Boss Hogg Will Have Competition in the NC-9 Republican Primary

We've already taken notice of "Boss Hogg" Stony Rushing, who's says he's running in the NC-9 congressional special election and who's been endorsed for the seat by Mark Harris, the man who ran last year and supposedly won but who may now be running from the Wake County District Attorney.

Boss Hogg will obviously provide the comedy for the special election. Who will supply the credibility?

Tommy Tucker

Maybe Wyatt Thomas "Tommy" Tucker Sr., a former state senator (first elected in the Tea Party Year of 2010 and who stepped down rather than run again last year). At his retirement he was co-chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. (Republican Todd Johnson -- who has also been implicated in the McCrae Dowless investigation -- won his open seat easily last November.)

Tucker is infamous for a 2013 confrontation with a newspaper publisher, at the time the Berger/Moore super-majorities in the General Assembly were really getting their conservative juggernaut underway and were feeling visibly arrogant about their power. In a committee hearing over a bill that would seriously hurt small-town newspapers, the publisher of the Goldsboro News-Argus challenged Tucker's interpretation of a voice vote in the committee. The publisher believed the vote had failed and wanted a show of hands. Tucker refused and declared, “I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”

Apparently, Tucker had a habit of regularly shushing public opposition in similar fashion. His voting record is textbook conservative: He voted for repeal of the Racial Justice Act and even voted to ban the use of statistical evidence that would show racial bias in cases where the death penalty was chosen.

Tucker was a big opponent of same sex marriage, voting for the ban in the state constitution, and after the Supreme Court stepped in and declared such measures unconstitutional, he voted for SB 2 in February 2015, which would allow state officials to refuse to perform marriages on “religious grounds.” He supported HB 819, which banned climatologists and other scientists from monitoring sea level change along North Carolina’s coastline. Et cetera.

Ridenhour with his family

Or maybe Matthew Ridenhour, who was a Mecklenburg County commissioner until he was defeated last November in the complete Democratic sweep of all county commission seats. He was a North Carolina delegate for Marco Rubio to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Interesting, as was this: After his defeat last November, at his final meeting on the Mecklenburg Commission, Ridenhour decried the partisanship, especially from national politicians, that is “rotting us to our core." He seemed to be indirectly referencing Donald J. Trump.

Ridenhour is an urban Republican, a little more moderate, a little more house-broke than his rural rivals. You won't catch Ridenhour in a Boss Hogg outfit. Ridenhour, like Democratic front-runner Dan McCready, is a former Marine and had evidently earned the respect of both Democrats and Republicans while he was on the Mecklenburg Commission. According to Politico, he's considered "a rising star in the local GOP" (popular among the far right of his party especially because he pushed for concealed carry rights in Charlotte parks).

Ridenhour has not completely decided to run, but he says he could win if he did, especially with the Charlotte part of NC-9 behind him.

There will probably be other Republicans jumping into this primary, including some currently serving members of the General Assembly. The schedule for the special election, including the filing period for candidates, will be set by the State Board of Elections on Monday. Whoever decides to run, and whoever eventually wins that primary, will likely be facing this man who already has good name recognition and a big financial advantage.

Dan McCready

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?

Time Out While a Republican Senator Puts Us in Our Place

Senate Bill 287, which would let local governments shift their legal notices from local newspapers to the Internet, passed through an NC Senate committee Tuesday, but not before producing one of the more iconic quotes from this current session of the NC General Assembly.

Several newspaper executives from around the state were on hand at the committee meeting to argue that newspapers offer the best chance to get information to the public. They said many people, particularly in rural areas, would never see the legal notices if they’re only on a government Web site.

“It’s obvious … that the Senate leadership is targeting the newspaper industry to inflict financial damage on the industry and the public’s right to know,” said John Bussian, counsel to the N.C. Press Association.

Todd Allen, publisher of the Wake Weekly, said the measure appears motivated by Senate leaders who “don’t like newspapers and their coverage.”

From coverage of the incident in the Burlington Times-News:

The committee passed the measure by voice vote. Bussian, the press association lobbyist, said the committee voted 6-5 to reject the measure. [Sen. Tommy] Tucker, the chair, rejected a subsequent appeal for a show of hands and declared the meeting adjourned. 

At that point, Hal Tanner, publisher of the Goldsboro News-Argus, approached Tucker. He told him he thought the vote was handled in a manner inconsistent with Republican stands for open government. 

“I said, ‘We just got through dealing with Jim Black,’ ” Tanner later recalled, referring to the former Democratic House speaker jailed on corruption charges. 

“I’m not Jim Black, I’m not Jim Black,” an angry Tucker replied. Senate rules prohibit roll call votes in committee. 

Later, in an email to members, the press association quoted Tucker telling Tanner: “I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.”

While many are charging that S 287 is a Republican attack on a press they don't like being monitored by, says ProgressNC, "the sadder truth is that this will make it all that much harder for citizens to find out about key meetings and hearings involving the very issues that affect their lives the most: zoning, local utilities, taxes, and more. If this bill passes, it will be very, very clear that the NC Senate has no intention of working for the public good this session."

This dust-up led Kevin Siers, the Charlotte Observer editorial cartoonist, to produce the following memorial to Republican arrogance: