Garrett v. Wade in the 27th NC Senate District

Democrat Michael Garrett filed to run in NC Senate District 27 against the notorious Republican incumbent Senator Trudy Wade, who tried her hand in 2015 at redistricting the Greensboro City

Council, gerrymandering the districts so that Republicans could win and attracting the scorn of a Federal judge who said, "Not so fast there, Senator Wade." Wade's Greensboro redistricting was so atrocious that even Governor Pat McCrory called it “a bad bill and a shameful process,” but he was brave against one of his own party perhaps because the Wade redistricting was a "local bill" not requiring the governor's signature.

It's been said that no one likes Trudy Wade, not even the members of her own party, perhaps because she operates like a Romanov tsarina, or like a Virginia Foxx, high-handed and imperious and mean toward anyone who doesn't toe her line. Going into her 2016 reelection campaign, some polling found her underwater with a majority of her constituents, though she won anyway with 53% of the vote in a Republican district drawn to insure she'd win.

The man she beat in 2016, Democrat Michael Garrett, who got a respectable 46.68% of the vote, is running again, and many think his chances are better than merely good for a re-do. Garrett, like many other North Carolina Democrats running this year, has public education as a prime commitment: "I can’t sit on the sidelines as career politicians like my opponent continue to strip our schools of the resources they need and play politics with our insurance and taxes." We expect that Garrett will

hammer Wade and the General Assembly for abysmal teacher pay and for eliminating education programs like the North Carolina Teaching Fellows.

Garrett is civic-minded and has served on the Guilford County Gang Commission, Guilford County Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, the United Way’s Education Impact Council, the UNCG Excellence Foundation Board of Directors, and as the president of UNCG's alumni association and chair of its alumni board.

Incumbent Wade was a big supporter of HB2, a discriminatory law that Garrett called "a trainwreck." “I think any discrimination is wrong, but it’s also bad for business,” he said, and we know that was the truth. Greensboro especially suffered from canceled concerts and conventions because of "the bathroom bill." It's what happens, said Garrett, when legislation is rushed through “without deliberate conversations.”

Garrett is 33 and the managing partner of a Greensboro marketing firm. He used to be a Republican. In fact he ran an unsuccessful primary campaign against House member John Blust in 2010, running to Blust's left in the year of the Tea Party, but he also managed his mother Darlene Garrett's winning race for the Guilford County School Board, and she ran and won as a Democrat.

His website hasn't been fully built out yet, but we expect a good showing from a man who makes his living in marketing.

Best Served Cold

Headline in Indy Week:

Poll: Nobody likes legislative lightning rod Trudy Wade, not even in her ruby-red Senate district

You made war on the city of Greensboro, because it had too many Democrats in elected office, so now it's time to eat your peas a la crow.

Trudy Wade Goes Down Without a Defense

In less time than it took the General Assembly to pass it, a federal judge in Greensboro nixed the city redistricting that Sen. Trudy Wade really really wanted to impose on her hometown. Sen. Wade is pissed, too, and whining publicly that the Attorney General's office didn't show up in court to defend her gerrymandering.

"It is shameful that Attorney General Roy Cooper refuses to do his duty and defend state law," Wade said yesterday.

Photo taken of the defense table last Thursday

But the lawsuit wasn't against the State of North Carolina, and Roy Cooper had told leaders in the General Assembly in advance of the court hearing that they would have to defend the law themselves. Did they? No. In fact, no one showed up in Judge Eagles' courtroom to defend Trudy Wade's redistricting. No one.

Suggesting, we assume, that the Trudy Wade redistricting was indefensible. Also an embarrassment -- a local power-grab so nakedly unsupportable that not one sleazy lawyer could be found in the universe to slink into court to make an argument in its defense.

Federal Judge Slaps Permanent Injunction on the Greensboro Redistricting Law

Federal District Court Judge Catherine Eagles has thrown out the Trudy Wade redistricting scheme for Greensboro for this election cycle, putting off a final decision on the law's constitutionality until a trial can be held prior to the 2017 city election.

"It appears on the current record that the new statute deprives Greensboro voters, alone among municipal voters in the state, of the right to change the city’s municipal government by referendum and otherwise treats the City of Greensboro and its voters differently from all other municipalities and municipal voters, without a rational basis," wrote Judge Eagles in her order today.

Another power-grab by the NC General Assembly thrown under the proverbial bus by a judge.

Meanwhile, the Republican-dominated NC Supreme Court, voting in a strictly partisan manner (4-3), today ruled that North Carolina can use public tax dollars to help children attend private and religious schools via a voucher program that a Wake County Superior Court judge had previously ruled unconstitutional.

We've got something akin to "the Roberts Court" in North Carolina, only worse. With Associate Justice Paul Newby on the Supreme Court bench, it'll be a cold day in July before we see a ruling that actually upholds the state constitution rather than upholding the partisan whims of the General Assembly.

The Senator Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest

Sen. Trudy Wade, the Republican who engineered the cynical gerrymandering of the Greensboro city council, may have earned her comeuppance next year. We can only hope that the voters, including fair-minded Republicans in Greensboro (if there are any left), teach her a lesson about arrogance.

In the meantime, the Greensboro News&Record is leading the charge with public outrage and a we're-not-going-to-take-this call to action: "Sue 'em, Greensboro" (editorial) and columnist Susan Ladd's "Resist, rally and vote until HB 263 and Wade are defeated."

Teach 'em a lesson, Greensboro.

NC House Member to Governor: "Your Comments Are Sophomoric"

Michael Speciale

Michael Speciale, R-New Bern, who originally voted against Trudy Wade's scheme to seize control of the Greensboro city council for Republicans (before he got himself disciplined by the Republican leadership in the NC House and came back into the House chamber to vote for the "local bill"), has lashed out at his fellow Republican, Governor Pat McCrory, who called Trudy Wade's plot against Greensboro Democrats “a bad bill and a shameful process.”

Speciale isn't having it! With a guilty conscience for having changed his vote and allowing this piece of garbage to become law, Speciale posted this on his Facebook page: “Gov. McCrory just cannot seem to get that he is no longer a Mayor and we are not his Aldermen. As usual, the governor’s comments about the General Assembly are sophomoric and borne of ignorance and a lack of knowledge. The Executive Branch needs your attention, governor, not the Legislative Branch!”

Speciale went on to suggest that McCrory is “constantly grandstanding in the press.”

Well, yes he is ... constantly grandstanding in the press ... but what's really striking here is how little respect the governor gets from members of his own party, let alone from political hacks like yours truly. Is this good for North Carolina? To have a governor whose own "allies" in the General Assembly characterize as "sophomoric" (which in other instances might be an apt adjective, but not in this present case)?

McCrory in Full Stutter Mode: "Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda"

Depend on Governor McCrory to pick a fight with his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly on an issue he could not under statute do anything about ... the "local bill" to redistrict Greensboro's city council to make it easier for Trudy Wade's clones to take it over this fall.

Local bills are not subject to veto by the governor. "I would've vetoed it if I could," sez the Guv, puffing out his chest in that pathetic attempt to seem relevant.

Funny man, this governor. Let's see him veto something he actually can veto, and let's see him raise the stakes publicly for sustaining his veto. Soon, very soon, someone's gonna set a match to this paper tiger.

Bastards Grab Power in Greensboro

Illegitimate power, illegitimately achieved.

Four sitting minority members of the Greensboro city council are now forced to run against one another as Greensboro's city government is "redistricted" to suit Republican Sen. Trudy Wade, in a process that blocked the wishes of the actual residents of Greensboro, not to mention their elected representatives in both city government and in the North Carolina General Assembly. (Rep. John Blust gets credit for standing up to his fellow Republicans.)

The power grabs in cities, the high-handed mucking about in local issues, and arrogant seizure of process so that no actual citizens have a fighting chance to choose their own course of action ... this is the contemporary Republican Party in North Carolina -- a circle-jerk of super jerks bent on seizing everything they can while they can.

The Lord Voldemorts who run these plays have drawn their own legislative districts to keep the very possibility of change completely beyond hope ... they think. How long are the citizens going to allow this?

NC House Rejects NC Senate's Rejiggering of Greensboro City Council

Sen. Trudy Wade's attempt to redistrict the Greensboro city council so that Republicans can win elections there has been soundly defeated in the NC House ... 35-73.

Wade first sent the redistricting proposal to the House in Senate Bill 36 [reports WRAL]. When the House refused to take up that bill, Wade sent it over again, this time attached to House Bill 263, a redistricting proposal for the small town of Trinity.

The bill would eliminate the city's at-large districts, quadruple-bunk four incumbents into a single district, and revoke the mayor's vote on the council.

The bill, though, is not now dead. It has to go to a conference with the Senate, where House Republicans from Guildford County promise to push for a citizen referendum, which would surely fail.

Feedback on Wade's scheme has been "about 40-1 negative, both Republican and Democrat. They don’t feel good about this bill," said Rep. Jon Hardister (R-Guilford). Said Rep. Ralph Johnson (D-Guilford), "The sponsor of this bill, she’s united Greensboro, both Democrats and Republicans. She’s done that, and I thank her for that."

Rep. John Blust (R-Guilford), the brother of Watauga County Commissioner David Blust, was the most passionate in his denunciation of Sen. Wade's motives: "You all know it is wrong for a city of 285,000 to have a form of government put in place by one person. One person did the design. One person insists that every detail of the plan must be preserved."

Greensboro News & Record coverage.

Headline of the Week

Appears today in the Greensboro News&Record:

McCrory: State should stay out of local government

He offered that opinion when asked about Sen. Trudy Wade's "local bill" to completely overhaul the Greensboro City Council so that Republicans can win elections there.

“Let me put it this way," McCrory said. "As governor I constantly have to fight Washington not to interfere. I think the same philosophy applies to Raleigh interfering with local governments.”

Ya think?

There are two many examples to list here, including the Soucek/Jordan "local bill" to take away Boone's extraterritorial control over development. But as with Soucek/Jordan, the Trudy Wade dismantlement of Greensboro City Council is beyond the governor's control anyway, so it's perfectly safe for him to have an opinion that will be totally ignored by his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly. The governor can't approve or veto a "local bill."

Why doesn't the governor get himself a contrary opinion about something he does have some (minimal) control over?

Big Government the Republican Way

Trudy Wade

The NC General Assembly is meddling in the self-government of the state's cities again. A bill introduced in the NC Senate by Trudy Wade (R) would completely restructure the Greensboro city council so that maybe Republicans can take control of it. You can read all the details in the Greensboro News&Record.

It's another naked power grab from Raleigh.

One of the sitting Greensboro council members, Republican Zach Matheny, whose seat would essentially be eliminated, said the legislation "seems to be in opposition to core Republican principles."

“Republicans — and I am one — want efficient government and less government,” Matheny said. “This is a big government move using the government to give more power to big government. It seems like the antithesis of what we would normally support.”

“I believe this is punitive, because we have been a very progressive city,” Mayor Nancy Vaughan said. Vaughan's powers would be greatly curtailed by the new bill, taking away her vote on the council except in cases of a tie.  “So we’re being singled out — I can’t see any other reason Greensboro should be treated any differently than any other North Carolina city.”

To which the Town of Boone expelled a giant sigh and said, "Welcome to our world!"

It wasn't enough for the Republicans in the General Assembly to gerrymander the state into pretzels to maintain their oppressive power. Now they're gerrymandering the cities to stomp the hell out of democracy there too.

Fetzer's Grip on Reality

"Under the Dome" allowed NC GOP Chair Tom Fetzer to go on about how Tuesday's elections are good omens for North Carolina Republicans without bothering to ask him how he explained the virtual sweep of municipal elections by not only Democrats but by progressive Democrats and what that might portend for next year's races.

It's like Fetzer is chair of the Virginia Republican Party, since looking north for inspiration was all he wanted to do. Understandable, since North Carolina cities (except for Greensboro) turned down Republicans flat in Tuesday's elections. Hell, we hear that even North Wilkesboro went progressive.

We don't know enough about Greensboro politics to understand what went down there, but it was bad for Democratic incumbents. For what it's worth, you can read the Republican interpretation of the meaning of that city election here ... by a Greensboro blogger.

North Carolina Round-Up

Where was the celebrated Republican/conservative resurgence in North Carolina yesterday? Nowhere much.

Charlotte
...elected its first Democratic mayor in 22 years, Anthony Foxx (no relation), pictured left, and increased the Democratic majority on the city council to eight out of 11 seats.

Asheville
Progressives swept the election. Mayor Terry Bellamy was reelected for a second term, and liberal Democrats Esther Manheimer, Gordon Smith, and Cecil Bothwell won council seats, beating two-term incumbent Republican Carl Mumpower, who ran such a weird campaign against Heath Shuler in the NC-11 last year. Both Smith and Bothwell are well known local bloggers.

Chapel Hill
The N&O summarized this race succinctly: "The liberal establishment held off a band of businessmen trying to change the town's course." So Chapel Hill has a new mayor, Mark Kleinschmidt, and the developers took only one of four available seats on the town council. Shades of Boone's Templetons: The pro-business candidates "were being influenced heavily by a specific group of developers, and I think in the end that backfired on them," said the top vote-getter, Penny Rich (love that name!).

Winston-Salem
Big reelection win for Dan Besse after "a sometimes-heated campaign" against Republican challenger Ted Shipley. Wish I'd been following this one! Dan is a personal hero of ours. Looks like a Democratic sweep otherwise in Tobacco City.

Durham
Democratic incumbents trounced their challengers, though the top vote-getter among the losers, a Libertarian, crowed that his 27% of the vote was a personal best for him and a sign of great things coming in the future.

Greensboro
The major bright spot statewide for the GOP. The mayor and city council turned over to Republican control. Mark Binker discusses it here.