The Arc of Nathan Tabor

 

Nathan Tabor is currently in jail in Brunswick County, with a list of charges I'll get around to summarizing below. Way back in 2004, Tabor ran as a young Christian conservative against Virginia Foxx in the Republican congressional primary, the year that Foxx took the 5th District seat she still holds. Tabor came in fifth out of six. He had been endorsed by the NC Right to Life and by the Rev. Jerry Falwell (no, really), who actually called Tabor "a young Jesse Helms." The photo here is from that period in Tabor's life.

He did his best to live up to Falwell's compliment. He was particularly unbending on the issue of abortion. He constantly modeled outrage over what women might do with their bodies, coming out of a general contempt for "women's rights." He ran as though Virginia Foxx was faaaar to the left, at the vanguard of bossy liberal women who were going to destroy Christian principles. He had attended Pat Robertson's Regent University and followed the Gospel of "let your women keep silence." He published The Conservative Voice, was kind enough to put me on his email list, so I regularly expressed my own outrage at his preachments. I wrote a lot about Tabor after 2004.

Tabor went on to chair the Forsyth County Republican Party, ran unsuccessfully for town alderman in Kernersville, and attempted to file in 2012 for the 6th District congressional primary but got to the Board of Elections after the deadline.

Currently, his estranged wife says he's addicted to drugs and always on the verge of financial disaster. Which perhaps explains how his current incarceration got started. He was arrested earlier in October by the Ocean Isle Beach police department, along with the Brunswick County Sheriff's office, for stealing catalytic converters from a church, a Habitat for Humanity Restore, and from two different people (some of the goods allegedly stolen at Sunset Beach). (Michael Hewlett, Winston-Salem Journal, has the most complete story on Tabor's multiple troubles.)

One wonders what Tabor was doing at the beach. His home is in Kernersville. Could it have anything to do with this: There was a warrant out for Tabor's arrest in Kernersville on August 21, 2021, on a complaint of cyberstalking filed by his pastor at the Kerwin Baptist Church. (The entanglements get increasingly baroque.) Luckily, the third week in August is the perfect time to go to the beach! But the details of his arrest suggest he was also close to destitute. And then there's what his wife wrote when she filed for complete custody of their 16-year-old daughter: “Defendant has become addicted to drugs, spending thousands and thousands of dollars on drugs.”

Nathan Tabor, four days ago

Added to the charges of outright theft: allegations that he made threats against his mother-in-law and other family members in Catawba County in an attempt to get more than $200,000 and that he harassed his pastor in Forsyth County, accusing the pastor of embezzling money from the church. He made sexually-explicit comments to both the pastor and his wife. The pastor filed for a restraining order against Tabor in August.

Mrs. Tabor herself filed for a restraining order against her husband after they separated last June, alleging that he had sent a constant stream of harassing text messages, emails, and social media postings. “Defendant is mentally and emotionally abusive to the minor child, including sending email implying the minor child will burn in hell, and ‘I curse that and pray every time you see or touch something you enjoy that you immediately get sick.’ ”

This is not to say that all Christian conservatives are hypocrites and potentially "mental." This is to say that sometimes claiming to be a Christian conservative can cover big cracks in character.

Completely Deranged Meets Merely Crazy

The newly drawn 13th Congressional Dist., its seat currently held by Democrat Brad Miller, is attracting a veritable smorgasbord of contemporary extremism, featuring (at the moment) both Vernon Robinson and Nathan Tabor, who have both announced their intentions to run for the seat.

Nathan Tabor's only issue is controlling what women do with their bodies.

Vernon's Robinson's extremism scares the bejesus out of many otherwise rational Republicans.

Both Tabor and Robinson ran against Virginia Foxx in the Republican primary of 2004. Robinson actually finished first, Foxx, second, forcing a run-off. Robinson consistently accused Foxx of being a crypto-lesbo-pinko feminist.

Tabor finished fifth in that primary.

Perhaps Tabor and Robinson can have a "stare-off" instead of a debate, seeing how long each could go without blinking.

Legislating Superior Morality

Sen. Dan Soucek was one of the stars at yesterday's Screw Gay People rally in Raleigh. People were literally thumping their Bibles in support of Soucek's proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state.

According to the Raleigh News & Observer, Soucek really said that he is determined to write "correct moral standards" into the North Carolina constitution.

How will we know the standards are "correct"? Because Soucek wrote them, duh.

The Soucek scheme is to get this proposed amendment through both houses of the General Assembly and then onto the ballot for public approval in November of 2012. With the economic dunderheadedness of the new Republican majority in Raleigh losing steam rapidly, the state's GOP needs something to rally the troops to the polls for the next elections. So ... why not religious bigotry? It's worked before, right?

And in case you're still giving this bunch the benefit of the doubt, that they're just well meaning throw-backs to the 19th century who ultimately mean no one any lasting harm, pay attention to what Forsyth Republican Party Chair Nathan Tabor announced yesterday: "There is no separation of church and state," Tabor told the crowd, telling them that God will judge them if they don't vote as Christians should.

Power and earthly control. Just like Jesus taught.

Mellow Man

Nathan Tabor, the right-wing Republican battlebot of yore (he came in fifth in the Republican primary for U.S. Congress that Madam Foxx ultimately won in 2004), says he's now "gentler, softer, more agreeable" in his new role as chair of the Forsyth County Republican Party.

Groovy.

He was the cleverer-by-half candidate who did things like buy up all the domain names he thought his opposition might want to use. According to John Railey, "Tabor has the Facebook savvy and youth [Republicans will] need to [sell themselves to voters again] -- if moderates aren't scared off by his past stances."

Tabor graduated from the Rev. Pat Robertson's Regent University, and has been endorsed, if not enabled, by both Robertson and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.

He now says that, though he still listens to Rush Limbaugh, he doesn't always agree with him. (For that slip of the tongue, he might want to keep this website bookmarked on his computer.)