Town Hall Condemns Appalachian State’s Unresponsiveness to Local Concerns

 

What impact is Appalachian State having on Boone? 

This was the question explored by a town hall held last night in the Evelyn Johnson Room of the Watauga County Public Library. The event was sponsored by the Appalachian State chapter of the American Association of University Professors and ClimAct, a local environmental group. The room was packed, with over forty citizens in attendance and that many more joining via Zoom.

The town hall left little doubt that there is a lot of concern—from community members, students, and faculty—that the university may be adversely impacting Boone and the surrounding area. Kellie Reed Ashcraft of the Watauga Compassionate Care Initiative noted that Boone’s poverty rate is significantly higher than the state average. There was a lot of worry expressed about the university’s aggressive enrollment growth goals. Many noted that the town is increasingly full of shoddy housing and that it is expensive, too, forcing many people who work in Boone to seek housing elsewhere. Some students bemoaned that App State is becoming a degree mill, and that reckless growth is resulting in lower quality of students, diminishing the quality of an Appalachian degree. One participant quoted Edward Abbey to chastise the university’s priorities: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Frustration was also expressed about the university’s lack of responsiveness to the Boone community, even to answer questions. At one point, the question was asked: “Who has even met Sheri Everts [the App State Chancellor]?” Only a few hands were raised. Many noted that the core problem is that Everts owes her $375,000 annual salary to the UNC Board of Governors in Chapel Hill—and that the Board is the only constituency she really cares about. Needless to say, the Board is appointed entirely by the Republican majority in the General Assembly.

Finally, some attendees pointed out that, on top of everything else, the recent revelations about App Pac and the lavish donations by two members of the App State Board of Trustees suggest that the university is now trying to buy the Boone Town Council. What a convenient way to get land owned by the university rezoned to meet its interests—and those of wealthy real estate developers.

Enough is enough, it was decided. App State used to be the pride of Boone. But, as one resident pointed out in one of the evening’s most moving testimonials, the university is now exploiting the local population, forcing out people who have lived in the region for generations.

The event’s organizers promised that more was soon to come.

More Questions About Big-Dollar Donors to AppPAC

Additional background on Mark Ricks and Brian Tracy, two maxxed-out donors to the AppPAC in the Boone Town Council elections:

In November 2017, at the time Mark Ricks was giving $10 million to AppState athletics, Brian Tracy was senior associate athletic director for external affairs at the university and very involved in securing that unprecedented gift from Ricks. The next year, in 2018, Ricks was appointed to the AppState board of trustees.

Last month on September 15, when he gave $5,600 to the AppPAC, Brian Tracy listed his address in Round Hill, Va., and his employment as "COO of DWF." I understand COO to mean Chief Operating Officer, but DWF momentarily stumped me. DWF? I didn't immediately understand that stood for Double Wood Farm, "an equestrian sanctuary for retired show horses in Bluemont, Virginia," owned by BOT member Mark Ricks. (I'm grateful to "Octavia" who made the connection in a comment on "Who's Funding the Appalachian PAC.")

So Brian Tracy is now working for Mark Ricks and living near Double Wood Farm in Virginia? And maxxing out to the same political action committee that Mark Ricks is supporting?

Why are so many of the big-dollar donors to AppPAC from out of state? We understand why so many have clear connections to AppState.

AppPac's Expenditures Report -- Hard To Figure

 

The expenditures report submitted by the Appalachian PAC to the State Board of Elections is one confounding document, since the PAC treasurer in Raleigh wants to claim a year-to-date expenditure for two Democrats running in the BooneTown Council races as $6,936.54, which is not just misleading -- it seems deliberately misleading, because each of four candidates, including the formal PAC endorsements of Eric Woolridge and Benjamin Ray, are all also listed as receiving the exact same amount: $6,936.54. In actuality, this same report clearly shows that the PAC spent only $19.57 each on its support for Tugman and Futrelle (for putting their names on a flyer? Who knows what could possibly have cost less than $20?).

Let's be clear: the PAC gave no cash to any of the candidates. That almost-$7K is an indirect contribution in the form of PAC mailers, yardsigns, buttons, etc. In fact it looks as though the PAC added up all (or most?) of its combined operating expenses, came up with $27,746.16, and divided it four ways, as though the two Democrats, Edie Tugman and Tim Futrelle, have benefitted equally with the PAC's actual endorsements of Woolridge and Ray.

How dumb do they think we are?

Edie Tugman is on record with this statement: "I have not sought endorsement from any PAC. I was sent a questionnaire by the Appalachian PAC and responded. I was then contacted and interviewed as they were making decisions about who to promote. As they were not forthcoming about who their Board Members are, who their donors/supporters are and had no position papers, I declined to be considered. After the interview, I wrote to Travis Critcher that I would not seek or accept support of any kind from the organization."

Tim Futrelle wrote this: "I have not sought any endorsement or financial contribution from any PAC. In full disclosure, during the first week of my campaign, a member of the North Carolina Association of Realtors contacted me to participate in an interview regarding a regional comprehensive housing study that would include our area. A few weeks after the interview I received a contribution from their organization. This is the only contribution of this type I have received. All others have been, and will continue to be, individual donors."

The PAC, in its continuing effort to look "non-partisan," sort of patted Tugman and Futrelle on the head, ignored Tugman and Futrelle's request that they not be endorsed by the AppPAC, and put Tugman and Futrelle's names on their PAC yardsign in much smaller type (the pat on the head). I guess they're saying that pat on the head is worth $6,936.54.

Again: how dumb do they think we are?

Who's Funding the Appalachian PAC?

"Political Committee Disclosure Reports" are due at the NC Board of Elections by this weekend, and the report from the Appalachian PAC, the newest organized political influencer in Watauga, was actually delivered early. Here are the donors as reported:

Maxxed Out

Rick Harmon, attorney with Harmon & Davies, Lancaster, Pa. -- $5,600

Mark Ricks, owner, Double Wood Farm, Boone -- $5,600

R. Thomas "Tommy" Sofield, owner, US Bldgs, Boone -- $5,600

Brian Tracy, COO, DWF, Round Hill, Va. -- $5,600

NOTE: Both Ricks and Sofield are members of the ASU Board of Trustees

NOTE: What is "DWF" in Round Hill, Va.? 

 

2nd Tier 

Jay Harrill, COO, Echota Resort, Avery County -- $1,000

Arthur H. Barber, owner, Charleston Forge, Boone -- $500

Susan M. Barber, owner, Charleston Forge, Boone -- $500

Chad Seigler, VP International Business, NASCAR, Stanley, NC -- $500

NOTE: Chad Seigler is a sports marketing executive and a member of the board for the Appalachian Foundation

Also Gave

Sallie Aceto, Owner, Design & Media Group, Raleigh, NC -- $278.08 (in kind)

Sallie Aceto, ditto -- $278.08 (credit card)

Travis Critcher, Director, Samaritan's Purse, Boone -- $100

Richard Woods, nurse anesthetist, Boone -- $100 

 

Mike Clampitt, 2nd Member of the NC House, Outed for Membership in Oath Keepers

 

Clampitt

First, it was NC House member Keith Kidwell outed as a member of Oath Keepers, the paramilitary outfit that participated in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. Literally dozens of Oath Keepers have been arrested for their participation in that assault. Apparently sitting back home and watching were Rep. Kidwell and yet another member of the NC House, Mike Clampitt of Bryson City. (Clampitt has traded that seat back and forth with Democrat Joe Sam Queen. Queen beat Clampitt in 2018, but Clampitt took back the seat last November.)

The following is from an investigation by ProPublica, as reprinted by The Progressive Pulse:

People with law enforcement and military backgrounds — like Clampitt, a retired fire captain in Charlotte, North Carolina — have been the focus of the Oath Keepers’ recruiting efforts since the group started in 2009. According to researchers who monitor the group’s activities, Oath Keepers pledge to resist if the federal government imposes martial law, invades a state or takes people’s guns, ideas that show up in a dark swirl of right-wing conspiracy theories. The group is loosely organized and its leaders do not centrally issue commands. The organization’s roster has ballooned in recent years, from less than 10,000 members at the start of 2011 to more than 35,000 by 2020, membership records show....

Clampitt said he went to a few Oath Keepers meetings when he joined back in 2014, but the way he participates now is by being a state legislator. He has co-sponsored a bill to allow elected officials to carry concealed guns in courthouses, schools and government buildings, and he supported legislation stiffening penalties for violent demonstrations in response to last year’s protests in Raleigh over George Floyd’s murder. Clampitt said he opposes violence but stood by his Oath Keepers affiliation, despite the dozens of members charged in the Capitol riot.

"The way he participates now is by being a state legislator." Yeah, we get that. He has another history of nostalgia for the Old Confederacy, and luckily he's a state legislator who can pass a law that you cannot bring up the Old Confederacy in any NC classroom in a discussion of racism.

Zero 'Class,' But Of Course You Already Knew That

 

May the statement Donald J. Trump made about a dead statesman haunt him for the rest of his life:

"Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!"

But anyway.

Banned from Twitter for life, Trump issued those words in a statement he hoped others would copy onto Twitter, which many did. Trump did not even try to conceal his envy for a man whose virtues others celebrate -- "Hope that happens to me someday."

Pathetic.

From Price to Cawthorn: North Carolina's Slide Into Hair-Brained Mediocrity

 

The 4th CD is losing a scholar and a gentleman in David Price. I can't begin to do him justice here, so I'll quote Ned Barnett:

In his decades in Washington, Price has been an earnest and thoughtful representative, liberal in his politics, but deeply traditional in his respect for the history of Congress and his commitment to work within the system. 

Throughout his career, Price has focused on issues important to a district known for its universities and high-tech businesses. A longtime member of the House Appropriations Committee, he helped win funding for expansion of the EPA lab at Research Triangle Park. He has also advocated for education, election reforms, commuter rail transportation, health care and affordable housing. 

A native of Tennessee, Price first attended Mars Hill College before transferring to the University of North Carolina and then going on to Yale where he earned a divinity degree and a doctorate in political science.

As he prepares to leave Congress, Price feels that the institution is leaving itself. Once a more deliberative body led by senior members and more open to bipartisanship, he sees Congress, especially the House, as an institution where showmanship and partisanship prevail and experience and expertise matter less.

What? "Showmanship and partisanship" have replaced "experience and expertise" in the US House? Yes, look no further than the 11th CD's Madison Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress and the stupidest and who is nothing but spectacle and irresponsible mouth-flap.

Lord help us, North Carolina. Instead of more statesmen, you send a punk who's all about clowning for the Trumpist crowd.

The Arc of Nathan Tabor

 

Nathan Tabor is currently in jail in Brunswick County, with a list of charges I'll get around to summarizing below. Way back in 2004, Tabor ran as a young Christian conservative against Virginia Foxx in the Republican congressional primary, the year that Foxx took the 5th District seat she still holds. Tabor came in fifth out of six. He had been endorsed by the NC Right to Life and by the Rev. Jerry Falwell (no, really), who actually called Tabor "a young Jesse Helms." The photo here is from that period in Tabor's life.

He did his best to live up to Falwell's compliment. He was particularly unbending on the issue of abortion. He constantly modeled outrage over what women might do with their bodies, coming out of a general contempt for "women's rights." He ran as though Virginia Foxx was faaaar to the left, at the vanguard of bossy liberal women who were going to destroy Christian principles. He had attended Pat Robertson's Regent University and followed the Gospel of "let your women keep silence." He published The Conservative Voice, was kind enough to put me on his email list, so I regularly expressed my own outrage at his preachments. I wrote a lot about Tabor after 2004.

Tabor went on to chair the Forsyth County Republican Party, ran unsuccessfully for town alderman in Kernersville, and attempted to file in 2012 for the 6th District congressional primary but got to the Board of Elections after the deadline.

Currently, his estranged wife says he's addicted to drugs and always on the verge of financial disaster. Which perhaps explains how his current incarceration got started. He was arrested earlier in October by the Ocean Isle Beach police department, along with the Brunswick County Sheriff's office, for stealing catalytic converters from a church, a Habitat for Humanity Restore, and from two different people (some of the goods allegedly stolen at Sunset Beach). (Michael Hewlett, Winston-Salem Journal, has the most complete story on Tabor's multiple troubles.)

One wonders what Tabor was doing at the beach. His home is in Kernersville. Could it have anything to do with this: There was a warrant out for Tabor's arrest in Kernersville on August 21, 2021, on a complaint of cyberstalking filed by his pastor at the Kerwin Baptist Church. (The entanglements get increasingly baroque.) Luckily, the third week in August is the perfect time to go to the beach! But the details of his arrest suggest he was also close to destitute. And then there's what his wife wrote when she filed for complete custody of their 16-year-old daughter: “Defendant has become addicted to drugs, spending thousands and thousands of dollars on drugs.”

Nathan Tabor, four days ago

Added to the charges of outright theft: allegations that he made threats against his mother-in-law and other family members in Catawba County in an attempt to get more than $200,000 and that he harassed his pastor in Forsyth County, accusing the pastor of embezzling money from the church. He made sexually-explicit comments to both the pastor and his wife. The pastor filed for a restraining order against Tabor in August.

Mrs. Tabor herself filed for a restraining order against her husband after they separated last June, alleging that he had sent a constant stream of harassing text messages, emails, and social media postings. “Defendant is mentally and emotionally abusive to the minor child, including sending email implying the minor child will burn in hell, and ‘I curse that and pray every time you see or touch something you enjoy that you immediately get sick.’ ”

This is not to say that all Christian conservatives are hypocrites and potentially "mental." This is to say that sometimes claiming to be a Christian conservative can cover big cracks in character.

AppState Denies Any Involvement in the Appalachian PAC

 

On Monday, Oct. 11, AppState political science major Adam Zebzda addressed a letter to the university administration "respectfully requesting" an investigation into the involvement of two AppState trustees in the launch of a political action committee (PAC) whose stated goal is to take over Boone town government for the betterment of the real estate industry and housing developers. I have a copy of that letter.

 

Zebzda wanted answers about whether "any Trustees violated North Carolina General Statutes or the UNC Policy Manual and Code, either explicitly or in spirit, which govern the political involvement of public State officials…."

 

Quickly the deputy general counsel for Chancellor Sheri Everts answered Zebzda in a two-page denial on Oct. 12, quick turnaround for a bureaucracy! (I also have a copy of that letter.) There's been no untoward political activity by the two trustees nor by Appalachian State University, wrote the deputy. 

 

Much of his denial seemed based on the photograph of the two trustees that was published on this site: 

 

The deputy counsel wrote: "Their only involvement seemed to be that they were photographed together. The photograph further illustrates that neither of these individuals wore any indicia of Appalachian State University affiliation and were pictured talking to each other and not candidates or officers of App-PAC."

 

The wording is interesting: "Their only involvement." The flat denial implied by that word choice gets undercut immediately by "seemed to be," which made me flash on the university's Latin motto: To Be Rather Than To Seem. The physical evidence in this case is a "seems," at least for the deputy counsel, and is utterly without substance. (But the involvement of high-ranking university officials in a PAC was never the implication of an otherwise innocent photograph. It's the stuff that stands well outside the view of any camera that concerns us. And the lawyer's argument is silly.)

 

None of it matters, anyway, because the deputy counsel hurries to his main point: The rules against political activity applies to employees, not to trustees (tiers of power):

 

"…this North Carolina law only applies to employees, as it is entitled Political Activity of Employees. Trustees are not Appalachian State University employees." 

 

Flatly stated, the two trustees are entitled to their political activity. I certainly agree with that. The question for me was always this: Does their political activity represent political policy for the university?

 

The deputy counsel says "no."

 

"To be clear, App-PAC is not affiliated with the University. Most importantly, the University is not affiliated, not associated, not connected and otherwise not part of the PAC in any way, especially when individuals, whether they be faculty, staff or students, are permitted to attend these types of political events on their own time."

 

I accept that categorial denial and wonder why the chancellor did not also say this at the ASU faculty senate meeting last week. I've apparently been roundly condemned on campus for publishing that Zoom clip of Chancellor Everts remaining mute (and not a little miffed) when asked the direct question about university knowledge of or involvement in the Appalachian PAC. If her silence did not signal guilt, then I have to assume it's just arrogance and irritation at being questioned about anything at all, ever.

 

That's now the corporate style at AppState.

 

And the overriding question behind all this controversy remains: What are AppState ambitions in Boone regarding real estate development, and what kind of levers of power can they marshal for those ambitions?