The Bo Hines Relapse

 

Remember the football player who won some big football games and then wanted to be somebody in the political world? Bo Hines originally from Charlotte, but very flexible in where he was willing to call home. In January 2021, he lived in Winston-Salem where he was in law school, but politics had gotten ahold of him in a leap-before-you-look kind of way. That January. Hines posted a video to his Twitter and Facebook feeds criticizing Congresswoman Virginia Foxx -- that she had mainly made herself rich in Congress and had done little for her constituents other than the disaster of a pork-barrel teapot museum which didn't actually come about. Hines was suddenly interesting as a brash insurgent taking on one of the most securely gerrymandered Republicans in Congress. Hines tried to make headway with Young Republicans during a visit to AppState in April 2021. Almost immediately thereafter Foxx got the endorsement of Hines' hero Madison Cawthorn (who hadn't turned totally toxic yet).

Oops.

Bo Hines folded quickly. On May 8th, 2021, less than a month after he announced against Foxx in the 5th, he was reported in conservative circles to be moving his candidacy from the 5th to the 13th. Incumbent Congressman in the 13th, Ted Budd, had already announced he was stepping down to run for US Senate. An open seat! (Which was ultimately won by Democrat Wiley Nickel last November.) Say whatever you want about Bo Hines's political I.Q. -- he had learned something valuable: Don't jump in the first time against an entrenched grandmother from your own party. 

But shit happened to the 13th CD. Under court order to divest itself of partisan advantage, court-appointed masters created new Congressional maps in 2022 that shuffled many of the precincts from the 13th into a newly drawn 7th CD, which was already complicated with bigger names than himself (Republican David Rouzer was the incumbent). For some nefarious reason Donald Trump Hisownself wanted Hines to run in the new 4th in exchange for the Trump endorsement. Instead, Hines went back to the now new 13th -- and got the Trump endorsement anyway. Trump featured Hines during a rally in Johnston County. Hines prevailed in the Republican primary but lost last fall to state Senator Wiley Nickel.

Just a few minutes ago

Reporter Bryan Anderson flashed the news on Twitter:

It's official: Republican Bo Hines is running against former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker in NC's 6th Congressional District, which includes outskirts of Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Other GOP primary candidates include Christian Castelli, Mary Ann Contogiannis and Jay Wagner. 

The incumbent congresswoman in the 6th, Democrat Kathy Manning, was brutalized by the latest Republican gerrymandering and is considered a Dead Woman Walking, though I don't know if she's announced her plans for 2024.

I Haven't Got Words

 

Brandon Presley

I've been glued to various internet feeds and news sites, catching up on everything that happened last night in several states, including in North Carolina, where it was municipal leadership on the line, and in Virginia, where Democrats flipped back their House and held the Senate and caused Republican "Great-White-Hope" Glenn Youngkin some major agita, and in the whole wide world where Moms 4 Liberty apparently lost bigly. I'm only sorry about Mississippi, where Democrat Brandon Presley impressed me, tearing relentlessly into Republican Gov. Tate Reeves over the expansion of Medicaid and the price of groceries. If Presley had won, or come closer (the margin was about 5 points), he might have proven a political point that Democrats with fight in them do best in the reddest of spots.

I'm glad to give Thomas Mills the floor on what happened and how we might feel about it:

Democrats won up and down the ballot and across the country. Last night should be a cautionary tale for Republicans, but the party is still beholden to a man who lives in a fantasy world of stolen elections and imaginary fortunes. Democrats have messages that work and an organization that’s functioning. Ignore the narratives of Democrats in disarray. Republicans are the ones in the wilderness.

Proof of Life

 

Last night in B'Rock, NC.

How Messed Up Is This? Meadows' Publisher Sues Him for Lying

 

I don't think I've ever heard of a lawsuit like this one. All Seasons Press, which specializes in conservative authors and which published former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows memoir The Chief's Chief, has sued its own author for damages for lying in the pages of his own book. The suit seeks compensation for damages:

More than $1 million for lost profits. 

Over $1 million in incidental damages including hits to the publisher’s reputation. 

Over $600,000 in out-of-pocket damages.

And All Seasons Press wants its advance of $350,000 paid to Meadows returned.

The lawsuit resulted after Meadows made news by cooperating with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, which included admitting that he had lied about the 2020 election results that he wrote in the book. All Seasons Press stated in its complaint:

“Meadows’ reported statements to the Special Prosecutor and/or his staff [sic] and his reported grand jury testimony squarely contradict the statements in his Book, one central theme of which is that President Trump was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze.”

What a train wreck has followed Mark Meadows idiotic decision to leave his safe seat in Congress to work for the man who destroys everything he touches. 

Rumble in the 14th: The Tim Moore-Pat Harrigan Primary

 

“I think it’s going to be a nasty primary. I would be shocked if Harrigan does not continue to hit Moore and hit him hard. What I don’t know is what Moore’s reaction is going to be.”

--WCU Political Scientist Chris Cooper

Harrigan

Last Friday I was tickled to publish Pat Harrigan's attack on Speaker Tim Moore's entry into the Republican primary in the newly drawn, heavily Republican 14th Congressional District. I couldn't guess at the time the response that attack got in yesterday's headline by Danielle Battaglia in the News&Observer: "23 minutes passed before Speaker Tim Moore’s race for Congress turned ugly. What now?"

Harrigan's attack is considered "ugly"? Because the facts behind it are also ugly? Harrigan put a hard finger right on the bruize: Moore's corruption, including the domestic corruption of the marriage vows, is a matter of character. Harrigan out-and-out suggests that Moore has none. 

Battaglia reminded me that Harrigan's race in 2022 against Jeff Jackson in the previous 14th also turned "vitriolic," with Jackson landing the sharper blows and Harrigan complaining in the media. He's not going to take anything sitting down, plus he was clearly ready for the arrival of Tim Moore. According to Battaglia, Harrigan published his attack on Moore only 23 minutes after Moore's announcement (or his strategist Paul Shumaker's statement, since it was actually Shumaker who made the news that day. Moore plans a big campaign public launch next week).

True to the ethos that money is the only god, Moore's staged "soft launch" last Friday in Gaston County involved the ostentatious presentation of a giant check to Gaston Community College. Sharing the goodies is a good ole boy's signature.

Republican operative Paul Shumaker got to announce that Moore is indeed running for Congress, so it only makes sense that Shumaker also responded to the Harrigan attack -- with superior condescension: “My experience, which is a little bit more extensive in this than most people in politics, is that those who are behind and those that are desperate, tend to be the ones who lash out first.” No shit. We'll see if Harrigan is willing to go whole hog on Moore, who's actually a big, fat, self-satisfied sitting duck.

The Importance of Virginia

Virginia State Capitol, Richmond

News&Observer editorialist Ned Barnett got me focused on the vote happening next Tuesday in Virginia, ungerrymandered Virginia (compared to NC), where Democrats rule the state senate 22-18 and Republicans rule the state House also 22-18, and Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is just itching to sign an abortion ban, he sez, when Republicans also control the senate. The elections for all those Virginia legislative seats happen next Tuesday, and Ned Barnett says it'll be a potential bellwether for North Carolina in 2024. 

Barnett wrote the words (which I turned into a more graphic display):

The Virginia vote will show whether ...

(1) new state abortion laws are a decisive issue for Democratic performance?

(2) whether right-wing attacks on school diversity policies is still motivating voters like it did in 2022?

(3) whether Black voters and young voters are motivated enough to turn out and vote?

I have not researched any of the Virginia legislative races this year, so I'll have to rely on mass media come Wednesday morning for numbers and analysis. 

On the potency of the abortion issue for Democratic performance, North Carolina has already done -- banned abortion after 12 weeks -- what Glenn Youngkin in Virginia promises to do (though Youngkin is more comfortable with 15 weeks).  We expect the resentment against the abortion ban to remain strong in urban and suburban North Carolina, but this state is much more blatantly gerrymandered now for partisan advantage, with "communities of interest" "cracked and packed" to smithereens.

I'll be watching Virginia, you bet!

Tim Moore Enters Congressional Race Under Small Arms Fire

 

Late yesterday, Tim Moore's political strategist got to break the news that Moore will indeed be doing in 2024 what every sentient politico in the state knew he was going to do -- run for the newly drawn and personally crafted 14th CD seat, which includes his home county of Cleveland.

There's already a Republican candidate announced in that race, an ex-Green Beret named Pat Harrigan, who "welcomed" Moore to the contest with this statement:

Tagging Moore as a "casino activist" hardly scratches the surface, though bringing up his "legacy of corruption" at least gets us on the right map for evaluating Moore's outstanding qualities as a candidate. Harrigan on his website makes a point of evoking the West Point Honor Code, which he says is sorely needed for members of Congress and which Tim Moore would presumably fail miserably.

The contrast between Harrigan and Moore could launch multiple memes. Harrigan is a lean warrior and is running as a metaphorical Green Beret of conservative thought and action. He tells us that while still on active duty at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, he started a small arms business out of his doublewide which grew into an arms manufacturing business, ZRODELTA, which in 2018 opened a plant with 65 workers in Burke County just off I-40. A Republican arms manufacturer running for Congress ought to be pure catnip for the conservatives of the new 14th CD, especially when they consider the sinewy, sacrificing Harrigan next to the pudgy, self-interested Tim Moore.

 

Harrigan ran for this seat in 2022 against Jeff Jackson, who won with 58% in a district that was much more favorable for a Democrat. It's been radically redrawn, which led to Jackson's stepping aside to run for the statewide office of Attorney General. For a brief couple of weeks, Harrigan was the only Republican in the primary, but he was clearly anticipating the entrance of Tim Moore. He had that "Welcome to the Race" statement written and cued up well before the news of Moore's run hit the wires.

The 3-Judge Panel in Cooper v. Berger (2023)

 

Gov. Roy Cooper sued (Cooper v. Berger, redux) October 10th, minutes after the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly successfully overrode his veto of a bill (S 512, a regular horror show of an omnibus) wherein Berger-Moore stripped the governor of power to appoint members of important boards and commissions (a bunch of them that guard public policy, including the N.C. Utilities Commission, which sets electricity rates, and the Board of Transportation, and the Environmental Management Commission, which sets pollution standards for businesses), and gave that power to themselves, to Berger-Moore personally (no kidding), thus creating a whole new level of political patronage and the wide-eyed expectation that corruption will surely follow. Cooper filed for an injunction to block implementation of Senate Bill 512 (and House Bill 488) "while their constitutionality is argued." 

A 3-judge panel

According to the new highly partisan court system Berger-Moore have set up, Chief Justice Paul Newby gets to pick the three-judge panel that will decide the constitutionality of the lege's taking so blatantly the administrative powers of the gov. The pool of superior court judges to hear such cases is now also appointed by Berger-Moore. It's wholesale power-grabbing. 

For hearing and ruling on this case, Newby chose Superior Court justices John Dunlow, Paul Holcombe, and Dawn Layton. They were scheduled to hear the case in Wake County this very day, starting at 10 a.m. 

John M. Dunlow (Republican), a superior court judge for Judicial District 9 in Granville County. His current term ends on December 31, 2026. He was a founding partner in Dunlow & Wilkinson, P.A., in Oxford, NC. He has a B.S. from AppState in poly sci and a J.D. from Campbell.

Paul A. Holcombe III (Republican), Resident Superior Court Judge for Johnston County in Smithfield, NC. Proud member of The Federalist Society. He got his J.D. at the University of Tennessee and worked as an assistant D.A. in Tennessee for some eight years before moving to North Carolina and taking the asst. D.A. route again, rising quickly to District Judge and then Superior Court Judge.

Dawn Layton (Democrat), superior court judge in Dist. 16A which includes Anson, Richmond, and Scotland counties. Appointed to the bench by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2019, she won in her own right in 2020 for an eight-year term. She's another one who learned her law in the assistant D.A. trenches, after getting her J.D. from Regent University School of Law in 2004.

 

"To Undo What We’ve Done.” Tim Moore Mis-appoints a Crony

 

Isn't cronyism inherently corrupt? I feel obliged to at least try to keep up with the new scandals that continuously sprout wherever House Speaker Tim Moore treads. His plans for Congress are well known, though he continues to play bashful about actually running for the newly drawn 14th CD that includes his home in Gaston County. Everyone even partially warm to the touch knows he's lusted for a seat in Congress, which he's now describing as only one of his many options. "Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, Timmy, were no crime." 

Kenneth Robert "Rob" Davis

According to Speaker Moore's fellow NCGA member Sen. Danny Britt (Lumberton), Speaker Moore hisownself put a name on a five-page list of appointments to important state government jobs, in particular an old college buddy and long-time friend Kenneth Robert Davis (goes by "Rob"), appointed to the Disciplinary Hearing Commission of the State Bar. All those appointments got voted on last week. Reporter Bryan Anderson discovered that the Disciplinary Hearing Commission (just this last May) found that as a lawyer Rob Davis had "failed to maintain accurate identification of all funds in his trust account, had mismanaged client funds, and fell behind on filing and paying several years of state and federal income taxes."

Sen. Danny Britt fingered Tim Moore as behind the appointment, because the appointment itself has become toxic enough already that fellow Republican Britt --also closely connected to Rob Davis in local politics; Davis is a county attorney for Robeson -- needed someone to blame not named Danny Britt. Britt's conversation with reporter Anderson included this:

 

Britt said Davis’s appointment came directly from Speaker Moore, and that Davis hadn’t requested it.

“He had not requested to be placed on this committee,” Britt said. “It kind of came out of the blue to him. He didn’t request to serve on it, but he appreciates being asked to serve on the committee. … I did not know he was nominated until I saw it in the appointment bill language. I know for a fact it was Tim Moore’s decision to put him on there and nobody else’s.”

For his part, Moore ain't talking (at least not to Anderson), though he did issue a statement last Wednesday that "he’d revisit the appointment" (whatever that means ... sounds juicy!). In the meantime the legal community and others involved in civic government are gaping at the appointment of a metaphorical jailbird to the new role as jailer (as political scientist Chris Cooper put it). Even though he was willing to finger Moore as culprit, Britt wants to peddle the narrative that Davis's transgressions were just "a minor bookkeeping thing."

Sen. Danny Britt

Rob Davis was a Republican member of the Bladen County Board of Elections during the great ballot harvesting scandal of 2018 to benefit the Rev. Mark Harris's campaign for Congress in CD9. After the State Board of Elections conducted its investigation of McCrae Dowless and his activities, the SBOE vacated all the sitting members on county BOEs involved in the Dowless multi-county shenanigans, just for a clean slate, apparently, and not because everyone was guilty of something. NCGOP Chair (at the time), Robin Hayes, appealed to the SBOE to keep Davis on the board but was denied. Asked very recently by reporter Anderson, Hayes now sez he has no memory of Davis. “The name doesn’t even ring a bell.” Ouch.

Lawmakers won't be back in Raleigh until November 29. In the meantime, Davis's appointment to the Disciplinary Hearing Commission is officially the law. Anderson reports that Davis himself is quite aware of the embarrassment and is seeking legal advice on how best to handle it, or simply not take the job. "Yeah! That's the ticket,"sez Britt, who actually did say out loud that Davis could "just choose to not participate in any commission activities":

“If he doesn’t get seated, doesn’t go to any meetings, doesn’t participate, then he’s a nonparticipating member and that’s really no issue,” Britt said. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do between now and [November 29] to undo what we’ve done.”

How to deal with the wounds cut by corrupt politicians: If a public servant doesn't do his job, that's a solution for a corrupt appointment!