The Morning After …
It’s Donald Trump’s world. We’re just living in it. 
It’s pretty clear that the re-emergence of a silent majority made a huge difference last night — turning what could have been a blaaah night for the NCGOP into one filled with some pleasant surprises. And who brought these long-lost voters out? DONALD TRUMP.
How else do you explain Mike Causey — who has been running statewide for nearly 30 years unsuccessfully — spending little money and scoring a 56,000 vote upset over entrenched incumbent Wayne Goodwin in the Insurance Commissioner race? Or Mark Johnson — who looks young enough to be the local Teenage Republicans chairman — and his low budget campaign knocking off an entrenched incumbent like June Atkinson at DPI?
Or Trump, Burr, and Pat McCrory pulling off the FIRST EVER Republican trifecta victory in yellow-dog Democrat Robeson County?
Two of the biggest Republican winners in the state — Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest and congressman Mark Meadows – were the most upfront and visible in their support for Trump. Gov. Pat McCrory — apparently on the losing end of a close race — kept his distance from Trump. Richard Burr embraced Trump late, and may have actually been helped by his opponent’s ads tying him to Trump.
In the state Senate, endangered GOP incumbent Tamara Barringer pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. And the GOP managed to capture a yellow-dog Democrat seat centered on Robeson and Columbus counties.
In the state House, the GOP lost four seats, but gained four seats for a complete wash.
So much for that theory about HB2 killing the GOP legislators. 
The GOP won all of the state Court of Appeals races — likely due to the fact the candidates were IDed by their partisan affiliation. Republican Robert Edmunds lost his Supreme Court seat to Obama-endorsed Mike Morgan — likely due to no party ID of the candidates in that race. (Morgan also had a much more aggressive TV advertising campaign than Edmunds did.)
That Edmunds loss was unnecessary, and it will give us a far left Supreme Court for a number of years. It was rooted in the asinine scheme to convert that election to a ”retention election”, something most grassroots Republicans were aghast at but was cooked up in the legislature. Anyone reading the State Constitution should have known it would not pass muster, and when challenged, it did not. The result was Edmunds having to run under the old law which did NOT list his party ID. On top of that, all the other Republican judge candidates were on the top line while Edmunds was on the second line, which led to further voter confusion and hurt Edmnuds. I noticed in my county that Edmunds was doing better than our ID’ed GOP judge candidates in Democrat precincts and worse in Republican precincts due to these factors.
Brant, it would be helpful if you could dig out who in the legislature was responsible for this blunder of massive proportions. The rumor is that it was the usual blunder boy David Lewis, but it would be good to confirm who it was. Whoever it was should be tarred and feathered and run out of the party on a rail. It was an incredibly dumb move and with disastrous results.
I would like to know why Morgan’s name was on top. That did not make sense because it was not alphabetical or party related. Someone in the state election board must have made that call.
With non-partisan races, the order of names on the ballot start with a particular letter of the alphabet which rotates every election cycle and is the starting point for alphabetical order. This year’s starting letter was “H” , thus moving to the next candidate’s name takes us to “M” and so Morgan was the first candidate before moving to the end of the alphabet and starting over again to “E”, making Bob Edmunds the second candidate on the ballot.
Yes, we should not have lost Justice Edmonds, devastating!
I know people that thought they were voting for the Republican in the Supreme Court race because of the order. We’ve been had again.
The retention law was good policy and made sense. It would also have guaranteed Edmunds’ re-election. The three-judge panel which overturned the law was dead wrong. They sunk Edmunds.
Retention ”elections” are NOT elections. They are an insult to the voters. The legislators involved could apparently not even read the Constitution. Retention ”elections” are liberal policy from California and should not have been imposed on our NC voters. Liberal policy is NOT ”good policy”. Most grassroots GOP activists were aghast when they heard what the legislature had done on this.
Putting the party label on the ballot was a great idea and it worked in the Court of Appeals races. The stupid game of retention ”elections” is what put Edmunds under the old law, once they were thrown out, and led to his defeat. The legislator who came up with this stupid ploy is the one responsible, and they ought to be held to account for it.
Is ”Lewis” your last name, David?
On anything, remember if it is California policy, it is probably something North Carolinians do not want.
I agree that Edmonds was done in by the desire for retention election. Not a smart move.
Because 1) It looked bad, and 2) while legally acceptable in certain other states, it really is contrary to the NC Constitution.
There is a postmortem maelstrom taking place in NC GOP circles with state GOP officials, GOP attorneys and legislators, and GOP judges infuriated with the three-judge panel that overturned a perfectly constitutional retention election law. These three judges threw the election to Mike Morgan whose sole intent in running was to destroy GOP governance in NC.
A ”retention election” is a referendum, NOT an election. It is disenfranchising voters. It does not square with the state Constitution. If they had tried to change the Constitution to do this, I think most grassroots activists would have fought that nonsense tooth and nail.
Those who pushed this nonsense are to blame for Justice Edmunds loss. I do not know who to blame outside the legislature, as the only fingerprints I see on it are those of legislators.
It they had not tried this UnConstitutional cute trick, Justice Edmunds would have been on the ballot in the same fashion as the Court of Appeals candidates and he would have been reelected.
To John Steed—Legislators are fed-up with Chief Justice Mark Martin and blame him for the retention law debacle and the Liberal Democrat takeover of the Supreme Court. The legislature carefully thought this law out and no one expressed any opposition to it. There is no lost love among Republican legislators for the Chief Justice.
If it came from the House, it is unlikely that the whole House carefully thought it out, just a few RINO’s in the House leadership. Like the stinking ”affiliated committees” that David Lewis sprung on everyone.
David, your assertion that “The legislature carefully thought this law out and no one expressed any opposition to it” is patently false. I expressed opposition to this at every opportunity, including on the House floor. I debated against this and several on the other side of the aisle debated against it as well.
Glad to hear it. Let’s be logical for one second. It looks like Roy Cooper is going to be our new governor now so under the retention law if we conservatives voted managed to defeat a liberal judge in an election it would just go to Roy Cooper and he would appoint the liberal judge’s replacement. Why would we support a law that takes away our ability to replace liberal judges with conservative ones? I think it was short sighted thinking that was based on the fact that Pat McCrory was governor at the time. The people supporting that law never considered the possibility that the Democrats might one day retake the governors mansion.
Spot on! We need to minimize appointment of judges and maximize voter election of judges. Retention elections are not real elections and are an attack on voter control of public office. This was a terrible bill from both a political and a policy standpoint. Who was responsible primarily for pushing this in the legislature?
I expressed opposition to this when I debated against it on the house floor and each time that I voted against it!
John Steed—both the House and Senate GOP supported the retention law. It was well-considered and thought out. It’s constitutionality was never questioned. Chief Justice Martin and his handpicked panel of judges scuttled it. With that, Edmunds’s defeat was sealed. These are just the facts. The entire GOP NC agenda is now probably doomed.
The fact that the House and Senate voted on it is a far different thing than genuinely ”considering” it. Look at the massive power play of the ”affiliated committees” provision, for example. Few rank and file GOP legislators fully realized what the RINO leadership in the House was pushing in that when they were called to vote on it. It massively upset the party grassroots.
The whole idea of replacing judicial elections with retention referenda is an assault on the grassroots and the voters. It is a liberal idea from California that may appeal to some of the RINO’s in leadership, but not to the rank and file of the party. We do not need those Nancy Pelosi type of ideas in North Carolina.
And it is very telling that our RINO leadership in the House did not even consider that it was UnConstitutional. Pushing that UnConstitutional load of garbage is what led to the defeat of Justice Bob Edmunds, a thoroughly good man.
The RINO leadership does not need to be trying to suppress the grassroots through measures like ”affiliated committees” on suppressing our voting rights by replacing elections with mere referenda. Read the Constitution and follow it, David.
Court of Appeals panels are not handpicked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
John Steed: I agree with David completely on this. The retention law only applied to Edmunds in this one election. Judicial elections across the board were not even impacted by this law. Had not Edmunds recused himself when the case went to the Supreme Court on appeal, the law would have been upheld. Mark Martin and Bob Edmunds did this to themselves. Don’t cry for them. Cry for what they did to the conservative cause. We now have a liberal Supreme Court.
You RINO legislators really take the cake. You pass a California-style liberal law to ”help” the situation which outraged the grassroots, did not even comprehend that it was not Constitutional, and now bellyache that Justice Edmunds recused himself from hearing a case that directly impacted him, as he was ethically required to do. The problem was not on the Supreme Court. The problem was our asinine RINO legislators who are clueless. You RINO’s are the ones who cost us our Supreme Court majority and a good man like Bob Edmunds his job. The GOP desperately needs new leadership in the NC House, as well as both branches of our federal Congress. As Rep. Speciale pointed out, conservatives like him understood this issue when it was being voted on even if intellectually challenged ”leaders” like Lewis did not.
Morgan was on top because they go in reverse ABC order starting at a random point in the alphabet every cycle. That is set by law
Dallas, you seem to stick your nose, inappropritely for an ED, into everything else regarding policy. Were you one of the proponents of this disaster called ”retention election” too? I’ll bet you were. It is just the sort of politically stupid thing you would do.
There is an important point here beyond the issue of the so-called retention election, and that style of election is itself awful public policy. It reminds me of Soviet elections with only one candidate on the ballot.
The thing that leaves me scratching my head is why those who were running this bill did not grasp that a Constitutional challenge was possible, even likely, and cover their bases? It would have been simple enough to provide in the legislation that in the event the retention election scheme was declared void, elections such as this would be run under the new rules that placed the party affiliation of each candidate on the ballot. If someone had just stopped to think and at least done that, they would have saved our Supreme Court majority. Unfortunately, those running things in the General Assembly, and especially those running this bill, did not.
That is what is really galling about the failures in our legislative majority.