What's the Matter With Georgia?

Well, the answer is obviously "yes." 

"Signature Matching" on Absentee Ballots in NC Shut Down By Court

 

Back in the summer, the NCGOP put in a formal request to the State Board of Elections (SBE) to force county boards to match signatures on absentee ballots to voter registration forms. The SBE said no, that North Carolina already has “an extraordinarily secure absentee ballot process” and that adding signature matching “would introduce a level of uncertainty where some voters might be treated different than other voters.” North Carolina law already requires absentee ballots be filled out in the presence of two witnesses or a notary, more stringent identification requirements than in most states.

In other words, "signature matching" is just another version of voter suppression.

The NCGOP sued in Wake Superior Court to overturn the SBE's decision.

Last Friday, Judge Stephen R. Futrell dismissed the suit. There will be no signature matching on absentee mail ballots in North Carolina.

The Election Denyer Running for NC Senate in Wake County

 

I haven't written about NC Senate District 13 because it looks like a solid Democratic district right in the middle of Wake County. Conservative NCFree rates it D + 6. Dave's Redistricting scores it 62% Democratic. Usually Republicans run their craziest candidates in districts they have no chance of winning. It's a pattern that is playing out again in SD13.

The November ballot in SD13 offers Lisa Grafstein (D) v. David Bankert (R) for an open seat. (SD13 was formerly the property of Republican Danny Britt, but redistricting put him now in SD24, where he's running currently.)

Does butter melt in that mouth?

Last night while I was eating up raw meat at a Fall Democratic Rally, the Raleigh NandO published a candidate profile of David Bankert -- actually, not reportage written up by a reporter but a short-and-sweet candidate questionnaire, in which Bankert declares himself undecided on legal marijuana and undecided on Medicaid expansion and very much opposed to abortion, and by the way, "No" to "Do you accept the results of the 2020 Presidential Election?" No further discussion. Just "No!"

Oh, come on out and say it, Mr. Bankert. You're willing to declare the Republic we've built through sweat and blood invalid because your guy didn't win.

Then I go to his website, and it's instant cognitive dissonance, because the 1st thing you encounter is this large print declaration (ALL CAPS in red) -- "Our Society Is Too Divided" -- followed by these soulful words of devotion to the Republic: "I’m offering a fresh voice and determination to bring average citizen values back to our legislative process. It’s time for We the People to get more involved.”

I see something flawed in Mr. Bankert's logic. Unless, of course, he's talking about the "legislative process" now being promoted by Trumpists in front of the Supreme Court (Moore v. Harper), arguing that state legislatures cannot be challenged by state courts in matters of gerrymandering and voter suppression. There's every chance that the Amy Coney Barrett court will agree with any wild-ass theory the Federalist Society dreams up.

Maybe that's what he's (secretly) planning on, joining BergerMoore in Raleigh to force on us worse gerrymandering and creative ways to suppress the black and brown vote, particularly voter photo IDs, followed by a clamp-down on the youth vote -- that is, once the Samuel Alito court gives them the green light.

Bankert is a retired electrical engineer with a degree from Carnegie Mellon and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. He goes easy on the right-wing stuff on his website, which makes sense because he's running in a probably unwinnable district, but the NandO questionnaire may have flushed him out.

I've found no Twitter account for him and the "David Bankert for NC Senate" Facebook page had one post back in April before the primary, and nothing since. It's like he's trying to stay unnoticed.

Lisa Grafstein (D)

Grafstein is a Raleigh disabilities and civil rights litigator, currently on staff of the non-profit advocacy org Disability Rights North Carolina. She's listed on Super Lawyers as a top rated litigator. She's endorsed by both Lillian's List of North Carolina and by the national PAC Emily's List.

She's a first-time candidate but has a long involvement in politics, mainly running the election campaigns for Democratic judges Linda Stephens, Robin Hudson, and Suzanne Reynolds.

Grafstein won her primary last May against Patrick Buffkin with almost 67% of the vote.

Yes, she is a powerful candidate who ought to win this race even on a rainy day.

Michael Munger (L)

There's one other candidate on this ballot, the somewhat famous Libertarian Michael Munger, a Duke professor of economics and political science who ran for governor in 2008 and for an NCHouse seat in 2020. Like most Libertarians (like more than most perhaps), I can agree with some of his policy positions since he's more socially liberal than some Democrats.

He might draw up to 4% of the general election vote.

NC Proud Boys Leader Pleads Guilty to Seditious Conspiracy

 

Jeremy Bertino, described as a leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Proud Boys, has pleaded guilty to the most serious charge leveled against any of the rioters on January 6th -- seditious conspiracy to use force to oppose the government of the United States.

And ... uh-oh ... he's cooperating with prosecutors and has agreed to testify against fellow Proud Boys at their trials. "In an unusual admission in court reflecting the importance of what Bertino might say, prosecutors said they might seek leniency at the sentencing and hide Bertino in a federal witness-protection program" (NandO).

Bertino is the 2nd NC Proud Boy to plead guilty. Charles Donohoe of Kernersville, the state Proud Boys president described as another key planner of the group’s role on Jan. 6, has already pleaded guilty to two lesser felonies and likewise promised to cooperate. The 34-year-old former Marine was one of six Proud Boys members named in a May seditious conspiracy indictment. 

William Todd Wilson of Newton Grove also has pleaded guilty to the sedition charge. Prosecutors say Wilson is state president of the Oath Keepers, a separate militia group accused of being at the center of the Capitol violence.

A Rising Republican Star in HD73

 

My attention was drawn this morning to Brian Echevarria, the Republican candidate for the NC House Dist. 73. The name is Cuban, and you need to pronounce it using all five syllables. He was outed first by Carolina Forward as having previously owned a lively (now supposedly scandalous) Facebook page, Spank That Tail, that advocated, sometimes quite humorously, for more corporal punishment for children, especially those caught “twerking” and not going to church. Especially not going to church.

The Charlotte Observer picked up the story, followed by the Raleigh News and Observer, where I saw it a couple of hours ago. Apparently, the now defunct "Spank That Tail" FB page "linked to a website, spankthattail.com, which is inactive. Documents from the N.C. Secretary of State’s Office also show Echevarria as the registered agent of a business called Spank That Tail, LLC. The business formed in December 2014. It was administratively dissolved in 2016."

From what I've now seen of candidate Brian Echevarria, I'm frankly astounded by the way he's handling this meh revelation. He was defensive with the Charlotte Observer -- "it was all joke" -- when clearly it was not a joke but an actual stab at a new business. Was he planning to market wooden paddles? He brags on his website that marketing is his super-power, so it tracks.

I'm surprised that the Echevarria I've been watching on video didn't immediately throw it back in the media's face. I'm surprised he wasn't proud of that funny but marketable entrepreneurship.

He finished on time, with seconds left over.

I grew up with corporal punishment. I had an outbreak of temper tantrums when I was 5. My mother sent me on regular errands to the backyard peach tree. "You break me off a keen limb and bring it back here." Those lessons stuck, and the welts went away. Everyone in that culture believed in and practiced spanking, because in West Texas, if you had boys, you had potential furniture breakage and an eye put out from the constant rough-housing. I had an older brother who was irritated with my presence. Because I was irritating. I was a master of irritation. Sorry, but some of us need a good spanking.

I had to go take a closer look at this guy Echevarria. I found out immediately that he can talk. Not just the perpetual yammer of politics but logical, clear, complex sentences spoken by someone born (or made?) for the microphone. He's got an engaging personality -- all brightness and the joy from knowing he's unimpeachably right -- and the kind of slick delivery that suggests he learned it in church. He's a born preacher, a persuader, a marketeer indeed, but his is not like the preaching of bully Mark Robinson. Echevarria is more on the Ted Talk end of that spectrum than the hellfire and sarcasm end that Robinson occupies.

Echevarria is famous for delivering 3 minutes of a blistering takedown of what he'd heard about CRT (which he clearly didn't really understand), in front of the Cabarrus County School Board. The board members were over-matched by Echevarria. They had already shown cracks in the masks policy for school (it was mid-February of this year, after all, when most people were just giving up and giving in to the idea of catching COVID), and I believe Echevarria, who had many in the audience nodding their heads, laughing at his fluency, and applauding him, I believe he simply cowed that school board. (The video, which went viral and got a write-up in the New York Post, can be seen on his website.)

I totally get Echevarria's point, though I think it's based on a myth, a misunderstanding of history mixed with an understandable defensiveness, and I can't accept that basis. Though I get it why a multi-racial man with an accomplished wife and three kids in the rural South might push back:

“CRT, all of that, the parents don’t want it. It’s a big fat lie,” Echevarria said. “If you believe in CRT … it means you look at your black neighbor and say they’re oppressed and you look at your white neighbor and say they’re evil — regardless of the experience you’ve had with them. We know that’s not true because we believe the lives we live.”

He didn't get recruited by Republican leaders to run for office based on the viral spread of that video, because the speech in front of the Board of Education came last February, and he had already filed to run in December. I know not whether he was recruited or launched this on his own, but his speech on CRT produced a stunning political debut, and he's clearly riding it like a stallion. I'm reminded of his obsession with "the marketplace." He's vague about his "many businesses" and how he makes his living, Linked In says he's a financial advisor (Consolidated Planning Inc., but only since July of this year). I think he's tried many enterprises but at some point understood that his real product is himself, and he's pretty good at selling.

He's a hustler, maybe not in the wholly negative sense that Judge Judy means when she uses the word, but he strikes me as a person on the street who can convince "less skillful players" into competing at a gambling game that he's always going to win. If he makes it to the NC House, he'll rise faster than Mark Robinson and will make more sense. And that's a frightening prospect.

Echevarria's Democratic opponent

House District 73 is brand new after the most recent redistricting. NCFree, which leans right, rates it R + 5, but Dave's Redistricting gives a very slight edge to Democrats: 49.5% v. 47.8% Republican.

HD73 is an open seat. The Democrat running, another first-time candidate upon whom some considerable hope has been pinned, Diamond Staton-Williams, is a member of the Harrisburg Town Council and a nurse, an evidently single mom with three kids, and her personal story is as up-by-her-own-bootstraps as Echevarria's, but her buttoned-down campaign also seems over-matched. She is endorsed by Lillian's List.

She's not got any candidate video that I've found, but she was interviewed by J D Wooten for his "Carolina Democracy" podcast.

The State of Play in Buncombe County

 

Going into 2022, the entire NC House delegation from Buncombe County -- Susan Fisher, John Ager, and Brian Turner -- announced they would not be running for reelection. Ager and Turner promised to serve out their terms, but Susan Fisher went ahead and officially resigned in January, which forced an appointment to fill out her term. According to Dave's Redistricting and NCFree, those three districts ought to be solid for remaining in Democratic hands.

House District 114

Susan Fisher's former district (eastern Buncombe). Dave rates it 63.9% Democratic, NC Free as D+10.

Eric Ager

Buncombe Democrats chose data scientist and Peace Corps veteran Caleb Rudow to finish Fisher's term, and Gov. Cooper dutifully appointed him on February 1st. The NC General Assembly site lists Rudow as currently serving in the Dist. 114 seat, but here's a small mystery: Ballotpedia says he was running for reelection in Dist., 114, but "did not appear on the ballot for the Democratic primary on May 17, 2022." Instead, he was suddenly running for the Dist. 116 seat. In his place in HD114, Eric Ager, John Ager's son, is now the Democrat on the ballot. But Eric Ager had already announced that he would be running for his father's seat in HD115. Something happened. The fruit-baskets turned over, so to speak, and I frankly don't know what.

So it's now Eric Ager (D) v. Everett Pittillo (R) in HD114.

Ager is a former Navy pilot and currently the operations manager of the Ager family farm, Hickory Nut Gap Farm.

Everett Pittillo "has worked in the food service industry, professional baseball player, mixed-martial artist, construction worker, farmer, mechanic, and worked in the Heating and Air Conditioning industry. Mr. Pittillo has also managed small businesses and large corporations alike. Having done most, not one individual can say that he does not relate to the blue-collar worker" (Pittillo website).

If Pittillo is a Trumpist, he's keeping it well hidden.

House District 115

Lindsey Prather

The John Ager seat in southern Buncombe. Dave's Redistricting scores it 53.6% Democratic, NCFree as D+4.

Ager's son Eric didn't end up running for this seat as he promised (see above), so the Democrat on the ballot is Lindsey Prather. Prather was for six years a public school teacher and then finished a Master's in Public Affairs at Western Carolina, and now works as assistant director of admissions at UNC-Asheville. She came to my attention by being endorsed by Pro-Choice NC.

Pratik Bhakta (R) immigrated with his parents from India in 1978 and was studying electrical engineering at NC State when family circumstances forced him home to Asheville to manage the family's motel.

Like Everett Pittillo above, Bhakta strikes a decidedly moderate tone on issues.

House District 116

Caleb Rudow

Brian Turner's current seat. Dave rates it 57.7% Democratic, NCFree as D+7.

This is where Democrat Caleb Rudow ended up running. He served in the Peace Corps in Zambia, and he's fluent in Spanish. He's a data scientist with a masters degree in Global Policy Studies from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Mollie Rose (R) is pretty invisible on-line, with no website nor Facebook nor Twitter account. The Buncombe GOP got her to list her policy positions, which contain a few significant dog whistles -- parental choice in schools (she's anti-CRT), responsible energy solutions, voter integrity, and compassionate fiscal responsibility which focuses on the true needs of hard working North Carolinians, while protecting our resources for the future."

BOTTOMLINE: Buncombe County is not a congenial piece of real estate from hard-right conservatives.

First Day of a New Supreme Court Term

 

The County Commish Race in Transylvania County

Wise

Lauren Wise is about as qualified as a county commission candidate can be. He's served on the Transylvania Co planning board for five years, currently as its chair. He's an architect and clearly has an eye for planning and long-range policy. He's been a bridge-builder and consensus leader on the planning board -- which is majority Republican -- but Wise has reputedly gotten unanimous recommendations out of them. Which then promptly die in the hands of hard-right county commissioners.

For example, in 2017 a new comprehensive plan for Transylvania identified a stretch of US 276 in the southeastern part of the county known as Cedar Mountain, bordering Henderson Co and South Carolina (the area contains the DuPont State Forest; its "heart" is some 20 minutes from the county seat of Brevard) -- someone with development stars in his eyes put his thumb on Cedar Mountain and declared it a "Designated Growth Area/Commercial Node."

The whole area is "without public water and sewer" and its long-time residents went gulp at the idea of being transformed by devil-take-the-hindmost commercial development (hello, Pigeon Forge), so they petitioned the county commission with a comprehensive plan of their own, a plan championed by Lauren Wise which would carefully limit different types of development, and encourage other including affordable workforce housing, none of which has to negatively impact historical and cultural norms. Some stuck-in-the-mud and beholden-to-special-interest Republicans on the county commish went "eek, zoning!" and tabled any further consideration of the plan in October 2021. And there it rests.

Is Lauren Wise going to run into the "zoning" buzzsaw that has ruined so many political movements in rural counties?

The historic Transylvania Courthouse was built in the 1870s and has been outrageously neglected by skinflint Republican commissioners who have been much more married to low taxes (the only issue they care about) than they are to historic preservation. Apparently the place is not only run-down but dangerously run-down, with some plaster ceilings prone to collapse. That's according to a letter of official complaint that a senior judge addressed to the county commission. He outlined outdated design and cramped conditions "that allow close contact between, for example, accused criminals and the people they are accused of victimizing." Did the commish take action? No, another prime example of why change is needed in Transylvania County, according to Lauren Wise.

In 2018 a bond issue authorizing some $68 million "to pay the capital costs of constructing, improving, renovating and equipping school facilities" easily passed in Transylvania County, and Democrat Wise is campaigning against Republican dilly-dallying over using that bond:

“Commissioners have spent the four years since this voter-approved bond issue passed collecting taxes, stalling contract negotiations, questioning the ability of voters to understand the complexity of the issue . . . and suggesting that Clark Nexsen, one of the most respected school architects in the country, is somehow fleecing our county with fees,” Wise has said.

“They have done everything possible not to move forward.”

It's a pattern of conservative foot-dragging all too familiar, especially when it comes to building tax-supported infrastructure for the good of the wider community instead of services for purely commercial interests.

It would be a huge indication of changing plate tectonics if Lauren Wise were to win this race. And no big surprise if he doesn't.

Two seats are open on the commission. Three candidates are running -- two Republicans (one an incumbent) and Wise. Two of the three will be elected. 

The Best Little Party in the State

 

"Very red Transylvania County." Brevard is the county seat. Voters there haven't elected a Democrat to the county commission since 2006. Trump took 57% of the Transylvania vote in 2020. Madison Cawthorn, 56%. Those were big wins -- but nowhere close to the 70% that Trump took in some other rural NC counties. The star Democratic candidate on the local 2020 Transylvania ballot, the engaging and credible Sam Edney, lost to incumbent whippersnapper Jake Johnson, but Edney took over 44% of the vote. The hurdle to victory, six percentage points. I know it may be a dreamscape, but that's a number I could work with if I had a fired up bunch of Democrats with me.

The Democratic Party of Transylvania County is on fire, the good kind. While some rural county Democratic parties have essentially given up and sunk out of sight into visible despair, Transylvania Democrats are projecting enthusiastic muscle. They've produced a couple of smashing TV ads (one is shown below), and their website is possibly (probably) the best website for any county Democratic Party in the state (and that includes the website I've been desultorily involved with for going on 30 years).

They ran a Democrat for county commish in 2020, David Siniard. He came in 4th, so missed getting a seat, but his vote total was only 2.3% behind the 3rd-place Republican -- some 1,200 votes. That's already substantially cutting the Trump/Cawthorn margin. Can that be whittled all the way down this year? You bet it can.

This year, Transylvania Democrats have a strong, well prepared co commish candidate in Lauren Wise. I have just read a long, in-depth piece of reporting on him and his candidacy on the BrevardNewsBeat (and I'll have more to say about him). He has the marks of someone who could pull off an upset.

Especially if the Party can get out the vote, especially the women. Certainly, the homegrown ad that the Transylvania Party just produced can't hurt that effort (and confirms what some of us have been saying, that the Dobbs decision plays well even in rural counties). (And by the way, what a find Shay Donahue is!). (Another less-than-a-minute Transylvania spot highlighting education can be seen here.)