Primary Results

Some takeaways from yesterday's primary:

1. Ted Cruz outpolled Donald Trump in Watauga.

2. The total Democratic ballots cast yesterday in Watauga = 1,181 more individual ballots than the total Republican ballots case for all 13 presidential candidates (including "No Preference").

3. Bernie Sanders buried Hillary Clinton in Watauga. The interest in that race obviously explains # 2 above.

4. Incumbent NC House Rep. Jonathan Jordan easily beat challenger Lew Hendricks, which is too bad.

5. Second-time Democratic candidate Sue Counts easily beat challenger Ronnie Marsh.

6. Franklin Graham's tool Deanna Ballard edged the vastly more qualified Ken Boham in the Dist. 45 NC Senate Republican primary, 52.96% to 47.04%. Boham should have won it.

7. Former Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker won his Secretary of Labor primary and is well set up to take on and beat incumbent disgrace Cherie Berry, "the elevator lady."

8. Ron Elmer, the more qualified candidate in the Democratic primary for Treasurer, took Watauga County but lost the state to Dan Blue III, who can still win the general election on the strength of his name alone.

9. Linda Coleman won the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor. Watauga County went for  her opponent Holly Jones, a Buncombe County Commissioner.

Lew Hendricks Forces a Primary on Jonathan Jordan

Watauga County resident Lew Hendricks filed to run in the Republican primary for North Carolina House, Dist. 93, and issued the following statement:

TO: Watauga and Ashe County Republican and Independent Voters

Jonathan Jordan hasn't earned the right to have a free pass in the Republican primary.

The Republican and Independent voters in Watauga and Ashe County deserve to have a choice. I will give them that choice.

1. A vote for me is a vote for an unwavering commitment to public education.

2. It is a vote to represent the best interests of the people of Watauga and Ashe County and not the special interests.

These are the two most glaring differences I offer to the Republican and Independent voters in the 2016 primary. Politicians love to talk about their support of public education and representing the best interest of their constituents. 

It's time they start doing it.

Jordan has not yet filed for reelection but is expected to do so.  On the Democratic side, Sue Counts, who ran against Jordan in 2014, filed for a rematch today.

NCGOP Jumps the Racist Shark

The North Carolina Republican Party has now successfully inhabited the racism of Southern Democrats, circa 1920. Congratulations, NCGOP, for finally and visibly embracing your true heritage. You ARE the racists of modern America.

Yes, the Jonathan Jordan mailer depicting grandmotherly challenger Sue Counts standing next to a very angry and threatening black man (photoshopped, naturally) was "Paid for by the North Carolina Republican Party."

Which means, O my brethren, that this same mailer is going out in every House district race (and Senate race?) that the Republicans feel slipping away from them ... just like the Dems-candidates-in-sombreroes mailers went out in 2010 all across the state.

It wounds my heart and sickens me deep in the marrow to see this blatant appeal to hatred and fear still so much alive in the North Carolina of 2014. Jesse Helms must be sitting up in his earth-bed, saying, "Wow, you guys! Way to go! We WILL set this state back a hundred years YET!"

North Carolina Republicans are going to richly deserve what they're about to get. They've earned the contempt of every forward-looking, constructive, good-will-sharing, and yes, Christian North Carolinian. Jonathan Jordan cannot hide behind the claim that he didn't know this bilge was going out for his benefit. He knew. He approved. He deserves what he's going to get.

They have destroyed themselves with this kind of filth. May they go down hard.

(And, no, I'm not about to put a picture of that disgusting mailer on this blog. It's all over Facebook and Twitter. Go find it for yourself.)

Jonathan Jordan Plays the Race Card

Weren't we all waiting for this? Instead of Cullie Tarleton pictured in a sombrero, the racist image Jordan used in 2010, he's now out with a mail piece showing his challenger Sue Counts side by side with an angry black man.

Classy, Mr. Jordan.

We didn't expect any less.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

At the candidate forum last night at the Ashe County Courthouse between incumbent Jonathan Jordan and challenger Sue Counts for the Dist. 93 NC House seat, Jordan wanted to exhibit a relentlessly sunny disposition: Everything is just fine, he assured us, since the Republicans took over in 2011. Anything that's not quite right is entirely the fault of "previous administrations."

According to him, Republicans have a long list of achievements: Teachers are better off than they've been in decades. Taxes have been reduced so that prosperity for all is flourishing. Medicaid is being reformed (kicking 600,000 citizens off Medicaid will do wonders!). Jordan and his fellow Republicans are johnny-on-the-spot, protecting the environment. The rogue Town of Boone has been thoroughly punished and humiliated. What's not to like?

At least half of the audience, which included a sizable number of teachers, wasn't buying it.

Jordan was hammered with questions about the sorry state of education funding in North Carolina, but Jordan had his bar graph which he kept displaying. This proves, said he, that the Republicans have done more for public education in the last two years than anyone else in history. Bar graphs and statistics can prove anything, he might have added, but didn't.

Jordan also defended his vote on opening up the state to fracking. He claimed that "no wells have ever been contaminated by fracking," a sweeping claim that surprised many of the people in the courthouse. He was asked why he voted to make disclosure of fracking chemicals a crime. He said that "only a few chemicals" are used in fracking. "Mainly, it's sand and water." Many people laughed out loud at that claim.

Among the questions from the audience, there were a number of thoughtful and well informed queries directed at both candidates. But a bizarre moment was provided by a prominent Ashe County Republican Party officer. She expressed skepticism that challenger Sue Counts could possibly be a Christian. (However low you think you've sunk with contemporary Right Wing religiosity, there's always a bit lower you can go.)

Wherein We Learn From Jonathan Jordan's Latest "Push Poll" and Have Some Questions Ourselves

Yesterday we received information about Jonathan Jordan via an email: 

Got a call on my home phone from some woman saying she represented some generic sounding agency like civic polling or something like that, wanting to ask me a few questions about the upcoming November elections.

First, very courteously, she wanted to know if this was a cell phone and if I was in a place to safely conduct the survey. I was home so no problem. Are you a registered voter? How likely to vote in November? What party registration -- Lib, Repub, Dem, Ind?

"I want to read you a list of candidates," she said, "to see if you recognize names. First name was Jonathan Jordan, then came others including Sue Counts [Jordan's Democratic opponent]. Did I have a favorable or unfavorable impression of Jordan? Counts?

"If I told you Jordan had voted for the higest education budget in NC's history, with average pay raise for teachers of 7%, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?  If I told you he backed Gov. McCrory's tax cuts that average 15% per NC family, would you be more or less likely? If I told you he voted to protect the integrity of our voting process by supporting a Voter ID bill, would you be more or less likely?"

"For Sue Counts, if I told you she is a radical liberal who supports the NAACP and Rev. Barber's Moral Monday demonstrations, would you be more or less likely to vote for her? If I told you she backs Obamacare? That she opposes the reforms McCrory has made to our state taxes?"

Well, okay then. We all know about the Republican habit of using such "polls," which really aren't polls at all but are intended to plant misinformation in a voter's mind that will impact his voting … in this case, that Sue Counts is a radical liberal and hangs out with black people.

Well, seems only fair that two can play at this game, with the difference being that we would base our questions on hard, cold fact. To wit:

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan had one of the worst constituent services of all the General Assembly members, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that the Jonathan Jordan campaign is currently attacking his opponent with racist, sexist, and unchristian slurs, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan pushed through the tax increase on your electric bill, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan pushed through the unpopular changes to the school calendar for Watauga and Ashe counties, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--[In Ashe County only] If I told you that Jonathan Jordan refused to stop Boone's water intake project on the New River, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan refuses to hold or attend a single public town hall meeting in his district to hear what the people think, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan is a leader in pushing through the General Assembly's radical Tea Party agenda, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan pushed through allowing natural gas companies to steal gas from under your personal property without your permission, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan had left his wife and children and has a new girlfriend, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

--If I told you that Jonathan Jordan helped pass a huge tax cut for the super-rich, which will leave the state budget unbalanced this year and the schools begging for money, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?

Don't You Love the Smell of Republican Panic in the Morning?

It's becoming clear that the real reason that Art Pope resigned as state budget director is that his Republican troops in the General Assembly, so expensively elected in 2010 to take North Carolina down the smelly rabbit hole we're now buried in, are about to get some comeuppance from the voting public. Pope is the grand strategist Daddy Warbucks of the Right-Wing Takeover, and apparently the knuckleheads need him now more than ever. He quit state government in order to save it, at least his twisted version of it.

Thomas Mills details the approaching tsunami through recent polling of individual races for General Assembly seats, where Republican incumbents -- even in gerrymandered districts thought to be safe for Republicans -- are experiencing dissatisfaction and underwater polling numbers. Mills says that their "fix" for their own dismal lack of popularity is to begin early the usual deluge of negative mail, mainly saying Obamacare as often as possible and trying to tie their Democratic challengers to the Washington of Barack.

Ain't working. Their "favorability" rankings are actually worse than Obama's in state polling.

We've braced ourselves to see the nastiness that incumbent Republican House member Jonathan Jordan has in store for challenger Sue Counts. Mills doesn't mention how Jordan is polling, but we happen to know that it ain't good news for him.

Bad Juju

Jonathan Jordan's wife Tracie came in dead last, in a field of five candidates, in the race for a district court judgeship (Dist. 23):

Robert (Rob) Crumpton		5,038	26.96 %
Donna L. Shumate		4,569	24.45 %
Fred Bauer		3,783	20.25 %
Regina Gillespie		3,427	18.34 %
Tracie McMillan Jordan		1,869	10.00 %

Ouch.

Mr. Jordan faces his own Waterloo in November with a candidate who's out-raising him and definitely out-campaigning him.

Sue Counts Announces for NC House (Dist. 93)

Photo: High Country Press

The Twitterverse hummed yesterday at noon with news that Sue Counts, former director of the Watauga office of the Cooperative Extension Service, was announcing her candidacy for the NC House seat currently warmed by Jonathan Jordan.

Counts already has a website and a Facebook presence. Game on!

The filing statement that went to the press yesterday lays the groundwork for what the elections of 2014 are going to be all about:

I am announcing my candidacy for the North Carolina House because I can no longer sit by and watch my beloved state wander down a path which is destroying the gains we have made in education, infrastructure, scientific research, job opportunities, and environmental protections. 

Since the new Republican majority in the North Carolina General Assembly took over control in 2011, and especially after they cemented that control with the election of Governor Pat McCrory in 2012, they have worked overtime to turn the clock back on every progressive program in the state that benefits working people, retirees, the poor, and others. Their budgeting priorities are aimed at helping the very wealthy at the expense of the hardworking people in our mountains. They have actually raised taxes on many goods and services that disproportionately impact low- and middle-income citizens while cutting corporate and higher-income taxes for the richest 5 percent of North Carolina taxpayers. It's Robin Hood in reverse. And it's wrong-headed. 

At a time when unemployment was soaring in the state, the new majority in Raleigh cut the length and the amount of unemployment benefits being paid to those struggling for work. And in a spiteful act based on nothing but shameful partisan politics, they refused to extend Medicaid to some 500,000 North Carolinians, an extension that would have been 100% paid for by the Federal government for the first three years, and 90% paid for after that. These decisions are hurting the people least able to fight back. Furthermore, the failure to extend Medicaid is crippling, and in some cases closing, our rural hospitals. It is simply immoral to condemn our fellow citizens to preventable suffering and even to early death for lack of medical care. 

Our current representative from House District 93, Jonathan Jordan, has voted in lock-step with the new majority in Raleigh. Instead of being an independent voice who stands up for the people of Ashe and Watauga counties, Mr. Jordan has been a mere rubber stamp for bad decisions and worse legislation.

Counts' biography (also at the High Country Press link) reveals deep connections to both the farming community and to economic development initiatives in the mountains. She's widely known and highly respected.