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.

NC Citizens Fight Back Against Fracking

Senate bill 786, passed by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Squishy in June of 2014, threw this state wide open to fracking, even though the enabling bill was innocuously and misleadingly titled "The Energy Modernization Act." It should have been titled "The Knee-Capping of North Carolina Citizens Act."

The Republican tools of the gas industry made sure that the bill not only welcomed a nasty polluting industry with open arms but also contained sharp obstacles for local governments that might not want their ground water contaminated. Section 14.a reads in part:

It is the intent of the General Assembly ... to place limitations upon the exercise by all units of local government in North Carolina of the power to regulate the management of oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities by means of special, local, or private acts or resolutions, ordinances, property restrictions, zoning regulations, or otherwise. 

Bottomline for counties and cities: you can not and will not protect yourselves and your citizens from fracking, so don't even think about it.

Nevertheless, local elected officials, acting as though they are responsible to those who elected them rather than to the oil & gas industry, have been passing moratoria on fracking. They are claiming that S786 does not explicitly outlaw moratoria -- which are, by definition, temporary stoppages -- but we wonder if that argument will stand up in court.

Chatham County passed a two-year moratorium on fracking in August. Last night, a unanimous vote by a 100% Republican county commission in Stokes passed a three-year moratorium. Commissioners in Lee County have launched the process of writing their own moratorium.

The legality of these moratoria -- not to mention the rights of local citizens through the agency of their local governments to protect their health, safety, and property values -- has not landed in a state court yet, possibly because the fracking industry is in a bit of a coma because of falling prices (thank you, Saudi Arabia). The only drilling we know of currently in North Carolina is in -- where else? -- Stokes County, in the community of Walnut Cove, where the NC Department of Environmental Quality is test-drilling for the explicit future benefit of the industry (as also provided for in S786).

Yes, O my brethren, the industry tools in the General Assembly put in taxpayer money to help the fracking industry find the best pockets of shale gas. That's who they're working for, if you still had any doubts.

County citizens in places where shale gas has been identified as commercially exploitable -- and that would include Stokes, Chatham, and Lee counties, by the way -- are not going to take this treatment lying down. At least, we hope and trust that they won't lie down.

Surprise, Lee County! You Get Millions of Tons of Coal Ash for Christmas!

Lee County, NC, is high on the target list for immediate fracking for natural gas. Now it's also about to receive a snoot full of Duke Energy's coal ash. Are the citizens happy?

Duke Energy wants to put millions of tons of its precious coal ash into open-pit clay mines in both Lee and Chatham counties. Duke Energy has put in its applications for permits to its wholly owned subsidiary, the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which is sure to approve them.

Some slick Duke Energy boys in expensive suits showed up earlier this month at a Lee County Commissioners meeting in Sanford and reassured the folks that everything was copacetic, that there was no danger, that ... blah blah blah. According to WRAL, the crowd of citizens who showed up to hear Their Slicknesses weren't buying what Duke Energy was selling. Every single speaker in the public hearing spoke against putting coal ash into Lee County, and they chanted "shame on you" at the end of the public hearing.

One resident spoke directly to the Duke representatives, “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re all very nice people, but you are not here for the betterment of my community.”

Incidentally, Republican Rep. Mike Stone, a great champion for fracking who represented Lee County, lost his seat to Democrat Brad Salmon in the elections just passed. So there's that.

Look What the General Assembly Did To Lee County

We hear about the new Republican majority in the General Assembly and what they did to Asheville's water system, and we hear about how they're trying to strip Charlotte of its airport, and we know about how they're forcing Durham to deliver water and sewer services against the will of the people to a huge mega-development outside city limits.

But some of their "smaller-scale" meddling in local government doesn't get the same news coverage.

Take Lee County and its local school board. See, Lee County has a majority-Democrat school board, and that fact apparently puts a burr under the saddle of the local Republican member of the NC House, Rep. Mike Stone, who was just elected in the Tea Party surge of 2010 and who has been drunk with power ever since.

Rep. Stone introduced three local bills in the General Assembly, all clearly intended to punish the Lee County School Board:

1. H490 forces the school board  — which has been officially non-partisan since it was established in 1967 — to hold partisan elections. 

2. H491 transfers control of school resource officers from the school district to the Lee County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff is a Republican.

3. H512 takes away the school board's power to appoint members of Central Carolina Community College's Board of Trustees.

H490 became law. H491 became law. H512 became law.

So much for local government.

But wait! A Lee Co. Superior Court judge has just granted a restraining order against H512 while a new lawsuit plays itself out.

The passage of local bill H512 ended the terms of four members of the Central Carolina Community College, specifically the four who were appointed by the Lee County School Board, and it furthermore decreed that none of those four people can ever be reappointed. Those four, one of whom was only sworn in a couple of weeks ago, have sued, alleging that H512 serves no legitimate government interest and is arbitrary and capricious.

"Arbitrary and capricious"? Why, yes, and perhaps there's still a judge in North Carolina who can recognize the truth of that. While H512 was singling out four people appointed by a Democrat-majority school board, it was leaving alone four other trustees appointed by the Republican dominated Lee County Commission. That's about as arbitrary as you can get. Also blatantly partisan, turning education, or at least the possibility of education, into a political pissing match.