Longtime NCGOP leader / activist scolds Simmons on handling of Berger-Tillis party disloyalty issue
Some sleight-of-hand helped US senator Thom Tillis and state senate president pro tem Phil 
Berger escape the wrath of attendees at the recently concluded NCGOP state convention. Beaufort County attorney and longtime party fixture Steven Rader took time to put his frustration over those developments in writing to the party’s statewide leader:
Appreciate his effort but he might as well scold the idiot delegates that elected this vapid RNC puppet.
Thanks Steve Rader, for your shot of light into the darkness. Good people have endured the years of corrupt electronic voting, and we are back to paper ballots. Now we’re back to the previous barriers of weighted voting and the imbecile faction that signed up to be a delegate instead of joining the la tee da club. With these barriers still firmly in place a credible party in North Carolina is just an illusion on the desert horizon.
Despite the efforts of some good people in the party, the party will be no help in dealing with disloyalty or any other thing of importance. It’s up to the voters. In order to handle the situation, they will have to wake up. Don’t stop dreaming, but in the meantime we better hunker down.
I don’t think the people who are towing the Party line — that is, those who refuse at the leadership’s insistence and threats to take any action against disloyal Party members — are necessarily imbeciles. The are simply members of an ever narrowing clique of insiders, cowards and hacks (a lot of them being former Democrats) who are systematically driving away many loyal, sincere, honest and hard-working activists. Then they blame the people who want the rules of the Party to be respected for “divisiveness.” Just like Democrats.
You’re right. We have that “clique of insiders” in our county, and they have driven many of our respectable activists away. I should have been more specific about the imbeciles. In my locale they are brought in whenever they are needed especially in crucial county conventions to follow the “insider” script that will produce enough votes to make things hard for conservatives. These strangers blindly follow their directives then we never see them again or until needed again. When we attempt to align with rules, decorum, or just basic ethics, they accuse us of being mean and divisive. All this seems to be commonplace these days.
Just last night in an exec. committee meeting a well-known state rep. moved to adjourn the meeting rather than address relevant business he did not want brought up.
While I was surprised to see this show up in the Haymaker, I had forwarded blind copies to some party leaders in the counties that had raised this issue so that they would be aware of it. I brought this issue up at the NCGOP ExCom meeting last Saturday at the conclusion of Chairman Simmons’ report as a question. He responded in the meeting that when he received a complaint from the home county of the individual whose party loyalty was challenged, he would bring it to the ExCom. When I tried to raise the issues addressed in the letter in response, I was ruled out of order.
At the close of the meeting, I went up to Simmons and verbally explained the situation to him. His response then was to tell me to put that in writing, and it would be the first item of business for the new General Counsel. That letter accomplished that and I am now waiting for a response.
I have had two people contact me and ask me the same question since this article was published so I thought I would answer it here. The question was “who was responsible for the misinterpretation of the Plan?”. My answer was that in speaking with Chairman Simmons, he implied he had gotten an opinion from somewhere but did not specify where. I did not ask because my focus is getting this process back on track so the counties filing the complaints can get the day before the ExCom that they are entitled to, not to engage in a blame game of what has occurred previously. I am not so concerned about what caused the derailment as I am about getting the train back on the tracks. Once this process can resume, the chips can fall where they may.
One caller went on to assume that since Simmons was going to direct this inquiry to the new General Counsel, that it must have been his predecessor who had rendered the erroneous opinion. but I pointed out that is not a valid assumption. Since the NCGOP hired a staff counsel, I understand that often that is who is called upon for legal opinions. Those guys are just out of law school and have little or no actual experience in the law or the party.. They get a little experience at NCGOP and then move on to something else. Another possibility is that it was referred to the Plan of Organization Committee, which now has authority to render interpretations of the Plan of Organization. Then, of course, it also could have been the General Counsel or Assistant General Counsel. Which of these rendered that opinion is immaterial and it is not productive to bother with it. What is important is getting the counties which have properly raised this issue their day before the executive committee.
Party disloyalty is serious matter and when it gets swept under the rug for any reason, it just encourages more of it. That is not productive for the party and that is why these matters must be fully dealt with before the executive committee. We do not need to send a signal that endorsing a Democrat is okay while one is a party official.