So ... There Are No Second Acts in American Lives?

So Dan McCready yesterday withdrew his concession to Mark Harris in the NC-9 congressional race, and with NCGOP Exec. Dir. Dallas Woodhouse collapsing like a white dwarf live last night on "All In With Chris Hayes" on MSNBC, a re-do of that election is becoming more and more likely.





Still not a peep out of Rev. Mark Harris -- no denial, no apology, no Trump-like "I hardly know the man" -- just silence that becomes more pregnant by the hour.

And this morning, this headline about the Reverend in the NYTimes: "North Carolina Republican Owes $34,310 for Disputed Absentee Ballot and Turnout Work, Records Show."

Not only hole up in his bunker but owing money too for the very thing he's in trouble for.

Is That Gun Smoking?

Nate Silver is "coming in hot" (as Jesse Presnell just said on Facebook) on the absentee ballot scandal in the NC-9. Silver posted on Twitter this morning: "We're changing our rating on this race to Lean Prison."

Pastor Harris

Nate Silver was referencing new reporting by Joe Bruno that (again) links Rev. Mark Harris directly, personally, to suspected fraudster Leslie McCrae Dowless, reporting that 2017 Charlotte City Council candidate Pete Givens said he was personally introduced to Dowless by his pastor, Mark Harris: "Mark told me about this guy's process ... that he had a process." So Givens apparently hired Dowless to help him out in last year's Charlotte City Council race, paid him $800 in "consulting" fees, but Givens lost. "The Dowless process" maybe depends on a more rural landscape to work properly.

Harris's direct involvement with Dowless was first suggested way back three days ago in the Charlotte Observer -- an article I completely missed even though Billy Ball referred to it and reprinted it at the Progressive Pulse, and I should have noticed.

I believe that when the activity of McCrae Dowless first surfaced in the news, the Harris campaign wanted to imply that they had nothing to do with his hiring, that it was campaign consultants at the Red Dome Group that hired him. Perhaps so, but Harris knew him and recommended him and gave $400,000+ to the Red Dome Group to marshall their troops for the fight. Those troops included Dowlass, and Mark Harris was bound to know.

The Reverend is staying very quiet about all of this. If he's issued any public statement, I haven't seen it, and can't find it. Though I've searched. His Twitter feed contains nothing in the way of comment, though he did tweet on November 30 that "there is absolutely no public evidence that there are enough ballots in question to affect the outcome of this race," a position he's incidentally very wrong about. He's never mentioned Dowless nor the scandal that has erupted, though he's ever more central to it.

Dallas Woodhouse.
Photo Harry Lynch News and Observer

Subpoenas have begun to fly, one of them issued by the SBOE to the Mark Harris campaign. Also one to the Red Dome Group. The SBOE so far hasn't subpoenaed the NCGOP, but they should because Dallas Woodhouse at the NCGOP also hired Red Dome with "state money" that can't be legally spent on federal campaigns, so shouldn't we know if any of that NCGOP money went to subsidize "the Dowless process"? Especially as Dallas Woodhouse has a history of bragging about laundering money through his party treasurer.

NC's Biggest Export Product: Republican Sour Grapes

Tim Moore and Phil Berger,
celebrating their own b.o.

If it ain't gerrymandered -- like a whole state can't be gerrymandered -- then Republican chances tank for winning an election in the Age of Twitterman. Which is why right now in Wisconsin and Michigan, lame-duck Republican legislatures are quickly rewriting the rules to snatch democracy out of the hands of the voters. They got the roadmap for how to do that from Phil Berger and Tim Moore, North Carolina's proudest politicians with teeth on edge. Sour grapes after losing an election will do that to you.

The cure for sour grapes -- at least in North Carolina -- has been a raft of Federal and state Superior Court judges who apparently take antacids. (Just yesterday, another Wake County Superior Court judge struck down another of their power-grabs.) The judges practice logic, common sense, and adherence to the constitution[s] and have neutralized many of Berger/Moore's most radical steps, with maybe more to come. Berger/Moore have counter-attacked with more acid -- "activist judges, legislating from the bench!" Yada, yada, yada, so pop another Gelusel.

The mass public protests we're seeing right now in Wisconsin and Michigan, aimed at Republican over-reach, those protests happened too in Raleigh in December of 2016, reactions to Berger/Moore's stripping of power from Roy Cooper a month before he could even take office. Majority Republican leges in the upper-Midwest are copying us in the craft of nullifying elections (but let it be recorded that Southerners were first!), and they're getting a dose of citizen protest that they've richly earned. In December of 2016, with Christmas looming in Raleigh, citizens began to mass on Jones Street for the special session Berger/Moore called, and naturally arrests were made. I believe the uproar reached the national media (but not like today, perhaps, in Wisconsin and Michigan). One particular NC Democrat (and citizen) published an editorial promising a stiff fight: "We're coming for you, NCGOP. You will be exposed. You will lose."

On the whole, they have lost, at least in North Carolina. (Stand by for legal action in Wisconsin and Michigan too.) But conservative radicalism doesn't always die like a bonfire doused with water. They keep sparking and threatening to roar back to life. We know from experience: Splash! a Democrat becomes governor in January 2017. Republicans grab power. Splash! Splash! and Splash! courts begin examining and overturning much of the December 2016 power-grab. Republicans continue to insulate themselves from accountability. Splash! Republicans lose their House and Senate supermajorities on November 6th. So we hold our breath as they convene yet another Special Session ... because even back on their heels, even off-balance, they still have a habit of overreach.

ITEM
In the voter photo ID bill (H 1115 -- "Let North Carolina Vote Act") now moving through the NC House -- the enabling legislation for the constitutional pig-in-a-poke the people bought on November 6 without knowing its contents -- the ineffable Larry Pittman tried to amend the bill to eliminate college student IDs as acceptable forms of identification for voting, but that was rejected. That was yesterday.

ITEM
On Tuesday, Gerry Cohen picked up on language added to the bill that appears aimed at out-of-state college students, mandating that they should be formally put on notice that they must declare their "intent to remain" in North Carolina (for the rest of their lives?). Gerry Cohen, who used to be a professional writer of laws for and in the General Assembly, commented, "What?"

ITEM
In a completely separate legislative initiative, Berger/Moore are also and once again rewriting the state Board of Elections (SBOE) with H 1117, bending to the judges. So they're restoring the SBOE to 3-2 Democratic/Republican composition and county BOEs to 2-1 Dems to Repubs, but they say the local county BOEs must be chaired by Republicans in even-numbered years. Odd. Since the 3-judge panel that threw out their first rewriting of the BOEs specifically ordered, "You can't mandate a chair of a county board not of the governor's party." At least, that's my understanding.

(Not sure what difference it makes anyway. If a local board is 2-1 Democratic-Republican -- at least through the end of Roy Cooper's term in office -- the two Dems can overrule a Republican chair. Plus any two board members can call a meeting. The hitch will come with under-informed and unprepared weak Democrats appointed to county boards. Some of them think compromise -- any compromise -- is a golden mean to be prized, but no compromise that tampers with people's access to the ballot is good. Forsyth County Democrats on the Forsyth BOE compromised away an early voting site on the campus of Winston-Salem State, thus contributing to a poor showing on November 6th, compared to other NC urban counties.)

ITEM
What will they think up next? Could be anything. They haven't announced an end-time for this present Special Session. Could be anything, but it will be something.

How Republicans in the General Assembly Take Care of Republicans Leaving the General Assembly

Justin Burr

Huge props to Republicans in the General Assembly for continuing to feather their own nests faster than a flock of hyper-active pigeons. One of their number loses his job in the General Assembly, and the brethren rush to boost the pay for a state job he wants and which he apparently has an inside track to get. Smells like pigeon poop, even with all the feathers.

The member of the NC House suddenly out of a job -- he lost his Republican primary back in May -- is Lex Luthor understudy Justin Burr of Stanley County, who until recently was chair of the House Special Committee on Judicial Redistricting, which means he was trying to redraw judicial districts so that African-American judges would be cut in half and Republicans would have a better shot at winning judgeships. It was a plot worthy of a power-mad supervillain. But alas. A nice old small-town pharmacist knocked Burr out in the May primary.

The state job Justin Burr is angling for? Executive Director of something called the Outdoor Heritage Advisory Council, which as far as we can tell, would be not inconsistent with cheerleading at the campfire and encouraging s'mores for everyone. It's a mighty shallow website the council offers to this inquiring mind, and as it turns out, the Executive Director would be the sole employee of an advisory council that is a shell with no innards.

Travis Fain reports that the position of executive director was created by the General Assembly last year but has so far gone unfilled. Justin Burr noticed after he lost his May primary that there was a juicy state position going unfilled -- salary at the time ... $74,000 -- so Burr applied and was interviewed in June.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but immediately after that interview, the proposed salary was boosted to $119,000, and then the Office of State Human Resources got involved and down-graded the proposed salary to a maximum of $88,221, noting that "this position was vacant and, upon review, was determined to be more appropriately classified as a Program Development Coordinator," a classification typically used for positions in "small programs with a small staff and/or limited scope." Small staff? How about zero staff!

Justin Burr's scope has always been larger than small potatoes, so with the help of Rep. David Lewis, who runs the powerful House Rules Committee and who knows a thing or three about manipulating laws to the benefit of Republicans, has slipped it through that the council's members get to set Justin Burr's salary. Wait, what? There's an Outdoor Heritage Advisory Council with members? Overseeing an "agency" with so far no employees? Who's on this council and how did they get there?

According to Travis Fain -- because their website is wholly blank on the matter -- the membership of this council is appointed by "legislative leadership" (that would be Berger/Moore), by the Secretary of Agriculture (Republican Steve Troxler), and by the governor, which suggests a Republican dominated council that's being empowered to set the salary sufficiently high to please Justin Burr.

And now everything is perfectly clear.

Republican Power-Grabbers in Wisconsin Take Lessons from Berger/Moore in How To Cure the Voters of Their Democracy

What's going on in Wisconsin today is so outrageous, it's a complete echo of what went on in North Carolina in 2016 in the month following the election of our Governor Roy Cooper while the Berger/Moore duopoly in the NC General Assembly still had Mr. Bobblehead Pat McCrory in office to rubber-stamp their power-grabs.

Wisconsin voters swept Democrats into office in most statewide races -- governor, attorney general, state treasurer, secretary of state, US senator -- but the Republican-dominated state legislature (as in North Carolina) got busy rewriting the rules ahead of the swearing-in of new Democratic Governor Tony Evers.

Hilariously, the Wisconsin Republicans justify their action this way: When we took full control of Wisconsin -- governorship and state lege -- in 2010, we transferred too much power to our new Republican governor, Scott Walker, and we now realize our grievous error. "Maybe we made some mistakes giving too much power to Gov. Walker and I'd be open to looking at that to see if there are areas we should change that," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters a day after the general election.

Republicans in the Age of Trump -- the only thing that matters is holding power.

Details You May Have Missed in the Bladen County Absentee Ballot Scandal

I remember reading that Joshua Malcolm, who is now chair of the NC State Board of Elections, said he had been dissatisfied with foot-dragging by the US Attorney for the Eastern District, Robert Higdon, who has supposedly been looking into absentee ballot harvesting going back to 2016. Just found out that Rev. Mark Harris's 28-year-old son works for Robert Higdon. We would assume that young Mr. Harris is recused from anything to do with this case.

While it's not clear that the ballots in question would change the result of the election, contrary to statements made by Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NCGOP, it is definitely possible. While the 679 absentee votes Rev. Harris received in Bladen and Robeson counties are not enough on their own, there may have been as many as 3,400 absentee ballots requested but not returned in those counties. There's evidence that some -- many? -- of the people supposedly requesting absentee ballots were African-American and that some -- many? -- of them did not know they had requested an absentee ballot. Some of those folks turned their ballots over to operatives working for McCrae Dowless. The clear implication is that African-American voters were being used as pawns in a fraudulent scheme.

Cynthia Shaw, the director of the Bladen County Board of Elections, packed up her office as this scandal was unfolding last week and left, never to return. She apparently decided to take her accumulated sick leave a month before she was scheduled to retire. Perfectly understandable that she might want to go to the beach as this firestorm consumes her office, but it's also mighty convenient/inconvenient, depending on which side you're seeing this from.

Chief fraud suspect McCrae Dowless has a previous fraud conviction in 1992. He reportedly stumbled across a dead person while out picking posies, took out an insurance policy on him, and then collected $165,000 on his death. Dowless has worked as a get-out-the-vote harvester for at least eight other candidates besides Rev. Mark Harris, or at least he's been paid as a "consultant." He was also convicted of felony perjury in 1990, which you may want to keep in mind as he begins to defend himself and his activities.

What did Rev. Mark Harris know, and when did he know it?

Rev. Mark Harris, swearing on a stack of Bibles?

For Those on a High Protein Diet: More Red Meat from Bladen County

Rev. Mark Harris, the putative winner
in the NC-9

Thomas Mills lays out some detail we had not seen before about absentee ballot manipulation down in the NC-9. The hinky results of absentee voting goes back to Republican primaries, in both 2016 and in 2018, and the same character, McCrae Dowless, was involved in all of it:

In the 2016 Republican primary that Mark Harris lost narrowly to incumbent Robert Pittenger, a third candidate, Todd Johnson, won the mail-in absentee vote in Bladen County with 221 of 226 votes cast. Johnson’s “consultant” in Bladen County was a convicted felon named McCrae Dowless. This year, Harris’ team hired Dowless and got an even more lopsided result in the primary in May, defeating Pittenger with 437 to 17 in mail-in absentee ballots. It’s very hard to believe Harris didn’t know what was happening even if he’s maintaining plausible deniability and the Red Dome guys are willing to go to jail for him.

The Red Dome guys.  The Red Dome Group lists Charlotte as a primary base of operations, with officers in Wilmington, in Montgomery, Ala., and in Washington, D.C. Hilariously, their motto (displayed in blood red, no less): "We Know What It Takes To Win!" Among the other "accomplishments" they're willing to tout on their website ... Dale Folwell's win as NC Treasurer in 2016 and the congressional career of Mark Meadows in the NC-11.

According to Mills, Reverend Mark Harris paid Red Dome $400,000 "for field services," which is a hell of a lot of field services and a nice wad of "walking around money" for people like McCrae Dowless.

Republicans Back Up To Hit That Iceberg Again

Here's a statistic from November 6: Republicans lost the popular vote by more raw votes than any time in history. But because of gerrymandering, many of those votes for Democrats piled up disproportionately in just 40 congressional districts, rather than in 80 congressional districts.

There's additional hopeful news for Democrats on top of that election: Congressional Republicans are noticeably uninterested in examining why they lost so decisively. “There has been close to no introspection in the G.O.P. conference and really no coming to grips with the shifting demographics that get to why we lost those seats,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, a losing upstate New York Republican. “I’m very frustrated and I know other members are frustrated.”

The GOP leadership is afraid to be introspective because eventually one name and one reason is going to float to the top of their consideration -- DJT and "Mr. Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women."

Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, who retired rather than run again (and whose seat flipped to the Dems), spoke some truth: “It’s clear to me why we lost 40 seats; it was a referendum on the president, but that’s an extremely difficult proclamation for people to make because if they were to say that, they’d get the wrath of the president.”

There you have it. There won't be any out-loud soul-searching because these guys are afraid of Twitterman. Better to eat a Danish and drink a cup of acid, because the next two years are going to be full of peptic upset anyway.

"What alarms Republicans even more is that the possibility that disgust with Mr. Trump will be uncurable in 2020, when he will most likely be on the ballot, no matter the party’s agenda .... This sort of cold-eyed assessment has Republicans already expressing concern that more of their colleagues may retire rather than run again in 2020 — and that recruiting top-flight candidates could prove even more challenging going into the next campaign."

So we're starting our short-timer's countdown calendar now: How many Republican members of Congress will choose to retire rather than run for reelection in 2020?

What Would Molly Ivins Say?

I've been reading some Molly Ivins from yesteryear ("You Got To Dance With Them What Brung You"), and I can't help missing her. What she would have written in this target-rich environment!

We have a criminal enterprise inhabiting the White House. We have a comic first family who know not what they do. We have a supine Congress which doesn't want its own power, its constitutional role in this mess. We have Brett Kavanaugh.

But what if Molly lived in North Carolina and hung out in Raleigh?  Here we have Republicans suing to stop an investigation into illegal voting after just convincing 55.49% of voters to institute a required voter photo ID, supposedly to cure voter fraud (which every rural Republican knows runs rampant, because they know a man who said it did, especially in certain counties). Twitterman fed their fantasy by proposing -- on camera -- that he knew many voters went in and voted and then went to their cars and changed their wigs or their shirts and went in and voted again as somebody else -- over and over. That's the lode of intelligence Molly Ivins would have mined with glee.

Molly would have loved Bladen County and the failure to certify the Reverend Mark Harris's win in the 9th Congressional District because of absentee ballot whiffing. It sure does look like the Reverend hired himself an ex-felon with a fraud conviction to harvest absentee ballot votes. Meanwhile, the Democratic chair of the State Board of Elections is forced to resign for being a fool on Twitter. The State Board of Elections has jurisdiction over ordering another election in the 9th, and by now Republican true believers will have conflated this into "Democratic Chair Resigns After Masterminding Ballot Fraud in Bladen County." Bet on it.

Meanwhile, Harris was elected, if he was elected, out of a mulligan stew of illegally gerrymandered districts designed by the best tech eggheads to keep Republicans in power for eternity. Districts, incidentally, existing now only by court order to get through the fall elections and then to forthwith straighten up and stop trying to deliberately disenfranchise people. Even with gerrymandering working its magic, voters were mad enough this November to flip sufficient districts to give the governor back his power to stop Republican bills with a veto.

The self-dealing of North Carolina Republican top dogs would have kept Molly Ivins chortling. Phil Berger's breathtaking self-interest in maneuvering his son onto the state's Court of Appeals. Tim Moore's scorecard on keeping Tim Moore well oiled. (You think I don't remember Jim Black? Guilty Democrats got that way from too much power held for too long. Same syndrome happening now to the NCGOP.)

It's a funny world. Also exhausting, the constant two-wheels-off-the-cliff. In such times, the authoritarian-minded look for a strong man to run everything. I look for simple humanity, with humanity's time-honored values held tight. Common decency must reassert itself and bring our careening chariot back into the road.