Kelly v. Dallas: You say REFUND, I say PARTY CONTRIBUTION.
“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
— Cool Hand Luke, 1967
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I guess it is all in the eye of the B.S. artist. In an earlier post, we raised questions about a $5000 payment from NCGOP headquarters to the campaign of state Rep. Kelly Hastings, while he was in the midst of a heated primary.
The controversy now has two of the NCGOP’s intellectual giants, Dallas Woodhouse and Kelly Hastings, at odds.
In the comment section of that previous post, the NCGOP executive director claimed that the payment was really nothing more than the refund of money that Hastings had parked in the state party treasury. A refund, if you will.
That alleged refund of $5000 was documented on the state party’s campaign finance report as having occurred on January 16. 
However, the Hastings campaign classified that same $5000 on its finance report as a “Party Contribution” received on January 25.
You are mixing timing. Members donate to the caucus over long periods of time, many reporting periods over months.
This does not meet the technical definition of refund because they can cross reporting periods.
It’s also just a practical issue. The state party caucus operations depend on members raising and DONATING money to fund their staff, polling, research and many other support functions that assist the entire operation through economy of scale
However members are always concerned about a possible primary election. So if members sat on their own money, (which they have every legal and moral right to do) the support operations would suffer.
Allowing a “clawback” policy helps fund the support operations while at the same time puts the members concerns at ease.
There is no other practical way to do it.
Bottom line is Kelly raised this money and sent it to party operations, to begin with.
We have very limited resources and it would make no sense to spend those dollars from general operations funds to pick one republican over another in a race we are almost certain to win in the fall anyway.
Limited resources ???? You and your grandpa spent all that time bragging to us about what fundraising wizards you are. How come we got limited resources?
If things are so tight, how can you possibly afford to kick $5000 back out to Hastings?
Does anyone else find it ironic that State Executive Committee members have to come here for even a pittance of an understanding of the ED’s activities. The State Party has pursued legal actions against rank-and-file Republicans, attempted to land the 2020 RNC Convention without consulting the ExComm, hosted LGBT love-ins at HQ, and God only knows what machinations with Party finances. None of which was particularly discussed at the last ExComm meeting last year.
A Chairman that will remain nameless would probably tell you to stop making “Hysterical” points
The only duty of a EXCOM member is to show up so Quorum can be reached and your yearly dues can be marked paid
and in regards of the 2020 convention if the news is too be trusted NO OTHER CITY wanted the thing…. and some of the places that they said made proposals BUT those cities tourism groups spoke out against it thus proving the news correct
how many cities want the 2020 Dem convention? that is the news I have not heard being reported
If it does not meet the LEGAL definition of a refund as provided in state election law and in SBOE rules and interpretations, guess what Dallas? It is NOT a refund. It is a contribution.
I think the Election laws require that you report the Fair Market Value of any in kind contribution. If Caucus members are getting services at a deep discount, that needs to show up on the GA member’s finance report as in kind with FMV attached to it. Don’t think that is being done.
“Intellectual giants”……A fine jest on your part, sir. ?
Under Woodhouse and Hayes, the NCGOP has become irrelevant. Their members in the GA are doing the same. NC’s two major parties are Beavis and Butthead, with not a shadow of difference between the two.
Thom Tillis was Jim Black masquerading as a Republican. Tim Moore is Liston Ramsey masquerading as a Republican.
Phil Berger started off great, but as his ambition for statewide office grew, he morphed into Marc Basnight masquerading as a Republican.
Tillis, Moore, and Berger have used the same techniques as Ramsey, Black, and Basnight to dominate the caucus.
They are all about their own personal ambition and power, not about any set of principles, but they are basically cowards as shown by the shameful surrender on HB2. They will sell out for cash as shown by their surrendering the state to the greedy solar bandits.
We need our party back, and we need Republican leaders who act like principled leaders, not used car salesmen.. I am afraid that all of this is going to end badly, and with Marxist governor Conman Cooper waiting in the wings, that is scary.
Two Democrat-inspired events in the past put way too much power into the hands of the leadership and that needs to change if we are going to change things in Raleigh. The body as a whole, not the leadership, ought to be in control.
In the House, a long tradition of the Speaker only serving a single term in that office kept the power of that office at bay. That longstanding tradition was broken in the 1970s when Speaker Carl Stewart (D-Gaston) wanted to run for statewide office and do it as sitting Speaker but needed a second term to align that office with the race and managed to maneuver himself into a second term. His successor, Liston Ramsey, however, decided he was going to be Speaker for life (that got upended by the Mavretic coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats who ousted him in 1987) and the one term Speakership became history.
In the Senate, the rules for many years had split power between the Lieutenant Governor and the President of the Senate, which kept leadership power in check. That got upended by the Democrats after the election of Republican Lt. Gov. Jim Gardner in 1988. The Democrats changed the rules to strip all the powers not set out in the Constitution for Senate operation from the Lieutenant Governor and concentrate them in the Senate President. That led many to refer to the new Senate President Marc Basnight as “the most powerful man in state government”. Those powers remain with the Senate president today.
The best course for North Carolina is to restore the state of affairs before these two Democrat power grabs, and the best way would be a Constitutional Amendment to limit the Speaker of the House to a single term and redistribute the powers of the Senate President between that office and the Lieutenant Governor based on what the Senate rules before 1988 provided.