A Case of Nerves?

 

Dave Boliek

 

 

A week and a day ago, June 16th, Republicans in the NC House introduced H 958, "Election Law Changes," 37 pages of monkeying around with the way things have been. Under this bill, any resident of a county may challenge any other resident's ballot until five days after an election (oh, yes, there'll be mischief on this one!), and State Auditor Dave Boliek will get yet a new sweeping power -- "mandatory post-election audits" in counties of Dave Boliek's choosing (maybe particularly the ones that turn blue?). Dave Boliek used to be a registered Democrat. He became a Republican, won his election, and has proven himself extra loyal to the GOP. (Witness how he bullied Republicans on the Jackson County Board of Elections to reject early voting on the Western Carolina University campus.) H 958 would also make more State Board of Elections staff into political (partisan) appointees, and curiously the law would ban any members of county boards of elections from "encouraging" citizens to vote. Why? Because human flesh is frail? 

The backlash to this bill, which was being fast-tracked, turned pretty fierce fast and overwhelming -- there's still a portal available for public comment -- so the bill is stalled, stuck in the Rules Committee (where many a problematic piece of legislation has died of slow suffocation). Revisions to H 958 may be underway, but does it matter? The GOP has cemented its identity -- the burning need to keep as many people from voting as possible.

The fact that the House leadership flinched in the face of public uproar -- former Speaker Tim Moore would never have flinched -- may tell us something about the case of nerves right now in the Republican majority. Do they need a lot of negative attention right now over the right to vote?

 

The NCGOP Absolutely Luvvs Amending the Constitution!

 

Democratic candidates for governor of North Carolina have beaten the Republican nominees three times in a row, and ever since Roy Cooper's reelection victory in 2020, Phil Berger and Tim Moore (at the time) took revenge by seizing power from the governor (and in many cases giving it directly to themselves), like taking the state Board of Elections and giving it to a wholly new guy because he was handy and loyal. The Republican bosses in the General Assembly also took appointments to the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina for themselves. They had some dull axes to grind into bright, gleaming steel. Now they're after Josh Stein. Bryan Anderson alerts us that there's a measure moving in the NC House, H 144, that would put a Constitutional amendment on the ballot to "strip Gov. Josh Stein of his ability to appoint 11 members onto the State Board of Education. In lieu of gubernatorial appointments, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature would draw 14 districts for voters to elect state education board members to four-year terms. The state’s lieutenant governor and treasurer would also continue on the education board. The state superintendent of public instruction would also serve as chair of the board." Why? Apparently, General Election ballots are not long enough already. 

Other proposed amendments to NC's constitution that are coming down the track:

H 1089 proposes to send it to the voters to put a limit (undefined) on county property tax rates, a measure that is bound to be popular and is absolutely a ticking time bomb that will cripple the finances and public services of some counties.

S 1080: Another one that's cotton candy for conservatives, a measure lowering the ceiling on personal income tax to 3.5%. Anderson: "In 2018, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment capping personal income taxes at 7%. But this time around, Democratic leaders and some prominent Republicans worry the bill could hamstring future legislators. Stein has said he worries the tax cap would put the state 'in a financial straight jacket.' Republican former House Speaker Pro Tem Skip Stam said the ballot measure 'needs a lot of work' and 'makes no more sense than a liberal version that required a minimum level of income taxation'.”

S 1081: The Right to Farm amendment. There's already a "right to farm" law on the books. Is this a potential future wedge against local zoning?

S 1082: An anti-union "right to work" amendment, even though NC workers already have the right not to join no effing worker orgs.

 

The Man Who Shut Down Early Voting at Western Carolina

 

Bill Thompson, presiding

 

 

Bill Thompson, the new Republican chair of the Jackson County Board of Elections, has managed to establish an early reputation as a nasty piece of work. But isn't that the way Phil Berger and Tim Moore intended election administration to go in North Carolina? They changed the law, put themselves in charge of elections, and just naturally attracted the meanest and most partisan people to make things as difficult as possible.

As chair of the Jackson BOE, it was Thompson who led the nasty move of killing an early voting site at Western Carolina University. “ By law, we could have just one site in Jackson County,” Thompson warned, ignoring evidence that the WCU early voting site was the most used in the county. “One site is required for every 30,000 voters. We've got four, that's plenty.”

Two complaints were lodged with the NC State BOE against Bill Thompson for his conduct in a Cullowee precinct polling place during the March primary. A voter, seconded by two other witnesses, and an actual poll worker both filed complaints on the second day of early voting, saying Thompson came into the polling site talking trash about Muslims and saying that both Germany and France were ruined now because of the Muslim invasion, and that he especially didn't trust Germans. The poll worker who heard all this was born in Germany and he summed up the grief  brief against Bill Thompson, that "he exposed deep and unfounded disgust against Muslims and their faith as well as any non-European culture.”

Bill Thompson's not the first bigot to chair a board of elections, but still....

The NC BOE on March 25th (last Wednesday) held an initial review to determine whether the complaints against Thompson "presented sufficient evidence of misconduct or a violation of election-related duties." The board voted 4-1 that the threshold had not been met. One Democrat voted with the Republican majority, though she lectured Thompson: "We're cautioned not to bring politics into the polling place, and discussions of politics. At least one of those instances cited in the complaints is arguably a political commentary, or brings in issues that really have no place in a polling place.” But she agreed to let him off the hook.

Republican SBOE member Stacy "Four" Eggers did give Thompson a highly decorous, because indirect dressing-down:

"Mr. Chairman, I think it is worth cautioning the chair [Thompson] as to his discussions, choice of words and what he chooses to discuss at the polling place. I know that Miss [Angela] Hawkins [another Jackson Co. board member] and I both have spent a lot of time in county precincts, and generally the discussion is limited to the weather, or perhaps your favorite sports team or something innocuous like that.

“Although the comments were not appropriate for the discussion in the area, they still, in my mind, don't show a violation of Chapter 163.” 

I suspect this may not be the last dressing-down that Bill Thompson will be needing.

 

Tricia Cotham's Rap Sheet Earns Her a Republican Primary

Tricia Cotham with Dan Bishop, announcing
her party switch

She defected to the enemy in April 2023. By switching parties, she betrayed the Democratic majority that had elected her as a Democrat in her "Safe Democrat" NC House Dist. 112. She quickly became the most unpopular former Democrat in the state: 

EqualityNC: "Tricia Cotham sought ENC's endorsement in 2022 affirming that she held values consistent with our own. Since then, she has betrayed those values, voting against equality by supporting legislation that targets the rights of marginalized communities." The NC League of Conservation Voters said in a statement that Cotham's party switch was "an act of betrayal." CarolinaForward tweeted: "No matter how your morning is going, just remember that you -- unlike @triciacotham -- didn't wake up the most hated and distrusted person in #ncpol." EQV Analytics tweeted: "Big payday, I guess. In just 5 months NC-112's @triciacotham went from opposing 'attacks on our democracy,' 'inequitable funding of public schools,' 'Republican attacks on our health care' & 'Republican attacks on LGBTQ+ youth' to being a Dan Bishop GOPer. Wow."

There had been indications that she had hatched a deal with Republican Speaker Tim Moore, perhaps even before the election, that she would defect the minute Moore needed her to override a Cooper veto. For his "honor escort" to the Speaker's chair when the House reconvened in January of 2023, there was Tricia Cotham, the only Democrat chosen to be at Moore's elbow. A full ten days before making her party-switch official, she cleaned out her desk on the Democratic side and moved her stuff over to a desk on the Republican side. As a notorious defector she quickly voted with her new pals to chisel away at abortion rights and open a bigger pipeline to funnel public education money into private schools where accountability doesn't exist.

Prior to the elections of 2024, everyone knew she wouldn't survive another go in Dist. 112, so redistricting honcho Destin Hall and his committee obligingly drew Cotham's home into a new District 105, which was said in 2024 to be 51.3% Republican vs. 46.5% Democratic and 2.2% "Other" (Dave's Redistricting). Those numbers indicated a close contest. She beat the Democrat by only 213 votes that November. Currently, the Civitas Partisan Index rates Dist. 105 as R+0 or "Toss Up." 

Cotham's Primary Challenger

Kelly VanHorn was recruited as a member of North Carolina Educators on the Ballot (NCEOB) to give Cotham a Republican primary. I'm indebted to Carli Brosseau's September 2025 article in The Assembly for clueing me into NCEOB's project of convincing stand-out educators, most of whom were former Democrats, to infiltrate and subvert the NCGOP -- changing from Democrat or Unaffiliated to Republican on the ballot. Such a tactic I take to be the logical reaction to the continued abuses of power by the Republican hegemony in the General Assembly. When one political party gets too entrenched and self-serving, what else to do but dress as a wolf and walk among the wolves, pretend to join them in order to reform them. The NCEOB might look like wedge-driving, a campaign of disruption. But I consider it a wake-up call to moderate Republicans who've let their party dismantle public education.

Patricia Saylor, the founder of NCEOB, a Democrat, and the person who recruited six NCHouse candidates including Kelly VanHorn, is realistic about overcoming the gerrymanders that Republican members of the General Assembly have drawn for themselves. You don't get anywhere running as a Democrat in most districts. Saylor saw that the only path to influencing education policy would have to be done under the GOP banner. "Running in Republican primaries is the strategy of playing the ball where it lies," said Saylor. She recruited mainly registered Democrats to change their registrations to Republican and to run with a unified pro-public education message.

VanHorn issued a statement pleading with Tricia Cotham to sustain Gov. Stein's veto of H 87, a bill that would "sign North Carolina up for the new federal school voucher program authorized by President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill." Stein vetoed it as just more "hollowing out" of public education, and VanHorn publicly praised Stein's veto: "As a fiscal conservative and a math teacher," she said, "I look at the numbers, not the political narrative. Siphoning millions from our public schools to subsidize private tuition for families already paying it—without reducing our fixed operating costs—is bad math. It inevitably forces local property taxes up to fill the gap. We cannot claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility while funding unaccountable private vendors at the expense of the taxpayer." Sounds like what ought to be Republican gospel.

Despite my hard-headed doubt about the ultimate success of NCEOB candidates, I can't wait to hear Cotham complain about someone who used to be a Democrat changing her party affiliation for the convenience of the moment. Ha! So far, Cotham is being totally quiet about her primary challenger. She's depending on the NCGOP to make the attack, which they're doing. But if VanHorn gets enough funding to build up some steam....Katy, bar the door!

The Democrat on the Ballot

I try to be a practical political operator, so I'm immediately wondering how Democrat Ken McCool's strategists and advisors are navigating a strange world in which you might be hoping that the other Democrat in the race would win her primary against Cotham. That might ultimately pose a dilemma, but that's probably not going to happen.

McCool ran for Matthews Town Commission in 2019 at the age of 20, came in 7th in a very crowded scrum, but only missed snagging one of six at-large seats by some 14 votes. When a vacancy opened up in February of 2020, the Commission recognized his showing in 2019 and appointed him to fill out the term. He was reelected a couple more times, including earning himself mayor pro tem as the top vote-getter. He and his father own Ken's Sports Cards and Collectibles in Indian Trail, which is a suburb of Matthews. According to LinkedIn, he also does subcontractor painting.

He appears to have been both very active and effective as a pro-development member of the town board. He brags about bringing Acceleration Advanced Manufacturing Campus to Matthews, which plans to occupy a large site on the I-485 loop south of Charlotte. Acceleration looks to be a subdivision of Hendrick Motor Sports, which builds high-performance vehicles among other things. McCool also claims ownership for expanding affordable housing in Matthews, delivering tangibles like a new fire station, and making "the largest investment in parks in a generation."

McCool needs an army of volunteers to start doing canvassing all over the district as soon as the weather allows, and his service to Matthews might actually produce the boots on the ground he needs. Cotham ain't gonna be a pushover. She's proven to be a survivor so far.

There's That Familiar Smell, the Odor of Rank Opportunism

 

Apparently there's a discharge petition being pushed by Republican loose cannon Anna Paulina Luna of Florida to get a bill banning stock trading by members of Congress to the floor of the House for a vote, and it would surely pass. Freshman hustler Tim Moore is on a stock-manipulating spree (see details below for how his wealth has suddenly ballooned to almost $7 million). Moore's stock greediness is trailed not far behind by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (also see below), whose own stock trades were formerly said to outpace your average Congressperson. But Moore has far exceeded her. (Moore, who an eye blink ago was the self-serving Speaker of the NC House, carved out for himself a congressional District 14 added by the last Census, a safe seat to launch him on DeeCee where he could become even richer, ever shadier.)

Editorial Board, in the Raleigh News & Observer:

It should be obvious why members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks, but if more evidence is needed, consider the investing gusto of U.S. Rep. Tim Moore, a Republican representing North Carolina’s 14th District.

Moore, the former North Carolina House speaker from 2015 to 2025, is a U.S. House freshman, but he’s already surpassed all other members of the state’s congressional delegation in buying and selling stocks. 

A recent report by The News & Observer’s Washington correspondent Danielle Battaglia detailed Moore’s frequent trades. Between his taking office in January and mid-September, Moore made more than 150 trades. That was five times the trading activity of the next closest member in the delegation, Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Banner Elk, who made just over 30 trades in the same period. 

Good-government advocates have long called for a ban on members of Congress from owning or trading stocks. The members have security clearances, receive confidential briefings and have contacts in financial circles that create a situation ripe for insider trading. 

There was nothing about Moore’s trades that showed he acted on information unavailable to the public. However, his trades included investments in companies that could be affected by government actions on health care and tariffs. Even if a member’s trades are above board, the ownership of stock itself can affect how or whether the member votes.

Fortune magazine reported in June that Moore made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of personal stock purchases shortly before and after President Donald Trump’s announcement of worldwide tariffs rattled the stock market in April. Moore failed to disclose the trades by a deadline required under the federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, but he did submit a report within a 30-day grace period....

It stinks, doesn't it? That odor of opportunism running amok under the guise of public service.

Political Notes -- "Fuck It" Edition

 

Kate Barr, the "Can't Win but Fuck It!" political influencer who has made a second career out of encouraging Democratic candidates to file in districts they can't possibly win -- as an act of revolutionary defiance against Republican gerrymandering -- has announced a new tactic: Can't win as a Democrat? File as a Republican and run a primary against the pasty-assed Tim Moore in Congressional District 14, a safe seat he mapped for himself when he was running the House. It was specifically and quite publicly drawn for him, a lucrative landing pad after Speaker of the NCHouse (which was also a notoriously lucrative perch for Moore -- and don't make me go look up all the investigative pieces exposing his corruption).

Barr told the WashPost, “My message is really about fairness. And it’s consistent with when I ran for state senate district 37 in ‘24,” she said. “We need fair maps. We deserve fair elections. We, as voters, should be able to hold our elected leaders accountable. And it is wrong that we can’t.”

Dave Boliek, the rubberstamp
for suppression of the vote in NC

On Friday, reporter Bryan Anderson broke the news that Paul Cox, General Counsel to the State Board of Elections, resigned his job, citing the highly partisan nature of the new board under Republican control. Guys as extreme as Francis X. DeLuca, former president of the Civitas Institute, and Robert Rucho, former Republican state senator with too many axes to grind, and their new boss, State Auditor Dave Boliek, a former reactionary Democrat with much to prove to his new Republican masters, not to mention the ineffable Dallas Woodhouse, appointed by Boliek to "oversee" county boards of elections -- all of that became too much for a lawyer with professional integrity which was itself based on an understanding that the administration of elections cannot become a partisan battleground, which would violate the statutory mandate of the Board of Elections. Ever since the Berger/Moore General Assembly took the Board of Elections away from Gov. Stein and gave it to the newly minted MAGA Republican Dave Boliek, we've always known what was afoot and what was indubitably ahead of us, ahead of anyone who wants to insure the voting rights and ballot access of all citizens. Paul Cox set a flare over the ice berg's drift.

In January of 2024, an Avery County man named William J. Barthel attended a special meeting of the Avery County Commish, stood at the back of the room so he wouldn't obstruct anybody's sightline, and unfurled a banner which made crude comments about the Commish's clerk, Cindy Turbyfill. The sheriff's department immediately descended on Barthel, told him to take the banner down; he refused; the commish chair told him he had to leave. At which point Barthel, who had been totally silent up to that point, asked "Why do I have to leave?" I'm exercising my constitutional rights. He was uncooperative which led to his handcuffing outside the courtroom. He was charged with disrupting an official meeting and with resisting arrest. After being convicted in Avery District Court, he appealed to the Superior Court and got a two-day trial with a jury before Judge Gavenus. Again, he was convicted, sentenced to 30 days, suspended for 18 months of supervised probation. 

Cohen v. California (1971)
ruled that this banner was free speech

A panel of the NC Court of Appeals just reversed all of that: "[Barthel] argues that the First Amendment protects his silent display of a crude banner criticizing [Cindy Turbyfill] at a board meeting. We agree. The First Amendment shielded his right to stand silently at the back of the boardroom with his vulgar banner during the public comment period. Because his arrest was unlawful, Defendant had the right to resist it without using excessive force. He used reasonable force. We therefore vacate both convictions." Republican Judge Donna Stroud wrote the opinion. Chief Judge Chris Dillon and Judge Fred Gore, two other Republicans, concurred.

I'm deliberately not reprinting here what Barthel's banner said (let alone his highly-offensive-to-many T-shirt), but if you click the link in the previous paragraph, you can read it for yourself in the Appeals Court order. I laughed out loud. And then I had to start googling. The court identified Turbyfill as a commissioner. She's not. She's clerk to the board and also assistant county manager. There's obviously a juicy story behind Barthel's grudge against her. Maybe someone in Avery who reads here will enlighten us.

UNC-Chapel Hill Punishes a Scholarship Student (and Certifiable Pain in the Ass) -- But It's a Free Speech Scandal

 

Laura Saavedra Forero, a UNC senior, a neuroscience major, and until very recently, part of the prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship program, was told on Jan. 6 (a date that already lives in infamy), that the Morehead-Cain Trustees had decided to terminate her scholarship.

Oh she was an activist, you bet! Her interview with the Daily Tar Heel is hair-raising if you're set in your ways:

In her application [for the Morehead-Cain], Saavedra Forero said she wrote about her activism, citing her work surrounding climate justice, the Black Lives Matter movement and for the Latino community in her area. She said in her interviews she talked openly about her use of “nonviolent direct action," her chosen form of protest method.

“I never hid who I was or what I did,” she said. “I always made it very clear, throughout my entire college application process, that if a program or a university did not want me for who I was at my core, and that is someone who organizes for the community, then I did not want to be there.”

But what really pissed off her superiors, all of whom are now either terrified of the partisanship of their governing boards or totally agreeable with suppressing dissent -- the activism that doomed her scholarship were her very loud protests of Israel's campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza, because evidently people like Virginia Foxx and her fellow travelers take a huge leap in equating any criticism of the Israeli government -- which has been a dick -- to "anti-semitism." I reject that.

But she started out as an advocate for handicapped access on campus:

When a broken elevator at her residence hall left Saavedra Forero [who depends on a wheelchair] stuck in her dorm room for 32 hours, she mobilized press and campus activists to start a years-long campaign calling for more accessibility at the University.

She subsequently crossed the apparent "redline" for the increasingly politicized bosses above her -- they are justifiably terrified of what the General Assembly might do next to hurt higher education -- when she organized a noisy protest of a appearance on campus of NC House Speaker Tim Moore, because of his meddling in university governance.

A Morehead-Cain scholarship official named Chris Bradford confronted Saavedra Forero over a graphic she had posted on her Instagram account, indicting Starbucks' pro-Israeli connections -- a bloody depiction of Palestinians being fed into a coffee grinder. That earned her a vague threat about her behavior, that it was under scrutiny. Saavedra Forero wasn't deterred, even though genocide in Gaza ... very verboten. She organized a protest with Starbucks Workers United outside of the Carolina Inn on Oct. 12, 2023. Bradford wrote her another email: “I am very clear that you have a right to free speech, and I do not believe that anyone has a right to not be offended,” he wrote in his email. “But I am equally clear that this scholarship is a privilege, and that the behavior of scholars should be a model for the behavior of others on campus.” Free speech as long as the new political correctness isn't offended.

To cap it all off, she participated very publicly in the UNC pro-Palestine "encampment" on the UNC campus, the event where Chancellor Lee Roberts marched in so theactrically to restore the American flag. Saavedra Ferero got trapped in her wheelchair under a toppled barricade. A week later, she attended an event near South Building organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, and participated in the march that attempted to block Provost Chris Clemens’ car from exiting the parking lot. A few days later, Saavedra Forero was informed that she was charged with “impeding traffic” and “resisting a public officer.” She said she was the only participant charged with impeding traffic. She was also referred to the UNC Honor Court and the Emergency Evaluation and Action Committee for her conduct. 

An alumnus of the Morehead-Cain Scholarship program told the Daily Tar Heel:

“I think there was a moment in time where Laura's boldness went from inspiring to threatening the Foundation,” they said. “And their only understanding of how to react was to assert dominance in this relationship, which is to remind Laura that she is being paid ... by the Foundation.”

The Daily Tar Heel details more. Bottomline: UNC-Chapel Hill is becoming a major university that I used to have respect for.

The Five New Republican Congressmen From NC

 

The NCGOP is calling them "the Fab Five of 2025" (if you can imagine Tim Moore as "fab" in any universe). Their sudden fulmination as freshmen owed everything to the powers of gerrymandering. For the record, here's a brief primer on who they are:

Pat Harrigan

Addison McDowell (NC-06) -- I made fun of him in the primary. (Also here.) He had no Democratic challenger in the General.

Mark Harris (NC-08) -- I made fun of him and covered extensively the election re-do in NC-09 his campaign caused in 2018. Too many individual posts to link. Use the Search button, top left.

Pat Harrigan (NC-10) -- Harrigan was interesting to me because of his initial willingness to criticize Tim Moore, going back to Nov. 2023, and challenge him in a primary for the newly created 14th CD, a district drawn expressly as an appropriate landing pad for Moore who had grown bored with Speaker of the NC House and needed more capacious real estate on which to deal and Capitol Hill would do just fine. Moore had a magic wand with the map-makers, and the new 14th would be a breeze. Then Pat Harrigan arrived out of nowhere. Early in November, with the candidate filling period looming the first week in December, Harrigan, an ex Green Beret who manufactures guns, bared his teeth at Moore: "Harrigan put a hard finger right on the bruise: Moore's corruption, including the domestic corruption of the marriage vows, was a matter of character. Harrigan out-and-out suggested that Moore has none" (JWW). Harrigan was right, incidentally.

Harrigan's righteous anger at public corruption was refreshing, coming from a Republican candidate in the Age of Trump. Maybe he's a standup guy with a sense of ethics, I mused. But then he looked like just an opportunist when he completely abandoned his interest in the 14th CD and switched over to file in the 10th CD minutes after Patrick McHenry announced his retirement. Harrigan beat an anointed business-type Republican in the primary.

Brad Knott (NC-13) -- A blank slate for me. I'll be watching.

Tim Moore (NC-14) -- The pudge who became an improbable sex avatar and who appears to be a giant sponge when it comes to free or loose money, offered by free or loose men. Too many posts to make choices. Use the Search engine at top of page.  

 

Doran's Crystal Ball

 

Destin Hall

Enjoyed Will Doran's forecast of what to watch most closely in Raleigh this year, with so many new characters running things, from the governor's office to the House speakership, to that pesky extra-Dem in the House who gives Josh Stein his best chance for a sustained veto (supposedly gives Stein that advantage, because there's always also Cecil Brockman to watch). 

Doran mentions a rather bold gesture of Governor Stein's -- a very public "olive branch" of bi-partisanship. The governor invited several Western Republican lawmakers on stage with him last week in Asheville when he was signing executive orders about Hurricane Helene, and he appointed Republican Sen. Kevin Corbin from Macon Co. as co-chair of a new committee Stein created to advise the governor’s office on Helene recovery needs. I hadn't picked up on that, and it looks like a good move.

Doran's background on medical marijuana legalization in North Carolina is interesting -- let alone the truly hilarious notion of "recreational marijuana." Legalizaion has been stopped cold repeatedly in the NC House, after the state Senate had passed legalization several times. "House leadership" won't countenance it, Doran says, and former Speaker Tim Moore would never let it come to a vote, apparently fearful he didn't have the majority of his caucus with him. Will the new Speaker (and comparative youngster) Destin Hall do better?

What Doran explores about a Trump immigration pogrom and its ramifications for the state's economy is also worth quoting at length:

Immigration could also require attention at the legislature. Trump has pledged a mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally, and some conservatives are also now pushing to reduce the number of visas given for immigrants to work here legally. Either strategy would disrupt the local economy and potentially drive up inflation: Approximately 1 million immigrants live in North Carolina, many of them employed in large industries such as agriculture, construction, tech and health care.

The GOP is becoming increasingly torn between more populist voters in the party base and pro-business interests among the major party donors — and the question of how to handle immigration is just one area in which 2025 could bring clashes between those opposing factions.

 Will Doran reports regularly for WRAL in Raleigh.

The Comedy Stylings of Berger/Moore

 

Berger and Moore ... said the governor has berated them for attacking the separation of powers doctrine when they are instead "seeking to preserve it."

--Haley Fowler, Law360

I was reading the details about the final legal briefs submitted to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in the matter of Cooper v. Berger (case number 24-440, civil suit over constitutionality of Senate Bill 382), and what leaped out at me was the audacious hypocrisy of Phil Berger and Tim Moore (headnote above), and their platoon of legal whizzes, to brazenly assert the opposite of the truth. S 382 strips Democrats, most especially Gov. Josh Stein, of the very executive powers we recently voted he get. S 382 essentially rewrites the job descriptions after the jobs are filled.

It's also a naked attempt for "legislative defendants" to control both the creation and the execution of the laws. That's against the state constitution, a pure-dee power-grab to cement the MAGA tribe's control of all aspects of the government including the courts and all the money under heaven.

"By enacting ... S.B. 382, legislative defendants make a mockery of the guardrails put in place by the people, shifting core executive powers like Monopoly pieces to whichever Council of State member currently enjoys their favor," Cooper's brief said.... "This approach is fundamentally inconsistent with constitutional government and individual liberty."

"...separating the powers accorded our state government by the people is foundational to our republican form of government," Cooper's brief said. "It is a fundamental guiding principle, enacted by the people to prevent tyranny."

Tyrants get away with defying truth -- and violating both law and ethics -- only by the consent of the governed.

The Head Bastard in the NC House Admits It

 

Speaker of the Republican-controlled NC House Tim Moore brazenly admitted to Steve Bannon that S 382, which the Republican House passed over Gov. Cooper's veto this week, is really all about taking control of the administration of elections to more generously guarantee that Republicans will never lose statewide races again. They don't mind admitting their schemes inside their own bubbles:

“This action item today is going to be critical to making sure North Carolina continues to be able to do what it can to deliver victories for Republicans up and down the ticket and move this country in the right direction,” Moore told Bannon on Wednesday on the latter's podcast.

No hell is hot enough for these enemies of the people.

S 382 has always and only been about putting the State Board of Elections under Republican control, and we all know what that will mean for fair elections, ballot access, and voter suppression -- mainly because we lived through what Boone lawyer Stacy Clyde Eggers IV ("Four") tried to do to student voters after Republican Pat McCrory won the governorship in 2012.

 

Natasha Marcus Lets Fly on the Republican Incumbent

 

Natasha Marcus

The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC), a venerable and actually pretty powerful state workers org (46,000 state employees and retirees), endorsed the incumbent Republican Mike Causey for Secretary of Insurance. (SEANC endorsed in all 2024 Council of State races, leaning decidedly Democratic in all contests except Insurance and Agriculture. Some can't imagine life without Steve Troxler. Most can't imagine life with Mark Robinson.)

I would have thought that Causey endorsement appropriate, given his Boy Scout reputation as the public official who wore a wire for the FBI to catch the CEO of an insurance empire in a case of bribery (bagged the Chair of the NCGOP at the time too, Robin Hayes). That move branded Causey something of a class traitor to the Republican hierarchy in the General Assembly. And there were new irritations. In April of 2023, Republican Causey came out publicly against "the corrupt deal that was pushed through the legislature this session to allow Blue Cross to raid its reserves and put the money in a new for-profit entity" (description, accurate enough, out of The Daily Haymaker). Bottomline: Phil Berger and Tim Moore make it possible for Blue Cross to transfer assets into a parent holding company able to move money with little oversight. Other Bottomline: HB 346 passed both chambers and was signed into law by Gov. Cooper. Causey's lone voice warning that permissive restructuring would be a time-bomb for policy-holders meant little. He was ignored, but as far as I'm concerned, he was the stand-up-to-tyranny fellow you want to see in public office, doing the honorable and ethical thing.

But that fellow, it turns out, is not all of that fellow.

Just bare minutes after he was elected in November 2016, he was playing games with Cannon Surety, a shady insurance company that underwrites bail bonds. A month after his election, December 2016, he was allegedly cooperating in a planned high-dollar fundraiser that Nick Ochsner uncovered for WBTV. A fundraiser, Ochsner conclusively demonstrated, that would have been illegal under NC law. After that exposure, said fundraiser dissolved like an Alka-seltzer in spring water, with everyone quickly denying knowledge or participation in any such fundraiser, legal or illegal.

In January of this year, a team of News & Observers reporters exposed a much darker portrait of Causey as an adept at cronyism. Democrat Natasha Marcus, the other candidate for Secretary of Insurance, is now using cronyism as an attack against Causey. I've reported on two of the crony examples below. Here's one. I've not heard before of Mendy Greenwood.

The Action in HD 105: Cotham v. Sidwell

 

A 501.c.4., Majority Rising North Carolina, put out a smart mailer hitting turncoat House member Tricia Cotham as a Judas, whose 30 pieces of silver came in a tiny poke of power. Republican Speaker of the House Tim Moore, totally smitten with her, killed a fatted calf to welcome Cotham into his fold.

Majority Rising has obvious strong ties to the progressive side of the North Carolina Democratic Party, listing former Wake County DemsParty Chair Mack Paul, House member and progressive lion Rick Glazier, and Obama's former body man and native of Charlotte Reggie Love among its board members.

Tricia Cotham's rap sheet

She defected to the enemy. She gave the Republicans their veto-proof super-majority in the House, and quickly voted with her new pals to chisel away at abortion rights and open a bigger pipeline to funnel public education money into private schooling where accountability doesn't matter.

She was serving -- still is until people vote on Nov. 5th -- HD 112, a majority Democratic Mecklenburg district which she was never going to win again as a Republican. So Destin Hall and his committee obligingly drew Cotham's home into a new District 105, which is said to be 51.3% Republican vs. 46.5% Democratic and 2.2% "Other" (Dave's Redistricting). 

Sometimes a newly adopted political party doesn't trust the turncoat any more than her old political party, and the flyer above does a pretty good job of raising the issue of trustworthiness.

Democratic candidate Nicole Sidman is said to be outraising Cotham, so she's got the money to pile on against Cotham with the same message aimed at the 2.2% Other group, and at those suburban "soft" Republican women. The Sidman campaign is low-key so far, though I see that her team has been holding weekly canvasses, and she's got vols. on the phones. She's teamed up for boots on the ground with overlapping NC Senate candidate Woodson Bradley, and the energy seems as pumped there as it is everywhere else. I'm feeling more confident about Democratic prospects in HD 105.

Naturally, They Want THIS Judge on the Case

 

I reported last October about several noxious laws the Republicans slipped into the state's budget bill, evidently hoping people wouldn't notice. We noticed. Among those terrible things, Phil Berger and Tim Moore gave themselves the power to pick 10 new "special" Superior Court judges -- no election or voice of the people required, just loyalty to the almighty power of the NCGOP.

That particular chicken has come home to roost. One of those 10 "special" judges became Clayton Somers, Speaker of the House Tim Moore's own former chief of staff.

Meanwhile, there happened a very contentious Republican primary in Rockingham County, where Phil Berger's planned gambling casino would have been located on land which had been conveniently (and just in time!) rezoned to allow for a gambling casino. One Republican county commissioner, Craig Travis, opposed all of the shenanigans, and campaigned against his fellow commissioner, Phil Berger's own son Kevin Berger. Travis almost beat Berger. Just 3 votes separated them when the dust settled.

Travis sued alleging that during the primary, other county commissioners and political organizations defamed him in attack ads stemming from his opposition to allowing a casino in Rockingham. So naturally, the defendants, including Kevin Berger, are petitioning to have the case tried by "special" Judge Clayton Somers, Tim Moore's BFF.

They don't even try to hide their corruption, nor mask it in any way. It's just business as usual. Give yourself the power to appoint the judges who will preside over your cases of corruption. The America of Donald Trump.

House District 35: Lawyer Vs. Lawyer

 

The shape of House Dist. 35 is a tale of political revenge (hattip Bryan Anderson). Terence Everitt, a 2018 blue-wave Democratic star held on to this seat through two reelections, through 2022, but in the process of doing his job, he couldn't help noticing the almost theatrical corruption of Speaker Tim Moore, so he wrote the Wake D.A., suggesting that "a probe" of Speaker Moore seemed more than called for. The Wake D.A., Lorrin Freeman, declined to take that up. So for Everett's trouble, Speaker Moore moved his office without warning to cramped space in the basement. Republicans weren't done punishing him. Destin Hall and his gnomes in the House Redistricting Committee gerrymandered Everett's district from what had been D+5 to R+5. Dave's Redistricting scores the district as 51.8% Republican. Civitas makes it R+3.) In frustration, Everett opted this year to run for an overlapping Senate seat, so Dist. 35 is an open grab for someone who brings energy and a persistent ground game. 

(With the sudden change at the top of the Democratic ticket, I predict renewed and possibly stunning energy in the grassroots for the Democrat.)

Evonne Hopkins, Democrat

"Evonne S. Hopkins is a North Carolina Board Certified Family Law Specialist and Certified Parent Coordinator licensed to practice in North Carolina, California, and the District of Columbia. Evonne earned joint JD/MBA degrees from the University of San Francisco in 2003 and a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Philosophy from Rollins College in 1998. She's got two decades of legal experience behind her, and is chief in her own legal business, the Raleigh Law Center, "a boutique firm that can help you and your family resolve complex family law issues. We have proven success record in all aspects of family law including child custody & support, alimony, division of marital assets and debts, domestic violence restraining orders, separation & prenuptial agreements. We also offer wills, trusts and estate planning" (Raleigh Law Center website). 

I particularly grooved on this assessment of Hopkins from that same website:

Never one to shy away from conflict, Evonne is known for her straightforward honest style, powerful advocacy and is considered a formidable opponent.

Gov. Cooper came to her kickoff event. She's been pretty good at fundraising, quickly lapping her Republican opponent, though he's been bestowed some $453,000 for TV by the Republican House caucus. Hopkins has done some convassing, and if she's not shy, there needs to be more video of her.

Mike Schietzelt, Republican

Schietzelt and some of his boys

Schietzelt is also an attorney (Duke Law) and an ex-Marine. The Marine part opens up a very interesting life story I quote at length:

As a young adult, Mike toured the world as a professional musician, performing in amusement parks and on cruise ships. In 2011, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps as a member of “The Commandant’s Own” United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. While stationed in Washington, D.C, Mike represented the Marine Corps before many of the highest ranking civilian and military officials in America, and he sounded Taps for military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery.

Random facts: He clerked for then-N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin during the 2018-19 term. He's lobbied at the General Assembly for changes to criminal law (what changes, not explained), and is currently a civil litigation attorney with Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, a quite large firm with multiple offices.

I don't find a whiff of MAGA or trumpism in his social media. He seems attractively moderate, good for this north Wake district. He has four sons and looks to be a swell dad and family man, which also cannot hurt since his opponent might be a single woman.

Schietzelt's greatest liability may be his name, which has to go on a yardsign. He's lagged behind Hopkins in fundraising, but to the rescue comes the NC House Republican caucus, who announced they were funneling $453,000 into Schietzelt's TV budget.

When Ideology Becomes Craziness

 

FlipNC. "The Shameless Bergers"

There have been plenty of cracked pots on the political Left, and the rest of us have suffered from the broad-brush of opposition and resentment when the push-back came. "Defund the police" springs to mind. Censorship by the Left is as bad as censorship by the Right. Anarchism is not a good look, nor is indiscriminate destruction of private property. Gender dysphoria, and all of its taboos and bright labeling, strikes many observers as a fraught fad that buries too many landmines with hair-trigger fuses.

But the ideological craziness that has overtaken the Right is in a class to itself, mainly because Republicans are often in a position to make it law. Like, the Clarence Thomas-written opinion lifting the ban on bump stocks, following hard on the Samuel Alito-written opinion taking away the abortion rights of women. Just this week, we saw the Southern Baptists' condemnation of in vitro fertilization, following the lead of the ideological nuts on the Alabama Supreme Court who "found" that frozen embryos are actually children. Good grief!

The very ideas of "fairness" and "equity" are under attack as wicked innovations intended to deprive children of the God-given right to hate and discriminate against whomever they -- or their parents -- please. Higher education is a plot -- obviously! -- to turn older children anti-American and if possible gay.

It's up to the voters to say "enough!"

Perhaps worse than crazy ideology is the self-interested corruption of public policy for the sake of power or wealth or both. Our current Speaker of the NC House Tim Moore certainly knows how to turn a buck and has taught his willing acolytes that as long as you have the power, you can pretty much twist things to your personal benefit.

The Berger family's interlaced web of power and influence is an even bigger example, with number one son Phil Junior repeatedly ruling in his father's favor on Supreme Court cases where Senior is a defendant or significant intervenor, and Junior steadfastly refuses to recuse himself. Second son Kevin Berger did what he could to get Dad his gambling casino in Rockingham County, though that one went off the rails, and Kevin barely won another term on the Rockingham County Commission. You can fool some of the people.... Maybe not all of the people.

It's up to the voters to say "enough!" It's the only thing that will stop the craziness and the corruption.

Federal Judge Blocks Part of NC Law Limiting Mifipristone Usage

 

On Monday U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles blocked parts of North Carolina’s law on medication abortions, ruling that any health care provider — not just physicians — and pharmacists who are certified can prescribe abortion pills, and patients can take mifepristone at home, and they no longer have to make three in-person visits to a doctor.

The lawsuit was filed last year by Dr. Amy Bryant, an OB-GYN in Hillsborough.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who’s running for governor, was a lead defendant in the case but declined to represent the state. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore were allowed to defend the laws with private attorneys. They argued that restrictions on mifepristone and abortion were necessary to protect patients’ health and safety.

In a statement released Tuesday, Stein lauded the ruling, saying:

“Republican lawmakers enacted SB20 to control women. Their sloppy, chaotic law violated women’s constitutional rights and made it harder to get a safe, effective medication abortion. I fought back against the unconstitutional parts of the law that made it harder for women – especially in rural parts of the state – to get the health care they need. I’m proud to defend women’s reproductive freedoms and pleased that this ruling helps women regain some control over their personal health care decisions. Politicians need to stay out of the exam room and leave these decisions to a woman and her medical provider.”

Judge Eagles did not grant Bryant’s request to strike down state requirements for an in-person exam, ultrasound, blood testing, and a 72-hour consultation before the abortion.

The Wray of All Flesh

 

Rodney Pierce and Michael Wray

Conservative Democrat Michael H. Wray had a good 20 years legislating in Raleigh before he was taken out in the March primary by Rodney Pierce (profiled here back in February). After the recount, Wray lost his seat by a mere 34 votes. Pierce will be going to Raleigh next January because there is no Republican candidate. It's a safe Democratic House district, and Wray often had no Republican challenger in his reelections though he often had Democratic primary challengers. Rodney Pierce finally had the juice to beat him.

He was unpopular among Democrats for being so popular with the Republican majority in the House. He was said to vote with the Republicans over 80% of the time, most notoriously for Dan Bishop's hated "Bathroom Bill" and more recently for the last Republican budget, choosing to override Gov. Cooper's veto.

He was and is a nice man, people say, at a time that Democrats needed a little more steel in tribal spines. Wray was sweet enough to Republicans that Speaker Tim Moore elevated him to a senior chairmanship on the powerful House Finance Committee way back at the start of the current session in January 2023. Moore was trying to woo Wray to change parties. Moore also wooed Tricia Cotham, who obligingly tumbled in April 2023.

No one said it was illegal to turn your coat. But there are consequences, especially among those who made the coat and expected you to wear it with the right side out.

Some Primary Results -- US Congressional Races

 

Pat Harrigan

US House Dist. 1 -- Republican Laurie Buckhout beat husband-beater Sandy Smith

US House Dist. 5 -- Republican incumbent Virginia Foxx beat challenger Ryan Mayberry, taking almost 68% of the vote district-wide. But almost a third of Watauga County voted for Mayberry

US House Dist. 6 -- Republican runoff coming between top vote-getter Addison McDowell, who took 26% of the vote, vs. former congressman Mark Walker, who took 24%. Bo Hines placed 4th. May be the end of his political ambitions

US House Dist. 8 -- Republican preacherman Mark Harris, the center of the 2018 ballot-harvesting scandal, won 30% against 5 other candidates and thus avoids a runoff

US House Dist. 10 -- Republican firearms manufacturer Pat Harrigan won outright over establishment pick Grey Mills (endorsed by Virginia Foxx and Tim Moore and many other big names) and 3 other candidates, taking over 41% of the vote

US House Dist. 14 -- Republican NC House Speaker Tim Moore easily won his primary in a district that was drawn especially for him

A Mean Little Republican Primary -- Echevarria vs. Crutchfield (HD 82)

 

I paid attention when politics reporter Colin Campbell singled out the Republican primary in HD 82 (Cabarrus and Rowan) as "the most competitive" Republican primary for a General Assembly seat this year, because a fast-talking insurgent named Brian Echevarria is trying to unseat a new Republican member in his first term, Kevin Crutchfield, who's endorsed by Tim Moore and supported by the Republican establishment. I perked up because I remember Brian Echevarria from 2022, when Democrat Diamond Staton Williams beat him for the HD 73 seat. He's something of a phenomenon. I called him a rising star in 2022. He's compelling. And this video is what he's famous for. These three minutes are the reason Brian Echevarria may scare the hell out of incumbent Kevin Crutchfield.

So Crutchfield, or Atlas Political Consulting, released a 30-sec spot via Twitter back on Jan. 24th. It's been largely sub-rosa since then, with fewer than 9,000 views. It sensationalizes Echevarria by snipping footage from Facebook posts (I guess) of Echevarria relaxing, dancing, partying, cut together to paint Echevarria as a Cubano party boy. You have to click the link to see it. Releasing such a bare-fisted attack, on behalf of a well respected businessman and member of a church, demonstrates a kind of incipient race panic, doesn't it? 

The video of Echevarria cowing the Cabarrus County School Board in February 2022, showed a flair for communication. Echevarria had many in the audience nodding their heads, laughing at his fluency, and applauding him. (The video, which went viral and got a write-up in the New York Post, can still be seen on his website.)  Echevarria doesn't seem to have a campaign Twitter account (none is linked to on his website), but he does post to one wholly separate from his campaign (@BrianEchNC), where he is not above complaining about the Republican establishment in Cabarrus.

There was something of a cyber-scandal back in 2022 involving Echevarria's scrubbing a Facebook page, Spank That Tail, that advocated, sometimes quite humorously, for more corporal punishment for children. That became something of an embarrassment and Echevarria disappeared it. That corporal punishment bent in Echevarria may be a bell wether for other rigidities, like his opposition to expanding Medicaid coverage.