Influence-peddling while Chairing: Dare Co. GOP calls NCGOP’s Hayes on the carpet
NCGOP chairman Robin Hayes’s dual roles as state party chairman AND paid flack for an environmental group has some grassroots Republicans demanding answers. Leaders in the Dare County Republican Party are accusing Hayes of using his political influence to sabotage a key industry — commercial fishing — in the coastal North Carolina economy.
In a strongly worded resolution — pages are here and here — passed unanimously at the county’s GOP convention today, Dare Republicans are demanding that Hayes either (1) appear before their executive committee to answer questions about his lobbying role with the environmental group, or (2) drop his reelection bid for state party chairman. Here are some, um, “highlights”:
With passage of the following notice, the Dare County Republican Party does give notice to Chairman Robin Hayes to present himself before this Executive Committee to answer questions and provide relevant information regarding his personal involvement and influence in the 2016 appointment process of members of the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission regulatory agency. Additionally, we seek answers and information of the Chairman’s involvement pertinent to the petition from the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, of which Hayes[…] is a senior advisor, to ignore science and destroy our state’s shrimping industry. […]
More specifically, we address the simultaneous (same day) attacks against normal processes via the petition and Hayes’s involvement in perverting the established appointment process. […]
[…] Through information and belief, the committee has been informed via well-placed sources within the state’s administrative and NCGOP apparatuses that indicates strong personal involvement by Robin Hayes to circumvent and contradict the normal appointment process. As a result of the chairman’s activities, Governor McCrory chose to ignore RECOMMENDED appointments for the Marine Fisheries Commission and instead stacked the regulatory body with a single special interest group coincidentally and suspiciously linked to Chairman Hayes – the Coastal Conservation Association.[…]
THIS is one of the controversies — along with the I-77 uproar near Charlotte — that many observers believe were key to McCrory’s close loss in November to Roy Cooper.
So, we have a party chairman actively lobbying for a group diametrically opposed to a key NCGOP constituency and hell-bent on damaging a key component of the coastal North Carolina economy? That doesn’t exactly sound tailor-made for a happy ending.
Couple this with the fact that the Democrats just elected an ethically-challenged influence peddler to their state party chairmanship. Keeping Dallas’s grandpa around sure doesn’t give the NCGOP much of a leg to stand on in proclaiming superiority to the other party.
So, Robin has his choice. Show up and tell the truth. Or quit.
Hey! Our establishment GOP legislators can prostitute themselves to the special interests, including liberals. Why can’t our establishment GOP state chairman rake in a little cash for himself doing the same thing? The fact that he is a millionaire by inheritance should not prevent him from prostituting himself to the special interests if he wants to.
Hopefully this resolution will make it to the floor of the 3rd District Convention and be approved and then maybe it will pass thru the State resolutions committee and actually get put to a vote at the State Convention. Non-establishment District Chairs are important to have on the Central Committee, but now more than ever we need good people on the State Convention Committees too (Resolutions, POO, Rules)
It is not a resolution. It is a notice requesting Robin Hayes produce himself and certain information to Dare County’s GOP exec committee. No other county need act and Hayes is free to blow them off. Wonder if that’ll make it go away? Best thing Robin can do is retire.
Retire Robin Hayes= Destroy major Economic Industry on NC coast.
Dare County isn’t the only County Party gunning for the corrupt regime in Raleigh, and you can take that to the bank.
The real question is how many of our legislators are in bed with Hayes and company.
well you know it has to be a good few of them…. one can only assume…. and why can one assume this with a great deal of confidence
because in 2015 before a vote for chairman had even been taken some of the legislators were working how they could move their caucus money out of the NCGOP in case the person won the Chairmanship that they did not want
some would say oh no this was in planning way before that convention but that is not how it sounded to me when the legislators that Saturday of the convention were talking about it
on a side note other people were crying after the chairman race totals were give and the chosen one lost that day and I asked one delegate why and they said they worked for a political consultant and they thought they were going to loose their job
SERIOUSLY THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PARTY AND NC HAS ITS OWN SWAMP TO DRAIN
It is clear to me the undermining of the Convention elected Chairman started even before he was elected and it continued till the time they got the result they wanted tossing out the delegate elected chairman and replacing them with someone that would do the dirty work of the central committee
Whether Robin Hayes is ideologically a radical environmentalist or whether he is just doing it for the money is beside the point. That he is doing it at all is the problem.
Hayes primary duty as NCGOP chairman was to the party. He should have resigned or not accepted any position that conflicted with that, something he clearly failed to do. Working for the enviros was a direct conflict of interest to his duties to the party and to the party’s candidates, especially Governor McCrory. Hayes’ conflict of interest helped cause McCrory’s loss.
It was Robin Hayes, whose position as NCGOP chairman gave him great weight to do it, carried the enviros choices for the Marine Fisheries Commission to Governor McCrory and procured their appointment. Hayes carrying water for his enviro clients cost McCrory thousands of votes in the east due to the outrage over those appointments Hayes procured among commercial fishermen, their families and friends..
Hayes put his fees from the enviros ahead of his duties to the party. He threw McCrory under the bus for their benefit. Anyone active in the party would know that many people from the commercial fishing industry have been active in the party, going back decades, as local chairman, local elected officials, contributors, and in other capacities. The enviros, on the other hand, tilt heavily Democrat.
Hayes apparently held this position with the enviros at the time he was installed as chairman, but dishonestly failed to reveal that conflict of interest to the Executive Committee.
The Central Committee members, such as the District chairmen, who were behind the party coup that installed Hayes bear a large part of the blame. They refused to allow time for other candidates to emerge or for vetting of Hayes or any other last minute candidates. They insisted on a vote to fill the office, to ram through their choice of Hayes immediately and they got their way. None of those responsible for the Hayes fiasco should be elected to any further offices in the party. Clean house at the district conventions.
everyone needs to remember that Hayes said ” I did not come here today to run for chairman” and then went to read from a speech he wrote at least in part the night before
he also at least one time said that someone asking for historical budget data was asking hysterical questions when regarding the state GOP budget
also that the party could not be run like a business because it was a political organization. This really show me that he has no business leading this party. I want the party personally run like a church with the utmost accountability and openness and to focus on the principles our platform states but then again this might just be hysterical values and beliefs you can be the judge
Also worth remembering is the fact that the Central Committee broke rules in the Harnett trial, particularly the one requiring two thirds of the Executive Committee voting “Aye” to remove a Party officer, such that it can be argued that Hayes is not legitimately and lawfully the NCGOP Chairman. As such, the delegates chosen by him to attend the National convention were not legitimate either, with associated ramifications for the Presidential nomination.
Hayes was recruited to run by the cabal that ousted Harnett. The cabal insisted on proceding with an election immediately after the ouster because they did not want any competition for their handpicked candidate. Hayes was far from their first choice, but the others said NO. The fact that he tried to deny being part of the scheme in claiming he did not attend for the purpose of running for chairman speaks volumes about his integrity or lack thereof.
many on the executive committee would love to tell all the republicans what really went down that day the chairman of the party was removed and quickly replaced but because of executive session rules we are not allowed to talk about what happened in that meeting
people in all the districts should pass resolutions at the district conventions demanding the release of the executive committee members to be allowed to speak freely about what happened that day
Just to be clear, I wasn’t leaking anything confidential…..Harnett supporters kept careful count of the number of Executive Committee members walking into the McKimmon center, crunched the numbers and quickly realized that nowhere near 2/3 of the ExComm was present so even in the unlikely event that every member present voted to oust Harnett, they mathematically could never have met the threshold demanded by the POO to remove a Party Officer.
Usually, executive sessions are held in such circumstances to protect the reputation of the accused, but with Hasan, the establishment had already put all their manufactured dirt out to the media, so there was no need to do that. The executive session was called in this case to cover up the sleazy hardball politics, fraudulent procedure, manufactured ”evidence”, and outright lies of the coup plotters.
Amen!
Robin Hayes is good at what he does. It is what he does that is not good.
It is not good that he ignored the relentless supportive efforts for the commercial fishing industry by so many eastern counties BOC to include many municipalities
It is not good that he ignored the supportive efforts of the GOP 3rd district for the same food producing industry.
It is not good that he stooped low enough to team up with the SELC to achieve the goal of special interests.
It is not good that he swept under the rug and lied to me 3 times about Dr Ada Fisher’s defiance of party expectations as to voting at the 2012 GOP Convention in Cal. To those that don’t know, she was caught on video!!!
It is not good for N C that he is the face of the Republican Party.
Browny Douglas
Browny, You should have spelled out the name of the SELC, the group Robin Hayes worked with to try to destroy our commercial fishing industry. It is the Southern Environmental Law Center, a radical far left bunch, if there ever was one. You Dare County folks know more about those quasi-Marxists than most North Carolinians as the same bunch of radicals sued the McCrory adminstration in a frivolous lawsuit that held up the Bonner Bridge replacement for years. The Southern Environmental Law Center are some of the most despicable leftist scumbags around.
Robin Hayes should remember the old saying that when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.
Furthermore, it is not good that he wants to continue to be the face of the N C Republican Party. Nor is it good that anyone else wants him to continue to be the face of the NC GOP.
His disgust for those that make their living on the water is not new. As a N C representive he sponsored the first local net ban attempt by the CCA in 1995. This was the 1st year after the CCA $enticed $ the Governor to make a certain appointment to the MFC. The Governor fell victim as has every N C Governor since. That is why the MFC is in the bully Commission that it now is.
Browny Douglas
My recollection was that our party platform, the most recently adopted one which is still the operative one since it has not been replaced, contained provisions supporting our fishing industry. I went to the NCGOP website to look it up, and lo and behold, discovered that the Hayes / Woodhouse regime has scrubbed our party platform from the party website! That is absolutely outrageous behavior and should not be tolerated by delegates.
It is principles and issues that make the party, not personal ambitions and personal advancement. Hayes and Woodhouse have clearly abandoned party principles.
The first sign of this bad attitude was when the current regime refused to call a state executive committee meeting to adopt resolutions and a new platform after their calculated and deliberate game of stall ball at the last convention ran out the clock on time to consider the platform and resolutions. They also conveniently failed to call the usual executive committee meeting immediately after the convention.
I would really like to compare Hayes’ activities while holding the office of state party chairman with the principles set out in our NCGOP Platform on the fishing issue. Can anyone post a link to where it may be found since it is no longer on the NCGOP website?
If you are talking about what should be on the NCGOP website there should be an archive of all past platforms, plan of organizations that have been adopted. everything the party does should be to add Transparency to the process
but the NCGOP party level wise is no longer the party of transparency they work like congress when passing Obamacare you must pass it to know what is in it but in this case it is more like pass it and you never need to worry about what is in it
if you question things then they just say your questions are hysterical and then forget you asked something
Hmmm! The platform is there this morning. The current version does not mention fishing directly one way or the other, but what Haye was pushing was unnecessary government regulation which the party opposes..
Lets also make it clear that if you are not willing to speak out against Hayes then you are supporting him
There has to be a clear line in the sand when it comes to this years chairman election
Some readers will blow this topic off thinking the commercial fishermen are getting what they deserve for “raping the sea” of fish. They don’t know the facts; they don’t know fishermen.
This is not entertainment for them. Commercial fishermen do what they do for the love of fishing and for the love of being part of a proud heritage going back to our Founding Fathers. Fish fed our ancestors while they waited for their crops to be established. Fish will feed us when our supply chain fails due to famine, war or natural disaster. Our fishermen are not stupid enough to risk their future by being sloppy conservationists. They are our original environmentalists.
Loss of fishing for NC would be more than the loss of the fresh, healthy food resource we are due. It would be the loss of the expensive, specialized equipment, the training, the instinctive drive that takes the fishermen to the best spots and the loss of the economic benefit of having these families and extended families living and thriving among us.
Identify politics would say these mostly white Christian men and women must give up; “evolve” into fish farming and be glad about it. Quite a slap in the face to men and women who regularly risk their lives in treacherous conditions in daylight and dark leaving families to fend alone during emergencies and special family events in order to heed their honorable calling. Fish farming and imported “fish” is a miserable substitute for the real thing swimming right off our coast in countless numbers (when asking about the science used to determine fish crop size ask if it is a guess or do they really, truly cross-their-hearts-and-hope-to-die know).
These are small business owners with no pensions, holidays, vacation pay or reasonable health insurance buying homes, paying their bills on time, going to church and raising decent kids who will most likely follow in their parents’ footsteps, if commercial watermen jobs are still there when they are old enough to join in.
Robin Hayes picked the wrong side of this fight. We folks who live in the coastlands love our working watermen. We love how they remind us what an American work ethic looks like. We don’t want to see them steamrolled into joblessness like our family farmers.
Our tourists expect local seafood in our local restaurants. They expect picturesque fishing villages. Don’t you?
We will fight to right what is wrong and preserve what is moral and deserved, so help us GOD.
We wish Gov. McCrory had seen this vision in its entirety because it would have landed him back in the NC Governor’s mansion.
The problem Mattie, is that McCrory was getting horribly bad advice on this subject, first from his non-Republican Secretary of DENR, John Skvarla, who had previously worked in the environmental field, and then from Robin Hayes, who was on the payroll of the environmentalists. Hayes did not tell the state Executive Committee that he was on the payroll of the environmentalists. I wonder if he revealed that to McCrory while he was sandbagging him and costing him votes?
Robin Hayes was McCrory’s closest, and by Pat’s actions, or lack thereof, his only advisor. Hand-delivering the CCA’s picks, and changes, for the MFC cost Pat the mansion. Robin Hayes, Jimmy Dixon, John Bell, Dallas= RINO. McCrory traded the Oregon Inlet bridge (held forever in litigation by the SELC) for anti-commercial appointments to the MFC. NCWF, CCA/RFA, Camo Coalition, and the SELC associated with the Republican party????? THE shame is embarrassing.
It has been somewhat of a mystery where McCrory was getting his general political advice, but if you are right and it was Robin Hayes, that is a good explanation of why he lost. Hayes defeated himself in his last Congressional race when he betrayed his voters by letting the K Street special interest lobbyists talk him into voting for NAFTA after he had promised his constituents to vote against it. It takes a special kind of stupid to make a blunder like that on something that was a huge issue in his district, and it cost Hayes his House seat.
On the Marine Fisheries appointments, the opposing groups were the commercial fishermen, who have long been a GOP-tilting voting group and the environmentalists, who have long been a Democrat-tilting voting group. Political savvy would be to go with your own base, but in this case, the Governor’s staff had put together a compromise list that both groups could live with. Hayes, using his clout as NCGOP chairman to give him pull, went in and got that compromise list thrown out and a different list, concocted by the environmentalists substituted. Hayes was carrying water for his paid clients against the interests of the Republican governor and the Republican Party. When the word got out about the Hayes list of appointments being made by the governor, there was a furor in the commercial fishing community over being stabbed in the back that cost McCrory thousands of votes and may, by itself, have cost him the election.
I hope Robin Hayes is proud of his major role in costing Governor McCrory his position, but for the rest of us, it means we must do all we can to replace Hayes with a reliable Republican. Hayes needs to think about whether his thirty pieces of silver were worth giving us that lowlife scoundrel Roy Cooper as governor.
CH Hayes should have calibrated his ethical and moral compass a long damn time ago.
Browny Douglas