The State of Play in Buncombe County

 

Going into 2022, the entire NC House delegation from Buncombe County -- Susan Fisher, John Ager, and Brian Turner -- announced they would not be running for reelection. Ager and Turner promised to serve out their terms, but Susan Fisher went ahead and officially resigned in January, which forced an appointment to fill out her term. According to Dave's Redistricting and NCFree, those three districts ought to be solid for remaining in Democratic hands.

House District 114

Susan Fisher's former district (eastern Buncombe). Dave rates it 63.9% Democratic, NC Free as D+10.

Eric Ager

Buncombe Democrats chose data scientist and Peace Corps veteran Caleb Rudow to finish Fisher's term, and Gov. Cooper dutifully appointed him on February 1st. The NC General Assembly site lists Rudow as currently serving in the Dist. 114 seat, but here's a small mystery: Ballotpedia says he was running for reelection in Dist., 114, but "did not appear on the ballot for the Democratic primary on May 17, 2022." Instead, he was suddenly running for the Dist. 116 seat. In his place in HD114, Eric Ager, John Ager's son, is now the Democrat on the ballot. But Eric Ager had already announced that he would be running for his father's seat in HD115. Something happened. The fruit-baskets turned over, so to speak, and I frankly don't know what.

So it's now Eric Ager (D) v. Everett Pittillo (R) in HD114.

Ager is a former Navy pilot and currently the operations manager of the Ager family farm, Hickory Nut Gap Farm.

Everett Pittillo "has worked in the food service industry, professional baseball player, mixed-martial artist, construction worker, farmer, mechanic, and worked in the Heating and Air Conditioning industry. Mr. Pittillo has also managed small businesses and large corporations alike. Having done most, not one individual can say that he does not relate to the blue-collar worker" (Pittillo website).

If Pittillo is a Trumpist, he's keeping it well hidden.

House District 115

Lindsey Prather

The John Ager seat in southern Buncombe. Dave's Redistricting scores it 53.6% Democratic, NCFree as D+4.

Ager's son Eric didn't end up running for this seat as he promised (see above), so the Democrat on the ballot is Lindsey Prather. Prather was for six years a public school teacher and then finished a Master's in Public Affairs at Western Carolina, and now works as assistant director of admissions at UNC-Asheville. She came to my attention by being endorsed by Pro-Choice NC.

Pratik Bhakta (R) immigrated with his parents from India in 1978 and was studying electrical engineering at NC State when family circumstances forced him home to Asheville to manage the family's motel.

Like Everett Pittillo above, Bhakta strikes a decidedly moderate tone on issues.

House District 116

Caleb Rudow

Brian Turner's current seat. Dave rates it 57.7% Democratic, NCFree as D+7.

This is where Democrat Caleb Rudow ended up running. He served in the Peace Corps in Zambia, and he's fluent in Spanish. He's a data scientist with a masters degree in Global Policy Studies from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Mollie Rose (R) is pretty invisible on-line, with no website nor Facebook nor Twitter account. The Buncombe GOP got her to list her policy positions, which contain a few significant dog whistles -- parental choice in schools (she's anti-CRT), responsible energy solutions, voter integrity, and compassionate fiscal responsibility which focuses on the true needs of hard working North Carolinians, while protecting our resources for the future."

BOTTOMLINE: Buncombe County is not a congenial piece of real estate from hard-right conservatives.

Sign of the Times?

The Republican booth at the Mountain State Fair in the WNC Agricultural Center near Asheville yesterday:

Vs. the Democratic booth yesterday:

Photos courtesy of Brian Caskey.

The North Carolina "Seven": New Black Sheriffs Elected Last Tuesday

Paula Dance, Pitt County

Paula Dance, Pitt County, became the first African-American female sheriff in the state of North Carolina and only the fifth in the entire country. She was already a major in the sheriff's office, running for an open seat. She has 28 years of law enforcement experience, 26 of those in the Pitt County department.

Quentin Miller, Buncombe County, 25-year veteran of the Asheville Police Dept., won with over 61% of the vote against both a Republican and a Libertarian. It too was an open seat, and the Libertarian had been jailed on a stalking charge in September.

Ennis Wright, Cumberland County, was already serving as an appointed sheriff following the retirement of a fellow Democrat. Wright won on Tuesday with more than 63% of the vote.

Bobby Kimbrough Jr., Forsyth County, defeated 5-term Republican incumbent Bill Schatzman with 53% of the vote. Kimbrough is a retired agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. “People are ready for change,” Kimbrough said. “This race wasn’t about me, and it wasn’t about him [Schatzman]. It’s about building some bridges.”

Gerald Baker, Wake County, "in a stunning upset," defeated 4-term Sheriff Donnie Harrison. The 55-45 winning margin made it doubly stunning. Baker had worked for the Wake County Sheriff's Department for 28 years, 15 of those under Harrison. Harrison had partnered in and defended a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that meant transferring people to federal custody who have been arrested and were believed to be in the U.S. illegally. Baker was critical of the program.

Danny Rogers, in Guilford County, ended the 24-year reign of Sheriff B J Barnes, a politician so powerful he was considered unbeatable. (That was Monday. Wednesday, people were thinking otherwise.) Rogers took 53% of the vote.

Clarence Birkhead, in Durham County, had virtually won the office back in the primary, taking some 69% of the vote against an unpopular white incumbent, and faced only write-in votes last Tuesday.

What the State Board of Elections Did Yesterday

Stacy C "Four" Eggers, member NCSBE, voted "no"
on every early voting plan except two.
Photo Lonnie Webster

At a rare Sunday afternoon meeting, the North Carolina State Board of Elections met in Forsyth County yesterday to hear 15 contested cases for Early Voting plans. Results in every case favored more access to Early Voting, with most votes going 5-4 along partisan lines (two unanimous exceptions noted below). Grateful to Loretta Boniti for keeping us informed yesterday.

Buncombe -- gets additional early voting site in black community

Dare -- gets Sunday voting

Durham -- keeps Sunday voting

Brunswick -- gets Sunday voting

Gaston -- gets Sunday voting (unanimous)

Gates -- gets expanded hours

Henderson -- gets Sunday voting

Lincoln -- gets expanded hours (unanimous)

Orange -- gets Sunday voting

Pender -- gets 25 Saturday hours and 20 Sunday hours

Pitt -- gets 80 Saturday hours and 20 Sunday hours

Randolph -- gets 4 early voting sites and 45 Saturday hours

Robeson -- gets more Saturday voting at more sites

Rockingham -- gets more sites

Wake -- gets early voting restored on NCSU campus

Little Watauga, Running With the Big Dogs

Hattip to Gerry Cohen, who keeps up with this stuff:

New voter registrations in various NC counties the past month (generally Aug 3 - Sept 2)

Wake 11,236
D 30.1%
L 1.0%
R 15.8%
U 53.2%

Orange 3,442
D 36.3%
L 1.1%
R 8.1%
U 54.5%

Durham 3,508
D 45.8%
L 0.6%
R 8.4%
U 45.3%

Mecklenburg 7,690
D 41.0%
L 1.3%
R 17.1%
U 40.5%

Buncombe 1,984
D 35.1%
L 1.8%
R 13.6%
U 49.5%

Guilford 3,532
D 40.4%
L 1.1%
R 14.1%
U 44.4%

Forsyth 2,383
D 39.2%
L 1.1%
R 17.1%
U 42.6%

Watauga 2,363
D 24.7%
L 2.1%
R 21.6%
U 51.5%

That Was Not Our Last Calf-Roping

That was not our first rodeo. Won't be our last, either. We know the taste of arena-floor dirt. Improves your perspective and adds nutriments that are otherwise rare to the diet. You know the old saying: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

2016 won't be the same for either party. Turn-out for Democrats and the unaffiliated is bound to be much stronger, even if all the voter suppression practiced by our General Assembly and The Guv stands up in court.

Locally, progressives held their own and even improved their situation. Sheriff Hagaman buried Randy Townsend, despite an early voting site in Deep Gap generously provided by our partisan Board of Elections.

It's steady-state on the county's Board of Commissioners, two Democrats and three Republicans. But at least the Nathan Miller Era will be over come the first of December. He has no more public office to abuse the power of. Republican Commissioner David Blust will have to run again in 2016 along with Republican Perry Yates. Without Miller pulling their strings, what will they do for direction? Will they put Democrat-turned-Republican Jimmy Hodges in as their Chair?

Democrats will now dominate the Watauga County Board of Education, first time in a long time. Republican Ron Henries, who got thrown under the party bus back in May because he voted not to ban books, is now being celebrated on the local conservative blog as one of their wins on Tuesday, as though we all don't remember how he was treated months ago. Bottomline: Wataugans have only one book-banner left on the school board, and that took a good deal of "single-shotting" by the conservatives.

NC House member Jonathan Jordan lost Watauga County, and state Senator Dan Soucek came within 226 votes of losing his home county too. If voters want more backwardness and bullshit, they'll certainly get it from Jordan and Soucek. But 2016 is coming.

For those without love for the North Carolina General Assembly -- which means those who've been paying attention to the extremist agenda in Raleigh -- the brightest spots on Tuesday night were in Buncombe and in Wake counties.

Tim Moffitt, the smug Buncombe County representative who engineered the seizing of Asheville's water system without compensation to the city, was defeated by Democrat Brian Turner. Moffitt thought he might be in line to succeed Thom Tillis as Speaker of the NC House. Oops.

Another Buncombe County Republican House member, freshman Nathan Ramsey, also lost to John Ager.

But Wake County was the real stand-out for a local slaughter of Republican office-holders. Another Republican NC House member, Tom Murry, used an election-day stunt to try to fool pro-education voters. The Murry campaign paid temp workers to hand out fake endorsement cards from the NC Association of Educators. The NCAE had actually endorsed Murry’s opponent, Gale Adcock. The fake endorsement cards were exposed on local television, and Adcock went on to beat the faker.

All four incumbent Republican county commissioners in Wake County, including Jesse Helms's nephew Paul Coble, were swept out of office by four Democrats.

Perhaps most significant of all races statewide, Democratic Supreme Court and Court of Appeals judges won all their races, except for that 19-candidate race for the Court of Appeals, where Republican John Tyson won because all Democrats did not unite behind one candidate.

It's Over, and Good Riddance

U.S. District Court Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. in Asheville issued a ruling shortly after 5 p.m. Friday declaring unconstitutional North Carolina's Amendment One, the gay-marriage ban approved by state voters in 2012.

Cogburn's ruling followed Monday's announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it would not hear any appeal of a July ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond striking down Virginia's gay-marriage ban. Judge Cogburn's ruling allowed the first same-sex weddings in the state to begin immediately, and they did.

Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger kept his Asheville office upon until 7 p.m., issuing some 19 marriage licenses to same-sex couple, several of whom were married within the hour.

"It wasn't until I issued the second license that the tears came," Reisinger said shortly after issuing the last license of the day. "It has been heartbreaking to decline these marriage licenses for three and a half years based on discriminatory laws. It was an honor to be able to say yes." (Asheville Citizen-Times)

Meanwhile, in Watauga County, the Register of Deeds office in Boone refused to issue a license to the first same-sex couple who came in. That will have to change, and fast.

Goodbye, Amendment One, it's been no pleasure at all knowing you. Wonder how much you cost the state, how much you're still costing the state in high-priced lawyers hired by Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger? They need to get a grip and stop playing to the bigots.

It's over. Thank God, it's over.

Does Buncombe Have More Drama Than Watauga?

You be the judge.

This could supply a full season's scenario for "The House of Cards."

You've got a dewy-eyed and reportedly naive Democratic challenger and a shiv-wielding Republican incumbent by the name of Tim Moffitt, who's angling to replace Thom Tillis as Speaker of the NC House.

You've got the back room of an Italian eatery.

You've got a third-party witness who's also a Republican office-holder and hardly to be credited as an unbiased commentator.

Every bad thing that happened legislatively to Asheville in 2013 can be traced straight back to Tim Moffitt.

Evidence That Parts of the NC DemsParty Are Comatose

Get this: Democratic members of county boards of election in some 32 counties have joined with their Republican majorities in requesting an exemption from the State BOE to have fewer Early Voting hours during the May primaries, hours that were mandated by the monster voting law (Voter I.D., etc.) enacted by the Republican majority.

The quirk in the law: As Pat McCrory so memorably said, Early Voting has been "compacted." Though the number of days of Early Voting has been reduced from 17 to 10, the total number of hours that polls were open during Early Voting in 2012 must be duplicated in the shortened Early Voting period of 2014, unless an individual county board of elections unanimously requests an exemption from the rule. Got that?

Apparently, when the law was originally passed and in order to get some Democratic support, Republican bosses had to add that particular provision (to maintain the same number of total hours while reducing the total number of days). The rationale used to sell the law to Democrats was that county election boards would henceforth be forced to extend Early Voting hours to 8 or 9 p.m., for example, and add more sites to help more people find time to vote.

Unless an individual county board of elections unanimously requests an exemption from the rule.

And that's exactly what 32 NC counties have done (complete list below). Which means that in 32 NC counties, the Democratic member of those boards of elections saw no problem whatsoever in reducing Early Voting even more than the cutting off of a full week of ballot access. Republican majorities on those boards proposed seeking the exemption, and Democratic members, in an excess of wanting to be nice or just plain stupid, went along with the further squeezing of North Carolina democracy into a box that will fit very neatly on Art Pope's desk.

We can understand the presence of some counties on this list, where no viable Democratic Party even exists, but ... Buncombe?!?

Alleghany

Bladen

Brunswick

Buncombe

Caldwell

Camden

Cherokee

Chowan

Clay

Craven

Currituck

Duplin

Graham

Granville

Greene

Henderson

Martin

McDowell

Mitchell

Onslow

Pamlico

Pasquotank

Perquimans

Sampson

Stokes

Surry

Tyrrell

Warren

Washington

Wilkes

Yadkin

Yancey

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/28/3661081/nc-counties-allowed-to-reduce.html#storylink=cpy

Too Much Honesty Can Get Your Ass Fired

Soon after Don Yelton's hair-raising appearance on The Daily Show (see video down-column), Doug Clark in the Greensboro News & Record praised him (in a back-handed sort of way) as "the most honest Republican in North Carolina."

Why? Because Mr. Yelton, until yesterday a member of the Buncombe County Republican Executive Committee, told the truth about the real motives behind the new voter suppression law passed this summer by the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly. Said Mr. Yelton, North Carolina's new voter ID law "is going to kick the Democrats in the butt."

Both the Buncombe County Republican Party and the NC Republican Party fell all over themselves calling for Mr. Yelton's prompt resignation as a Buncombe precinct chair. He had pulled the white sheet a little too far back to reveal the contemporary Republican Party in the modern South, and though a majority of Republicans agree with Mr. Yelton's opinions, his blabber-mouthing their strategy all over Comedy Central was a definite no-no.

Sort of like Watauga Republican Party Chair Anne Marie Yates blabbing to the Watauga Democrat newspaper about how the local Board of Elections was planning to play hardball over the college student vote. So far, Yates still has her job. That's the big difference.

POSTSCRIPT
The refreshingly honest Mr. Yelton doubled-down in an interview with Jake Frankel in the Mountain XPress:

"The comments that were made, that I said, I stand behind them. I believe them." 

The short interview clips were edited together from a much longer two-hour sit-down, says Yelton. But he says he was pleased overall with the parts that were included. In fact, he notes that some of the comments he made that weren't included might've even been more controversial. "To tell you the truth, there were a lot of things I said that they could've made sound worse than what they put up." He adds, "I would've loved to been able to do it live. … But that wasn't offered."

Emphasis added. The man's proud of himself.

Don Yelton live. Boggles the mind.

Rebranding Update

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Buncombe County Republicans Also Hate College Students

This is a tale of little Warren Wilson College in Buncombe County, NC, and a Republican candidate for County Commissioner down there who lost her race to a Democrat by 13 votes.

The losing Republican went to a special meeting of the Buncombe County Board of Elections last night and made her case that 44 votes cast on the Warren Wilson College campus in her race should be thrown out.

During the meeting, the Republican member of the Buncombe BOE actually argued that he didn't think college students should be allowed to vote if their parents lived somewhere else (gosh! that argument sounds familiar). According to the Mountain Xpress,

At one point, an attendee in support of [the losing Republican] looked back at a group of Warren Wilson students in the packed meeting room and flashed a piece of paper on which she had written, "You are a law breaker."

The hapless Republican lost the vote in the Buncombe BOE and intends to appeal to the state BOE. The stakes are substantial. If this commissioner district goes to the Democrat, that will give the Democrats a 4-3 majority on the Buncombe County Commission.

Profiles in Egomania

Reading about one of Buncombe County's reps in the NC House, Mr. Tim Moffitt, might make you feel marginally lucky that we have the local bobble-heads that we have representing us in the General Assembly.

"Moffitt ruling like a king" the headline says. "Drunk on power" might also have served.

One of the things Moffitt seems on the verge of achieving is breaking Buncombe County into voting districts in which Asheville's clout is disabled. All voters in Buncombe, no matter where they live, have been accustomed to voting for all County Commission candidates on the ballot. No more, under Moffitt's scheme. Voters in each district will vote only for representation from that district.

Buncombe's system has been exactly like Watauga's (and a lot of other counties). How long before some Republican operative decides that the citizens of Boone have too much influence and decide to ram through a "districting" local law for Watauga?

So perhaps we're lucky that Jonathan Jordan and Dan Soucek know how to sit in their offices in Raleigh until someone comes and tells them how they'll be voting on any given day. Instead of thinking of ways to screw people on their own.

Buncombe GOP Gets Even Wiggier

The Buncombe County GOP at its convention yesterday elected Chad Nesbitt as its new chair. Nesbitt is a well known conservative (we would write "conservative extremist," but why get redundant?) who started The Carolina Stompers to exterminate Democrats and "soft" Republicans willy nilly and who also happens to be the step-son of Democratic state Senator Martin Nesbitt, the Democratic Majority Leader of the NC upper house (Thanksgiving at the Nesbitt house must be tons of fun!). That's Chad, wearing the boxing gloves, in the center of the Carolina Stompers group photo (other members of this sterling group identified here).

Anyhoo ... those posting comments over at Scrutiny Hooligans about this rise of Chad Nesbitt are gleeful about the Buncombe Republicans' evident resolve to become even more marginalized, while The Bugg Blog runs through some of Chad Nesbitt's greatest moments. And you can see Chad himself in action, giving his nomination speech, on the Buncombe GOP site.

Buncombe County Commission "Knocking on the Doors of Hell"

Citing the Forsyth County case, the Buncombe County Commission will no longer precede its meetings with an official prayer, opting for a moment of silence instead.

The board's attorney said in a statement, "On November 9, 2009 a magistrate judge with the US District Court for the Middle District of NC issued a recommendation of judgment against Forsyth County as the practice violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution .... The Forsyth case is based on facts establishing that out of 33 invocations prior to meetings only 7 did not contain some reference to Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, Savior, or the Trinity, and none of those 33 invocations invoked another deity associated with any faith other than Christianity. Such statistics are no doubt common here in the Bible Belt and I believe are also fairly representative of such a sampling before our Board."

To be legal prayers before the opening of a government body must be non-sectarian in nature and not endorse one faith or denomination over another.

Naturally, such a decision, even in Asheville, could be guaranteed to invite the raining down of hellfire, starting with the recently defeated right-wing former town councilman Carl Mumpower and local conservative "activist" Don Yelton, who said, modestly and with hardly any hyperbole, "I am reminded of what some [Jewish] friends told me, they did not know how fast it could happen. Hitler. We are knocking on the doors of hell right now. Please get your pastors to get awake and take a stand."

Buncombe to Tighten Steep-Slope Regs

Following Jackson County's lead, no less.

NC Appeals Court Throws Out Buncombe County Zoning

On a technicality. Amazing how 24 hours can become a gigantic clod in the churn.

Reaction from Asheville's Scrutiny Hooligans.

Watauga, Jackson & Buncombe -- Oh My!

Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Joel Burgess takes an extended look this a.m. at why three lone North Carolina counties in the western mountains went for Obama, while all around them was red hot for McCain/Palin. Answer: young voters. All three counties contain a major state university.

Didn't your mother always warn you that a little larnin' was a dangerous thing?

Interesting factoids:

Of the Democratic-leaning counties, Watauga has the largest percentage of 18- to 25-year-old voters — 31.3 percent. Jackson is next with 15.4 percent, then Swain with 12.7 percent and Buncombe with 11.6 percent. Obama won all but Swain by differences as large as 57-43 percent.

We got us a new Generation Gap, folks!