it fell to President Johnson to carry it out in stages, and those stages included some Texans' getting mighty exercised that their land was being unfairly, unconstitutionally, and communistically taken from them. I remember reading up on the history at the time and writing a letter to the editor of the Plainview Herald supporting the Mexican position. I was being a very fair-minded little Christian and budding historian to reach that conclusion. I was told later by a classmate of mine who also worked as part-time receptionist for an insurance agent that her boss had a file folder labeled "Suspected Communists" and that he had instructed her to put my letter to the editor -- which he had patiently clipped from the Herald -- into that file. Apparently, I've been a Communist since I was 18.

We label what we fear, and so does Trump. He doesn't fear Communists. That's just the scare-word he remembers from his own childhood -- he and I are the same age, give or take. What Trump fears and chooses to label with an old insult is the surge of voting enthusiasm for the men and women who have been winning elections on the Democratic side and sometimes upending apple carts of more conservative members of their Party -- the brave and outspoken "progressives," the sometimes self-described "socialist Democrats." That's what he fears, being charged and tried by new politicians who have power because they have followings.

 

NC House Pumps the Brakes on NC Senate's Rush to Harsh Your Vibe

 

Today a bill, H 328, "Regulate Hemp-Derived Consumables," got fast-tracked and passed the same day in the NC Senate, with some 14 of the 20 Democrats in the Senate voting for it. The House's original H 328, which the Senate hijacked and wrote its own substitute, would have required public schools to adopt policies prohibiting hemp-derived consumable products in school buildings, on school grounds, and at school-sponsored events. Okay. We all can support limiting easy access to intoxicating hemp products for minors, but the North Carolina Healthy Alternatives Association (NCHAA) sez the new Senate rewrite is a bad bill for the future of the billion-dollar state hemp industry. 

The House adjourned without taking up the the Senate's substitute H 328, and Speaker Destin Hall appeared resistant to it: “It’s up to the [House] caucus, at the end of the day,” Hall said. “It was a complicated bill, and so folks are going to have probably a month to digest it and see if they approve of it,” he told reporters. The General Assembly plans to reconvene on July 27th.

"Complicated," Destin Hall said, which sounds like a warning to me.

The NCHAA thinks it will overnight send North Carolina's booming hemp industry into the crapper: 

• Cannabinoid Ban: HB 328 bans all cannabinoids except for Delta-9 THC, even non-psychoactive compounds like CBD. This is a direct contradiction of the federal definition of hemp and would eliminate many therapeutic products that consumers depend on.

• Potency Caps: The bill caps edibles at just 10mg of Delta-9 THC per serving. For comparison, most popular hemp-derived gummies on the national market range from 25 to 50mg per serving. These caps would force companies to reformulate or exit the North Carolina market entirely.

• Vape Restrictions: It also limits vape cartridges to 3ml total Delta-9 THC—an unrealistic threshold that, from a manufacturing standpoint, is virtually unworkable.

• Exorbitant Licensing Fees: HB 328 requires a $25,000 license fee for manufacturers and $500 per retail location with no cap. These costs are far beyond the reach of small operators and would create massive entry barriers that favor large out-of-state corporations.

• Criminal Penalties: The bill authorizes criminal charges—including Class H felonies—for unlicensed sales. It also imposes escalating fines and empowers the Alcohol Law Enforcement Division (ALE) to revoke licenses and issue penalties of up to $7,500 per violation.

NCHAA concludes: "These are not minor adjustments. These are measures designed to constrict the industry, cut out competition, and centralize the hemp market into the hands of a few."

 

How I Fell Upstairs and Found God

 

I got super-annoyed by C.G.I. at the movies -- computer-generated-images -- back around the time super heroes were pretty much it, everywhere. Super heroes and tiresome fantasy. Supernatural hoo haw. Pop culture became lousy with C.G.I. gimmicks, imitations, wild flights of illogic and cheap, cheap story-telling (even though C.G.I. is super-expensive to produce). So I turned up my nose at the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) when it was new and fresh. I wanted real human stories told about real, flawed human characters in adult situations. I'm no longer new and fresh myself, but I have Disney streaming anew, and no way was I not going to induce my second adolescence watching the MCU timeline unfold. Little did I know what I missed because of Pecksniffian snobbery.

I appreciate morally compromised characters, but I usually associate them with realistic interpretations of human life, not space-and-time epics. Don't we all actually prefer the self-involved to saints? I'm elated to find frequent divided minds among the super-heroes who gather under the rubric of "The Avengers." Bruce Banner is my living notion of ambiguity, always teetering between unchecked power and unchecked rage. Tony Stark can be a prancing egotist, but he also knows guilt intimately and unrelenting. Thor can't get over himself; he's as self-centered as Tony without the wit or god help us finesse. Captain America, Steve Rogers, is the most saint-like of the Avengers but sparks a civil war when he refuses to subordinate his power to the state by signing the Sokovia Accords. He's standing up for what he believes as a principled person, that big government has no business holding a super-hero's leash. We have to applaud that righteous puritan.

The best example of moral complication is the great MCU villain Thanos, played by Josh Brolin through a trio of films culminating in Avengers: Endgame. Brolin, despite the heavy masking required to make Thanos appear other-worldly, plays a towering, powerful villain and a character full of regret on how the world is destroying itself with runaway consumption. He's kind of a soured environmentalist. Thanos believes as sincerely in his own moral mission as Captain America believes in his. Both are prepared to sacrifice life to be true to themselves. Thanos quite righteously sacrifices his adopted daughter Gamora on the desolate planet Vormir, because to obtain the Soul Stone he's instructed to sacrifice someone he loves. Gamora is handy. In The Infinity War, Thanos snaps out the lives of half of all living creatures -- not just humans, but animals too (visually the filmmakers make people turn to blowing dust before our eyes. The disappearance of Peter Parker who's cradled wounded in Iron Man's lap is truly one of those scenes that'll sneak up on you at the movies and make your eyes water). Thanos becomes a mass murderer not out of hatred, not for conquest, but because he wants the blessed world to be sustainable. He sees overpopulation and greed as the only defining features of this world, and those greedy traits offend him deeply. Thanos dies believing in his own heroism. His death is melancholy for that very reason. We hate to see any soul, even a misguided one, face his own colossal failure.

The writers of the MCU universe explore all sorts of topics, like the wholly arbitrary and spiteful nature of divinity, particularly the god Odin who brooks no stubbornness. (Any resemblance to the angry God Jehovah of Christian nationalists would appear to be purely coincidental.) Thor is my least favorite Avenger, except when he gets dissolute. In the long run getting banished to Earth improved his character. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow (played by the sparkling but-seriously-don't-mess-with-her Scarlett Johansson) is my favorite, and her self-sacrifice (again on that awful planet Vormir) to save Clint Barton (Hawkeye) is another moment of terrible moral consequences derived from doing what's right.

Heroes are necessary bearers of culture -- every culture, every sub-culture, living now and in every time. Heroes transmit principles, sometimes the local gospel, often the illustrated moral decisions that keep societies and civilizations cohering. We need them. I fall back on something my friend Dalton George wrote on Substack:

"I'm of the mind that we have a biological inclination towards heroes. Our longest-surviving stories, art, and songs detail heroes. An individual is up against something much great than themselves, someone using their agency to benefit the community, country, and place. There's a reason Marvel movies are the cash cow they are. Brighter minds than mine have observed that our society is largely starved for heroes." 

I relish the idea that heroes arose from our very evolution through danger. We have to have heroes, and we'll create one on the spot if need be. But the Sokovia Accords were all about keeping unchecked power under scrutiny. Because otherwise giant ballrooms arise where once there was the law and duty and honesty and the good of the body politic. Heroes are not self-centered pricks.