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?

Eye Witnesses to the Dysfunction

Raleigh political guru Gary Pearce published an account by a General Assembly insider about what went on among the ruling Republican junta during the closing days of the session:

Legislative Republicans treated each other last week just like they’ve treated the state’s citizens for the last two years: with meanness, impatience, and a lack of caring, respect and statesmanship.

The multiple procedural failures also highlighted a desperate leadership void and lack of knowledge about how to govern. The inability to adjourn the session in an organized fashion left the process in turmoil, with no one exactly sure what’s going on. A civilized adjournment requires some communication between the House and Senate, and that apparently just doesn’t happen anymore, especially with a distracted Speaker.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate lobbed hand grenades at each other over the coal ash legislation. It’s unclear whether the failure of this legislation was incompetence, a conspiracy or a last-minute desire to protect a large GOP financial contributor. None of it makes sense when House members tried to amend a conference report. Everyone knows you can’t do that.

 This mess would be laughable except for the dire consequences to the state.

Veteran WRAL political reporter Laura Leslie added her own perspective:

This is what happens when you've got testosterone-soaked under-40s running your "negotiations" -- a term I'm using loosely here. There's something to be said for knowing how things work, and even more to be said for having enough perspective to keep your ego out of it.

A whole bunch of puffed-up men, stepping on their own weenies. North Carolina pays the price.

The War on North Carolina Cities

Laura Leslie at WRAL puts her finger on the trend, and she only scratches the surface of what's rolling from Raleigh all the way to Boone and beyond.

"More of an Ideology Stand Than Anything"

WRAL's Laura Leslie tracked down Randy Dye, the "conservative blogger and activist" who's behind the North Carolina petition to secede from the Union (the video is below). Seems like a sane guy, but he believes the election is proof that the country is headed toward "socialism." (Why none of these folks are ever asked to define socialism I can't decipher.)

Then he makes us a very generous offer: "The Democrats can have this country. They deserve it. It's going to fall, I think." I realize that there's a worm in that bud, like a man giving away a house that just burned, but still .... Is Mr. Dye being half-way accommodating in suggesting that Democrats will be allowed to stay, and to breed?

It's clear that Randy Dye doesn't expect anything like secession to actually happen. It's a gesture, "an ideology stand," he says, and that's cool. Our Constitution allows for that.

Perdue Says No to Fracking in NC

Gov. Perdue's second veto of the 2012 "short session" of the NC General Assembly came on Senate Bill 820, the so-called "fracking" law which would open North Carolina to horizontal drilling and the fracturing of deep rock to release trapped natural gas. "Fracking" has been highly controversial. There's plenty of evidence that it endangers ground water, among other side effects.

Laura Leslie and Mark Binker have a good post up about the likelihood of a veto override.

Only two Republicans in the NC House voted against the original bill. One of them, Rep. Bryan Holloway of Stokes County, was obviously reflecting the majority opinion in his home county, which would be one of the few counties in the state with enough rock-trapped gas to be targeted by the big fracking companies. The Stokes Board of County Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution recently calling on the governor to veto the fracking bill. That Board, incidentally, is 100% Republican.

The threat that fracking represents to our water supply does not have to be a partisan issue.

North Carolina Republicans Declare War on Science

You've probably heard that the North Carolina General Assembly (the cluelessness of Sen. Soucek, squared) is moving forward on a bill to strangle science before it can project sea-level rise on our coast that might imperil developers and their plans to develop. The revised legislation would ban -- ban -- sea-level rise projections that are based on global climate change data.

Pushing this piece of head-in-the-sand ignorance is a group calling itself NC-20, referring to 20 coastal counties which stand to lose the most in development dollars if builders actually pay attention to scientific research. And guiding the intellectual argument against science for NC-20 is one John Droz, about whom Laura Leslie posted an investigative report late Wednesday night.

It says a great deal about the quality of our current legislative majority that John Droz is the "authority" they are listening to.

Previously, in our great moment as national laughing stock:

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Someone Watched the Dems Debate!

The best political reporters in Raleigh, Laura Leslie and Mark Binker, analyze the performance of the three main candidates in the first debate leading up to the Democratic primary for governor.

Modern Politics Is All About Wedges

That's not a quote from Deborah Greene, but she certainly knows the truth of it.

Revealed today by reporter Laura Leslie is an internal document from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) which speaks frankly of at least one of the political strategies being used in North Carolina to put civil rights discrimination into the North Carolina Constitution by way of Amendment 1:

"The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two Key Democratic constituencies,” says the report. 

“Find, equip, energize, and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots," the report instructs. “No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.”

In these mountains, the forces of blue-nosed repression don't need this particular wedge. All they need are the regular church-goers who'll believe what their preachers say and fall obediently into line to "save marriage," completely ignoring the philandering and divorce in their own ranks which have done a sight more to destroy marriage than the love and commitment between two people of the same sex.

NC Women: North Carolina Can Probe Your Womb

And you're supposed to watch!

When Transvaginal Airlines made an unscheduled landing in Virginia a week or so ago, my instincts told me that the North Carolina anti-abortion law passed last year over Gov. Perdue's veto had also inserted a similar probe into women's vaginas in our fair state. And I've been intending to go look at the law. Laura Leslie beat me to it.

Indeed, dear North Carolina women, our state's Republican Party has rammed through an invasion of your most private parts, because -- hey! -- they own your womb.

If you seek a wholly legal abortion in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, the new abortion law mandates -- demands -- an ultrasound before the procedure. And the woman seeking it must be shown the image of the fetus and have the fetus described to her (should she deliberately or inadvertently close her eyes) and be offered the opportunity to hear the fetal heartbeat (I can hardly believe the legislators made that part optional).

Now then ... as Leslie explains, to get that ultrasound image in the first weeks of pregnancy requires transvaginal probing. So although the NC law does not explicitly say it, nor use the now-famous term, they have nevertheless staked a transvaginal-probing claim to a woman's innards in effect.

A federal judge has temporarily stayed the part of the law that requires a doctor to describe the ultrasound image to the patient, but the rest of the law is in effect.

The fact that North Carolina women, and particularly Planned Parenthood, allowed this to happen without storming the friggin' castle a little more concertedly, suggests that the women of Virginia are more organized and tougher. And that I don't believe.

Berger Admits He Has Cooties

Phil Berger, President Pro Tempore of the NC Senate

1. So Gov. Bev Perdue takes the gutsy action of calling on the NC General Assembly to raise sales taxes three-quarters of a penny to restore some of the teaching jobs lost under the budget rammed through by the new Republican majority, a budget which included letting a temporary 1-cent sales tax increase expire.

2. Republican Senate Pooh-bah Phil Berger has a conniption, partly, we suspect, over the fact that The Guv was gutsy. Who saw that coming? He challenges Perdue to a debate. Which she declined.

But here's the funny part, the seemingly unconscious acknowledgement on Berger's part that the politics that he and his boyz in the General Assembly have created are not working to the benefit of Republicans. Via Laura Leslie:

Asked how much of this is about election-year politics, Berger said he’d been told by consultants that “The governor’s path to re-election is most likely going to be successful if she can pick a fight with the legislature. In my opinion, I think what you’re seeing, particularly over the last week or so, is her picking that fight."

Let that sink in. Republican consultants have been telling Berger (and Thom Tillis, we would guess) that their long-awaited assumption of power in the state has made them very unpopular. More than just telling Berger, they were apparently warning him that The Guv could put herself on a track to reelection if she "picks a fight" with the unpopular Republican-dominated General Assembly.

She does it, and Berger spills the beans. There are some Republican consultants experiencing face-palm time right now in Raleigh.

Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Republican Veto Over-Ride

Bob Orr

Yesterday afternoon, Wake County Judge Paul Gessner signed a temporary restraining order stopping enactment of the Republican vendetta against the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE). Gessner agreed that the association had demonstrated it would suffer irreparable harm if the law is enacted, according to Associated Press reporter Gary D. Robertson. Judge Gessner said that NCAE “has shown a likelihood of success on the merits” of its claim that the process violated the state constitution.

"A hearing for a preliminary injunction to block the enactment while the complaint is tried in court will be scheduled in the next 10 days, said Bob Orr, a Raleigh attorney representing the association."

Bob Orr? Former Republican justice on the NC Supreme Court, noted conservative constitutionalist, and until recently an employee of Art Pope's at the Pope-funded N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL). That Bob Orr?

Wow.

Laura Leslie at WRAL has put together an informative piece interviewing a variety of legal experts debating the merits of Bob Orr's case for the NCAE. Most interesting are the opinions of Orr's former colleagues at the NCICL, which prompts all sorts of questions about why Mr. Orr left the Art Pope group that is now strongly disagreeing with his new clients.

Greensboro News&Record reporter Mark Binker says that Orr was asked during a conference call "about taking up a case closely associated with Democrats when he has run in conservative circles for so long. 'The state constitution does not mention Democrat or Republican. It doesn't mention liberal or conservative. It is what it is and says what it says,' Orr said."

We believe that having Robert Orr as lead counsel in their face-off with Thom Tillis and the Republicans in the NC House is the NCAE's equivalent of playing political hardball right back at the politicians who decided last year that they would play political hardball with the state's teachers.

Over-Caffeinated?

Hard to figger Rep. Bill Faison's interview with WRAL's Laura Leslie as anything less than an admission that he's dying to take on Gov. Bev Perdue in a primary next year.

"...I think ultimately Governor Perdue will do the right thing and decide not to run. I don’t believe you’ll ever see her file [to run for reelection],” Faison said.

Faison had already caused a bit of a ruckus about the failings of the Guv but then surprised many by announcing that he would not run against her.

He seems to be backsliding rapidly. When Leslie asked if he's still interested in running against Perdue, he replied, "Well, I certainly think we need strong leadership at the top of the ticket, and I’m certainly giving consideration to it. That’s a decision for some time in the future."

The future is pretty much standing on the door-stoop, with filing for office scheduled by the state Board of Elections for the first week of February.

A warning shot by Faison or just an unwise flapping of the lip to the best political reporter in the state? Hard to figger. It's clear enough that the indictment yesterday of two Perdue aides and a close friend for campaign violations in 2008 -- even though the prosecutor took pains to say that Perdue was not a target -- is the proximate cause for Faison's fantasy-talk. Faison has been public and loud in challenging the Republican leadership over jobs, and doing it all over the place, which is welcome, especially at a time when state Democratic leaders seem tongue-tied too often (including the governor -- recall her hemming and hawing over the anti-gay equality amendment).

Faison might have some trouble drawing disaffected Dem progressives to his insurgency, should one develop. Just yesterday, the Art Pope org Civitas Action rated Faison as one of the more conservative Dems in the NC House.

Deeper Into the Weeds With the Raleigh GOP

Laura Leslie's account of the action in the NC General Assembly yesterday is un-summarizable and should be read -- twice, if possible -- to begin to understand the constitutional bog that Republican redistricting has become in our fair state.

Some bare facts: over 400,000 voters were left out of the new NC House, Senate, and the US Congressional maps, mainly because of the splitting of precincts between two and sometimes three different voting districts.

Leslie: "Legislative staff and lawmakers were in agreement that the mistakes in the current bill make it unconstitutional. Some districts aren’t contiguous, while others have too many or too few voters."

The "fix" that the Republicans performed yesterday is also unconstitutional, according to Rep. Rick Glazier, absent the judicial system's involvement, so it seems fairly certain that some judge is eventually going to be sorting out this mess for months to come.

Leslie wrote more on the "unconstitutional" issue here.

When Ideologues Write the Budget

North Carolina is in some serious stew because the budget the new Republican leadership in the NC General Assembly wrote bears little relation to reality. Among other problems that were emerging into public light by Wednesday of this week, most resulted from Raleigh lawmakers trying to impose cuts to programs like Medicaid, cuts that violated federal rules or were simply not feasible, but the Republicans nevertheless projected those cuts into the new budget as "savings." According to deputy Health and Human Services secretary Michael Watson, the state's Medicaid program is currently $139 million short on cash for the year.

Republican leaders got mad when they heard the news, Speaker of the House Thom Tillis did his now-standard "nobody informed us that there could be problems" routine, and they immediately took to blaming the governor, who for her part had vetoed the budget and warned the Clown College that they were violating several federal rules.

Laura Leslie cited "senior sources in the administration" who recalled the
"unrealistic expectations by GOP budget writers" from earlier in the year. "They say warnings from experienced executive budget staffers fell on deaf ears among new leaders" in the General Assembly.

The chickens of make-believe math are coming home to roost in that Republican forest of blind ideology.

Thom Tillis' Cronyism,

The pay-to-play shenanigans of Jim Black, felon, live on (and on) in Republican Speaker Thom Tillis.

A Leader For the 21st Century ... NOT!

What a mensch isn't Pat McCrory!

Despite hiking his skirts during the bash-gay-people one-ring circus in Raleigh, he still managed to get the discrimination-against-gay-people ICK all over his polished, corporate self. It may have been Laura Leslie who single-handedly forced him out of the closet (so to speak).

To steal shamelessly from Sir Toby Belch, "Some are born bigots. Some achieve bigotry. And some have bigotry forced upon 'em!"

NC Senate Tries To Squelch Public Comment on Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment But Gets Outted

Cute.

Manifest, outright fraud committed by Dan Soucek's bosses in the NC Senate .

Laura Leslie, once again, proves herself the best political reporter in Raleigh.

Billionaires Reward Thom Tillis

For his outstanding service in the corporate takeover of North Carolina, Republican Speaker of the NC House Thom Tillis received a hunk of shiny metal in New Orleans yesterday at the Koch Brothers' American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference.

Laura Leslie has the story and a photo.

Clown College Has Chosen Its Voters

The new district maps for U.S. Congressional seats and for both the NC Senate and House got final passage last night. They are not subject under law to a veto by the governor.

Not only are counties split between districts; many precincts are split. The gerrymandering surpasses what any previous Machiavelli ever dreamed up. Laura Leslie points out a side cost to all this that has gone largely undiscussed:

"...The resulting lines divide hundreds of voting precincts across the state, running down sidestreets, across college campuses and through apartment complexes. Critics of the maps say the split districts will require local elections boards to print many more specialized ballots, which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of headaches for voters and elections officials in 2012...."

That will be an unfunded mandate, folks, falling on local boards of elections (a.k.a., county commissions) in those counties singled out for the slicing-and-dicing. Watauga was left intact.

NC Taxpayers Are Paying for GOP's Out-Sourced Maps

The top Republican political hack, Tom Hofeller, who drew the new congressional district maps in Washington, D.C., was paid with North Carolina taxpayer money. Laura Leslie has the scoop. Which opens up the next mystery to be solved: How much taxpayer money? Laura Leslie:

"...Unless the attorneys send [NC] lawmakers a detailed bill with Hofeller’s contract broken out, it may never be known how much tax money was spent on it...."

Nevertheless, we expect the other shoe will drop ere long, and we'll all find out that Republicans are extremely good, after all, at sucking off taxpayer money.

Damon Circosta, director of the NC Center for Voter Education, has the propriety of this use of taxpayer money exactly right: "If the goal of hiring an expert is to achieve partisan advantage, and not fair and legal maps, then it shouldn’t be publicly paid for."