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.

Buck Fever

Alexander H. Jones, writing for "New Branchhead" on Substack, very recently called NC Sen. Buck Newton "the worst of the South," meaning Newton is a walking PowerPoint of the worst traits of bigoted Southern politicians. Newton ran for Attorney General against the then-incumbent Josh Stein in 2016, and he came perilously close to beating Stein. Newton, a lawyer in Goldsboro, is a graduate of AppState. One of his former classmates posted a now-famous take-down of Buck's character during his student days in Boone, a post which Pam'sPicks found and published before the 2016 elections (reprinted below).

Here's NC Newsline's blow-by-blow of Buck Newton's most recent hijacking of legitimate legislation to continue his crusade against queer people: 

Democrats serving on the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee asked Republican Sen. Buck Newton (R-Greene, Wayne and Wilson) a week ago to reconsider his efforts to amend House Bill 805 — a noncontroversial measure designed to prevent sexual exploitation of women and minors that won unanimous support in the House — into a vehicle to advance the conservative social agenda on issues of gender identity and sexuality.

On Wednesday, Newton gave his answer: “No.”

As Newsline reported last week, when the bill was first considered by the Senate Committee, Newton — a committee co-chair — put forth a proposed amended version that defined the state’s recognition of two biological sexes: male and female. Newton also proposed the state maintain the vital records of anyone seeking to change the sex on their birth certificate.

At Wednesday’s committee hearing, Newton went a step further by introducing new language aimed at transgender individuals and school libraries....

...Newton’s new version of the legislation would also provide parents with access to a searchable list of library books available at each public school.

Local boards of education would be required to adopt policies to allow a student or their parent to request that the student be excused from specific classroom discussions or assigned readings if they believe it “imposes a substantial burden on the student’s religious beliefs” or invades the student’s privacy by calling attention to the student’s religion.

 

Pam'sPicks, Oct. 2016:

Newton graduated from Appalachian State University (sorry about that) with a political science degree and went immediately to work for Jesse Helms. Newton got his seat in the NC Senate during the 2010 Tea Party wave and has held onto it until announcing in late 2015 that he'd be leaving to run for Attorney General.

He made headlines in 2016 by loudly proclaiming his support ("keep our state straight!" he shouted to a rally in Raleigh) for HB2, the "bathroom bill" which has so tarnished the state in more ways than one, and for helping get it passed in a special session of the NC General Assembly.

His support for HB2 prompted this post on a Facebook thread:

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.

Not for nothing did Buck Newton receive his perfect score from the American Conservative Union. He has voted to prohibit wind farms, to repeal the state's recycling program, to increase sales taxes on working families, and he has a 100% rating from the NRA (among many other things).

 

 

Bon Appetit! NC GOP Serves Itself Two New Turd Sandwiches

While You Were Ogling DeeCee...
Something else happened yesterday while you were possibly transfixed by the pre-dawn arrest of Roger Stone followed by the complete capitulation of DJT ("wall" has shrunk to "wah"). And didn't Nancy Pelosi show every man in Washington how to wear your balls out? Why did I ever doubt her?

Meanwhile, in North Carolina...

Dallas Woodhouse

1. Load, Aim, Shoot Your Eye Out

We had not even noticed that in their newest Board of Elections law, the Republicans in the General Assembly explicitly prohibited anyone serving on the board who had worked at "electioneering" in the past 48 months. Seriously. Dictionary definition of "electioneering": "the activity of trying to persuade people to vote for a particular political party."

Beyond the restoration of the 3-2 governor's-party architecture of the old old SBOE, I had no idea what else was buried in that law. Evidently, Dallas Woodhouse didn't know either. He's NC GOP Executive Director, and in contravention of his party's law, he presented two (of four) nominees for the SBOE who violate the explicit language of the statute, Francis Deluca and Buck Newton. Governor Roy Cooper actually knows what's in the law, and he demanded two more names, eligible people rather than partisan knights.

Though Cooper gave Woodhouse until Monday to produce two new nominees, Woodhouse coughed them up immediately and under the signature of Republican Party Figurehead Chair Robin Hayes. We'll follow up presently on those two new names in a separate post.

Woodhouse is ruthless but sloppy. Like Twitterman. I like that in an adversary.

Footnote
Four Eggers remains as a nominee, along with Dallas Woodhouse's cousin Eddie, who has served on the Wake County BOE.


2. "Is it me, or has it gotten hot in here?"

NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin announced he would be leaving the bench in February to become dean of the law school at Regent University, Pat Robertson's Christian mill in Virginia. Governor Cooper gets to replace him on the court (and that someone will have to run in his/her own right in 2020).

After the November election of Justice Anita Earls, the Court was 5-2 Democratic majority. With Cooper's ability to appoint Martin's replacement, it may now go to 6-1.

Relatively speaking, that's pretty huge. The NC GOP goes from trying hard the last two years to jury-rig the judicial system in North Carolina, to this:

NC GOP Nominates Four Eggers to New SBOE

Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four")

News broke late yesterday that the North Carolina Republican Party had nominated four people for the two Republican slots on the new new State Board of Elections (SBOE):

Col. Francis Deluca
Eldon Newton III
Stacy Eggers IV
Edwin Woodhouse Jr

Under the new new law, Governor Cooper must pick two of these people to serve with the three Democrats he'll also be choosing. Generally, a party presents their nominees in rank order, and Four Eggers is listed third, just ahead of NC GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse's cousin Eddie Woodhouse.

Also interesting: Of the four Republicans who served on the last incarnation of the nine-member SBOE, Eggers is the only Republican who made the cut, even though he was far from the most aggressive Republican on the old board, and he voted twice with the Democrats not to certify Rev. Mark Harris's election in the NC-9. That board was dissolved by court order on December 28.

Check the search engine above left and enter "Four Eggers" if you want to browse how he's famous in Watauga County.

The top two Republican nominees:

Col. Francis Deluca -- Until last spring, the president of the Civitas Institute. A big proponent of voter photo ID (and curiously, a bitter enemy of solar power). The "Colonel" honorific comes from 30 years of active and reserve service in the US Marine Corps. He flew combat missions in the First Gulf War. He stepped down from the Civitas Institute, but he remains deeply embedded with the Art Pope machine in the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (previously known as the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy). He takes a dim view of a whole bunch of stuff and has the requisite training to off his enemies.

Deluca was nominated early in 2018 to the first Republican General Assembly's incarnation of the SBOE, an eight-member board with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. By court order, that iteration was thrown out for a nine-member board, with one added Unaffiliated voter, and Francis Deluca was nominated for that one too. Gov. Cooper didn't pick him from among the Republican nominees.

He's supposedly considering a run for the NC-3 congressional seat that Republican Walter Jones is finally retiring from in 2020. Doubtful, since he allowed himself to be nominated again to the SBOE, which would preclude a candidacy.

Eldon Newton III -- Better known here and abroad as "Buck" Newton. He's best known as Attorney General Josh Stein's Republican opponent in 2016.

Newton graduated from Appalachian State University with a political science degree and went immediately to work for Jesse Helms. He won a seat in the NC Senate during the 2010 Tea Party wave and held onto it until announcing in late 2015 that he'd be leaving to run for Attorney General.

He made headlines in 2016 by loudly proclaiming his support for HB2 ("keep our state straight!" he shouted at a rally in Raleigh). His support for HB2 prompted this post on a Facebook thread:

"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."

Not for nothing did Buck Newton receive his perfect score from the American Conservative Union. He has voted to prohibit wind farms, to repeal the state's recycling program, to increase sales taxes on working families, and he has a 100% rating from the NRA (among many other things).

I look at these lists of nominees as a game of political chess. Dallas Woodhouse wants to force Cooper to appoint the top two, so he offers poison pills in the alternatives. Four Eggers would once again present the anomaly of having two members of the SBOE from Watauga, something that's made Gov. Cooper hesitate before. And Eddie Woodhouse? Dallas Woodhouse's cousin ... seriously? 

But if I were Governor Cooper, I think I would pick Four Eggers and Eddie Woodhouse. Meetings of the SBOE would be less colorful, perhaps, but the American carnage might be more manageable.

Alternative chess: Go ahead and pick Deluca and Newton, who then stage suicide missions for the sake of partisan advantage -- displaying once again what the GOP is all about. We can use the advertising. Whatever superior logic and argumentative powers Deluca and Newton are rumored to possess, it's doubtful the three-Democrat majority will be swayed.

Another consideration: It will take four members of the new new SBOE to order a new election in the NC-9. None of the four Republicans listed above are likely to provide that fourth vote. Conversely, it takes only a simple majority to refuse certification, so stalemate lies ahead, until a higher power orders a new election. Which can happen, I am persuaded.

Buck Newton v. Josh Stein for NC Attorney General

PamsPicks.net, guest blogging:

NC ATTORNEY GENERAL

Buck Newton (Tea Party/Republican): http://www.bucknewton.com and Buck Newton NC on Facebook

Newton graduated from Appalachian State University (sorry about that) with a political science degree and went immediately to work for Jesse Helms. Newton got his seat in the NC Senate during the 2010 Tea Party wave and has held onto it until announcing in late 2015 that he'd be leaving to run for Attorney General.

He made headlines in 2016 by loudly proclaiming his support ("keep our state straight!" he shouted to a rally in Raleigh) for HB2, the "bathroom bill" which has so tarnished the state in more ways than one, and for helping get it passed in a special session of the NC General Assembly.

His support for HB2 prompted this post on a Facebook thread:

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.

Not for nothing did Buck Newton receive his perfect score from the American Conservative Union. He has voted to prohibit wind farms, to repeal the state's recycling program, to increase sales taxes on working families, and he has a 100% rating from the NRA (among many other things).

Josh Stein (Democrat): www.joshstein.org and Josh Stein for NC Attorney General on Facebook

Following the Tea Party takeover of the NC General Assembly in 2010, I had a hero in the NC Senate, and it was Senator Josh Stein.

Stein graduated from Chapel Hill High School and lives in Raleigh. He earned his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College and went on to Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. He has worked for the Self-Help Credit Union in Durham and the United States Senate. Prior to serving in the General Assembly, Stein spent eight years as North Carolina's Deputy Attorney General for Consumer Protection.

He was elected to the NC Senate in 2008 and has been reelected three more times. When Roy Cooper, his former boss in the Attorney General's office, announced he would be running for governor in 2016, Stein announced for the Attorney General's job. He's immensely qualified, in both character and training.

Stein became my hero in 2013 when he stood up in the NC Senate and denounced the Republican budget proposal which was robbing from public education to pay tax-cut dividends to the one percent. He's also been a champion of abortion rights, and he argued forcefully against the monster election law rewrite that has now been overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals as unconstitutional.

While the North Carolina General Assembly was descending into Tea Party darkness, Josh Stein's light for justice and fair play shone bright on YouTube and gave many of us out here in the world hope that we could turn it all around eventually. Stein is still very much a part of that hope.

Mr. Keep-Our-State-Straight Is a Graduate of AppState

NC Senator Eldon Sharpe "Buck" Newton III made some headlines this week at a pro-HB2 rally in Raleigh that was characterized yesterday on the editorial pages of the Charlotte Observer as a hate-fest worthy of the darkest days of the 1950s.

Buck Newton wants to be Attorney General of North Carolina. Of such are nightmares made.

Buck Newton graduated from Appalachian State University with a political science degree and went immediately to work for Jesse Helms. Now he's working to rid North Carolina of difference and drive us down the hole that Jesse Helms started digging so many decades ago.

In response to Buck's "coming out" at the HB2 rally, this got posted on Facebook:

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 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.

Taylor Batten wrote in his Charlotte Observer editorial:

Supporters of House Bill 2 have dubbed it the Bathroom Bill, as if the legislation isn’t much broader than that, as if it doesn’t take North Carolina back to the days where discrimination is an accepted way of life. The rest of us have to decide if that is OK.

It ain't okay, and there's something bad wrong with Buck Newton.