A Rising Tide Can Sink Boats, Too

I'm going for another metaphor altogether: Republican retirements from the North Carolina General Assembly are beginning to pile up like cordwood before a hard winter, with more to come.

Most recent: Susan Martin of Wilson, a three-term member of Republican leadership in the NC House. Her redrawn district -- redrawn by the Republicans under court order -- became harder to win, they say, "more Democratic" (Carter Wrenn, quoted by Laura Leslie).

Martin had a near-death experience in her last reelection in 2016, beating her Democratic male opponent by a mere 163 votes. (What's going on with Martin in Wilson and Pitt counties?) So late 2017 turned out to look pretty good for announcing your retirement, if you were Susan Martin.

In the NC Senate, Cathy Dunn (Davidson) announced she wouldn't run again. Health, they say.

Laura Leslie mentioned others headed for the exits, some of them double-bunked with other Republicans by the most recent court-ordered redistricting, and some of them surprising retirements. Senator Ron Rabin of Harnett County is bowing out, after easily winning reelection in 2016. Wake County's Senator Chad Barefoot got "double-bunked" with Republican Senator John Alexander. Barefoot didn't want to be in a Republican primary in 2018. He opted out.

Barefoot was an active and successful legislator, at least until the courts threw out his redistricting laws for Wake County (and Wake County alone), redrawing lines on maps to make it possible for Republicans to reassert themselves on School Board and County Commission after losing control of both. Both his redistricting laws were ruled unconstitutional in the courts. Barefoot has a famous flying-wedge mother-in-law: Tami Fitzgerald, lobbyist for "Republican family values."

Senator Bill Cook of Beaufort County ... out the door, and careful not to let it hit him. He was double-bunked with an incumbent Democratic woman, with the district already trending decidedly Democratic.

Senator Tommy Tucker of Union County, who ran unopposed in the general elections of 2012, 2014, and 2016, will not run again. He's somewhat famous for a hot temper. But he'd risen to be the top Republican tax-policy writer in the General Assembly and had only served four terms. Did he see the distant water grow closer? Did he taste something metallic on the rising breeze?

GOP Lost Wake County in 2014. Their Outrageous Plan To Get It Back

Chad Barefoot

Trudy Wade-ism is now coming to Wake County.

To recap, Guildford County Republican Senator Trudy Wade recently introduced a "local bill" to rewrite local election rules in Greensboro so that Republicans can win elections there (because otherwise they weren't winning elections there).

Now comes Republican Chad Barefoot of Wake County. He introduced S181 to rewrite election rules in Wake County so that Republicans can take back the County Commission, which they lost overwhelmingly in last fall's election.

I don't know why Republicans in the General Assembly don't just save time and declare that Democrats are ineligible for any office anywhere. Could that possibly be any more blatant and transparent than these constant manipulations of ballot access and voter suppression?

Do "Cut-and-Run" Republicans Have a Clue?

Yesterday the full North Carolina Senate tore to shreds the lease that had already been negotiated, drafted, and signed for the City of Raleigh to take control of the former Dorothea Dix insane asylum site for a public park. The Senate Republicans carried that vote without the help of two Republican senators from Wake County who "cut and ran" from their party's position: Senators Chad Barefoot and Neal Hunt.

Gary Pearce wrote some wise analysis of those renegades this morning:

Barefoot and Hunt might look safe politically. They have good districts. They have a big money advantage. 

But, to keep winning, they have to win moderate Independents. The kind of voters who don’t like partisanship. The kind of voters who might see the legislature as a bunch of rural Tea Party extremists who hate cities in general and Raleigh in particular. The kind of voters who see Republicans nationally as a gang of vengeful, angry old white men. 

Barefoot and Hunt have to worry that a future opponent might figure out that there are a lot of well-heeled people in Raleigh who are mad enough to give big money to a Democrat – or to a super-PAC helping Democrats. 

They also have to worry that, in 2014, President Obama’s OFA might pump a lot of money into North Carolina. Or that, in 2016, Hillary Clinton might set off a Democratic tidal wave among moderate Independent women in their districts. 

Hunt and Barefoot have no control over a lot of that. They could control how they voted. So they voted with Raleigh and against their fellow Republicans.