#ncga: GOP-blessed UNC BOG member a top campaign aide to DEMOCRATS
Walter Davenport has a four year term (2015-2019) on the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. He had to make it through a GOP-dominated
legislature to get that appointment. In fact, Cary’s Rep. Nelson Dollar (R) was a big booster of Davenport’s candidacy for a board slot. Here’s an excerpt from my post in March 2015:
My sources tell me that state Rep. Nelson Dollar (R) is aggressively touting the candidacy of one Walter Davenport of Raleigh. What is it about Mr. Davenport that so impresses the honorable gentleman from Wake County? According to one of my sources:
” ‘He’s black and he’s been there before. That’s why we need to vote for him.’ THAT is what Nelson is running around telling everybody. We’ve got an awful lot of really solid candidates, who by the way actually bothered to register and vote Republican, and this is what Nelson finds so fascinating about Mr. Davenport.”
What else is so interesting about Mr. Davenport? According to the state board of elections, he’s a registered Democrat. He served as treasurer for Democrat Cheri Beasley’s successful campaign for state Supreme Court last year. FEC records also show that he donated to Democrat Laura Fjeld — now-congressman Mark Walker’s general election opponent — and incumbent congressman G.K. Butterfield (D). […]
Well, Mr. Davenport is now safely ensconced on the university’s big board until 2019. I was reviewing Dan Blue III’s campaign finance reports when I discovered WALTER DAVENPORT is the treasurer for Blue’s 2016 state treasurer campaign! (Wow. Get the Republicans to do you a solid — appoint you to the UNC Board — and then go to 
work against those same Republicans.)
Davenport was also the treasurer for Blue’s father’s 2002 US Senate run.
The GOP takeover in 2010 gave Republicans a fantastic opportunity to institute conservative reform in state government. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re still dealing with the same kind of cronyism, double-dealing, backroom nonsense the OTHER PARTY smothered us with when they were in charge.
Nelson Dollar has been such a friend of Democrats, that it will be better for the GOP if a real Democrat is elected to the seat the holds rather than letting Democrat enabler Dollar continue to hold it. I have suggested to friends who live in that district to vote Libertarian as a protest vote against the very unsound Dollar in office. Dollar is just so awful on so many things that it is hard to imagine a real Democrat being any worse.
I guess Dollar would love to see the corrupt Eric Holder return as Attorney General since ”he is black and he has been there before”. Policy should always be the key, not race, and not that someone ”has been there before”.
This is one primary that conservatives should have won. Dollar is downright awful.
Living in Chapel Hill, I can personally attest to how rotten politically UNC is. Nelson Dollar’s complicity in this disaster should be enough for even Republicans to vote against him next Tuesday. But Dollar is not the only culprit–the entire House GOP voted to approve Davenport for the BOG! Now they are begging conservatives to turn out and re-elect them. These House Republicans have no shame. I am so fed up with the GOP shenanigans in Raleigh that I’m voting for Trump and leaving the rest of my ballot blank. I have been lied to by the NC GOP for the last time!!
That is extremely counterproductive. We have some suckweasels in the NCGOPe and they need to go. It makes perfect sense to not vote for some, like Burr who failed to repudiate the Clinton-Burr movement and who openly said he would vote for Clinton over Ted Cruz. Also, there are a number of NC House members like Dollar who function more as Democrats. Abandoning them makes sense.
But we have good solid conservatives, too, and it is mindlessness to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There was a group of twenty or so House members who forced Tim Moore hand on the budget by refusing to vote for the Moore / Dollar bloated budget. Moore was forced to take a meat ax to what he wanted to spend. Those legislators are heroes, and the establishment is after some of them even in the general election.
Similarly, in the US House, we have Mark Meadows who brought down John Boehner and Walter Jones who also stood strong on that effort. I could see abandoning a McHenry or a Pittenger, who are liberals, but not a Jones or a Meadows.
There are good guys running at the statewide level, too.
Painting with way to broad a brush by refusing to vote for conservatives elsewhere on the ballot is really really dumb politics.
We have to remember that it is incompetent blowhards like Dallas Woodhouse who caused this nonsense of abandoning the rest of the ticket by trying to throw Trump under the bus for the Billy Bush tape. Woodhouse is a Karl Rove alumnus, so please don’t apply his stupid crap to conservative candidates on the ballot.
As to the BOG, there was a vote in the caucus. Many conservatives did not vote for the bad guys like this one. Please do not hold them responsible.
GUWonder, very clear thinking and well said!!
GU Wonder: I can tell you are sincere and I appreciate that. But you simply cannot get around the facts–a majority if not all the House Republicans voted to put liberal Democrat Davenport on the Board of Governors. And now he is doing everything he can to defeat our conservative GOP candidate in the all important Treasurer’s race. I do not recall any House Republican publicly speaking against Davenport or doing anything to block his appointment to the BOG. The House GOP went along with Nelson Dollar’s chicanery. Wake County Republicans should vote against Dollar. If I lived in Wake County, I’d vote against every GOP House candidate. You can’t trust them when push comes to shove.
Brings up a point. The Democrat Insurance Commissioner’s wife is on the State Industrial Board. Re appointed by the Republican Governor.