#ncga: Lawyering up in HD-20
It was only a matter of time. This GOP primary between two very tough ladies — Holly Grange and Tammy Covil — has been one of the more interesting fights this election year. Hillary Clinton and Benghazi have been players — for the first time in my memory — in a North Carolina General Assembly race. Now, it appears that Grange has injected a big-time New York City lawyer into the fray:
Of course, the Covil campaign had something to say in response:
What does a candidate who claims one of her top priorities as your representative will be to demand accountability from state government do when someone tries to hold her accountable? She hires a fancy New York attorney and threatens legal action. Is this the type of Chicago-style poltics we can expect from Holly Grange?
The Special Committee on Benghazi and the hearings that are ongoing are government accountability. This was demanded
by the poeple because Hillary Clinton allowed four brave American souls to be murdered in Libya. We want answers and we’re seeking justice. It is unfortunate that Grange’s company, Osprey Global Solutions, has surfaced in the committe’s investigations of Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The information on HollyGrange.com is 100% factual. There are multiple credible news outlets that have reported the same information, which are sourced and linked, and the statetments made by Congressman Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the Special Committee on Benghazi, are pulled verbatim from official Congressional record and linked to the government website that houses his documented letter.
Military servious is honorable and no one, myself included, is questiong anyone’s service to this Country. What’s questionable are the actions of someone who has long since retired from the military and who, as a private citizen, is using high-level military connections to secure government contracts for profit.
Using previous military service as a shield to insulate yourself from criticism for shady business dealings as a private citizen is disgraceful.
Once again Tammy illustrates that she has not researched nor read the facts and certainly does not understand what they mean. There are no financial links tied to Osprey. She believes that if she repeats her slanderous lies over and over that everyone as she does will believe it. That she publishes a letter that Wilmington’s voters believe is an appropriate response for the negative unprofessional slanderous messages. It also illustrates thst she has nothing to offer our community because she doesnt know what we need. She was unable to communicate it at the forum. She didn’t understand the questions nor could answer. No one like these attacks ads. Tammy it’s time you listen. This isn’t working. We have serious issues.
It is any surprise that the yankee candidate chooses a yankee lawyer to represent her? We do not need Grange’s Illinois values, or maybe now combined with New York values, in the NC House! We need the North Carolina values of Tammy Covill.
Grange was a lawyer in Illinois herself before carpetbagging here a few years ago. Why is it she is not practicing law here in North Carolina?
GU you’re good at calling names, you’ve called me a few. Here is a few to call Holly Grange:
NC High school graduate gone on to West Point, served at Ft. Bragg, NC Ports Commissioner, Conservative.
Holly Grange is as conservative as the day is long and as Carolina as the sky is blue. You are foolish to argue otherwise…
Just what we need in Raleigh, another well qualified REMF!
The fact that her father happened to be stationed at Fort Bragg right at the time she was graduating from high school does not make her a North Carolinian, and being in the military bubble anywhere is not the same as growing up in the real world in the same place. I don’t put down the military, as I respect them, but just recognize that it is a very different world. When Grange got out of the military, she chose Illinois, not North Carolina, and got her law license there. Has she even bothered to get a law license here in NC in the short time she has been here?
As to holding a McCrory appointment, that is no indication of being a conservative, and more likely the opposite. Jim Martin was very good at making appointments, but McCrory seems to make more bad ones than good ones.
The people Grange surrounds herself with in her campaign are from the Big Government wing of the party, and that speaks volumes, starting with that Common Core backstabber Bill Cobey.
Obviously, you must define ”conservative” the way Karl Rove or Haley Barbour define it, or indeed the way George McGovern defined it in his unsuccessful 1976 Senate reelection campaign. You do not define it the way actual conservatives do.
Glancing through Holly Grange’s political contributions, I see ones to and/or from the PAC of the trial lawyers, a very liberal bunch and the NC Chamber of Commerce, who these days are big government Republicans hung up on corporate welfare, big spending, amnesty for illegal aliens, and other special interest concerns. Neither of those groups are remotely conservative. Her connections with them indicate a legislator who will be a lap dog for the special interests.
Many of the individual contributors I did not recognize, but one who stuck out like a sore thumb was Frank Gorham, the chairman of the Coastal Resources Commission, and a radical environmentalist who worships the Chicken Little fairy tales of the global warmists and has fought tooth and nail with conservatives in the legislature. Gorham wants NC policy aligned to the Al Gore theories, and the conservative legislators do not. Gorham was a founder and leader of a rabid environmental organization in New Mexico before he came to NC. Gorham’s contribution shows Grange must be in tune with the Obama global warmist crusade, and that is NOT conservative. She would be an addition to the Al Gore / George Soros oriented clique in the GOP caucus, something conservatives do not need. Read the articles on this site about Frank Gorham. He belongs in the Obama party.
Between ill-advised mail piece after mail piece, an instant backfired negative attack in November only hours after a fellow Republican announces as running as well (instead of holding back closer to election as good fodder when timing counts), costing herself the endorsement of the outgoing Rep. Catlin, a complete lack of attention to the voting demographics of her own district, sending mail to non-voters, and on and on and on. I am astonished and hope for conservatives’ sakes that Tammy’s consultants never step within 1000 yards of another candidate client. As they have show with every single step they have no idea of what they are doing running a campaign, whatsoever. None. No grasp of the data, no grasp of simple public relations abilities, no grasp of candidate preparation, no grasp of strategic creativity in mail, radio and TV. When Tammy loses this race by an enormous margin, Andy Yates and Carolyn Justice should close their door and promise North Carolinians to never work on another Republican campaign. Ever. But just watch, they will be privately blaming Covil for her loss in order to distance themselves after Tuesday.
The public figure doctrine means it is basically open season on politicians when it comes to attacks. Politicians who lawyer up this way are usually those where their opponents have struck a bulls eye and they have no real answer, so they try this bluff.
Grange screaming like a stuck pig through her lawyer is a good indication that Covill is right on target and hit a vulnerable point.
John, you sound upset, taking this so personal. I would too, if my candidate continued to make the same mistakes over and over, spending her own money on lies and scare tactics. She doesn’t have anything to say about how she has contributed to our community? Tammy is not from here.
The few comments I have seen, that are not negatively targeted to Mrs Grange, have stated that she will “halt immigration from all countries that are seen as a high risk from exporting terrorists”. Seriously she can’t control this. She speaks on issues she cannot impact. Does she know this?
She also states she will eliminate Common Core. She tired and couldn’t accomplish anything but wasting our money.
Then this ad last campaign – did you miss the news last night? She paid for this photo to illustrate a black man in a hoodie. Did you see that? I am surprised that anyone is still blogging her praises.
She didn’t think that this would offend people? Maybe she thought no one would notice. It was offensive and stupid. Then to find out that Andy Yates and Carolyn Justice are advising her?
The only one I see screaming like a pig (stuck) is Tammy Covil telling everyone that will listen, that she doesn’t like nor can get along with anyone. The two times I have seen her on TV her face is red, she is looking down, grasping and ringing her hands together. She appears to be extremely uncomfortable and is ill prepared to speak about anything.
Tammy has underestimated her constituents that see through the smoke and mirrors of who she, what she stands for and what she can do for them. This is where she should have spent her and money and time.
Grange would just be another Obama Republican, like David Lewis, Jason Saine, or Nelson Dollar and North Carolina does not need that. A special interest Republican is another term for them.
Common Core is ruining what is left of public education, and Grange pals around with the suckweasels like Bill Cobey who have sold us out on that issue. The committee approach to deal with Common Core was hijacked, with the assistance of the Cobey types on it. Conservative legislators now know that they must take the bull by the horns and deal with it themselves. Covill will be on our side on that fight, while Grange will side with the liberals.
States can and should take a number of actions to deal with illegal immigration, and Covill will fight for us on that. I expect Grange would be in the Nelson Dollar camp that wants to coddle illegal aliens by giving them NC drivers licenses.
We have too many sellouts like Grange up there already. We do not need another one.
And this seems to be coming from your imagination, because we haven’t seen or heard a single thing out of Grange that would lead anybody to believe she would anything less than a staunch conservative across the board. Everything you wrote above is conjecture from your blind support of Covil. Your loyalty is admirable, but taking down a fellow conservative based solely on innuendo and made up assumptions is asinine. If Grange had said or written a single thing to spark concern, than that would be one thing, but your zealousness for Tammy Covil is clouding your judgement.
trust me, Covil has blown this race, she’s run a terrible campaign. It won’t be close…
Grange and her supporters want to pooh-pooh the issue of the Muslim migrant / ”Syrian refugee” placement in NC. That is another issue that shows she is not conservative.
The issue is one that NC voters should be concerned about. It is one that the legislature can do something about. And it is one that we should be concerned about Grange on.
These Muslim refugees have been a real nightmare in Europe with jihad dangers and rampant sexual assaults and rapes against local women. In the US, they are distributed through the country through private agencies, one of which is located in New Bern. The Craven County Commission recently passed a resolution against placed these Muslim migrants in their county, so this agency will be looking for others nearby and southeastern NC counties could well find themselves saddled with these migrants.
This Washington Times article explains how they are being distributed around the country:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/10/abraham-h-miller-syria-refugees-likely-end-up-on-w/
This article from a major British newspaper about what happened to one Swedish town of 44,000 when 900 of these Muslim migrants were dumped on them should be eyeopening about what can happen in NC:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3485473/The-small-Swedish-town-terrorized-string-sex-attacks-eight-assaults-past-three-weeks-leaves-women-terrified-walk-dark.html
While the NC General Assembly does not have the power to prohibit these placements, they do have a range of actions they could take that would effectively force them elsewhere. These include:
1) requiring positive ID for welfare for anyone from overseas. NC residents currently require a positive ID, so this would merely extend that principle. The feds pay for the migrants for about 6 months, then dump them on the states and counties. If they cannot get welfare, they will go elsewhere. If the migrants do not have a valid passport that can be confirmed through their own national authorities, they should be denied welfare. There are many counterfeit Syrian passports in circulation, so no Syrian passport should be accepted without Syrian government confirmation.
2) pass legislation creating liability to the victims for any civil or criminal wrong committed by a migrant placed by an agency placing the migrant against not only the agency itself but against any employee of the agency involved in any way in the placement. This will have these agencies decamping to another state.
3) create a very strenuous licensing system for agencies that place these migrants / ”refugees”. Make them post a very substantial civil bond, in the millions of dollars, to cover any liability for actions of the migrants they place. Create severe requirements for positive identification of the migrants and vetting of them Make it a felony to operate such an agency without being licensed.
4) create a public registry of where these migrants are placed like the sex offender registry (given the rampant sexual assaults committed in Europe by these migrants, that is a very apt analogy)
Holly Grange wants to sidestep this issue. Given the business that her husband is in, and she is at least nominally part of, and the countries they have been dealing with, like Libya, she simply cannot be depended upon to stand up for our citizens either against illegal aliens or the imposition of Muslim migrants / refugees on our state. It is against their own business interests.
Hate to say I told you so, I’ll just say I tried to tell ya!
Holly wins by 23 points, what a butt whooping Tammy Covil and the GOPc took in this one!
One more BAD (Basically a Democrat) legislator who will kiss up to the corrupt crony capitalists of the NC Chamber of Commerce and other obnoxious special interest groups. Nelson Dollar in a skirt.
Colvil runs a negative campaign, illegally purchases Grange’s named website and proceeds to slander with ludicrous accusations…putting together a global conspiracy theory understood by only her; gleaned from a few emails… What all that tells us is Tammy Colvil doesn’t have the sense to understand how far out of depth she is. She should take the now available time and attend CFCC to earn something beyond her high school degree. What the voters said on Tuesday was “OMG, Tammy go away”. Thanks to Holly Grange for entering the race and showing us all what a solid conservative candidate should look and act like.
John, You and others have ranted and insulted Holly Grange throughout the campaign. There has been much speculation and intense arguments over issues in which Holly Grange has never even commented. Why all the hostility when you have never bothered to research her views on many of the issues? If you had done some due diligence, you would have saved yourself a lot of heartache. I am sure Holly Grange will work hard during her term to represent the citizens of her district and to gain the support and respect of her opponent’s supporters. You need to give her a chance!
She is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, which these days is a big government, crony capitalist, corporate welfare organization. That tells you all you need to know that a candidate is a special interest Republican. He is also supported by those who sold us out on Common Core like Bill Cobey, so there is little doubt she will fall in line with the big government position there, too. She was also supported by noxious radical environmentalist Frank Gorham, so I am sure we will see her out there supporting the Obama green energy agenda. I could go on.
John, in your reply to PGBell you still don’t seem to point out anything that Holly Grange stands for, only that you don’t like those that support her. Nothing she’s said or any of her positions support your statements, let alone your ‘predictions’ of how she’ll act in the future. The voters clearly got it. Look at her positions and record; she’s going to be a great representative.
Liberal groups like the trial lawyers and establishment big government groups like the Chamber of Commerce are picky about their candidates. They don’t get behind conservatives. If they are involved with a Republican it is backing a primary challenge against a conservative. That has been true with the trial lawyers like forever, and with the Chamber over the past couple of decades, getting much worse recently. The US Chamber boasted last year about spending millions this year to oust conservatives in the US House and Senate in primaries. As to the trial lawyers, merely being a lawyer is not enough. The key with them is being a liberal. I was involved in a campaign for a conservative GOP attorney for the legislature some years ago, and the trial lawyers wanted nothing to do with him because he was a conservative.
The fact that the trial lawyers and the Chamber backed Grange speaks volumes about her positions. She would not have gotten their backing if she had not committed to their liberal positions. She may be telling voters in her district something different than she is telling these special interests, but that is nothing new for a special interest Republican. See Nelson Dollar.
Lol, you can read Tammy Covil’s ” consession” speech and realize why she lost, she doesn’t have an introspective, thoughtful bone in her body. All she knows is attacks, all she is is done…
Btw…I hope Holly Grange sues her pants suit off for her slander!