#ncga: Changing the rules at the last minute. Heading to court.
So, we’ve got two different cases of the majority on Jones Street changing the rules governing this year’s elections at the last minute. Both cases appear to be headed toward becoming COURT CASES.
First, we have the state Supreme Court race. Being too cute by half, the NCGOPe, um, “brains” in Raleigh decided to rig the candidate selection system to ensure top-down control. Candidates would have partisan labels. Supreme Court primaries were done away with. NCGOPe insiders announced WHO their troops outside the beltline were supposed to support. All so neat and tidy, eh?
Well, a monkey wrench named Anglin has appeared on the scene. Chris Anglin, an attorney with a lot of ties to the NC Democrat Party, filed for the Supreme Court as a Republican. That presented a problem for incumbent Justice Barbara Jackson (R) who had been set up by Raleigh power-brokers for a one-on-one matchup with Anita Earls (D). Now, there will be two names on the Supreme Court ballot with R next to them.
NCGOPe types screamed to high heaven about shenanigans and 
stalking horse candidates. Though, wouldn’t primaries have helped deal with just such a problem?
The honorables on Jones Street went back into special session. They passed special legislation that said, basically, if you weren’t registered with a particular party 90 days before filing, you can’t run under that party’s standard. (You have to run as unaffiliated.)
Not too long ago, the crew at state GOP HQ fought tooth and nail to keep a state senate candidate on the ballot who had only registered to vote in North Carolina DAYS before filing closed.
The governor has vetoed this, and it appears an attempt will be made to override the veto.
And then there is the Constitution Party of North Carolina. NCGOPe types were all giggly when The Green Party got ballot access. A great opportunity to split the liberal vote.
Then, The Constitution Party — which supports all that stuff Republicans are supposed to be supporting — got ballot access. The honorables went to work and threw a monkey wrench into the party’s candidate recruitment process.
Well, it appears the fledgling party’s leadership is seeking its day in court:
On July 20th The Constitution Party of North Carolina, and 3 of it’s Candidates, Jerry Jones, Greg Holt, and Alen Poindexter filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ruling by Josh Lawson to remove it’s candidates from the ballot after the Law Changed.
Vice Chairman Kevin Hayes said “ We are asking the courts to place 3 of our candidates back on the ballot. The Constitution Party followed the Law, and our candidates legally filled. Because the Republican led general assembly was afraid of the Constitution Party they opted to target us with a law that would keep New Parties from nominating people who lost a primary. ”
Al Pisano State Chairman said “ Clearly this bill was a direct result of The Constitution Party making the ballot. There was no mention of this until after we made the ballot. Removing someone from the ballot after the law changes sets bad precedent and is dirty politics. Even the Democrats never pulled a stunt like this and we believe the citizens of our state will end up rejecting this type of politics. “
All of this is about the Establishment trying to protect itself from US — the rabble outside the Raleigh beltline.
Our state and our country were established with the idea of the government and its politicians being servants to the people. We’ve allowed a 180-degree turn on that thinking. Time to nip it in the bud.
It just keeps getting worse for the GOP. Harry Smith, the Republican chairman of the UNC Board of Governors, just took a break from hiring liberal Democrat chancellors to announce he wants to remove Silent Sam. If Smith wanted to enrage conservative voters against the Republicans, he couldn’t have picked a better issue. I have never before seen such a stupid political party. Go ahead Chairman Smith—go ahead and destroy the Republican Party in North Carolina.
The blunders by the GOP legislature and the NCGOP party leadership has already cost us one Supreme Court seat and our majority there, and I now fear it may cost us a second seat.
What we have is a Democrat ringer who has filed as a “Republican” to try to divide our vote by confusing GOP voters. It is a scam by the Democrats and needs to be squelched, but the only reason they are able to try the scam is blunders by our own side,
The Haymaker was spot on when they called out the stupidity of the “jungle primary” and that wacky procedure is the cause of our current problem. The jungle primary resulted from some of our Republicans in the Senate working to take away our right to vote for our judges. They could not get the House to go along, but while there was an impasse, this absurd jungle primary was created for this election. Our party leaders were asleep at the switch for not fighting this jungle primary tooth and nail.
The jungle primary gave the Democrats the opportunity to file one or more ringers to fool low information GOP voters, all of whom would then be on the November ballot as “Republicans”, This was talked about at the last NCGOP ExCom meeting. Since they anticipated the Democrats playing this card, why did we not have GOP ringers to file as Democrats to water down their vote, too? It was gross incompetence and political malpractice for NCGOP not to have our own ringers ready to go.
The legislature also screwed up in not putting the 90 day party membership requirement that applies to other filings in the jungle primary law, as it should have been, when it was originally passed. They have now corrected that with this bandaid legislation.
We could end up with the extreme leftist Anita Earls in this Supreme Court seat due to political incompetence by our own side. Barbara Jackson is an excellent justice and does not deserve that, and neither does our state.
We lost the Edmunds seat due to political incompetence by both our legislators and our party leadership in first creating the stupid “retention election” (again denying our right to elect our judges) and when that failed making it a non-partisan election. If Edmunds had run in a regular partisan election like the Court of Appeals candidates did, he would have won. Edmunds was also a good justice and did not deserve this, although he made a mistake in hiring a consultant who pushed both of these really stupid moves that cost him his seat.
Our party needs better leadership if we are to avoid these blunders that cost us elections.
Harry Smith is not the only problem on the Board of Governors by any means. Most of the BOG members are totally clueless when it comes to managing the UNC system. Margaret Spellings is equally clueless. There needs to be a total housecleaning. Living in Chapel Hill, I’ve watched this clown show for the past eight years. The UNC system is long overdue for conservative reform–but the GOP just can’t get it done. Very sad to watch. Allowing a dozen notorious radicals to threaten the UNC War Memorial is just indicative of the lack of leadership by the Republican BOG and Spellings.
The problem with the BOG appointed by the GOP legislature is the practice, begun by Thom Tillis of selling board seats for contributions. We have thus ended up with dolts who care nothing for either policy or management. We need to be appointing reform-minded stalwarts.
Nine times out of 10, I agree with the point of view of The Daily Haymaker, but not this time.
Chris Anglin is not a Republican. He’s a Democrat. He changed parties at the last minute in order to try to help the Democrat candidate win Justice Barbara Jackson’s seat. The General Assembly rightly decided to bring the judicial seat races under the “must be a member of the party on whose ticket you’re running for at least 90 days when you file to run for office if you want to be shown on the ballot as belonging to that party” requirement.
I totally blame Bob Edmunds for losing the Supreme Court. He didn’t want to run as a Republican and he didn’t want to run in the retention election–either one of which would have guaranteed his re-election. There is almost total agreement in the state among conservatives and Republicans that Edmunds stabbed us in the back. We may never recover politically from his betrayal. He is as worthless as they come.
The problem in Edmunds race was his consultant Paul Shumaker, who was the one pushing the sham “retention election” that bombed and then pushed the race to be non-partisan, which sunk Edmunds. Some conservatives in the General Assembly raised the issue that the election should have been made partisan, but the establishment big dogs like David Lewis went along with Shumaker and that sunk Edmunds. Edmunds is not a politician and he unfortunately relied on Shumaker’s advice. It would be more correct to say that Shumaker stabbed the party in the back, and it is not the first time he has done that.
What is scary is that Barbara Jackson is also using Shumaker as a consultant.
GUWonder: You fail to recognize that it was Bob Edmunds himself that “bombed” the retention election that would have guaranteed both his and Barbara Jackson’s re-election. Shumaker may have advised him against running as a Republican, but Edmunds is totally responsible for deep-sixing his retention election. In the final analysis, the fault lies solely with Edmunds. He is detested in the GOP.
Once again, Dallas Woodhouse exhibited his total lack of political savvy in his media comment on this matter. The only part I saw quoted was Woodhouse calling Anglin “the enemy”. This sounded personal and petty. Anybody with a brain would have made a comment that summed up what was wrong with the Anglin candidacy like calling him what he is – “a Democrat plant”. That succinctly sums up the problem, instead of Woodhouse making it look petty and personal.
Why is a party bureaucrat allowed to make media comments in the first place instead of an elected party leader? Maybe the fact that chairman Hayes is just as bad on lack of political savvy, like his recent comments on the GOP National Convention being set in Charlotte, in which the only part quoted was where he criticized President Trump unfairly for “dividing America” (hey, Hayes, the media is doing that, not Trump). Jeeez!
Lets get elected leadership with the savvy to deal with liberal media and get the hired help back doing what they should be doing, not playing chairman.
I thought Isaiah chapter 3 was unfolding before our eyes, but I am beginning to think that it has been unfolding for years and years.
WHO IS GOING AWAY?
“the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor and the skillful magician and the expert in charms.”
(verses 2-3)
WHO WILL TAKE THEIR PLACE?
“And I will make boys their princes, and infants shall rule over them.
And the people will oppress one another, every one his fellow and every one his neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the despised to the honorable.
(verses 4-5)