NC-09: At SBoE, Malcolm OUT and, um. Woodhouse IN?


It looks like the guy who started this whole fracas that threw the Ninth Congressional District race into limbo won’t be around to make any  more trouble.  Josh Malcolm of Robeson County does not appear to have been  reappointed by Governor Cooper.

Malcolm was besieged by all kinds of controversy, which included: (1) early knowledge of election shenanigan  allegations and failure to act on them, (2) covert discussions with key players in the current investigation of the Ninth District race,  and (3) payments to his live-at-home daughter to work for Dan McCready — the Democrat candidate from the Ninth District.

Republicans have nominated:  (1) Buck Newton, a former state senator and 2016 GOP nominee for attorney general, (2) Francis DeLuca, former head of The Civitas Institute, (3) Watauga County attorney and member of the last elections board Stacy “Four” Eggers, (4) and Eddie Woodhouse of Raleigh.

(Woodhouse is Dallas’s cousin.  He ran unsuccessfully for Raleigh City Council a few years back, and Dallas took some heat lobbying the Wake County Board of Elections to make Eddie chairman of the board.)

Democrats have nominated:  Stella Anderson, Bob Cordle, Greg Flynn and Valerie Johnson to the board.  Anderson, Cordle and Johnson all served on the recently dissolved board.  Flynn is a liberal activist and blogger who has been  serving on the Wake County board of elections.

State Democrats are apparently protesting three of the NCGOP’s four nominees:

[…] Democrats say De Luca and Newton are ineligible under a statute that says any officer of a group that “has engaged in electioneering” in the previous 48 months cannot serve on the state board. De Luca was president of the Civitas Institute and associated with Civitas Action, a nonprofit that ranks legislators based on their conservative voting record. Newton launched a super PAC last year to push passage of the voter ID amendment. And Woodhouse was a candidate for Raleigh City Council in 2015.

Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state GOP, said the party was trying to clarify the law with the staff of the elections board. […] 

Woodhouse and DeLuca are way too close to the current problematic leadership at NCGOP HQ.   Eggers wasn’t much of a stand-up guy during his tenure on the last board.  (It’s hard to see much evidence of DeLuca ever standing up to John Hood. The roll-over and show-the-belly response to Rob Schofield’s weak attack on The Carolina Plotthound was most appalling.)  Newton, an attorney,  knows the ins-and-outs of the law and has a reputation as a fighter when fighting is needed.

What about  Jay DeLancy from the Voter Integrity Project?  (I have no idea if he actually WANTS the gig.)  But the guy IS highly knowledgeable on the law and has a strong record of standing for ballot integrity and election security and all that good stuff.

The folks the NCGOP has been regularly tossing over to the board of elections have been grossly ineffective against street-fighter libs like Larry Leake and Josh Malcolm.  There has been a lot of tough talk about refusing to keep getting walked on.  Why not demonstrate it with some serious picks for this very important job?