#NC-03: Dacey v. Jones
Craven County commissioner Scott Dacey made it official today. Sources in Raleigh and DC confirm for me that uber-consultants Carter Wrenn and Paul Shumaker have been instrumental in pushing Dacey into the ring with Jones. Dacey, a career lobbyist with a DC lobbying firm, has the potential and connections to raise big bucks — music to the ears of any political consultant worth his salt.
I am also told that Dacey is trying to recruit former Jones opponents Taylor Griffin and Philip Law to publicly support his effort against Jones — promising them jobs on his congressional staff if he wins.
Dacey, I am told, is pitching himself as “a conservative alternative” to Jones. (Never mind that most raters of conservatism regularly place Jones in the state delegation’s top 3 or 4.)
Says one source of mine from the Third District:
“This guy is running around telling people he’s going to go up to Washington and give them a piece of his mind. Be a voice for the little people, the voiceless. But he’s been up there for decades wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill. He’s been a fixture on Capitol Hill longer than Walter Jones.”
As far as the whole “conservative alternative” argument goes — Dacey has been blasting Jones for voting down something if he doesn’t like a small fraction of it. His argument 
goes something like this: “Why vote down something that is 80 percent good? Isn’t it better to get 80 percent rather than nothing? It’s selfish to hold out for 100 percent of what you want. That’s not how you get stuff done in Washington.”
A source in the Third District passed on a great story about a Dacey speech before a Tea Party group in the district. Dacey fielded questions after his talk, and an older gentleman stood up to speak: “Mr. Dacey, I heard what you said about 80 percent or nothing. I have a dish of candy right here on this table. Let’s say I told you 20 percent of the candy in the dish was poisoned, while 80 percent was not. Would you take a piece, if I offered it?”
I will say it again. Dacey is no alternative to Jones. Neither was/is Taylor Griffin. Phil Law traveled the district and represented a viable alternative. I would be very disappointed to find out he was supporting a Washington insider like Scott Dacey. If the story about him being promised a job is true, the disappointment would turn to shame. That’s not the Phil Law I know.
I am not in your district, but I used to be in Jones’ district, and I like him very much. He is the best one up there and I would not lift a finger to bring him home.
If Jones and all Republicans would vote conservative 100% of the time this would never be a problem. Now this presents even a bigger problem for the GOP Conservatives. If we outist Jones then we prove a point that we want strong conservatives voting in DC, however if we keep him we are saying if you leave the reservation every now and then it’s OK …
Damned if we do…damned if we don’t !!!
Scott Dacey has made lots of contributions to liberal Republicans, but the most telling as to what kind of a Republican he really is are those to Eric Cantor in his primary with conservative Dave Brat, where Dacey gave Cantor $500, and then the $10,000 that Dacey gave to “Boehner for Speaker” (no, not Boehner for Congress, but Boehner for SPEAKER).
Eastern North Carolina does NOT need a John Boehner Republican representing us in Washington.
Can’t forget a conversation I had once with Dacey regarding Jones. My recollection is Dacey doesn’t think Walter knows how to play the game. That’s enough to get me to vote for Walter again. The game is the politicians win and we, the pawns, lose every time.
”Uber consultants”?? Does this mean they use the ride sharing service instead of taxis?
The same Carter Wrenn who originally brought us Renee Ellmers, and now wants to bring us a male version of Renee? The same Carter Wrenn who last election wanted to run Tony Tata, who wasn’t even a Republican, didn’t live in the district, and who pushed drivers licenses for illegal aliens against Walter Jones? That Carter Wrenn?
The same Paul Shumaker who gave the moronic and disastrous advice that Justice Bob Edmunds should run for reelection in a non-partisan election instead of a partisan one, which cost him his seat and cost Republicans our Supreme Court majority? The same Paul Shumaker whom Civitas revealed to be taking big money from major national environmental radicals to push Obama;s expensive green energy policies in North Carolina? That Paul Shumaker?
The ride sharing service Uber seems to be cracking up these days if one reads the financial pages. Maybe that term fits well with these two crackpot RINO consultants.
You don’t give Wrenn enough credit…..he also brought us faux conservative George Holding….you know, the guy that said he’d cut, cut, cut spending if we sent him to Washington.
All Wrenn and Scuhmaker are looking for is a payday. Both are nothing more than establishment hacks.
Brant –
For the record, Scott Dacey didn’t need to “recruit me,” nor did he offer me a “job” in DC or anywhere else. I wouldn’t take it if he did. You have my contact info, why not just ask me?
I’m supporting Scott because I’ve watched him work his ass off for Craven County, and especially for MCAS Cherry Point — and he’s a real conservative across the board. Walter’s commitment to conservative principles is directly related to the strength of his next primary challenger. Look at Walter’s voting record before I ran against him. It’s not hard to just vote the right way on a handful of votes you know are going to be scored.
It’s true that both Scott and I have Washington experience. So do you as I recall. Scott does work as a lobbyist, but your readers deserve to know more than just that. You and I both started our careers working for Sen. Jesse Helms, who was President of the NC Bankers Association, which lobbies Congress too. Yet, he made a damn fine Senator – for my money the finest our state has ever produced.
My campaign for Congress was ENTIRELY my (possibly stupid) idea. The same goes for Scott. ENC deserves to have a competent representative in Washington, it’s time for Walter to go. End of story
As I did, Scott will likely draw on relationships in DC to close the enormous advantage Walter has as a career politician who has spent 30 years doing favors — often for special interests that are not conservative at all — to build a fundraising base. He’s taken a whopping $4.3 million from special interest PACs over his career.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that Walter is one of the only Republicans to rake in tens of thousands from liberal trial lawyers? Maybe it’s because he’s the only Republican who votes with the Democrats against conservative attempts to reform abusive lawsuits that are strangling small businesses and (along with Obamacare) driving health care costs to the moon.
Walter has benefited from a system that protects incumbents with huge campaign war chests at the ready to crush anyone who challenges them. As soon as you and other media outlets stop charging for ads, challengers won’t need to raise vast sums of money to get a message out to voters and give folks a choice when you go to the polls.
There’s reasons to support Walter. If you think that we don’t need to be deploying our armed forces abroad to fight terrorism, Walter’s a perfectly acceptable choice. For people like my friend Todd Bennett for whom this is their number one issue, support for Walter is perfectly reasonable. But, pretending like he’s a conservative — at least one that is likely to advance the ball down the field on conservative priorities and fight effectively for Eastern NC in Congress — is nonsense.
Walter pledges to serve no more than six terms, now he’s running for his thirteenth. I think it’s fair to hold him to his word.
Given the liberals who bankrolled the campaign of counterfeit conservative and Washington special interest operative Taylor Griffin, his support of another liberal lobbyist like Dacey should be the kiss of death.
Dacey giving ten thousand dollars to moderate establishment hack John Boehner’s effort fo hang on to his Speakership against a conservative challenge tells you all you need to know about Scott Dacey and the fact that he is anything but a conservative. Walter Jones was the only other NC Congressman to back the succesful campaign by conservative Congressman Mark Meadows (R-NC) to oust Boehner as Speaker.
We do not need a lapdog of the liberal leadership as our Congressman and that is precisely what Dacey’s contribution history tells us he would be.
LOL. Big talk for a guy too scared to post under his own name “GUWonder.” How about telling us exactly which policy positions I hold that are liberal?
There is an old saying that “money talks and bullshit walks”. All one has to do is look at the money people behind your campaign from that New York City liberal whose efforts made New York City the top place where your contributors came from to associates of John Boehner in the Washington, DC area. The people who were investing in your campaign told a lot more of that story than the song and dance you gave voters. Those people would not have been busting their hump to raise money for you if they did not have a pretty good idea that you would be voting their liberal positions. There was lots of discussion on these boards during your failed campaign about the money people behind you. And while you were getting lots of NY and DC money, your reports show that almost no one in the 3rd district other than lobbyist Dacey gave you money, and since his lobbying business is in DC, he really does not count..
Hey Taylor, Here’s the facts. The first time you came across as a nice alternative and you snuck up on Jones and got close.
The second time it looked like you’d been to Washington candidate school and came across as such a fake damn Phil Law beat you.
That equals 2 time LOSER.
Now, you’ve hitched your wagon to someone with a worse establishment record than you. You don’t get a loser tag for being with Dacey. Instead you’ll be presented with the “Just Doesn’t Know When to Go Away ” award.
You tried to tell everybody you had the maturity to be a congressman. Looks to me like you spend your time looking on every blog and website for an excuse to be relative again.
Don’t go down with the Dacey ship. The rats jumping off will eat you alive.
btw…. eat a couple biscuits for breakfast. Way to sickly thin to be in politics.