"To Undo What We’ve Done.” Tim Moore Mis-appoints a Crony

 

Isn't cronyism inherently corrupt? I feel obliged to at least try to keep up with the new scandals that continuously sprout wherever House Speaker Tim Moore treads. His plans for Congress are well known, though he continues to play bashful about actually running for the newly drawn 14th CD that includes his home in Gaston County. Everyone even partially warm to the touch knows he's lusted for a seat in Congress, which he's now describing as only one of his many options. "Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, Timmy, were no crime." 

Kenneth Robert "Rob" Davis

According to Speaker Moore's fellow NCGA member Sen. Danny Britt (Lumberton), Speaker Moore hisownself put a name on a five-page list of appointments to important state government jobs, in particular an old college buddy and long-time friend Kenneth Robert Davis (goes by "Rob"), appointed to the Disciplinary Hearing Commission of the State Bar. All those appointments got voted on last week. Reporter Bryan Anderson discovered that the Disciplinary Hearing Commission (just this last May) found that as a lawyer Rob Davis had "failed to maintain accurate identification of all funds in his trust account, had mismanaged client funds, and fell behind on filing and paying several years of state and federal income taxes."

Sen. Danny Britt fingered Tim Moore as behind the appointment, because the appointment itself has become toxic enough already that fellow Republican Britt --also closely connected to Rob Davis in local politics; Davis is a county attorney for Robeson -- needed someone to blame not named Danny Britt. Britt's conversation with reporter Anderson included this:

 

Britt said Davis’s appointment came directly from Speaker Moore, and that Davis hadn’t requested it.

“He had not requested to be placed on this committee,” Britt said. “It kind of came out of the blue to him. He didn’t request to serve on it, but he appreciates being asked to serve on the committee. … I did not know he was nominated until I saw it in the appointment bill language. I know for a fact it was Tim Moore’s decision to put him on there and nobody else’s.”

For his part, Moore ain't talking (at least not to Anderson), though he did issue a statement last Wednesday that "he’d revisit the appointment" (whatever that means ... sounds juicy!). In the meantime the legal community and others involved in civic government are gaping at the appointment of a metaphorical jailbird to the new role as jailer (as political scientist Chris Cooper put it). Even though he was willing to finger Moore as culprit, Britt wants to peddle the narrative that Davis's transgressions were just "a minor bookkeeping thing."

Sen. Danny Britt

Rob Davis was a Republican member of the Bladen County Board of Elections during the great ballot harvesting scandal of 2018 to benefit the Rev. Mark Harris's campaign for Congress in CD9. After the State Board of Elections conducted its investigation of McCrae Dowless and his activities, the SBOE vacated all the sitting members on county BOEs involved in the Dowless multi-county shenanigans, just for a clean slate, apparently, and not because everyone was guilty of something. NCGOP Chair (at the time), Robin Hayes, appealed to the SBOE to keep Davis on the board but was denied. Asked very recently by reporter Anderson, Hayes now sez he has no memory of Davis. “The name doesn’t even ring a bell.” Ouch.

Lawmakers won't be back in Raleigh until November 29. In the meantime, Davis's appointment to the Disciplinary Hearing Commission is officially the law. Anderson reports that Davis himself is quite aware of the embarrassment and is seeking legal advice on how best to handle it, or simply not take the job. "Yeah! That's the ticket,"sez Britt, who actually did say out loud that Davis could "just choose to not participate in any commission activities":

“If he doesn’t get seated, doesn’t go to any meetings, doesn’t participate, then he’s a nonparticipating member and that’s really no issue,” Britt said. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do between now and [November 29] to undo what we’ve done.”

How to deal with the wounds cut by corrupt politicians: If a public servant doesn't do his job, that's a solution for a corrupt appointment!

Danny Britt, COVID Poster Boy in the NC Senate

Danny Britt

So Friday morning NC Senate leader Phil Berger said, "Oh, by the way, a Republican member of the Senate has tested positive for COVID-19," without naming him, and the said senator was apparently on the floor of the Senate the day before without a mask -- few Republicans wear them, in obeisance to Trump and the Trumpists. By Friday afternoon, Republican Senator Danny Britt (Dist. 13 -- Robeson and Columbus counties) 'fessed up -- it was me who tested positive and who might have spread the virus to other legislators.

Real Facts NC had listed Britt's Senate district as one to watch for a possible red-to-blue flip. The Democratic candidate there, Barbara Yates-Lockamy, has been in my eye since 2018, because Real Facts had touted a possible flip in HD46 in 2018 whereYates-Lockamy was running against incumbent Republican Brendan Jones. She lost badly, 36.65% to 63.35%.

So I had opted to ignore the SD13 race this year, based on Yates-Lockamy's track record for that House seat in 2018, and especially considering that Danny Britt actually has a kind of hero status in Robeson County as a "one-man rescue squad" during the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. District 13 is a minority majority district, with 54% of the population classified as either Black or Native American. You would think that would give Yates-Lockamy an advantage, but it didn't help Danny Britt's Democratic opponent in 2018, John Campbell, even though Barack Obama named Campbell among his "candidates to watch" that year.

I've taken another look at Yates-Lockamy's web presence, and she does seem to be running more of a campaign this year than in 2018. Her website is better, and she's active on Facebook. Her Twitter account, however, only calls attention to her lack of Twitter activity, with one measly post since 2018, and she's still describing herself as a candidate for the NC House.

Lord knows I'm cynical. But I also have a fairly boundless capacity for hope, and I can hope for Yates-Lockamy's success in 2020, along with hoping for a speedy recovery for AppState alum Danny Britt and additional hope that he didn't infect more North Carolina lawmakers.

Barack Obama Just Got My Attention

President Obama came out yesterday with a second round of his endorsements, and he included Linda Coleman, running for the US House (2nd District), and three candidates for the NC General Assembly. Two of those have been profiled previously on WataugaWatch: Natasha Marcus (here and here and here) and Brandon Lofton (here and here -- and full disclosure ... I'm a contributor to Lofton's campaign).

The third Obama endorsee running for the General Assembly was new to me -- John Campbell, a preacherman and a two-decade+ public servant on the Robeson County School Board who's running for NC Senate, District 13. (He had a Democratic primary back in May, and that's probably why I overlooked him because I hate Democratic primaries.)

NC Senate District 13 includes Robeson and Columbus counties, and according to Ballopedia, it's minority white with almost 54% of the population classified as either black or native American.

So why is Republican Danny Earl Britt representing the district in Raleigh? Britt only won the seat in 2016, beating incumbent Democrat Jane W. Smith with about 55% of the vote. Jane Smith had only held the seat for two years herself, winning in 2014 with over 60% of the vote. Before Jane Smith, there was a Democrat man who served multiple terms, so ... okay, Senate District 13 looks like a solid Democratic district, and the question remains ... how come Republican Danny Earl Britt?

Here's how:

Danny Earl Britt,
AppState Alumnus

Britt was heavily backed in 2016 by the NC Republican Senate Caucus, so his name was already out there when Hurricane Matthew hit in October 2016. Lumberton, county seat of Robeson, went under water. "The whole town was thrown into absolute chaos real quick. Roads were shut down, and there was no power. Bridges were out all over the place."

Danny Earl Britt, an attorney in Robeson and an active member of the National Guard, became a one-man rescue squad with "skills he'd acquired in relief efforts as a National Guardsman":

He didn't go out of his way to broadcast who he was during the storm. "He never wore a campaign shirt. He never did an interview," Mark Locklear, who works with Britt as a criminal investigator, told me [Daniel Allott]. "He was just busting his ass to help people, and it was being noticed. People saw this. People began to talk about it — the passion that he had to help others."

When calamity strikes, people pay attention to who shows up to help and who doesn't. In this case, one of the people who showed up to help was a local attorney who happened to be the Republican state Senate candidate. "He was going door-to-door helping everyone he could, you know, helping people get out of their houses, doing whatever he could," said Matt Walker, whom I met at his mother's restaurant, Candy Sue's Cafe. "He was rolling up his sleeves and getting dirty, and you just didn't really see that from the Democrats."

Ouch.

So Britt ousted the Democratic incumbent on the strength of his personality and his good deeds. Good for him. Turns out -- and I just this minute learned this -- Britt was the first Republican to take this seat since Reconstruction.

Britt hasn't let up. For Hurricane Florence, he organized a "sandbag marathon" around West Lumberton Baptist Church, and he'll be pushing for quick spending on hurricane recovery by the General Assembly. He'll get that money too, and be a hero for it. He'd already been critical of Governor Roy Cooper for the slow distribution of Matthew recovery money, and he'll make a show of his influence in Raleigh.

He deserves credit for this: Early in 2017, when the Phil Berger/Tim Moore bosses decided to make all judicial races in the state partisan, Britt broke with the brethren and voted to sustain Roy Cooper's veto of the bill.

In his campaign Britt was all about jobs and economic development for a county with a high poverty rate. But while in the General Assembly he's been forced to go along almost completely with a Republican regime that promises all sorts of trickle-down benefits from petting the already rich, while a poor county like Robeson just gets the added misery of more under-funded public education and the ham-stringing of the Affordable Care Act.

RealFactsNC lists District 13 as "Competitive." So does the NC Free Enterprise Foundation. IndivisibleNC listed the district among the "most flippable" this year. I dunno. Britt looks damn strong, plus he's got relative youth on his side.

John Campbell with
his wife, Constance Williams Campbell

Democrat John Campbell is deeply embedded in Robeson County, especially its religious and education communities. He's the Duke-Divinity-School-educated pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and he's served for over 20 years on the Robeson School Board. He's 67 years old.

Considering the General Assembly's record since 2011 -- its budget priorities, with Danny Earl Britt signing onto those priorities since he joined in 2016 -- it makes perfect sense that he's campaigning for Medicaid expansion and to “prioritize classrooms over boardrooms.”

Up Troublesome Creek: A complaint was lodged against Campbell's campaign for failing to file a required First Quarter fundraising and expenditures report with the State Board of Elections, and his campaign got accessed a penalty. Campbell said at the time that his treasurer had quit, and he had trouble finding a replacement. At this moment, he appears to be up to date on his NCSBE filings.

Campbell has complained about what he calls a “dirty” campaign being waged by Britt, who has sent out fliers in the mail showing Campbell has bounced checks in the past, been convicted of mortgage fraud, and once was forced to repay the school system for money he took to attend a conference that he did not attend.

A blue wave might win it for him. Barack Obama's endorsement seems strategic and could undoubtedly help. But I'm not betting any money.