WataugaWatch

Apparently they couldn't get Michelle Bachmann nor Sarah Palin, so Tom Fetzer and the NCGOP will use under-informed and under-performing poor Doug Hoffman, fresh off his loss in the NY-23, as the headliner for a Raleigh fundraiser (Hall of Fame Dinner on November 21). Oh goody.

What were we predicting a couple of days ago about Hoffman's becoming the new face of the GOP?

ADDENDUM
Tom Jensen, reacting to this news over at Public Policy Polling, sez, don't underestimate the North Carolina Republican Party's ability to defeat themselves in an environment that might otherwise conventionally favor their electoral chances:

If the Hoffman model is what [Fetzer & Co.] want to emulate they may just find a way to screw it up in a political climate that appears to be very favorable for them. Democrats have kept power in recent years despite one corruption scandal after another because voters in North Carolina think the Republicans are just too extreme and incompetent. You'd think they'd try to learn from those lessons and put a different face forward that could actually appeal to voters in the center but I may have overestimated them.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer, Tom Jensen

Where was the celebrated Republican/conservative resurgence in North Carolina yesterday? Nowhere much.

Charlotte
...elected its first Democratic mayor in 22 years, Anthony Foxx (no relation), pictured left, and increased the Democratic majority on the city council to eight out of 11 seats.

Asheville
Progressives swept the election. Mayor Terry Bellamy was reelected for a second term, and liberal Democrats Esther Manheimer, Gordon Smith, and Cecil Bothwell won council seats, beating two-term incumbent Republican Carl Mumpower, who ran such a weird campaign against Heath Shuler in the NC-11 last year. Both Smith and Bothwell are well known local bloggers.

Chapel Hill
The N&O summarized this race succinctly: "The liberal establishment held off a band of businessmen trying to change the town's course." So Chapel Hill has a new mayor, Mark Kleinschmidt, and the developers took only one of four available seats on the town council. Shades of Boone's Templetons: The pro-business candidates "were being influenced heavily by a specific group of developers, and I think in the end that backfired on them," said the top vote-getter, Penny Rich (love that name!).

Winston-Salem
Big reelection win for Dan Besse after "a sometimes-heated campaign" against Republican challenger Ted Shipley. Wish I'd been following this one! Dan is a personal hero of ours. Looks like a Democratic sweep otherwise in Tobacco City.

Durham
Democratic incumbents trounced their challengers, though the top vote-getter among the losers, a Libertarian, crowed that his 27% of the vote was a personal best for him and a sign of great things coming in the future.

Greensboro
The major bright spot statewide for the GOP. The mayor and city council turned over to Republican control. Mark Binker discusses it here.

Labels: Anthony Foxx, Asheville, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Dan Besse, Durham, Greensboro, North Carolina Republican Party, Winston-Salem

That's Republican Senate Leader Phil Berger with a wheelbarrow load full of "voter surveys" which he later delivered to Gov. Perdue's office to show just how displeased North Carolinians are with Democratic rule in the state.

Two small problems with that load o' survey crap:

1. The questions were asked only of "conservative Republicans," and the questions were just a smidge prejudicial. Sample: "Do you think death panels made up of government bureaucrats should decide if your loved ones live or die?" Wait! Let me think about that.

2. Phil Berger himself did not know what was in those envelopes, because apparently neither he nor his minions had bothered to open them and read the contents. Well, the governor's office did open them and found a few surprises. By late yesterday, an aide to the governor had opened about a third of the 3,000 "surveys" and found (among other things) a check made to Phil Berger for $50 (unclaimed and uncashed) and a few comments suggesting that all of those "conservative Republicans" are not all that happy with the North Carolina Republican Party. Such as ... "I am embarrassed to be associated with this organization. Your tactics are disgusting and you're going to lose a generation of voters" and "Stop wording questions so geared up to get the answers you want and start wording them to actually find out the people's opinion, not just confirm your own. There are probably only three questions on here that are legitimate" and "Not sending you any more money."

After "Under the Dome" spilled these latter beans, a self-identified Republican posted a rueful comment, comparing the NCGOP to Wile E. Coyote and the Democrats to the Roadrunner:

We just cannot seem to catch up with the Dems. We're comfortable being bumbling idiots. Nothing ever works out for us politically. We would be in a mess if we had not been born rich.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party, Phil Berger

It's one thing for the likes of me to call Republicans self-righteous hypocrites. It's far more effective for a Republican legislator (make that a "former" Republican legislator) to point out the obvious, even though he did it out of pure self-interest.

But, really, who better to know the inner workings of self-righteous hypocrisy?

Labels: Cary Allred, North Carolina Republican Party

It's Tom Fetzer for chair of the Republican Party of North Carolina.

According to Katy's Conservative Corner:

Party unity has been achieved. A big relief has filled the room and your blogger is especially happy. Not necessarily at the outcome, though that did go in her favor, but over the fact that this long, often dirty, race is over. We've all said things we've regretted and its thankfully time to move forward and get on with the job of electing Republicans!

Then immediately noting that many of the supporters of Fetzer's chief rival, Pope Foundation minion Chad Adams, were taking their defeat hard:

Sadly, many Adams delegates are filing out.

Perhaps they weren't quite as sad for saying things they regretted. We dunno.

Labels: Katy's Conservative Corner, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

On the first half-day of their state convention, North Carolina Republicans took an hour sniffing up on this new-fangled way to communicate, called (we hear) "e-mail," and decided reluctantly that it might be all right to send out party info via that means.

The U.S. Postal Service promptly collapsed.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party

Former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer and current candidate to take over the NC GOP (who is, incidentally, still not gay) decided to prove to delegates to the Republican state convention next weekend that he can produce attack ads better'n any other candidate up for chair of the state party.

He's got the formula down: ignore current real problems and go the Republicans-are-morally-superior route.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

Definitely.

Legal precedent, not on his side: "The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled in 1994 that falsely claiming someone is gay or bisexual is not libelous on its face."

Labels: homophobia, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

When last heard from, N.C. House member Cary Allred was suggesting that the chairwoman of the N.C. Republican Party pound sand up her ass for demanding he resign from the General Assembly.

But the headline this a.m., when we fired up the boilers on the old computer, was that Allred had decided he would resign after this current legislative session was over, in, say, September.

By this afternoon, the resignation time-table had accelerated, and Allred now says he'll be out of his friggin office by Monday.

And since he is a demonstrated master of loose-cannonism, he ain't going quietly. He's sick, he says, of being a Republican in a body dominated by Democrats, and he's perhaps even sicker of fellow Republicans:

"I am disgusted with my Republican colleagues who have looked at me through dark-colored glasses with evil thoughts," Allred said.

Sic transit gloria mundi. Which means, roughly translated, "I never liked any of youse anyway."

Labels: Cary Allred, North Carolina Republican Party

Jeff A. Taylor over at The Meck Deck, another of the 4 million websites sponsored by the right-wing John Locke Foundation, sums up his reaction to the Tom Fetzer "I'm NOT Gay" side-show in the N.C. Republican Party: "...this dust-up tells me that there is a sickness deep within the Republican Party in North Carolina that will not soon be healed. What was once a party of ideas is now a collection of special interests, boiling resentments, and stunning mediocrity."

We're going to remember that particular oxymoron ... "stunning mediocrity." Nice touch, that.

Labels: homophobia, John Locke Foundation, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

That's Cary Allred, Republican member of the NC General Assembly from Burlington. He's an accomplished comedian.

First, he was stopped on his way to Raleigh for going approximately a zillion miles per hour. Later that day, and apparently under the influence of lighter fluid, he put the (heterosexual) moves on a female House page, which behavior his (heterosexual) Republican colleagues later jealously called gross, icky, and mildly arousing.

Linda Daves, chair of the state party (until June 13th, when she's OUT), roused herself from baking apple dumplings long enough to demand that Allred resign from the General Assembly, and as late as Thursday Allred was saying, "All right, suckas, I'm outta your friggin uptight little political conclave." Allred said he'd change his registration to Unaffiliated.

But now, the about face and the punchline: Hell no, I won't leave the Republican Party, sez Allred, and who the hell is Linda Daves anyway?

"She never did anything to help me get elected. She doesn't know me. I don't know her," Allred said. "She does not know my constituents and my constituents don't know her."

Ooo, ouch.

Labels: Cary Allred, Linda Daves, North Carolina Republican Party

It's not just the Watauga County Republican Party that's obsessed with homosexuality. The state party is too. Where else would an e-mailed gay accusation about front-runner to become the new state Republican Party Chair, Tom Fetzer, elicit this hilariously defensive denial from Fetzer:

"I am not gay -- never have been -- never will be. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support any of the scurrilous allegations made in the anonymous attack on me .... The fact that I'm 54 and single does not mean that I have to put up with vicious rumors that I'm gay. The fact that I am heterosexual is a matter of public record."

Excuse me? How did Mr. Fetzer establish his heterosexuality as "a matter of public record"? Is there a central office for doing that? A board of examination? Is there videotape evidence of his rampant heterosexuality in action?

What is even funnier is that Fetzer is also a political consultant (he was big in this state for Elizabeth Dole's reelection), and he's done what I should think a political consultant might have advised him against ... giving credence to the accusation in the way he denies it ("The fact that I'm 54 and single...") -- not to mention letting the whole world in on what was probably just an e-mail kerfluffle among a few Republican wing-nuts.

Such is the paranoia (queer fear) in the modern North Carolina Republican Party.

Labels: homophobia, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

Timothy F. Johnson (left), chair of the Buncombe County GOP, is running for vice chair of the NC GOP and sees himself as an insurgent. He's speaking out against vague "tactics" used to keep folks like him from sitting at the proverbial table. The "Old Guards," he calls them, and they're evidently as shadowy and mysteriously powerful as the Illuminati.

Nasty, too.

Writes Johnson, "One of the criticism of our party has been the perceived nastiness and underhanded tactics employed by some." That nastiness, Johnson says, has been used against him in his efforts to win the vice chair role in his own party. He alleges that his personal and professional life have been investigated, and false or not-entirely-true allegations have been spread around, sub-rosa.

So, in defense, Johnson has an endorsement from his ex-wife.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party, Timothy F. Johnson

Should North Carolina Republicans welcome Libertarians and ally with them? That was the deep topic yesterday at ConservativeNC.com. It's certainly a yawning chasm of possibility, somewhat in the realm of how many free marketeers can dance on the head of a pin, and poster "Eagle Forum in NC" works up a good deal of angst contemplating a Republican Party in which Libertarians, with their dope smokin' laxity toward abortion and gay marriage, might take over.

Conclusion: Libertarians telling Republicans what to think is a plot hatched at Daily Kos!

Labels: Libertarian Party, North Carolina Republican Party

Kevin Bondelli, who blogs on the youth vote at KevinBondelli.com, cross-posted on BlueNC yesterday a tweet he noticed on the Western NC GOP twitter page:

So, this is why the youth vote went to Obama ... because they're a bunch of easily led, useful idiots. Makes sense. http://bit.ly/b6Jm

Ah yes, contempt of the young springs perennial in many Republican circles, particularly in western North Carolina where there's a major university.

Labels: Barack Obama, North Carolina Republican Party, youth vote

Delegates to the state Republican Party convention in May will elect a new leader for their party.

ConservativeNC.com has endorsed a Locke Foundation apparatchik for the job.

But we would expect that this guy has greater name recognition, bigger political connections, and hence the inside track.

Labels: Chad Adams, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

A group of North Carolina teenagers visited the N.C. General Assembly and talked to legislators about the reality of their lives ... that "abstinence only" sex education is no education at all, and as a result, many of the state's teenagers have a "dangerous" lack of knowledge. The teenagers were advocating for a bill currently being considered that would establish a two-track option for parents: either keep their children woefully ignorant in abstinence-only programs or allow them "comprehensive" sex education.

While the students were visiting the legislature, a House committee voted to pass the proposal, with all the Republicans (naturally, dude!) voting against giving parents the option.

Rep. John Blust of Greensboro spoke for many of his Republican colleagues, holding high the banner of ignorance: expanding the sex education curriculum, saith Blust, would give schools license "to mention things way out there that are properly discussed at home, if at all."

Labels: abstinence only, John Blust, North Carolina Republican Party

Katy at Katy's Conservative Corner has the fix for the North Carolina Republican Party's woes: root out moderate Republicans.

And here we were worried that they might go all sane and stuff.

(Yes, we realize Katy's prescription is a month old. We must have missed it at the time and thank PPP for bringing it to the top of the discard pile.)

Good luck to Katy and her fellow Republican conservatives on that uprooting project! We have extra shovels, if that helps.

Labels: 2008 election results, Katy's Conservative Corner, North Carolina Republican Party

Katy at Katy's Conservative Corner goes on at some length about the sort of leader the NC GOP needs now to lead it out of this current wilderness. By way of comparison, she points at NC Democratic Party Chair Jerry Meek (stepping down next month after two successful terms in office) as the model for what she wants to see in Republican HDQs:

Your blogger hopes for a State Chairman like the former State Democrat Chairman, Jerry Meek. Despite his surname, he went after our party tooth and nail and he never gave an inch. He had daily e-mails that went out to anyone who wanted to subscribe, explaining the issues in an easy-to-understand format. He also supported his candidates and backed them up, day after day.

Your blogger most admires how Meek used technology to organize his troops and get out the vote....

Katy, incidentally, rejects for Chair any politician who intends to run for office in the future. That pretty much narrows the field significantly.

Labels: Jerry Meek, Katy's Conservative Corner, North Carolina Republican Party

Now, this is more like it, this anonymous Republican operative dude, rallying the pitchforks and torches to purge the North Carolina Republican Party of, first, its chair Linda Daves and then start throwing out members of the Republican caucus in the state legislature who ever even THOUGHT of voting for a Democratic budget. If there's gonna be an internal purge in the North Carolina Republican Party, where do we purchase our bleacher seating?

Contained in that (still anonymous) blog posting (so brave!) is this first-hand account of what it was like inside the Raleigh Hilton last Tuesday night during the GOP "victory celebration." This is "local color" we didn't get from any mainstream reporter:

On one side of me, Bev Perdue was on TV giving her victory speech. On the other side of me, another TV was showing a map that made the U.S. look like it was flooded -- a blue tide was spilling over the coasts, flooding the heartland and drowing our own beautiful North Carolina. And in front of me was a third TV on which several commentators were discussing what Elizabeth Dole did wrong.

And standing at a podium giving a "rah, rah" speech was our own Linda Daves, seemingly oblivious to the catatonic stares on the faces in the crowd -- all desperately wondering if someone got the license plate of that big blue truck that hit us.

The only thing missing was a melting podium and funky looking trees. Believe me, they would have fit right in, because out party was melting before our eyes. Melting into a puddle of gelatinous ooze with no spine, no shape, no form, and no future. And Linda Daves was giving a "go team go" speech.

Labels: Linda Daves, North Carolina Republican Party

Nino Saviano, a North Carolina-based Republican political strategist, has a column in today's Asheville Citizen-Times with a warning headline: "GOP had better pay more attention to young voters." (Hat-tip: The Political Junkies)

Saviano is reading the right (that is, the left) tea-leaves ... that young voters are going to turn out in large numbers for Obama and, given the dismal baggage the label "Republican" carries with it, there's a very good chance that those young voters are going to vote straight Democratic tickets.

Writes Saviano,

With Obama as the Democratic nominee and [Ron] Paul out of the race, the youth vote in the November general election may be the most important group vote for the Tar Heel State. While no youth polls exist specifically for North Carolina, nationally Obama claims more than 50 percent support among the young, while McCain claims just above 35 percent.

Since 1992, split-ticket voting by some voter groups has characterized North Carolina and has led to the election of Republicans for president and U.S. senator on one hand, and a Democratic governor and state assembly on the other. In the 2004 election, voters in the 30-44 age group and self-identified suburbanites led the key split-ticket voting.

In November, the impact of a straight-party voting by the young may overshadow any traditional split-ticket voting by any other group. An unusually energizing presidential contest may result in a strong youth vote showing and young voters opting for a straight-party vote from president on downward. This may surprise many North Carolina candidates -- from congressional to statewide and legislative races, to county, city and school board races.

What he said.

Labels: Barack Obama, Nino Saviano, North Carolina Republican Party, youth vote

How DARE NC Democrats remind people that George W. Bush is a Republican! Why would anyone even care that Sen. Liddy Dole has been a Washington bobblehead for Bush policies? Or that John McCain trips over his own legs trying to line up with El Presidente (most recently on off-shore oil-drilling, which McCain used to oppose).

Because no Republican would ever associate one politician with another to make a political point.

Labels: Elizabeth Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, North Carolina Republican Party

The icy reception of Ron Paul supporters at the state GOP convention breaks out into the mainstream press today, just as candidate Paul also announces (1) he's dropping out of the race and (2) he won't be endorsing Whatisname for president and (3) he'll in fact be holding a rival rally in Minneapolis at the same time the Republicans are holding their convention in St. Paul.

The most galling maneuver by the state GOP chairwoman is that she apparently hand-picked the two North Carolina Paul delegates that were allowed, and they're NOT Paul supporters.

Labels: John McCain, Linda Daves, North Carolina Republican Party, Ron Paul

At Barack Obama's kick-off campaign event in Raleigh on Monday, the only other speaker was an unemployed nurse from Pittsboro, Pamella Cash-Roper, who highlighted what seven years of George W. Bush trickle-down economics have meant for blue-collar, pink-collar, and lower middle-class workers. The main message: Don't even think about getting sick in George Bush's America. (Details of Pamella Roper-Cash's remarks from IndyWeek.com)

Both Pamella, 54, and her husband Keith Cash, 58, who was an electrical technician at WakeMed, developed heart disease. Keith first. He needed heart surgery in 2000 and couldn't work. He lost his job and hence their company-paid health benefits; and though federal law guaranteed him extended health insurance for 18 months, they couldn't afford the $600 a month insurance payments on top of the $1,800 a month for his prescriptions.

Meanwhile, they were dropped by their disability insurance carrier, a decision they continue to dispute, so far, unsuccessfully. So they sold their house, moved to a smaller one and went without health insurance for two years until he became eligible for Medicare as a Social Security disability recipient.

Pamella continued to work as a home-health nurse/aide until 2005 when she, too, needed bypass surgery and also turned to disability payments.

Today, she said, the two live on combined disability payments of $1,164 a month. Each takes about 15 kinds of medicine paid for by a state prescription-subsidy plan enacted during the Easley administration and paid for from tobacco-settlement funds funneled through the Health & Wellness Trust Fund.

It cuts their costs to between $2 and $4 a month for each prescription, she said. "If that had not been implemented," she said, "we'd probably both be dead."

Pamella told NPR's "Morning Edition" "We were lower middle-class. Now we're not even lower middle-class, I'm as low as it can get. When the price of milk and the price of gas are almost the same, we need to start looking at something."

Pamella Cash-Roper is a Republican and Will Vote for Obama

Apparently, that particular headline caused the NCGOP a little heartburn. First, the state party chair apparently tried to deny that she was even a Republican. She is. I've been gazing at her voter registration on the state Board of Elections website. Her husband Keith is registered Unaffiliated.

Look for the Obama campaign to use more Republicans in this way and for local and state Republican Party apparatuses to stamp their feet indignantly.

Labels: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, North Carolina Republican Party, Pamella Cash-Roper

First, we have Linda Daves and the North Carolina Republican Party getting denounced by presidential candidate John McCain for producing and running attack ads linking state Democratic candidates to Obama and, by association with Obama, to the Reverend Wright.

Now the Georgia State Republican Party chair Sue Everhart tells her state convention to vote for John McCain because he's the closest thing to Jesus Christ.

As they say in the Frozen North, Jay-sus.

Jeff Taylor at one of the John Locke Foundation echo-chamber sites takes such displays of misguided politicking as evidence that the national GOP is indeed washed up. "Doomed" is the specific word he uses.

Labels: Barack Obama, Georgia Republican Party, John McCain, Linda Daves, North Carolina Republican Party, Sue Everhart