#ncga: But, but but — It’s them bloggers’s fault !!!
That was apparently the spin — as reported to us by a faithful reader — put forth recently by state Rep. Frank Iler (R-Brunswick) in response to questions about those “affiliated committees.”:
”As for the second provision in the bill, it was about good accounting and business practices. These groups already exist. This just made it more open and accountable. The funds were held by the state party as a line item, not as a separate account. These are funds we and our caucus supporters give for our races. The party promised not to dip into them, but has in the past. It’s a long story, but it’s like you putting your money in your neighbor’s bank account and them promising not to dip into them even if they have financial problems. Oops, they did it one time, but never again. It’s just good conservative business practice to have separate, accountable funds.
You won’t hear this from the self-appointed pundits and bloggers trying to drum up business for their sites. It’s an issue only with folks looking for issues on which to go negative. Hope you don’t fall for it.”
Drumming up business? Yeah. We’re getting *filthy rich* doing this. * SIGH. If only I was in a position where I could use the leverage of a bureaucracy to shake people down for cash money …*
I don’t know if Iler is counting his House colleague Justin Burr as a “self-appointed pundit and blogger”:
I read that Wolf guys piece weeks ago about money being taken.. I heard that some of this happened before Hasan took over but that they asked for a lot of money over the summer and then there is Wolf talking about 75k. I get your point above but it looks like both sides have points? Outside of the usual internal power struggles what’s going on here.
This is a liberal Boehner-like State House Speaker’s power grab that makes pay for play almost a certainty with a new one stop shop for special interests buying influence. It is about legislators being controlled from the top down instead of being responsive to their constituents. It is bad government on steroids.
Abuse of Speaker controlled funds is already clear, but this just makes it much worse. A good example is Tim Moore’s placeman recently distributing $75K BEFORE THE PRIMARY to a group of his cronies, all squishy Big Government Republicans.
But the Senate voted for it, too, you say? While they should be ashamed of that vote, it is easy to see how they were stampeded. The Senate has been the conservative house of the legislature while the House has been more liberal. A couple of months ago, Governor’s McCrory’s PAC, Carolina Rising, under the leadership of Dallas Woodhouse, ran opposition polling against leading members of the State Senate who were opposing the big spending items in the House version of the budget. This was an effort to intimidate the Senate into backing the higher spending levels the governor and the House wanted. Just before the vote of HB 373, it came out that the governor’s crowd and other establishment Republicans were pushing the very same Dallas Woodhouse to be Executive Director of the NCGOP. It understandably alarmed the Senate that someone who had just engaged in very hostile political aggression against the leadership of the Senate might end of sitting on the Senate caucus’ funds. Woodhouse did indeed become NCGOP ED in a very divisive move by the Central Committee. The Senate also objected to the provisions about staying out of primaries, but that too is a product of the Woodhouse situation. Understandably, the Senate caucus wanted to be able to fight back in primaries if Woodhouse’s successor at Carolina Rising followed through from the attack polling done under Woodhouse to actually back moderate challengers against key Senators.
Woodhouse’s factional infighting involvement in all this means he should never have gotten to first base on becoming NCGOP ED, but it also pushed some legislators who should have stopped this bad legislation, as so often has happened in the Senate, into supporting it instead.
I wonder how Rep Frank Iler would spin this – his conservative score from
Civitas Action as gone from a B in 2012 to an F in 2014. He went from a ranking of #7 to #47. But perhaps that’s the bloggers fault too?
I can assure him that the voters in his district are paying very close attention and have had enough.