When Your Governor Breaks Your Best China

 

Kirk deViere

Last Sunday, I asked -- sincerely -- what Democratic state Senator Kirk deViere had done to warrant a primary challenge from two other Democrats.

Yesterday, at least part of the answer seemed to arrive in Governor Roy Cooper's endorsement of one of deViere's rivals, Val Applewhite. Whaaa? A sitting Democratic governor gets himself publicly involved in a Democratic primary by sticking a stiletto between the ribs of a sitting Democratic state senator. I know this sort of thing goes on all the time behind the scenes, but Cooper decided to go public. Val Applewhite was only too happy to publish the endorsement on her Twitter feed.

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan attempts to unpack the politics behind this surprise development (posted to the News and Observer last night). The implications point to deViere's willingness to agree with Senate Republicans on some budget issues, particularly on expanding Medicaid and school funding, and those are precisely the two issues Cooper highlighted in his endorsement of Applewhite: "I need legislators who will expand Medicaid [and] pay teachers more...." DeViere's appointment to the Republican budget conference committee, which put him in direct negotiation with the governor's office, may have triggered the governor's spite.

I don't know. (But reading between the lines, deViere might be the type of "moderate" Democrat I'd be loath to support too, all things being equal, which they aren't.)

Val Applewhite

WRAL reporter Travis Fain says he asked Val Applewhite when she filed to run whether she'd been recruited by the governor to challenge deViere: "No, she said. Morgan Jackson, a key Cooper political strategist, said the same." Judging from Applewhite's campaign infrastructure, which is de minimis (no website, nothing on Twitter except the governor's endorsement), I'm inclined to believe she wasn't recruited and also wasn't really ready to capitalize on the endorsement. She looks like a total novice from this distance, hardly ready for primetime.

Applewhite and deViere are old rivals for the mayorship of Fayetteville, so there's probably a lot more history between them than meets the eye. Whatever. Governor Cooper has chosen to violate the accepted etiquette for staying the hell out of Democratic primaries, and I'm sorry for that.

Who benefits most from this? Wesley Meredith, the Republican deViere narrowly beat for the Senate seat in 2018. Meredith is running again. He has his own primary but will likely win it, and he can't wait to capitalize on the squabble among the Democrats.

Sen. Meredith Just Woke Up From His Months-Long Nap, Sez ... "Who Put That There?"

Sen. Wesley Meredith, one of Phil Berger's top lieutenants in Raleigh, just discovered ("No way! I couldn't have! I didn't!") that he voted for a really putrid constitutional amendment that takes away the governor's ability to appoint judges to vacancies and gives that power to Phil Berger. And his boys.

Or maybe Senator Meredith thinks he was egregiously misled, or blinded by the light, or was possibly dosed with a knock-out drug at the time(s) that he voted (repeatedly) to give Phil Berger the power over judgeships. Phil Berger and his boys, of which Wesley Meredith is one.

Anyway, at a public forum in the Cumberland County Public Library, Senator Meredith suddenly announced that he was against the constitutional amendment changing the way favored people get on the bench. Precisely no one at the forum asked the obvious follow-up -- "But didn't you vote for it, not only on final passage but also in committee votes, and in totally different forms -- the one ruled unconstitutional by a judge and the second version the Republicans put on the ballot November 6th along with five other putrid power grabs? Didn't you vote for that repeatedly?"

Rob Schofield at The Progressive Pulse got hold of Senator Meredith and did ask that question. Senator Meredith went into a kind of fugue state trying to explain the inexplicable. You have to read that interview.

For the election upcoming Meredith is threatened by Democrat Kirk deViere, who starred on WataugaWatch months ago. DeViere looks to be mounting an energetic campaign, while by comparison, Senator Meredith looks ... panicked. "Flummoxed" was the word Schofield used.

Deanna Ballard with NCH93 Rep. Jordan

FOOTNOTE
Two more Republican lawmakers have subsequently come out against the judicial selection constitutional amendment: Sen. Rick Horner (R – Johnston, Nash, Wilson), who also voted for the amendment on final passage, and Rep. Chuck McGrady (R – Henderson).

Know who else in the Senate voted for the amendment and all the other amendments, both in committee and on the floor and who hasn't apologized for any of them? Deanna Ballard of the 45th Senate District. Over on the House side, Jonathan Jordan did as he was told and voted for all of them too. No recanting from him.

The Connection Between Ballot Subpoenas in North Carolina and DJT's Ego

Well, knock us over with a feather duster! A lengthy investigative piece posted last week on Salon proves that there was past substantial voting by "illegal aliens" in a North Carolina election, only it was done to benefit a Republican candidate for Fayetteville City Council.

We've written about Wesley Meredith before, because he's now an incumbent member of the NC Senate, and a powerful one, and he has a credible Democratic opponent this year in Kirk deViere.

But back more than a decade ago, according to Steven Rosenfeld, Meredith was trying awfully hard to get onto the Fayetteville City Council. He ran once and lost. Then he ran again in 2005 and won, but not without a lot of questions and evidence of illegal registrations by non-citizens who were supposedly taking a keen interest in seeing a landscape contractor elected to city council.

Marshall Tutor, who retired in March 2018 after many years as lead investigator for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, was deeply involved investigating Meredith's 2005 win. "There are a lot of problems with that case," Tutor told Rosenfeld. "I spent a lot of time on fraudulent absentee ballot requests and non-citizens requesting absentee ballots. And it was federal crimes involved because there were absentee ballot requests made for Fayetteville citizens who knew nothing about it, that were mailed over state lines into a drop box in Virginia.”

Tutor took his evidence to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina -- "evidence showing that non-citizens tried to, and did, register and vote, and vote early. We had enough [evidence] that, had it been thoroughly investigated, there would have had to have been charges on somebody” -- but “the U.S. attorney’s office told us they would get back to us after they had time to go over the documentation. About 13 months later they sent an email saying they didn’t have enough evidence to go forward with any kind of investigation. Keep in mind Meredith was a huge fundraiser for state Republican candidates during this time.”

Robert J. Higdon Jr.,
U.S. Attorney
Eastern District of N.C.

Hmmm. Who was that Federal prosecutor who said no thanks to busting illegal voting? Why, Robert J. Higdon Jr., who is now, presently, the very U.S. Attorney who engineered the recent surprise subpoena for some 20 million ballots and voting records from 44 eastern counties of North Carolina ... 44 eastern counties where the proportion of Latinos just happens to be highest. That appears to be the point of the subpoenas and more evidence that the Trump administration is still pursuing its fraudulent claim that millions of "illegals" voted in 2016.

See, when Trump's bogus commission appointed to look into illegal voting crashed and burned -- it was led by Kris Kobach of Kansas (what's the matter with Kansas?), a sloppy partisan with no qualms who's now trying to move his conspiracy theories into the Kansas governor's mansion -- when that commission disbanded in disgrace, Kobach transferred the "hunt for illegals" to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE, which made the requests to Robert J. Higdon Jr. to issue those blanket subpoenas at 5 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day.

Threatening subpoenas delivered not only to the county boards of elections in 44 eastern North Carolina counties, but also to every DMV office, where many people register to vote, with the clear threat and implication that someone has broken the law and needs to be keel-hauled ... coming from a U.S. Attorney with a history of partisan decision-making ... well, ain't that just a kick in the pants?

We're thankful we have a State Board of Elections and an Attorney General willing and able to push back against the intimidation, the lingering penumbra of Kris Kobach, vampire hunter.

Landscape in NC Senate District 19 Looks Rocky

NC Senate District 19 -- Republican incumbent Wesley Meredith

Wesley Meredith

This description of Meredith caught our attention in Real Facts NC's assessment of the District 19 race: "Meredith, a top lieutenant of Senate Leader Berger, now finds himself in a redrawn district where 30 percent of the voters haven’t seen his name on their ballot before. Gov. Cooper won Meredith’s new district in 2016. However, given Meredith’s deep unpopularity with folks that know him, being less well known to the voters he’ll face might be an advantage."

Meredith is a mean campaigner. He beat Democratic incumbent Margaret Dickson in his first campaign in 2010 with what many observers considered sexist attacks and innuendo. He eked out a win with 51% of the vote. His district was promptly gerrymandered to make it friendlier for a Republican, and he more easily won reelection in 2012 against a weaker Democratic opponent. In 2014, he faced a strong Democratic candidate who produced evidence that Meredith had soaked up social welfare money in the 1990s on a six-figure income, and an ex-wife of Meredith's jumped in and corroborated the charges. That scandal got Meredith a good going-over on the Wonkette website, but he won the race again anyway with some very mean TV spots aimed at his Democratic opponent.

This year Meredith is running in a court-ordered redrawing of District 19 that might not be so friendly. We would expect him to go full-bore negative on his Democratic opponent, but whoever that Democrat turns out to be (after the May 8th primary), he'll have a smorgasbord of Meredith's record to work with in his own attack ads. Let's hope he's got the will to answer every attack.

The likely Democrat in District. 19 -- Kirk deViere

Kirk deViere

DeViere has to survive a primary first with a former Cumberland County district court judge, Ed Donaldson, who was last in elective office a dozen years ago.

DeViere is a former Fayetteville city councilman (as was Wesley Meredith prior to 2010). He is president and owner of the 219 Group, a marketing and advertising company in Fayetteville. He ran more than once unsuccessfully to be mayor of Fayetteville, first as an unaffiliated voter before switching his registration to Democrat early in 2017. In the municipal elections of 2017, deViere didn't make it through the mayoral primary and was criticized for accepting the endorsement of Anthony Chavonne, a former mayor whose tenure was "littered with strife, corruption and malfeasance." 

DeViere's campaign website is woefully under-developed at the moment and needs some protein, especially for a man who makes his living as a marketer and promoter. Where's the beef?