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."