The Anglin ‘trick play’
For those of you who may still harbor doubts that “Republican” Supreme Court candidate Chris Anglin was a Democrat plant, consider this:
- Through October 29, Anglin reported spending a grand total of $16,598.83. Of that amount, $9250 was paid to Democrat consultant Perry Woods. You can also subtract another $4500 paid in legal fees to The Forrest Firm in Raleigh. That was for the legal fight to keep Anglin on the ballot IDed as a Republican. Anglin’s attorney in that case? None other than John Burns, an incumbent Democrat on the Wake County Board of Commissioners and a notorious left-wing activist. (Most of the remainder went toward parking fees, a few hotel rooms, and pizza.)
- Anglin reported raising $19,085 through the same period. His biggest donors? Dean and Sesha Debnam, a Durham couple who EACH donated $5,200 to Anglin. Dean runs the Democrat polling firm Public Policy Polling and is a renowned liberal activist. (The Anglin camp tried to be slick. They IDed Dean by his first name “Carey” as opposed to his
middle name “Dean” which he is more readily known by. They also listed his occupation as another of his business holdings, instead of the polling firm he is so typically IDed with.) Democrat attorney Ben Whitley, of Raleigh, also donated $2000 to the Anglin effort. Soooooo – at least $12,400 of Anglin’s total haul of $19,085 came from Democrats.
Campaign reports were due by October 29. For some reason, Anglin’s report was date-stamped “received” on Nov 6 and uploaded on Nov 7.
The NCGOP leadership should resign in shame for not putting up a GOP ringer to counteract this Democrat ringer. We all knew the Democrats would put one up with the insane way our legislative leadership organized this election. The GOP House and Senate leadership should also resign in shame for organizing the election that way.
I am told that Woodhouse promised to recruit a counter-ringer but failed to do so.
I guess we will all be waiting to see the payoff Cooper gives Anglin for his role as a spoiler.
Expect more trick plays from the Democrats if our legislature does not have the brains to fix a glaring problem while they have a super majority.
Democrats have learned that running ringers to split conservative votes works. Expect them to use the Constitution Party for that purpose in the future by inserting Democrat ringers running on the Constitution Party line in close legislative seats. How to fix that? Grant the Constitution Party what it wants and allow it, and any other party that wants to do so, to nominate by convention.
At the same time, there is another time bomb related to the Constitution Party that needs to be fixed, and that is changing the criteria for a party remaining on the ballot. It is now tied to the govenror’s race and that forces any third party to run a candidate for governor and work to get votes. Normally, there would be a good chance that a conservative third party would not challenge a guy like Can Forest, but NC election law almost forces them to do so.
Changing these election laws is in the Republican Party’s political interest.
Oh, and as long as the Green Party allows anyone to file, we need to be working up some Green Party ringers in key legislative seats.
There is another solution to the Constitution Party problem and that is to use the Australian preferential ballot. In the US, only Maine is using that system. That would allow voters of small parties to have their second choice counted until a major party received a majority. Constitution Party second choice would be overwhelmingly Republican.
Our legislature does not need to bury their head in the sand on fixing the Constitution Party problem, and it does not need to wait until Cooper can veto their fix.