A NCGOP surrender on the Supreme Court?
The NCGOP is in real danger of going 0 for 2 in Supreme Court races during the Hayes-Woodhouse era. (They’re already 0 for 1 in gubernatorial races.)
It wasn’t long ago that we were bombarded with ads promoting Justice Paul Newby (R). Judicial races are all about name ID, and we had Newby’s name pounded into our heads.
Then comes 2016 and the Bob Edmunds debacle. Marketing for the Supreme Court race was ratcheted way down, and Edmunds lost a very winnable race.
Now, in 2018, it’s becoming apparent the state GOP learned nothing from 2016. The state Supreme Court has a far-reaching on life in North Carolina. Yet, the reelection of Justice Barbara Jackson is basically being ignored at NCGOP HQ. More and more funds are being doled out to sheriff candidates and legislators in marginal seats. There are few if any ads. Spotting a Jackson yard sign is like finding a four-leafed clover.
We saw polling from Civitas not too long ago that showed Jackson with 11 percent of the vote in the three-way race. Spectrum News just came out with a poll that’s not a lot better:
If Civitas and Spectrum are right, brace yourselves for Justice Anita Earls. She’s been mentored and guided by 
George Soros and Eric Holder. She’s all about “racial justice.” And she thinks marxism / socialism / statism as applied in various African dictatorships was a groovy idea. Earls has fought voter ID in the courts. She’s Obama in a dress. Anita Earls is getting ready to be dropped into a very powerful position in our state government. Meanwhile, the Woodhouse-Hayes team at NCGOP HQ is rolling over and showing its belly.
I remember the lengths they went to save Paul Newby. You couldn’t turn on a TV or radio without seeing or hearing about Paul Newby.
The last two efforts to protect GOP incumbents on the state’s high court have been abysmal in comparison.
More could have been done. (I heard about ONE typo-filled mailer that supposedly went out IN JULY promoting Jackson and bashing Earls.)
More can be done in the short time we have left in this election cycle. But I don’t know — at this point — if Jackson can be saved.
It seems things have been going in reverse since the big wins of 2010 and 2012. The GOP majority in The General Assembly is shrinking. A very winnable governor’s race was lost. A very winnable AG’s race was lost. (The 2014 US Senate race was very nearly blown.) The majority on the state Supreme Court was lost in 2016. And the NCGOP is in danger of going deeper in the hole in 2018.
The Trump team seems to have their act together. When will Raleigh start following their lead?
Bob Edmunds and Mark Martin have constantly put their own personal egos ahead of keeping conservative control of the Supreme Court. The Bob Edmunds fiasco in the last election is having its predicted impact in this year’s election. Jackson will probably lose and a leftist Supreme Court will now rule North Carolina and control the state for at least a decade. Not only did Bob Edmunds commit political suicide on himself, he committed political genocide on the NC Republican Party. The seriousness of this tragedy has still not registered with most Republicans, but state headquarters obviously knows the score and what’s coming. This debacle rivals the GOP debacle on the UNC Board of Governors and the inept McCrory-Stith administration. Why should conservatives even bother to get out and vote with such pathetic leadership as this?
Everyone (Conservative) needs to get out and vote. There really is no excuse to not vote, we have over two weeks of early voting. I urge everyone to vote, the last thing we need with a liberal NC Supreme Court is a democrat General Assembly with Cooper as Governor. If we spread the word to vote for Jackson, and Conservatives show up, she can win. I am afraid the gains of the past 8 years in NC could be erased if we become complacent. VOTE !
There is only one thing that can save the Jackson seat right now and that is grassroots activists standing at the polls with palm cards. That can still work, and I hope it has been organized. With Woodhouse running HQ, though, I have my doubts. In early voting in my county, the county GOP had done their job and had volunteers out with county printed palm cards on the judges.
Woodhouse sending out that mailing on the Supreme Court race in July shows he is clueless on campaigning. That was way too early before voters were focused.
As to Bob Edmunds, he should be faulted for hiring Paul Shumaker and then listening to him. It was Shumaker who kept coming up with and pushing all sorts of stupid ways to elect judges – communist style “retention elections” and Democrat favored non-partisan elections – while resisting the system proven to work for Republicans – partisan elections with a primary.
Now Barbara Jackson has made the same mistake in hiring Shumaker, and I wonder if Shumaker had a hand in the absolutely asinine method we are using on the court elections this year.
Shumaker will take money to work for just about anybody, and one always wonders what his real agenda is in any race he is involved with. He could even be the Democrats secret weapon for taking over the courts.
I am confident that if Anglin were not on the ballot that Jackson would get a win. Republicans are outperforming Democrats in early voting this year and that is good news. However, if a voter selects Anglin on their ballot, they are uninformed.
Both of the Supreme court seat losses are on the legislature, not the party, unless the party was advising the legislature. We threw away the Edmunds seat by not making Supreme court races partisan. In 2016, every Republican won the state-wide Court of Appeals races. The Supreme Court race received half a million fewer votes, meaning many Republicans did not know who the Republican was in the race and left the vote blank. This year, someone came up with the incredibly ignorant idea to do away with all primaries for judicial races. This provision did not ever go before either house of the legislature. Leadership tucked it in to a conference report on an unrelated bill, as it often does to get its way on issues that they worry will not have the support of the membership. I argued vociferously in caucus that we NOT do this and voted against the whole bill because of this terrible provision. Had there been a primary, Jackson would have won and only one Republican would be on the general election ballot.
You nailed it, John. The culprit here is the legislative leadership which has done incredible dumb things (or maybe it was a deliberate sellout) in the last two Supreme Court elections to cost us those seats. As you revealed earlier, the House caucus voted to have a partisan Supreme Court election but Moore ramrodded a bill to make it non-partisan as Paul Shumaker wanted.
Moore and Berger and their cronies are the problem with the Supreme Court races and they need to be thrown out of leadership for what they have done.
The party has its share of responsibility for not staying on top of this and jerking some chains to get the Supreme Court election that would give everyone a fair break, a partisan election with a primary.
Of course, Dallas Woodhouse failing in his promise to get a Democrat ringer to counterbalance the “Republican” ringer Anglin was also a major fail.
Republicans need new, competent leadership in both the legislature and the party. The current duds need to pay for what they have done to our Supreme Court elections.
Had Bob Edmunds not put his own ego first and caved to the Democrats two years ago, Barbara Jackson would be running in a retention election and pretty much guaranteed re-election. The GOP would have a solid 4-3 majority on the court going into the 2020 redistricting battle. But it is likely not to be. Perhaps the ever-loyal conservative voters will tromp to the polls yet again and give Jackson a win, but we are getting awfully tired of the misfires by the GOP leadership in this state.
The problem is that Bob Edmunds did not want to run as a Republican and then he sank the retention election law which would have guaranteed his re-election. Yes, he committed political suicide on both himself and the GOP. The legislature has been trying to figure out how to fix this fiasco ever since. The proposed constitutional amendment may solve the problem–but the idiot Pat McCrory is trying to defeat that! I find it difficult to understand why conservatives even care enough to go vote. What’s the use?
It is good that the heavy-handed rape of the voters known as “retention election” was sunk. It viciously goose stepped over the rights of voters to chose their officials, in this case judges, by setting up one candidate “elections” much like the old Soviet “elections”. It was a corrupt incumbent protection plan that would have glued Democrats to the seats they held and prevented a GOP challenge.
It is partisan elections with a primary that both helps the GOP keep the seats we have and allows us to take the Democrats seats from them. It gives voters a free and fair election with a real choice, not a Soviet style single candidate rubber stamp.
If you liked the old Soviet method of “elections” I am sure you loved the concept of farcical “retention elections”
The Constitutional Amendment is geared to appointment of judges, which again is a fraud on voters. When there is a judicial vacancy, what is needed is a quick special election to fill it by the voters, not an appointment by anyone, except perhaps for a temporary caretaker of that judicial position until the voters fill the vacancy in a competitive election. The elitist panels set up in the amendment smack of highhandedness by the insider power brokers.
Are Berger and Moore actually Democrats? It’s my understanding neither wanted a single pro-life bill passed on their watch, and succeeded. But the rumor was that it just wasn’t the “right” time with a Democrat AG and Governor. Now it would appear the Supreme Court will be Democrat controlled and any pro-life legislation that is passed will certainly be challenged, so the legislators have a self made excuse that will last longer than most legislators’ terms. The pro-life movement is now officially “dead” in NC.
This same pair – Berger and Moore – also stonewalled the major gun rights bill in the last session of the legislature, and they sold our state and Christian conservatives down the river in their cowardly surrender to the far left and the corporate bullies on HB2. They are the reason much of the GOP base is not thrilled with voting for legislative Republicans this time. If not for the Kavanaugh factor nationally, the GOP would be in real trouble right now in getting its base to turn out due to Berger and Moore.
There was a dismemberment bill sitting in the Senate with 3 sponsors that never saw the light of day. Boy, wouldn’t that be nice to have members votes recorded on Record? Life issues work and are effective in elections-ask the SBA List!
Plain and simple. If you do not vote, and the Democrats make significant gains in the General Assembly, Congress, and the amendments fail, you can only blame yourself. I am seriously concerned about people looking for excuses to complain and not vote. We (Conservatives) need our fellow Conservatives to vote. I “early voted”, and made sure my family and friends also voted. Please do your part and vote today, tomorrow, or election day.
John, you are absolutely correct–conservatives should get out and vote. In fact, it’s the conservatives doing the grassroots work when RINOs are nowhere to be found. But how much longer must this charade continue when conservatives put Republicans in charge and then the GOP leadership throws it all away? Need examples? Pat McCrory, Bob Edmunds, the UNC Board of Governors, etc.
Stan, so instead of Edmunds, we got Morgan on the Supreme Court, instead of McCrory, we got Cooper. Not voting and putting Dems on the court and in the Governors mansion is the worst option.
Edmunds was a good conservative judge. I do not know anyone on our side who had a problem with his court rulings. The problem was that he was not a politician and unfortunately relied on a very bad source, RINO consultant Paul Shumaker for political advice. Even with Shumaker’s bad advice, I do not know any activist who voted against him for that reason.
Where Shumaker’s bad advice in setting up an election method through legislative action killed Edmunds was with low information voters. The screwball non-partisan method that Shumaker insisted on left some frustrated not knowing which candidate was the Republican, so they left the race blank. Others guessed, and guessed wrong due to the relative positioning of the Court of Appeals candidates who were running in a proper partisan election. The GOP won every seat on the Court of Appeals with its partisan election, and would have done the same for Edmunds seat if we had just followed the same procedure.
Since most agree that the Barbara Jackson seat is the most important vote on the ballot, where’s the NCGOP money running ads for her? GOP leadership, you are failing AGAIN. Sure, we’re out here handing out sample ballots, but where are you?
I would also ask where they were in fighting fire with fire – getting our own ringer to counterbalance the Democrat’s fake Republican Anglin. I understand that Woodhouse promised to do this but blew it big time.
Also, where was the NCGOP in telling the legislative leadership that this absolutely stupid and anti-Republican method of election set up for judges this time was just absolutely unacceptable?
We need a fruitbasket turnover in both NCGOP and legislative leadership.
District 3 spent our entire budget promoting Justice Jackson with tie-Ins with local state office R candidates. The feedback received makes me think the money was well spent, comparative numbers Wednesday morning.