Judge Bob Orr Joins the Kamala Harris Campaign

 

Donald Trump broke the Republican Party for former Republican NC Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr. Orr was a John Kasich delegate from NC to the 2016 Republican National Convention. He left the convention early rather than witness Trump's coronation but not before commenting to a WRAL reporter that Donald Trump was “singularly unqualified to lead this country.” In fact, Orr said, "Trump is a danger to the country." Orr finally broke formally from the GOP, changing his registration to Unaffiliated in 2021.

Aside from having served as the appointed District Attorney serving Watauga County and the rest of the 24th Prosecutorial District in 2014 (to finish the term of DA Jerry Wilson), Orr had already built an impressive record of service. He was appointed to the NC Court of Appeals by Republican Governor Jim Martin in 1986. He won election to the NC Supreme Court in 1994 and served there for ten years. He ran for governor in the Republican primary of 2008, losing to Pat McCrory. He believes in our Constitution, and he clearly thinks that Trump is out to trash it.

And now he's been chosen to lead an effort to organize independents and moderate Republicans in NC for Kamala Harris. “As we approach the final days of this election, there has never been a more important time for Republicans, former Republicans and unaffiliated voters who lean Republican, to come together and put country over party by working to elect Kamala Harris and stopping Donald Trump,” Orr said in a statement.

Judge Bob Orr to the NC Supreme Court: "Be Fair!"

 

Former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr (and former registered Republican) filed suit Wednesday (Jan. 31) in Wake Superior Court aimed at taking down gerrymandering in North Carolina by way of a Supreme Court finding that fair elections are also a constitutional right even though fair doesn't appear in the language of the NC Constitution but only the adjectives free and frequent. “If the citizens of North Carolina are guaranteed by their State Constitution the right to ‘frequent’ and ‘free’ elections," Orr's lawsuit argues, "then surely the Constitution guarantees them the right to ‘fair’ elections. After all, what good are ‘frequent’ elections if those elections are not ‘fair’? Likewise, what good are ‘free’ elections if those elections are not ‘fair’?” 

Orr filed the suit on behalf of seven Democrats and two Unaffiliated voters.

In particular, the suit mentions specific Congressional and NC General Assembly seats as egregiously illustrative of the meanness (sometimes approaching cruelty) behind partisan gerrymandering, namely CD 6, CD 13, CD 14, SD 7 and HD 105, "as well as other districts" (like HD 67, HD 103, HD 10, HD 13) -- redistricting maps showing outrageous unfairness, all appended to the complaint.

Orr seems to be going straight for the Paul Newby gullet. Newby as chief of a 5-2 Republican majority took inordinate pride in ruling not so long ago that the previous finding by a Democratic Supreme Court that extreme partisan gerrymandering is both recognizable and subject to judicial re-do -- he said that was wrongly decided, and in fact, he and his fellow Republican majority ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not only A-OK but venerable in its historical presence in state government.

Guaranteed, Paul Newby is not gonna see the logic of saying "free" and "frequent" also implies "fair." He'll see no such thing, and his fellow Republicans also, who can't admit that the base of their power is situated in the highly partisan districts drawn by computer desk jockeys who know how to manipulate population blocks.

Who Is Bob Orr?
Aside from having served as the appointed District Attorney for Watauga County and the rest of the 24th Prosecutorial District in 2014 (to finish the term of DA Jerry Wilson), Orr had already built an impressive record of service. He was appointed to the NC Court of Appeals by Republican Governor Jim Martin in 1986. He won election to the NC Supreme Court in 1994 and served there for ten years. He ran for governor in the Republican primary of 2008, losing to Pat McCrory. In 2016, he was a John Kasich delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, leaving the convention early before Trump's formal coronation but not before commenting to a WRAL reporter that Donald Trump was “singularly unqualified to lead this country.” In fact, Orr said, "Trump is a danger to the country."

NOTE

CD 6, CD 13, and CD 14 all elected Democrats to Congress in 2022 -- Kathy Manning, Wiley Nickel, and Jeff Jackson -- but after the late Fall Republican gerrymandering of those districts, all three Democrats declined to run again because of impossible odds. It's now a foregone conclusion that these will be Republican seats after November. SD 7 is the outrageous case that carved Black neighborhoods out of Wilmington and shoving them across the Cape Fear River to be part of a very rural Senate district dominated by white Republicans. HD 105 illustrates the bizarre favors the General Assembly attempted to give the recent turncoat Tricia Cotham, whose previous district map was heavily Democratic and now leans Republican.

Old-Line Rural Republicans Hold the Key to the Election in North Carolina

I believe Trump will be defeated. I believe he won't. I believe the Democrats will take control of the NC House. I believe they won't -- and in fact, that they'll probably lose some of the seats they gained in 2018. I believe Democrats will take control of the US Senate. I believe they can't and that they'll lose Doug Jones in Alabama in the bargain. I believe that even conservative rural Republicans have understood the deep tragedy of Donald J. Trump and will stay home this year. But I know good and well that they're itching as much as me to get to the polls to reelect the great businessman and owner of "the libs"; yes, they'll show up with no masks and sharp elbows, and people will get hurt.

Hope has a companion, despair. He comes dressed in black and wearing a plague masque. While Hope squeegees on the softsoap -- "The polls reflect reality!" Despair blasts a cold water hose --"You should doubt the polls, because ... history. The polls don't know shit because they don't know the right ones to talk to."

It's not just the polls nurturing Hope. It's ground-level narrative -- rumor and hearsay. Like this we heard: Old-line rural Republicans in Watauga County seem more embarrassed by Trump than energized, and if they decide not to show up on November 3rd, then Hope, she is a prophetess.

Politics is an art, but it's also divination -- reading the signs -- and intuition, taking the surrounding temperature, looking for that high fever on the other side that will mean trouble for you and for the candidates you work for. We don't feel any fever over there (except among the most ardent Trumpists, the ones pushing guns and God, but there aren't enough of them to lift a jalopy to the roof). 

(I used to hope, oblivious to arithmetic, but I've learned better. The loss of Harvey Gantt in 1990 scarred my soul. But scar tissue is useful education, along with math.)

Judge Bob Orr,
of Henderson County

Arithmetic was trending my/our way, really since the day after Trump's inauguration when millions of women revolted, and it manifested itself in special election after special election in 2017, where the progressive Democrat regularly won, and culminated in the 2018 Midterms, when Trumpism was rejected every time in the suburbs. Why should we think that that resistance has ebbed by 2020? If anything, it's exploded. Republicans like Judge Bob Orr and the others who are organizing a splinter National Republican Party combined their membership with other never-Trumpers to hold their own on-line convention in Charlotte at the same time as Trump's convention. 

Judge Bob Orr is the living embodiment of an old-line rural Republicanism that is stand-up virtuous. Judge Bob Orr speaks for a silent minority of other old-line rural Republicans who can hear that splintering sound as a sign from God. Perhaps they know a cult of personality for what it is, a surrender of religious values. Might be something they like to avoid, like a cow patty in the path. How those old-line rural Republicans play will determine the election in North Carolina. 

I hope one thing; I fear another.

Trumpism's Achilles Heel -- Disaffected Republicans

The 30-second ad below will run on Fox News on Saturday during Trump's July 4th Salute to America. It features the face of former NC House member and Matthews, NC mayor, Shawn LeMond, saying, “The Republican Party that I knew and loved was an honorable party. What’s taken over our party is wrong. And as a Republican, as a Christian, we simply cannot allow this man to be re-elected.” (SORRY! Every attempt to embed the ad into this post screwed the hell out of the text. See the ad here.)

The ad was produced by a group calling itself Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT). Their website is not forthcoming about who they are -- the names of individuals leading this effort -- but it contains a calvacade -- dozens and freakin' dozens -- of Republican testimonials about loss of faith in Trump, from all over the country. A bracing stew of discontent.

RVAT was founded in May 2020 as an auxillary PAC to Defending America, the brainchild of Bill Kristol and a small group of oher disaffected conservatives (Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, et al.) and veteran Republican campaign operatives (Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller). RVAT appears to have been created to target specifically North Carolina, along with Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Florida, with anti-Trump ads aimed at white college-educated suburban voters (Wikipedia).

Meanwhile, other conservative Republicans have been organizing other expressions of disgust, including Judge Bob Orr in North Carolina who helped launch a whole new would-be National Republican Party in the fall of 2019. Republicans for the Rule of Law and The Lincoln Project also sprang up.Yet another group, Republicans for a New President, plans to bring all the disaffected together in Charlotte for "an alternate convention" to Trump's renomination in Jacksonville. The website for Republicans for a New President also does not list its members, the names of its organizers, but says it's "A Project of Stand Up Republic." Stand Up Republic is a 501(c)(4) launched in January 2017 by Evan McMillan, a 2016 independent candidate for president.

Anyway, all these guys and gals are planning to get together August 24-27 in Charlotte for "The Convention on Founding Principles," a convocation of all the #NeverTrumpers, the location obviously chosen because the Republican National Convention was supposed to be there. After Roy Cooper pissed off Donald Trump, and the RNC moved itself to Jacksonville, Republicans for a New President didn't move. They stuck with Charlotte (though much of their "convention" is now likely to be "virtual"). The question: Can they get noticed enough? Get out a message? Present a salutary contrast to Trump's mob on the issue of COVID-prevention. Influence the election?

Trump continues to say (believe?) that 95% of Republicans love his ass, but the truth is he's been shedding Republican support at an accelerating pace. While early in the year some polls found Trump with 90% support among registered Republicans, by May a Rasmussen poll could find only 70% of Republicans enthusiastic about Trump's reelection. Some 23% explicitly wanted someone else to run for president. A Pew Research poll this week gives Trump 78% of the Republican Vote, down from 85% in March. (For comparison, George W. Bush was down to 75% support among Republicans by the end of his term.)

GOP strategist Larry Shaheen of Mecklenburg County said that ads like the one above are "not designed to move Republicans. They're designed to make the Unaffiliateds in urban areas more comfortable not voting for Trump and voting for Biden." That's Trumpism's Achilles heel, the independents.

Un-Trumping North Carolina: Democrat Moe Davis in the 11th Congressional District

I've been an enthusiastic supporter of retired Air Force Colonel Moe Davis who's trying to take the congressional seat in western North Carolina that Trump toady Mark Meadows held until very recently. Davis is perhaps the strongest Democratic Congressional candidate in North Carolina not supported by the Democratic Congressional Candidate Committee (DCCC). The DCCC opted to support Pat Timmons-Goodson in the NC8 as a part of its "Red-to-Blue" campaign, the only Democratic congressional candidate in North Carolina singled out for that kind of financial and tactical support (and I'll be profiling Timmons-Goodson soon).

If anyone can do it on his own steam, it's Moe Davis. He's got a adamantine spine from years of "gut-check moments," when as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay he refused to use evidence obtained from torture during the Bush admin and later came out publicly against the handling of prosecutions by the Obama admin. An equal-opportunity pain in the ass. We like that in the age of Trump.

He's a graduate of AppState and lives in Asheville.

He does not yet know who his Republican opponent will be in November because there's a second runoff primary on the Republican side on June 23rd (postponed from May 12 because of COVID) between Trump-endorsed Lynda Bennett, a middle-aged real estate developer, and upstart Madison Cawthorn, a very young 20-something who has the looks of a movie star. Bennett's baggage includes the ill will generated by Mark Meadows' trying to prearrange her assent to the seat. Bennett is standard-issue Tea Party. Cawthorn represents a much younger, perhaps less encumbered generation. If there's resentment of Bennett for her closeness to Meadows, and Republican backlash against Trump, Cawthorn may be the winner.

Judge Bob Orr

NOTE: Republican Judge Bob Orr, who has a moral compass and who lives now in Asheville, already announced on Twitter that he would be voting in the runoff for Madison Cawthorn, propelled by Trump's endorsement of Bennett, but that he'll be voting for Moe Davis in November.

NC's Judge Bob Orr Is Leading a Republican Splinter Group

Judge Bob Orr

Noted North Carolina constitutional conservative Judge Bob Orr has become the national spokesman for a splinter group of non-Trumpist Republicans. They're calling themselves the "National Republican Party," and they're planning to hold their own rump convention next summer in Charlotte at the same time the Republican National Convention will be (presumably) renominating Donald Trump for a second term.

The National Republicans have a Facebook group page on which they published this "pledge":

1. I am a registered Republican, and/or generally support GOP policies and candidates. 

2. I believe that Republican presidential primaries and caucuses that have been closed should be re-opened, and stay open. 

3. I support the Republican Platform as adopted at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, minus the abortion and same-sex marriage planks, on which we take no positions.

Number 2 responds to the cancelling of some state Republican primaries in South Carolina, Arizona, and a few other states, presumably to clear Trump's path of any (even weak) Republican opposition.

Who Is Bob Orr?
Aside from having served as the appointed District Attorney serving Watauga County and the rest of the 24th Prosecutorial District in 2014 (to finish the term of DA Jerry Wilson), Orr had already built an impressive record of service. He was appointed to the NC Court of Appeals by Republican Governor Jim Martin in 1986. He won election to the NC Supreme Court in 1994 and served there for ten years. He ran for governor in the Republican primary of 2008, losing to Pat McCrory. In 2016, he was a John Kasich delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, leaving the convention early before Trump's formal coronation but not before commenting to a WRAL reporter that Donald Trump was “singularly unqualified to lead this country.” In fact, Orr said, "Trump is a danger to the country."

Truer words?

The News&Observer has an article up this morning about Orr and the National Republicans.

More Dirty, Rotten Politics in Raleigh

Bill Rabon

Some Republicans in the NC General Assembly want to change the state's constitution to force judges at all levels, including the Supreme Court, to run for reelection every two years. That would in effect put judges into constant campaign mode and further erode the independence of the state's judiciary.

The constitutional amendment filed by Rep. Bill Rabon of Bladen County is intended as a direct slap at judges who have found so much legislation passed by this General Assembly plainly unconstitutional. If judges uphold new Republican laws, they're acting like wise judges, but if they strike laws down, then they're "legislating from the bench."

Republican Rep. David Lewis (Harnett County) underscored the political calculations behind the Rabon amendment in a comment he made to WUNC: "If you’re going to act like a legislator, perhaps you should run like one” -- that is, run every two years like members of the General Assembly do.

One of the last principled Republicans in the state, former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, has already come out strongly against the Rabon amendment:

“It’s just wrong,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Bob Orr

Orr said the amendment sends the wrong message to the judiciary that if judges won’t rule the GOP’s way, lawmakers will retaliate. 

“That’s just fundamentally repugnant to everything I believe,” he said....

“Not only [are two-year terms] a bad idea, it’s just fundamentally a bad policy. I don’t think the legislators or the public want judges to be full-time candidates.”

The General Assembly has adjourned until January, so perhaps Dictator Phil Berger and Go-Along House Speaker Tim Moore won't call another special session to ram this thing through prior to the first of the year.

In the meantime, people need to let Jonathan Jordan (Jonathan.Jordan@ncleg.net) and Deanna Ballard (Deanna.Ballard@ncleg.net) know that the Rabon amendment is dirty, rotten politics.

Republican Statesman Denounces NCGA

Former Supreme Court Judge Bob Orr, as straight a shooter as the NC GOP can claim as a member, has blasted the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly for practicing just plain bad government.

Orr singled out three principal actions that were especially egregious power-grabs:

The draconian stripping of Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein’s budget with no debate or discussion is simply unacceptable. This kind of hardball politics doesn’t just “punish” a political opponent but jeopardizes the critical work of the attorney general’s office. Stripping the Court of Appeals of three of its 15 judges in order to keep the governor from making appointments to replace retiring Republican judges is short-sighted and overtly politicizes the judiciary at a time when we need to be moving to de-politicize it. And merging the Ethics Commission and the Board of Elections might be a good idea, but the way it was done with no real discussion about the merits of the proposal flaunts the concept of good government.

[I would link directly to the Charlotte Observer, but I'm blocked by their pay-wall (and I'm already paying hundreds of $$ for on-line subscriptions, so no). I'm linking instead to Progressive Pulse which excerpted the editorial.]

Distinguished NC Republican Calls Trump "A Danger to the Country"

Robert F. "Bob" Orr, a former Republican justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, has left the Trump coronation but not before telling a WRAL reporter that Trump is “singularly unqualified to lead this country.”

Orr led the John Kasich campaign in North Carolina. His candor about Trump earned him a denunciation from Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NC GOP: Orr “hasn’t been a good Republican for a long time,” Woodhouse said.

"Good Republican." Whatever that means to Woodhouse, we doubt you could find a Republican Party regular with a more distinguished pedigree. After he was appointed to the NC Court of Appeals by Republican Governor Jim Martin in 1986, he won election to the Supreme Court in 1994 and served there for ten years. He ran for governor in 2008, losing to Pat McCrory. He would have made a hell of a better governor.

He even served for a few months in 2014 as the appointed District Attorney for the 24th Prosecutorial District, which includes Watauga County, after the resignation of DA Jerry Wilson.

He's a principled conservative, and he's read the character of the Republican presidential nominee correctly. Upon departing Cleveland, Orr said, ruefully, “I’ve had all the fun I can have.”

Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Republican Veto Over-Ride

Bob Orr

Yesterday afternoon, Wake County Judge Paul Gessner signed a temporary restraining order stopping enactment of the Republican vendetta against the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE). Gessner agreed that the association had demonstrated it would suffer irreparable harm if the law is enacted, according to Associated Press reporter Gary D. Robertson. Judge Gessner said that NCAE “has shown a likelihood of success on the merits” of its claim that the process violated the state constitution.

"A hearing for a preliminary injunction to block the enactment while the complaint is tried in court will be scheduled in the next 10 days, said Bob Orr, a Raleigh attorney representing the association."

Bob Orr? Former Republican justice on the NC Supreme Court, noted conservative constitutionalist, and until recently an employee of Art Pope's at the Pope-funded N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL). That Bob Orr?

Wow.

Laura Leslie at WRAL has put together an informative piece interviewing a variety of legal experts debating the merits of Bob Orr's case for the NCAE. Most interesting are the opinions of Orr's former colleagues at the NCICL, which prompts all sorts of questions about why Mr. Orr left the Art Pope group that is now strongly disagreeing with his new clients.

Greensboro News&Record reporter Mark Binker says that Orr was asked during a conference call "about taking up a case closely associated with Democrats when he has run in conservative circles for so long. 'The state constitution does not mention Democrat or Republican. It doesn't mention liberal or conservative. It is what it is and says what it says,' Orr said."

We believe that having Robert Orr as lead counsel in their face-off with Thom Tillis and the Republicans in the NC House is the NCAE's equivalent of playing political hardball right back at the politicians who decided last year that they would play political hardball with the state's teachers.

Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment a "Political Decision"

Former Republican NC Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr admits that the decision to ram through a gay marriage amendment to the NC Constitution was purely a "political decision."

Big "duh" there. Eh, Dan Soucek?