Team Templeton, On the Comedy Circuit

Much laughter in some quarters over the Republican Party campaign mailer, "Elect the Sunshine Ticket" (pictured on the Watauga Conservative blog site).

Team Templeton, the folks who gave us a fradulent and ghost-written Board of Elections, is going to bring the sunshine back to Boone?

Burning question: why did they throw candidate James Milner off the bus, or under it?

We thank Anne Marie Templeton Yates for giving us inspiration for this Sunday morning music video:

Inside the Watauga GOP

The local Republican Party held an event last night at the Fairway Cafe on the Boone golf course, and Jimmy Hodges stood up and said he was changing his party affiliation and will run for County Commissioner in 2014 from Nathan Miller's Meat Camp district.

Jimmy Hodges was a registered Democrat when he sat on the County Commission from 1996-2004. He retired from the real estate business in 2009.

Our snitch said that all three Republican Boone Town Council candidates -- Mark Templeton, Matt Long, and James Milner -- were there, and they spoke. Candidate for Boone Mayor John Mena was not there, even though he's been publicly endorsed by the party chair Anne Marie Yates. County Commissioner David Blust announced that he will be running for reelection in 2014. Current County Commission Chair Nathan Miller spoke about his candidacy for District Attorney. According to my source, "He trashed the local DA's office." Britt Springer, a Republican member of that office and also a candidate for DA, was there, and at first party chair Anne Marie Yates was not going to allow her to speak, but Springer insisted. Snitch sez, "Springer knocked it out of the park."

No word on how many ASU College Republicans made it out to the golf course, but the local party was offering free tickets to any member of that club who wrote an email to the State Board of Elections supporting the selection of Legends nightclub for the Boone 2 polling place. Caroline Hartman is the president of the ASU College Republicans, and she's a good soldier:

Meanwhile, Republican insurgents are calling for the removal of Anne Marie Yates from her position as chair of the local party and spilling certain beans about a now notorious August 29 meeting (about which we had already heard from party insurgent and perennial pariah, Deborah Greene).

This Has Been a Lip-Smacking, Gob-Smacking August. It May Get Worse for Some

The lip-smacking of Watauga County Republican/Tea Party activists this past spring over the thought of taking over the Watauga Board of Elections was loud and obnoxious. They were publicly celebrating the idea that they would soon...

1. Fire elections director Jane Anne Hodges, the 27-year veteran in the Board of Elections.

2. Put an end to the voting of those pesky college students at Appalachian State University.

And then the local universe would belong to them forever and ever amen!

But there's many a slip between the fork and the mouth. First (and for reasons never publicly explained), the Republican choice for the chairmanship of the Watauga County Board of Elections, Stacy Eggers IV ("Four") was rejected at the state level, and the man that the State Board appointed, Mr. Jim Hastings, declined the appointment. A lot of serious time was eaten up by that SNAFU, and a deadline loomed: The Implementation Plan for Early Voting in the Boone Municipals needed to be submitted to the state by August 16.

The Republicans needed a chair of the Board that they could control, someone who would take orders, and it may yet turn out to be one of their biggest blunders in decades that they decided to appoint Four Eggers' little brother Luke. He was seriously not ready for prime time.

Then the Watauga County Republican Party Chair Anne Marie Yates appeared in the Watauga Democrat, giving evidence that a conspiracy existed to massively alter the ability of college students to vote, which would (we're sure it was a coincidence) help her brother Mark Templeton and Matt Long and James Milner and John Mena sweep the Boone Town Council elections in November.

With the August 16th deadline pushing him, Luke Eggers rushed to get himself sworn into office and to hold a meeting as the new Chair of the Board that would do all the stuff that is now the subject of state-wide and national attention.

The pushback was perhaps unexpected. The negative publicity was perhaps not really thought through. The legal recourse for Boone voters was perhaps not fully anticipated. (Hell, Anne Marie Yates may already be in the witness relocation program or is otherwise not speaking to the press in an undisclosed location.)

Now comes the state Board of Elections, which clearly does not like the press coverage of Watauga County. The new Republican Chair of the State Board, Josh Howard, gave an interview to the Raleigh News & Observer last week, and he said this:

“It may disappoint a lot of folks that there’s still a steady hand on the rudder.”

That was a somewhat cryptic utterance that can be read in a couple of ways. Mr. Howard also told the 500 new board members and staff people from across the state at their training day in Cary:

Board members are supposed to assure voting takes place in compliance with the law. Decision-making should not be rooted in party politics....

It's an open question what Mr. Howard meant by that and what he's prepared to do to prove to the world that the NC State Board of Elections is not now rooted in (revenge) politics.