The Blunt Truth: Republican Government in North Carolina Is Illegitimate. Bottomline: They're Bastards

Reporting by Michael Wines:

The advocacy group Common Cause said in court documents submitted in Raleigh on Thursday that the Hofeller files include new evidence showing how North Carolina Republicans misled a federal court to prolong the life of their map of state legislative districts, which had been ruled unconstitutional.

The Republicans told the federal court hearing the map case that they would not be able to draw new legislative districts and hold public hearings on them in time for a proposed special election in late 2017 or early 2018. In fact, Common Cause said, Mr. Hofeller’s files show that almost all the work had already been done. 

While the advocacy group’s court filing did not include any of the underlying documents from Mr. Hofeller’s storage drives, it stated that a detailed analysis of the maps found among his files showed that new boundaries had been drawn for more than 97 percent of the state’s proposed Senate districts and 90 percent of House districts. 

The federal court’s decision later not to call a special election left the existing legislative gerrymander — and a veto-proof Republican majority in both the state House and Senate — in place for roughly an additional year. 

Republicans used that extra time to, among other things, try to tilt the state judiciary rightward, remap elected judges’ districts in the state’s largest county, and tweak election rules for the state Supreme Court. They restructured the State Board of Elections to dilute the influence of Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic governor. And they tacked six proposed constitutional amendments onto last November’s ballot — many of them, like a proposal to make fishing and hunting a constitutional right, aimed at pumping up Republican turnout. 

The new evidence about the actions of the Republicans in North Carolina “raises serious questions about the legitimacy of their hold on power in the state,” said Eric Holder, an attorney general in the Obama administration who now heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The committee’s nonprofit arm has financed the Common Cause lawsuit. “They should now explain to the court — and the people of North Carolina — why they are so intent on manipulating the election process for their own benefit,” Mr. Holder said in a written statement.

"Hofeller devoted the most time to North Carolina..."

Big news, from Slate:

In February, attorneys challenging North Carolina’s legislative gerrymander notified the defendants, a group of Republican leaders in the legislature, that they’d issued a subpoena. The lawyers had asked Stephanie Hofeller Lizon to provide “any storage device” containing redistricting-related documents left by her estranged father, Thomas Hofeller, a Republican consultant who specialized in gerrymandering. Republican legislators did not object, and Lizon turned over the requested materials: 18 thumb drives and four hard drives containing more than 75,000 files—many related to her father’s consulting work. The voting rights attorneys had uncovered a vast trove of information exposing the inner workings of GOP gerrymandering across the country. 

Upon learning what their opponents had obtained, attorneys for Republican lawmakers went to court to try to seize the files. But it was too late. Voting rights advocates had lawfully acquired the materials, even after having given Republicans a chance to object. And on Thursday, they dropped the first bombshell from Hofeller’s hard drives: A key portion of a 2015 memo written by Hofeller appeared in a draft Justice Department letter used to justify the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the census. Hofeller’s memo, which explains why the citizenship question would boost the voting power of “Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites,” indicates that administration officials lied about the reason for adding the question.... 

For years, Hofeller held an office at the Republican National Committee on Capitol Hill. He worked as both its official redistricting director and, later, as a paid consultant. He traveled the country to teach Republican lawmakers how to gerrymander their districts to create permanent GOP legislative majorities.... But Hofeller devoted the most time to North Carolina, where he created lopsided Republican majorities in a state evenly divided between the parties....

Read the whole article! Republican attorney Phil Strach, husband of recently fired executive director of the NC State Board of Elections Kim Strach, was representing the "Republican lawmakers" (Berger/Moore) in the attempt to suppress the Hofeller secret gerrymandering files.

More revelations to come.

Same Old B.S. Afoot in Raleigh

The Republican overlords in Raleigh whose 2011 redistricting of NC House and Senate seats was declared illegal and unconstitutional in the courts have hired the same guy who drew those illegal districts to draw new ones. If at first you don't succeed...

To be precise, 28 of the General Assembly districts drawn by hired gun Tom Hofeller in 2011 were declared an illegal "racial gerrymander," but the Republican leadership itself admits that some 116 districts will have to be redrawn, because, you know, the domino principle.

The battle over redistricting is also back in court today in Greensboro federal court, where a three-judge panel will hear arguments about how quickly the redistricting must be done and whether there might still be mandated House and Senate elections this year for those 116 redrawn districts.

Doubt that House District 93 (Jonathan Jordan) would be impacted, but Senate District 45 (Deanna Ballard) might be.

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."

NC GOP Out-Souces Its Appetite

Who drew the new NC Congressional maps? Not, as it turns out, anybody in Raleigh.

The new Republican majority in Raleigh apparently farmed out the maps to a Republican political operative in Washington, D.C., one Tom Hofeller, who as recently as April 2010 was licking his chops over redistricting as a top staffer at the Republican National Committee.

USA Today has described Hofeller as a “key Republican general” in the fight to manipulate state politics through redistricting (via Cottonmouth). He's apparently now working for a "campaign mail outfit" in northern Virginia.

The man who drew our new maps works as a for-profit right-wing political operative.

How much was he paid?

After working in state legislative redistricting battles for three decades, he wrote "What I've Learned About Redistricting -- The Hard Way" in 2000 and laid out his political philosophy:

● No permanent allies

● No permanent enemies

● Only permanent interests

● Self interest binds, honor doesn’t

Okay. Got it!