Thinking Out of the Box for a Democrat Who Could Beat Thom Tillis

I'm looking at every pooh-bah's available list of "potential" Democratic candidates to take on Republican Senator Thom Tillis in 2020, and I can't help noticing that generally they're all men (and more about them in a later post). There are outstanding women in politics in this state -- let alone thousands who haven't established a public presence or profile yet -- who are not only qualified for that high office but also potentially very electable in a new world wrought in response to Twitterman. He's the first cause of global politics change, and I think we know by now that previously improbable movements can coalesce quickly around the right candidate, all other things being basically even.

The women written about here aren't necessarily interested in running for higher office. I get that. But if not one of them, then someone like them should be thinking about it.

Pricey Harrison during
Early Voting, 2018

NC House Rep Pricey Harrison (HD61) -- An attorney, Harrison represents much of Greensboro. First elected in 2004 in HD57, redistricted into HD61 last year, she won over 70% of the vote this past November. She's an environmental champion. She's also advocated for medical marijuana laws. She volunteered repeatedly for other candidates up and down the ballot, campaigning even with a broken leg and wrist. 

She's often described with the bland phrase "civic leader," which hardly does her justice. She has served as president of the Julian Price Family Foundation and in leadership with the NC Environmental Defense Fund and the Piedmont Land Conservancy.

She was very outspoken about the dangers of coal ash contamination after the Dan River spill seven years ago. She is a whistleblower of the best kind, someone in public office where her voice and her votes might make a difference. She's on top of issues, knows her facts -- especially about North Carolina's vulnerability to catastrophic climate change -- and she was outraged by the Republican super-majority's "unprecedented" power grabs.

She's good on her feet. Here she is addressing protestors against a pro-fracking bill outside the General Assembly in 2014:

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles -- Lyles won election in Charlotte only a year ago, first defeating incumbent Democratic Mayor Jennifer Roberts (who had the bad luck to preside over the city during the Republicans' bathroom bill debacle), and then going on to get almost 60% of the vote against the Republican candidate. Lyles is the first African American woman in that seat, though not the first African American (Harvey Gantt had that distinction back in the 1990s). Previously, Lyles had worked for the city of Charlotte as a budget analyst and assistant city manager. She ran for city council and won in 2013, was elected mayor pro-ten in 2015, and following the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in 2016, "she proposed a seven-point plan to reduce racial and class divisions in the city," parts of which were passed by the council.

Recently (December 2018) the Charlotte Observer said, "She has been the mayor Charlotte needed." She has received praise from Republican conservatives as a "graceful" peacemaker between city factions. "Her style is so even-handed and thoughtful and positive," said NC Senator Dan Bishop, a Mecklenburg Republican.

The Observer described her as "cautious" and as something of a brake on the city's leftward propulsion under a new and very diverse city council (ever since the bathroom bill, pushback by progressives has become more assertive). 

Some -- many? -- progressives were pissed that she advocated for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte in 2020 ("it will bring more risk than payoff," editorialized the Charlotte Observer), but by her own lights -- she was elected to advocate for the municipality, after all -- a national convention even of idiots will benefit the economic development of the city.

She's calm, composed, and well prepared as she defends her decision on the RNC before a Democratic Women's group of Mecklenburg County:

NC House Rep Deb Butler (HD18) -- An attorney long active in Democratic politics, Butler represents much of Wilmington and has become a prominent whistleblower about the toxin Gen-X in the Cape Fear River. She also fought the highly controversial House Bill 2 ("bathroom bill") in 2016. Tragically, Butler's wife of three years, Anni Parra, died suddenly and unexpectedly four days before New Year's. She was 52. This is perhaps the worst timing possible for this discussion, and I hope Rep. Butler will forgive me. 

Butler's fight for LBGTQ rights predates her service in the House. She ran in 2012 for the NC Senate (SD8) and lost to creepy Thom Goolsby. When Democratic Rep. Susi Hamilton (HD18) resigned early in 2017 to take a cabinet post, Governor Cooper appointed Butler to her seat. Though she's new to the body, she immediately stepped out (both literally and figuratively) as an effective voice of resistance to the Republican super-majority. In November's election, she took over 60% of the vote.

Butler started posting commentaries as she walked around the General Assembly building, or in near neighborhoods, where she could get some fresh air and cool off -- talking clearly and effectively, with appropriate passion and resolve, about what the Republicans were up to that day. (I wish I could post one here, but I can't. They're on Butler's Twitter feed. Her most recent, on December 7, is riveting. The Republicans were overriding Governor Cooper's veto of the VoterID Bill, trying to distract everyone from the real and present ballot fraud down in NC-9, which would not have been stopped by voter photo ID, and Butler had had it.)

Here's her "walk and talk" from 13 June, when she was leaving the General Assembly at 11:30 pm, after hours of Republican bullying. She was flourescently a-light about what had just gone on.

Aside from proving she's pretty damn agile -- I can barely walk, let alone walk while videoing myself! -- she has the presence and the smarts to start a movement. Short version: I want to listen to her.

She told the Port City Daily, "I've been accused of being perhaps too straightforward sometimes, but I just don't know any other way. There is a lot that needs fixing in North Carolina and in Washington, and I think people are tired of the arguing and are looking for intelligent, forthright, and candid representatives who focus on solutions instead of division and churning everyone up all the time."

She supports an independent redistricting commission to end the practice of office-holders' choosing their voters. She supports restoring the tax rebate program for the film industry, which worked for so many years to build businesses in Wilmington and across the state and which the Republicans repealed. The film industry took its business to Georgia and elsewhere.

High Time We Took a Wrecking Ball to the System

In the US Congress, HR1 is a bill number traditionally reserved by the majority for its most important legislation, the bill that will shape a new era under whichever ruling party. The Democrats in the US House unveiled their HR1 yesterday, "To expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants."

Commentators are calling it "sweeping legislation," not only in the sense of wideness of impact but in the sense of sweeping out the accumulated political corruption of a system geared to those with money (and hence, influence). "Sweeping" doesn't strike me as nearly strong enough. HR1 takes a sledgehammer to public corruption, the evils of gerrymandering, the selling of political favors, and all attempts to suppress voter rights.

When passed, this law will mandate independent redistricting commissions for all the states. It will establish automatic voter registration (which comes as a birthright), and it will end the continued disenfranchisement of felons after they've served their time.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans -- including most of those Twitterman voters -- were and still are pretty unhappy with the way our political system is working and think the whole system is rigged against them. They ain't wrong. HR1 intends to change that by mandating more transparency for the campaign finance system -- no more big-dollar anonymity -- and empowering everyday Americans "with a powerful new system that rewards and amplifies small donors" -- a public financing system that would make a 6-to-1 Federal match on small donations. That might make politicians visit living rooms in their district more frequently and private country clubs less often.

HR1 would make sure that public servants actually serve the public, not use their office for personal gain. That means strengthening ethics across all three branches of government, ending the revolving door in Washington, and reining in lobbyists. Hurray!

Mitch McConnell has already announced that HR1 will get no hearing whatsoever in the Senate. No surprise. And of course Twitterman would never sign such a law, since self-enrichment is his entire reason for breathing. But at least the new Democratic Congress has laid down a marker for where we must go to preserve some semblance of our democracy. And there's another election coming in less than two years.

Looking Forward to the Colorado US Senate Race in 2020

Yesterday, the new Democratic majority in the US House passed the exact same government funding bill that the Republican majority US Senate had passed (unanimously!) back before Trump pulled the rug out and shut down a large chunk of our Federal compact. Last night, Senate leader Mitch McConnell immediately said the Senate would not be considering that legislation and no other legislation unless Trump supports it first. No, really.

Under Mitch, the Senate is no longer a coequal branch of government.

Meanwhile, some of Mitch's Republican troops in the Senate are beginning to sweat, particularly the ones who have to run in 2020 and most especially the ones who represent states that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. Like Cory Gardner of Colorado. He sez, “I think we should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open. The Senate has done it last Congress, we should do it again today,” he said. That was yesterday afternoon even before the House passed its bill.

Cory Gardner is nervous because there's a whole bench of good Democratic candidates who might challenge him in 2020. The date for the Colorado Democratic caucus/primary hasn't been set yet, but could come as early as the first Tuesday in February. Yikes. That's barely a full year away from right now!


Here are some of the potential Democratic challengers:

John Hickenlooper, recent two-term governor of Colorado who before that was elected twice as mayor of Denver and got named in 2005 by Time magazine as one of five top mayors in the US. He's a trained geologist (see fracking, below) and has worked for the oil and gas industries. Hickenlooper started the Wynkoop Brewing Company, the first and quite successful brew-pub in Denver. As a commercial brewer perhaps it isn't surprising that as mayor he opposed the marijuana legalization referendum in Denver in 2006, and as governor he opposed the constitutional amendment legalizing marijuana for the whole state in 2012, though he acquiesced in enforcing those innovations and accepting their legality. (Hickenlooper's had a knack for presiding over major economic bonanzas without necessarily helping those bonanzas happen.)

He's considered a "centrist Democrat":

"Hickenlooper’s record on oil and gas is mixed. On one hand his administration has added and strengthened regulations to protect health and the environment. The state’s ground-breaking methane rules are a prime example. His regulatory agencies also rolled out a litany of other smaller measures, often leading to grumbling among operators. As a former oil and gas geologist, Hickenlooper is also a savior of the industry, helping to keep a fracking ban off the ballot in 2014 and speaking out against a similar measure in 2018." (Colorado Public Radio)

Fracking? Say it ain't so! 

But he's progressive in a courageous way on some issues: In a state with a strong hunting tradition, he signed a law requiring background checks on all "firearm transfers" in the state, which would naturally give gun show operators -- not to mention the NRA -- a peptic flareup. He signed the law in his first term and still won reelection, while three Democratic state senators did not fare so well. They were either recalled or forced to resign by angry gun-owners in their rural districts. 

He's also not a fan of capital punishment.

Hickenlooper is striking because he could probably win the Colorado Senate primary easily, with his record and his name recognition, but he's got stars in his eyes for the presidency. Yes, he's been to both Iowa and New Hampshire. Would someone please dump some ice water on this guy and wake him up? The presidency is out of his reach, but the Senate seat squats there waiting for him.

If Hickenlooper doesn't see the light, or doesn't see it soon enough, there are other viable Democrats waiting for their moment....

US Rep Earl Perlmutter, who represents (since 2007) the 7th Congressional District, which encompasses much of the northern and western parts of the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area, including Golden, Lakewood, Arvada and Westminster.

“There are a couple of giants in the Democratic Party that could shape this race, and Ed Perlmutter’s at the top of the list,” said Craig Hughes, a Colorado Democratic campaign strategist.

Perlmutter has attempted a run for statewide office before. For about three months in 2017, he was the presumptive front-runner in Colorado’s gubernatorial race. However, he bowed out after colleague Rep. Jared Polis jumped into the race. At the time of his exit, Perlmutter said he didn’t have the “fire in belly” to run a statewide campaign.

That's not a good sign. "Fire in the belly" (and not the peptic kind) will be necessary to win a US Senate race.

He's a consistent progressive, with zero ratings from conservative groups and 100% (or near it) from liberal groups including Planned Parenthood and NARAL-Pro Choice America.

Speaker of the Colorado House Crisanta Duran ... a four-term member of the Colorado House from Denver and the first Latina Speaker of the House, elected unanimously by her fellow members a year ago. She's been very critical of Twitterman over his immigration biases, declaring he's on the "wrong side of history." Colorado has a sizable Latin American demographic, and if trends from 2018 hold strong, the white voting public seems more inclined to put more diversity into high office.

Said Micha Rosenoer, the executive director of Emerge Colorado, a political group that trains women to run for office, “Crisanta would be a formidable opponent for Gardner — she’s young and Latina, was extremely successful in the state Capitol, and represents a demographic [that Trump] has never been able to connect with.”

"There is a question of how much appeal and name recognition she has outside of Denver, her home base." And is she too progressive?

Nora Olabi profiled her in July 2018:

"Crisanta Duran was raised to be skeptical of politicians. Her father served as the labor union boss of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, and her mother worked on affordable-housing development for the State of Colorado. Every night around the dinner table, Duran remembers, her family would talk about the failures of government to stand up for hardworking and disenfranchised people.

"That drive to fight for working people, Duran says, motivated her through law school, her professional career as a union attorney and in her decision to eventually seek office."

A Duran candidacy (she hasn't declared any intention to run yet) could take off like a rocket in a primary, especially if her male competitors were pallid white guys. Her biggest white guy competitor might be this man...

Former state Senator Mike Johnston ... young and ambitious, with already a national network of wealthy donors who support his philosophy on public education. He was term-limited out of the Colorado Senate in 2016, subsequently ran in the Democratic primary for governor in 2018, and came in third.

"But his campaign, which focused intensely on unaffiliated voters and took him to all 64 counties, gives him statewide name recognition among the party’s base. The former Denver lawmaker is a native son of the Rocky Mountains, which lends him credibility with voters who live in the mountains and on the Western Slope." (Nic Garcia)

“He’s the kind of candidate Republicans would prefer not to face,” said independent consultant Eric Sondermann. “His challenge is going to be the Democratic primary.”

Because...? The state's public school teachers don't like him a little bit because of the controversial teacher evaluation system that he designed and pushed through the Colorado legislature. I know nothing about that evaluation system, so I can't comment on whether the teachers and their union have grounds for their spite against him.

I note, however, that he's been a hands-on teacher with a commendable track record:

"After graduating from Yale, he joined Teach For America, a nonprofit that recruits college graduates to teach for two years, typically in low-income neighborhoods. Johnston taught in Mississippi and wrote a book about the students he met." (ChalkBeat) He later got a master’s degree in education from Harvard and a law degree from Yale and was hired in 2005 as a new high school principal and became an education consultant to the Obama campaign in 2008.

New Development in the NC-9 Congressional Seat

The previously scheduled January 11th State Board of Elections (SBOE) hearing into ballot fraud in the 9th Congressional District election is now off. There is currently no empaneled SBOE. Governor Cooper's plan to appoint an interim board to hear the evidence in the NC-9 case has been thwarted by the NC GOP, which refuses to recommend Republican members to that temporary board. (A new, fully functioning board is not scheduled to be appointed by the governor until January 31. You can thank the Republican-dominated General Assembly for that.)

Speculation abounds as to what happens now. Republican Rev. Mark Harris is trying to get a Wake County Superior Court judge to go ahead and certify his election. Harris also finally agreed to a sit-down interview with SBOE investigators, which is happening today in Raleigh. Meanwhile, the rest of Congress is being sworn in today, minus Harris. My understanding is that the US House has the power to determine who will be seated but does not have the power to order a new election.

So we wait? Until January 31st? Presumably, a new SBOE will finally schedule that hearing, presumably for sometime in February. It's beginning to look a lot like we'll be deep into 2019 before we get some closure on this chapter in our state's history.

Mitt Romney, Hall Monitor?

Newly elected Senator Mitt Romney sez he's going to bang the drum loudly "against significant statements or actions [by Twitterman] that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions."

Lordy, how's he going to have time to be a senator?

We hope Mr. Romney is not just blowing [good Mormon, non-tobacco] smoke.

What's Happening Right Now in Raleigh: "Game of Groans"

You know how many transformations the state Board of Elections (SBOE) has gone through since the Republicans seized power, each change either an attempt to seize more power or an attempt to lessen the sting of a negative court decision. Same for local county boards, currently at an impasse with 2 Dems and 2 Rs.

The most recent new legislation will take all boards of election back to majorities "of the party of the governor," with 5 members on both the SBOE and all county boards (majority of 3 Dems on each).

The problem has been down in the 9th Congressional District, where the putative election of Reverend Mark Harris has not been certified because of an investigation into ballot fraud. In the meantime the previous composition of the SBOE, which is holding Harris's certification, was supposed to expire weeks ago -- the 4 Dems, 4 Rs, 1 Unaffiliated iteration (with both Stella Anderson and Four Eggers of Watauga County representing the major parties). The 3-judge panel which ruled the current iteration unconstitutional had extended the life of the board twice, to give it time to rule in the Harris case.

Apparently, late this week, the 3-judge panel ran out of patience and refused to extend its stay for the dissolution of the 4-4-1 SBOE. The staff at the SBOE yesterday (a little after 3 pm) sent out this announcement:

Today at noon the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement ceased to exist after the three-judge panel in Cooper IV refused to extend the stay. The parties to the lawsuit had unanimously requested that the court extend the stay to allow the Board to conclude its investigation into irregularities affecting the 9th Congressional District.

Effective January 31, Session Law 2018-146 establishes a five-member State Board of Elections and eight-member Ethics Commission. Once appointed, County boards of elections will be made up of five members.

The governor and legislature appear to disagree on what happens to the board in the meantime. It is our view that the agencies go back to the way they were in 2016, prior to the legal changes that were struck down. This means the governor could appoint five board members from lists provided by the parties. These board members would serve until January 31. [emphasis added]

What this means is that for the moment county boards of elections do not have appointed members and therefore may not meet or conduct business.

We understand that Governor Cooper intends to appoint a 5-member SBOE on Monday that will conclude the Reverend Harris circus and that he has invited the two parties to make nominations immediately. We understand that Dallas Woodhouse and his GOP gang are claiming the governor has no such power (didn't Berger/Moore take all his power away, and if they missed this little piece, it was merely an oversight). So the Republicans might sue, and they might lose. We expect they will.

FOOTNOTE: The ballot fraud investigation in the NC-9 has become ever more Byzantine, and I gave up a long time ago summarizing every new piece of news about it. The SBOE hearing on the case is scheduled for January 11th, and I may be there to witness it. I suspect a lot of other people will be there too.

FOOTNOTE: The Rev. Mark Harris campaign yesterday filed in Wake Superior Court an emergency petition to certify his election. That won't work, as the courts can't take that power from the body endowed with it, and the Democrats in the US House have no intention whatsoever to seat Harris until the investigation into fraud is complete.

Kamala Harris Would Make a Hell of a Chief Executive

I've been impressed by Sen. Kamala Harris since I watched her dismantle Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- "You're making me nervous," he whined at her on June 13, 2017. Mr. Chicken who couldn't remember scratch is gone, but Senator Harris has risen as a possible presidential contender.





She's obviously a skilled prosecutor and has the history of study and public office to prove it. She got her law degree from the University of California's Hastings College of Law and got her feet wet as an attorney for the City of San Francisco, then ran successfully for district attorney of the city and county of San Francisco in 2003. In 2009, Harris wrote Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer in which (according to Wikipedia) "she looked at criminal justice from an economic perspective and attempted to reduce temptation and access for criminals" (the love of filthy lucre being the root of all evil, yes and amen!).

She ain't no bleeding heart: "While Harris was the San Francisco District Attorney, the overall felony conviction rate rose from 52% in 2003 to 67% in 2006, the highest in a decade .... convictions of drug dealers increased from 56% in 2003 to 74% in 2006." Conviction rate for homicides went up too, though Harris is strong against the death penalty. Life in prison for cold-blooded murderers is adequate for her.

In 2010, Harris ran for and was elected Attorney General of California, winning the Democratic primary in a crowded field. She got more than twice the votes as her nearest competitor. She was reelected attorney general in 2014. After Senator Barbara Boxer announced her retirement, Harris ran for her Senate seat and won in 2016. She's in her first term.

She is in every way imaginable the very image of the new America. Child of immigrants from Jamaica and India, well educated and instinctually smart, she's a crusader. She participated in a suit against five big California banks over the sub-prime mortgage crisis and secured over $12 billion in debt reduction for bamboozled homeowners.

She has an interesting history with DJT's Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin: In 2013, she did not prosecute his bank OneWest despite evidence "suggestive of widespread misconduct," according to a leaked memo from the Department of Justice. In 2017, Harris said that her office's decision to not prosecute Mnuchin was based on "following the facts and the evidence ... like any other case." Here's where eyebrows really started going north: In 2016, Mnuchin donated $2,000 to Harris's senate campaign. Then this inexplicably happened: as senator, Harris voted against the confirmation of Mnuchin to become Twitterman's Secretary of the Treasury.

If she runs for president, that curious history will be mined. Anyone as involved in public policy implementation as Kamala Harris will have loads of decisions subject to investigation and opposition research ... if she runs for president. (She's supposed to announce her decision early in 2019.)

Here's more of Harris as a senator on the Judiciary Committee, questioning Rod Rosenstein about protecting the independence of special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation -- all more than relevant now in light of the temporary head of the Department of Justice that Twitterman put in Sessions' place and in light of the dude Twitterman has nominated as his permanent replacement for Attorney General of the United States.





I'd pay money to see her in a debate with the biggest damned ignorant fool on the planet (and you know who I'm talking about!).

A Deeper Dive Into Sherrod Brown

Senator Sherrod Brown's wife Connie Schultz said she thinks her husband should run against DJT in 2020 “because Sherrod’s onto him. Sherrod is who these voters thought Trump was.”

These voters ... Trump Democrats, workers in fading industrial towns, forgotten citizens longing for someone to carry their torch instead of water for Wall Street.

Sherrod Brown has a much longer history than Twitterman of getting his hands dirty fighting free trade deals that dump on working people. While still a member of the US House in 2005, representing the 13th Congressional District of Ohio, Brown led the fight against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which finally passed by one measly vote despite Sherrod's best efforts. He doesn't mind the label "progressive populist."

He's got intellectual muscle behind his populism (unlike Twitterman). He wrote a book in 2004, Myths of Free Trade, which "provides a front-row seat to the Washington spectacle of corporate lobbying and political intimidation that keeps the free-trade mantra alive as American policy, despite all the evidence of its failure." Brown argued that it was labor activism that built the US middle class, and free trade agreements -- he opposed NAFTA -- have torn the fabric of middle-class prosperity.

Brown has especially criticized free trade with China. In 2011 -- well before Trump started breaking the furniture -- Sherrod co-authored and sponsored a bill that would officially declare China a currency manipulator and require the Department of Commerce to impose countervailing duties on Chinese imports. In January of this year, Brown expressed support for Trump's decision to impose tariffs on washing machine imports.

Brown opposed the 2017 Republican tax bill because it overwhelmingly benefitted the rich and powerful corporations, and he seriously got Senator Orrin Hatch's goat, who also happened to wield the gavel at the time, which gave him the advantage:





Brown was seriously considered for the vice presidential slot by Hillary Clinton in 2016, and there were informed voices urging her to make that choice:

Brown is Bernie [Sanders] without the bombast, a bold progressive voice who understands that the Democratic Party has always stood for the interests of the disenfranchised, disparaged and downtrodden; like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, he can articulate the woes and frustrations of the put-upon middle class, and coherently explain how progressive policies can redress those grievances. The selection of Brown could accomplish two mutually important goals for Clinton: he could appeal to the more rational members of Sanders’s fan club while also attracting support from working-class voters who might respond to populist appeals, but who haven’t swallowed the last drop of Donald Trump’s Kool-Aid.

In May of last year Brown published his definition of populism in USA Today. It was also an implicit indictment of Twitterman's divisive bullying:

Populism doesn’t preach hate. Populism preaches hope — hope that all workers will have the opportunity to build better lives for their families....

...populism values work and it respects the people who do it — every last one of them. Our society doesn’t value work the way we once did; Americans work harder and have less to show for it.

If you want to call yourself a populist, you better be ready to stick up for the little guy — whether she punches a time clock or earns tips. Whether she works in a call center or a hospital or on a factory floor. Whether he is a contract worker or a temp.

And you better be willing to be straight with the people you serve. A true populist tells the truth, because she respects people’s intelligence.

Of course we’ve always had cynical politicians. They — and the media that cover them too — often confuse popularity with populism. Populism and popularity may share the same Latin root, but not the same political home. An opportunist politician divides people and kowtows to the powerful. He spreads blame instead of solutions, and lies about bringing back an idyllic past that never was. And he often treats those with less power and privilege with disdain.

(Won't pause here to note that Sherrod Brown values work while our president values golfing and sitting on his big butt watching Fox News and tweeting other peoples' opinions.)

Sherrod Brown has a long history of elective office: eight years in the Ohio House of Reps (and the youngest member elected to that body), eight years as Ohio Secretary of State, 14 years in the US House of Reps, and now recently reelected to his third term in the US Senate. That long string of public offices means lots of individual votes and actions that will be mined for negative details that can be used against him, and he'll be called "a career politician," you can bet!

I think he's got grit, and I don't see him blowing in the wind. Beto O'Rourke's got grit too, but I worry that his recent starring role as Ted Cruz's nemesis may have inflated his ego past his capacity to listen to sage advice. Dunno. We'll find out soon.

Trump's US Attorney in Eastern District of NC Implicated

US Attorney Robert Higdon,
enabler?

After the 2016 general elections, the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE) forwarded almost 300 pages of evidence of absentee ballot fraud in Bladen County to US Attorney for the Eastern District Robert Higdon. In 2016, two years ago.

Higdon did nothing about that evidence. Instead, he chose to prosecute 19 non-citizens who mistakenly voted because they thought they could. Honest mistakes will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law while elaborate schemes for illegally harvesting absentee ballots that benefit Republican candidates ... well, yawn.

Joe Killian at NC Policy Watch reports that Bob Hall, former executive director of Democracy NC, accuses US Attorney Higdon of following "the Republican Party line on election fraud. That means pursuing cases that advance the GOP narrative of supposedly rampant voter fraud by non-citizens and convicted felons, Hall said, while essentially ignoring much more complicated and statistically prevalent fraud – like absentee ballot tampering.

“If the election rigging operation in Bladen County looked like it involved a group of non-citizens voting, Higdon would have deployed the FBI in a heartbeat,” Hall said. “Imagine what his office would have done if he had reports of white conservative voters being victimized by a multi-year ballot stealing operation led by Black operatives. Instead, the reports his office received from the State Board of Elections pointed to the reverse scenario, which wasn’t Higdon’s priority and why the FBI only recently got involved.”

Earlier this year Higdon’s office issued subpoenas on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the North Carolina elections board and more than 40 county boards in the eastern third of the state. The move led voting rights advocates to ask why federal investigators and prosecutors seemed to be concentrating so heavily on non-citizens when so much evidence of absentee ballot fraud had been served up for years by the state board of elections.

The pending likelihood of a mandated new election in the North Carolina 9th Congressional District has blown Mr. Higdon's cover, and we trust that the January 11th SBOE hearing into ballot fraud will expose everything to the sanitizing light.