NC-09: Republican candidate, Democrat donor

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Leigh Brown is  an interesting character.  She’s part of the gaggle of Republicans seeking the GOP nomination in the Ninth Congressional District.  She’s getting a lot of publicity for all the money a national realtor PAC is investing in her.  But is there more to her story?

 

We say, YES. 

 

Let’s review:

 

Exhibit 1:  Brown kicked off  a bizarre, very short-lived campaign for governor in 2012.  She attempted to get on the ballot as an “independent.”  It’s not clear why the campaign never completely came to fruition.  Perhaps it was that simply nobody cared.

 

Exhibit 2:  After the aborted “independent” run for governor, Brown was publicly identifying herself as a “DemoPublicanRepubliCrat”.  O-Kay. 

 

 

Exhibit 3:  In 2014, she filed to primary conservative stalwart and state Rep. Larry Pittman.   Brown appeared to have a poor grasp on the action on Jones Street: 

 

[…] Brown, who owns the Harrisburg real estate company Leigh Brown & Associates, said she is fed up with legislation coming out of Raleigh that she feels is hampering teachers.

 

“I am not a politician by trade. With that being said I am putting my pearls in the ring, primarily because I’ve got two children in public schools and I am very, very concerned about what’s happening to public education,” Brown said.

 

“What’s coming down on the local schools is coming from the legislative level, so I am not going to sit back and fuss about it,” she said. “I will go do everything I can to help get the ship righted.”

 

The filing period is Feb. 10-28. The primary election is set for May 6, with the general election on Nov. 4.

 

Brown, 39, is challenging Pittman, who was appointed in October 2011 and ran unopposed in 2012 after defeating former Cabarrus County commissioner Jay White in the primary.

 

N.C. House District 82 seat covers most of western Cabarrus, including part of south Concord.

 

“This is not about Pittman, this is about me,” Brown said. “This is about the fact that I’m a citizen and I’ve got a voice, and I don’t think we should be as concerned with people’s background in politics as much as we should be concerned about having a broad array of different kinds of people in the legislature, different genders and ages, and cultural backgrounds and business backgrounds and family makeup, so that you have people represented in many different ways.

 

“And I for one don’t feel the legislature really looks like me. So if I’m not happy about that I have to go do something about it.”

 

Brown said she opposes some of the education legislation passed recently by the General Assembly, including the Read to Achieve program.

 

That program “is unnecessarily stressing out our third graders and our third-grade teachers and parents with threats of summer school and holding children back on a test that has not been vetted,” Brown said. “And we’ve got people in a panic. These children are 9 years old. They should be receiving a well-rounded education, not learning how to take some test that nobody really knows what it’s going to look like.”

 

Brown said the state is losing teachers because of education legislation coming out of Raleigh.

 

“It’s got to stop,” she said. […]

 

She was attacking a Republican majority at the time — using liberal talking points straight out of the NCAE playbook.    Thank goodness, she was unsuccessful in her assault on Mr. Pittman.

 

Fast forward to 2015.  Mrs. Brown made some curious campaign contributions:

 

That’s right.  US Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), who was then the chairman of the House Democrat Caucus.  #3 to Nancy Pelosi.  (The notorious AOC defeated him in a primary in 2018.)

 

That same year, Brown contributed to the campaign of then-insurance commissioner Wayne Goodwin — whose name has come up in connection with the current scandal engulfing the Department of Insurance and the NCGOP:

 

We found a selfie-video Brown produced on the day she filed for Congress this year where she described herself as “pretty fiscally conservative” and a “cheerful and kind person willing to find solutions and not throw stones.”

 

She then goes on to describe “affordable housing” as a top issue Congress needs to tackle.  (The last time they did that, we got the financial crisis of 2008.  NO THANK YOU.)

 

 

 

Leigh Brown is a great reminder of that famous warning:  BUYER, BEWARE.