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.

BREAKING: State BOE Moves Toward Evidentiary Hearing on Bladen County

At the State Board of Elections minutes ago, Democratic member Joshua Malcolm moved for an evidentiary hearing on the irregularities involving absentee ballots in the 9th Congressional District before December 21. The vote was 7-2, so at least two Republicans voted for the motion.

In other words, the election of Republican Mark Harris is still uncertified.

FOOTNOTE
Watauga County's own Four Eggers was one of the two Republicans to vote for Malcolm's motion.

ANOTHER FOOTNOTE
In a letter to the NCSBE Chair, NC Democratic Party attorney John Wallace urged the board to delay certification of the Harris election, and he outlined additional reasons for an investigation (via Jim Morrill in the Charlotte Observer):

...Bladen County had the highest percentage of absentee ballot requests in the state. There, 7.5 percent of registered voters requested absentee ballots. In most counties it was less than 3 percent.

An analysis by Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer suggested more aberrations.

In seven of the eight counties in the 9th District, for example, McCready won a lopsided majority of the mailed-in absentee ballots. But not in Bladen County. There, Republican Mark Harris won 61 percent even though registered Republicans accounted for only 19 percent of the county’s accepted absentee ballots.

Unaffiliated voters accounted for 39 percent. Bitzer said Harris’ margin “could potentially come from all those unaffiliated voters.”

“But to have each and every one of those unaffiliated voters vote Republican, that’s pretty astonishing,” he added. “If that’s the case, there’s a very concerted effort to use that method to one candidate’s advantage. . . . But at that level there’s something else beyond a concerted effort that could be at work.”

YET ANOTHER FOOTNOTE

AP NEWS

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina judges have delayed the enforcement of their ruling that struck down the latest iteration of the state elections board. 

The extension from the three-judge panel came late Friday.

The judges ruled in October that the board’s composition doesn’t give Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper the control that’s warranted to him over an executive agency. They had put off the board’s termination until Dec. 3, but now it won’t happen until noon Dec. 12. 

GOP leaders had asked the judges for at least another 30 days so they could pass a new elections board law and let the current board work on resolving the pending 9th Congressional District election. The current nine-member board said Friday it would hold an evidentiary hearing on the 9th District by Dec. 21.

So ... sports fans, the 9-member SBOE will stay empaneled for a little longer to resolve this election. But even that is complicated somewhat by a complaint (justified, in our opinion) filed against the Democratic chair of the SBOE, Andy Penry. Penry, in his capacity as chair of a board assembled to guarantee non-partisan administration of elections, should not have been tweeting such partisan material.

Watauga BOE Squelches Eric Eller's Motion to Refer Disallowed Provisional Voters for Investigation for "Fraud"

[This post partially answers in the affirmative the question asked earlier: "Is Watauga BOE Member Eric Eller Just Nathan Miller With Hair?"

So Republican members of the Watauga Board of Elections -- Chair Nancy Owen and fellow member Eric Eller -- voted this morning to refer over 200 would-be voters on November 6 to the State Board of Elections for the possible crime of election fraud. That motion died 2-2.

Democratic member Jane Anne Hodges had pointed out that the local election officials have always acted in accordance with State Board of Elections -- specifically their instructions to give any person requesting it a provisional ballot (instrux consistent with Federal law, incidentally). The would-be voter signs an affidavit affirming "I am a duly registered voter." As always happens in such cases, that would-be voter is subsequently researched to determine whether there is a proper registration on file in Watauga. If not, that ballot will not count. Over 200 of some 500+ total provisional ballots did not count. But Eric Eller thinks -- and thinks strongly -- that the signature alone constitutes potential voter fraud.

"Potential" is the operative word. It would be fraud if the voter knowingly made a false statement. Most of those 200+ disallowed ballots were cast by young people who had filled out voter registration forms in Watauga County but listed their residential addresses at the homes they recently moved away from -- where their parents live -- and did not understand enough about the process to know that they were in fact registering to vote in some other county.

Eric Eller wants those knuckleheads prosecuted for fraud. So does Nancy Owen.

Democratic member Marv Williamsen said he didn't want to participate in any aggression toward these would-be voters -- did they knowingly do anything wrong. Williamsen didn't like what message that would send to all young voters -- "We'll get you if you make a mistake trying to exercise your right to vote." Williamsen especially didn't want to go there in the current national churn of alleged "voter suppression."

At the mention of those words, Eric Eller went ballistic. He was shouting "no voter suppression, no voter suppression," but an 18-year-old who blundered into a polling place last November 6, thinking he was registered in Watauga County and who just wanted to participate in the national elections -- that would-be voter might disagree about the implied intimidation.

To be referred for possible prosecution for fraud -- when your vote didn't count anyway -- looks like very direct voter suppression to me.

What's the Matter With Bladen County?

The article down-column, "State Board of Elections Refuses To Certify Congressional Race, NC-9," was pure speculation on my part (brought on -- in my defense -- by SBOE member Joshua Malcolm's choice of words and general mysteriousness). I was largely wrong (though accurate in my background facts from a 2016 scandal in Bladen County). I had gone researching and immediately turned up the name Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. He was charging others with absentee ballot fraud in 2016, and in 2018, he appears to have followed that same piper.

Joe Bruno, in the field reporting for WSOC, has been a veritable developer of leads (his Twitter feed is especially lively) and hence indispensable in understanding this developing sinkhole. Don't know about other regional TV stations (I watch little network TV), but WSOC has been comprehensive in its coverage.

First, Joe Bruno's Twitter feed:

Oct 28
A spokesperson for NCSBE says shortly after the election, a state investigator seized absentee ballot request forms and absentee ballot container envelopes (the envelopes that ballots are returned in), but not the ballots themselves from Bladen County

Oct 28
Washington Post: "The investigation appears to be focused on Bladen County, but an official in Robeson County said that county also has been contacted"

Oct. 28
BREAKING- I have obtained 6 sworn affidavits related to the #NC09 investigation. A team of a dozen @wsoctv employees and I working on this. Huge allegations and potential implications.

The affidavits center around a man named Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. He is well known in Bladen County political circles. Attempts to get in contact with Dowless have so far been unsuccessful

Two of the affidavits reference Dowless working for the Harris campaign. (Harris camp hasn't responded) One witness claims to have overheard someone saying Dowless would get a $40,000 bonus if Harris won. Another witness claims Dowless told him he doesn't do checks, just cash

In a sworn affidavit a witness claims Dowless told him he had 80 people working for him and that he was doing "absentee" for Harris. This conversation was said to have happened on April 25 before the primary.

Oct. 29

Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. on right.
His brother in Mark Harris Tshirt
Photo Joe Bruno

Oct. 29

Maybe most significant of all, because it claims insider info on the Bladen Co. BOE:
A woman claims the tape showing election results was run after the polls closed and viewed by officials who were not judges. She also claimed the absentee mail in ballots were distinctive.. and a large number from the Bethel precinct

Nov. 30

The NCSBOE will be meeting this morning via teleconference. The certification/decertification of the Harris-McCready congressional race is on the agenda. The NCSBOE has every right under state law to mandate a new election "if it finds that the race was tainted, a move likely to be challenged in court." NCGOP has promised to sue (Kirk Ross in the WashPost).

To complicate the matter further: The present state board and all local county boards will be dissolved as of midnight next Monday, December 3, and the board structure will revert to 3-2 Democratic majority on the state board and 2-1 Democratic majority on all county boards. That's the effect of a three-judge ruling reached last October 16, 2018. Implementation of that order was put on hold until after the election, but is in force now.