The Newest Chair of the NCGOP

 

Jason Simmons

Following Trump's elevation of Michael Whatley to the chairmanship of the national GOP (and also to holding Lara Trump's handbag), the chairmanship of the NCGOP stood open for an election by the state's executive committee -- which happened last night. The winner of a contested race was the state party's executive director Jason Simmons, handpicked by Whatley and endorsed by Trump. The vote was decisive despite a spirited challenge from the ultra-conservative Jim Womack, head of the "NC Election Integrity Team" who thinks far too many people are allowed to vote in this state.

Womack is a big deal in Lee County -- chair of the local GOP and a former county commissioner -- and something of a serial loser. He ran for the chairmanship of the NCGOP twice before, unsuccessfully, and usually with collateral damage. The ultra-MAGAs supported Womack last night and had made plenty of noise leading up to the vote about the failings of establishment Republicans like Thom Tillis and Whatley himself, who nevertheless remain in control of the NC org.

Womack's supporters are naturally furious. They consider themselves "the real Republicans" as opposed to  the Thom Tillises, who are really just part of a "Uniparty" made up of Democrats and country club Republicans who protect the status quo for their own profit. The ultra-MAGAs have baroque theories to explain why Trump won North Carolina in 2020 despite widespread fraud to elect Biden: “Donald Trump may be happy with NC because he didn’t lose in 2020, but it is my belief he didn’t lose because the Uniparty didn’t need him to lose since the fraud in the other states with unexplained pauses in vote counting was adequate to secure his defeat. Letting Trump win protected the Uniparty in NC” (former Republican state Sen. Fern Shubert, in a comment here).

Letting Trump win NC's electoral votes protected the "Uniparty"? I'm truly stunned by that logic.

If Mark Robinson, Michele Morrow, or Dan Bishop lose their statewide races in November, Jason Simmons will be blamed. We have a sympathy card ready to go.

Watch for Voter Harassment Based on Delusion

 

Long before Trump made fraud the only conceivable reason he could ever lose, GOP leaders often invoked busloads of undocumented brown people voting in North Carolina to explain their losses. No need to also explain their wins, because every honest voter loves them, right? Now fraud is the watchword  of many politicians, following Trump's lead to the point that roughly 70% of registered Republicans "believe there is widespread voter fraud."

Hell, they claim fraud even in counties that went 70% for Trump, and some very right-wing Republican members of the General Assembly wanted to force their way into the Durham County elections office to inspect voting equipment -- because, well, it's the most Democratic county in the state, so too many Black votes, obviously.

It's going to get worse.

Jim Womack

Just finished reading an investigative piece of journalism about the "North Carolina Election Integrity Team" (NCEIT), a kind of Republican voting gestapo of "observers" who have based all their hoped-for observations on the fantasy of widespread fraud. You think it's there, you'll find it, Betty, and you've been trained to kick up a ruckus. As far as NC polling enclosures go, seeing things that aren't there because you've been primed to see them amounts to harassment based on a delusion.

The leader of the election integrity team (NCEIT) is one Jim Womack, the GOP chair of Lee County and a follower of Cleta Mitchell, notorious as the Trump lawyer who sat in on the call to Georgia that demanded the SecState "find" a few more thousand votes. Mitchell now lives in NC and is happy to pitch in on the project of delegitimizing democracy altogether.

Deep in the Laura Lee and Jordan Wilkie investigation of NCEIT and Womack, I encountered this paragraph:

Womack said that he and his group are now gearing up for the next election by creating a “suspicious voters list” of anyone they believe to be double-registered or not actually a citizen, and asking members in every county to use it to challenge voters on sight.

Jesus! If you look Hispanic, you a target, Bro, and gawd knows what other visible attributes will attract the gaze of a Womack "observer."

You don't have to put up with harassment in the polling place. Assert yourself.

NOTE: The piece of journalism being referenced here was published online in The Assembly, which is behind a very modest paywall, which I gladly pay because it's an excellent source of independent journalism that's North Carolina specific. It offers what good big-city dailies used to offer, and we've got to support such reporting for the sake of the Republic.

Good Luck With That Project, Brethren

Michael Whatley

CREDIT MICHAEL WHATLEY FACEBOOK PAGE

At the North Carolina Republican state convention last weekend, there was a good deal of public talk about how the NCGOP should and can win back urban areas.

“The first thing is that the party has to get branded as the party of family, faith and fun,” said Jim Womack, who was running to be the next state party chair and who received the most in raw votes but who lost the chairmanship anyway to "weighted voting."

"Family, faith and fun."

"Has to get branded."

diospswwixei ... Sorry. Sudden onset of "HAR-DE-HAR-HAR," and I doubled-over for a minute there.

Fun is funny enough, but it's the faith part that is deeply and offensively funny.

The Christianity of those evangelicals who've been publicly drunk with Trump-love doesn't resemble any Christianity I recognize from actually growing up on the Bible and going to church three blessed times a week. Is it not the essence of idolatry, their winking at and excuses for a shameless liar, a deeply cruel and immoral man, "a pagan who embodies the seven deadly sins"? One Watauga County Republican even claimed that he actually heard the voice of God when Trump came down the escalator, informing him personally that Trump was the future savior of both Christianity and the nation. God chose a man of those values and that behavior to save Christlikeness on earth? 

By "urban" we assume Womack meant black, and let me tell you something. Black Christians are the best Christians, and they tend to recognize hypocrisy when they see it.

But back to the Republican state convention and their discussion of re-branding themselves for the urban audience. Jim Womack, the candidate for state party chair who got snaked out of winning it, promised that if elected to leadership he would start running "ads on radio stations that cater to African-Americans." Boy! Wouldn't you like to get the contract to produce those radio spots!

Michael Whatley, the man who actually won the chairmanship, said the party needs "a permanent presence in urban communities. And it has to remind voters of Republican economic policies he said have benefited those communities." “It’s messaging but it’s also presence,” he said.

Maybe the NCGOP should open a chain of second-hand stores.

The New Frontrunner for NCGOP Chair

Robin Hayes has been chair of the NCGOP since April 30, 2016, when the Republican executive committee ousted Hasan Harnett from the job. Hayes had been NCGOP chair before, from 2011-2013, and he had served ten years in the US House, from 1999-2009. Hayes was "Republican establishment" all the way, while Hasan Harnett was Tea Party conservative, backed by the rowdier elements and movement conservatives. Most observers thought -- up until yesterday -- that Robin Hayes would run again for the party chairmanship and that he could probably win (with the help of Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse), but Hayes has suddenly dropped out of the running, citing "issues with his mobility" (following hip-replacement surgery and a recent fall at the Cabarrus County GOP Convention).

That suddenly throws the chairmanship of the NCGOP open for a cantankerous and entertaining contest, with Lee County Republican agitator Jim Womack probably emerging as the leading anti-establishment contender. The chairmanship will be decided by the NCGOP state convention in June. Womack ran against Robin Hayes in 2017, was defeated by double digits, but has never stopped his campaign to remake the state party and put it on a "war-footing": "We will campaign on all fronts– in the media, in government circles, and especially in the trenches –where we will encounter the most ardent socialists and anarchists. We will prevail!" ("We Are at War," by James Womack, April 4, 2017)

Those armored columns of "ardent socialists and anarchists" are figments of imagination that have apparently taken on some ample flesh in Mr. Womack's head: He also alleges that "the democrats [sic] have hired agitators who roam from venue to venue seeking to disrupt conservative groups and political events." If you can talk yourself into that fantasy, you'll also believe that millions of "illegals" are always voting against The Right.

Did we say "agitator"? Womack and about a dozen other "grassroots activists" put paper sacks on their heads "in peaceful protest" at the 2016 GOP state convention "each time the convention chairman or central committee staff were perceived to be manipulating the proceedings to disadvantage grass roots candidates running for office, or when resolutions and platform changes were being suppressed" ("Wearing a Paper Bag at Convention").

Womack was elected to the Lee County Board of County Commissioners in the Tea Party wave of 2010 and served four colorful years (he called his critics "libtards," which gives you a sense of his level of discourse). He was a frequent target for criticism on the blog "The Rant: News Out of Sanford, North Carolina."

As the appointed chair of the state's Oil and Gas Commission, Womack has been a vociferous advocate for fracking, and when the Lee County Commission -- on which Womack no longer served -- passed a moratorium on fracking, Womack went jihad in defense of five Lee County landowners who claimed their rights were being infringed by the moratorium. The five, turns out, had written (or had ghostwritten for them) identical letters, all addressed to Womack, and all five, turns out, were Womack's buddies. Lisa Sorg attended that meeting of the Oil and Gas Commission:

...Jim Womack, the agency’s controversial chairman, seemed agitated, frantic even, to attend to what he deemed as Very Important Business: to hear from disgruntled people who want the commission to overturn Lee County’s fracking moratorium.

“I’m a little bit motivated,” said Womack, a long-time fracking proponent, as he pressed the commission’s attorney for more legal leeway on hearing the complaints.

There's plenty more to this guy's history.

Robin Hayes

He's gonna make a fine chair for the NCGOP!

But side benefit: If he makes it, Dallas Woodhouse will be gone as executive director!

UPDATE
This previously sealed indictment became public this afternoon, after the above was posted: Robin Hayes, along with three others, federally indicted for bribery, or more specifically, "of directing illegal political donations to North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey in an effort to bribe him." Here's more news about it.

So "mobility" did turn out to be a disqualifier for Hayes to run again for NCGOP chair, since he surrendered himself to federal authorities today.

Wow.