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North Carolina Republicans Are Suffering An Identity Crisis

North Carolina Republicans Are Suffering An Identity Crisis

All eyes will be on North Carolina next year, when the Republican Party holds its 2020 convention in Charlotte to nominate President Donald Trump for a second term. In truth, though, the state has been the center of attention for a while because of the actions of party members — and the gaze has not been kind.

The North Carolina GOP realizes it has a problem, quite a few of them, and is busily trying to recover. But what’s the best path as the party tries to regain the trust of voters in a state that is a crucial battleground, one where independents are an important part of any winning coalition, and where millennials and Generation Z voters are fickle?

Standing firmly with the president, who won in 2016, will certainly solidify the base. For those voters, party and presidential loyalty might calm any doubts about scandals and missteps. But what about those still making up their minds?

One step for Republicans was electing a new party chair, lawyer Michael Whatley of Gastonia, to replace outgoing chairman Robin Hayes, indicted on bribery charges. Hayes had given up many of his day-to-day duties and had said he would not run for re-election; he and three co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.

On Whatley’s résumé is his role as a member of George W. Bush’s Florida recount team in 2000. That’s an interesting credential considering another of the state party’s challenges — charges of election fraud concerning the counting and collection of absentee ballots in North Carolina’s 9th District last fall. An operative for what looked to be winning GOP candidate Mark Harris has been charged, and a special election is next between Democrat Dan McCready and current Republican candidate Dan Bishop, who won the spot in a primary redo.

The playbook so far follows the Trump example of trying to move past old scandals quickly. Hayes left to positive comments on his strengthening the GOP’s power in the state. But the party’s current position is not quite as solid as it had been. Democrat Roy Cooper sits in the governor’s mansion, and though Republicans are still in the majority in both the House and Senate in Raleigh, they lost their supermajority in 2018, so they can no longer easily override every gubernatorial veto.

That scenario played out after Cooper vetoed a “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Act,” which would have penalized medical professionals for allowing a survivor of an abortion to die. Cooper had characterized the bill as unnecessary, as current legislation already protects those survivors, with most Democrats agreeing that the act would result in government interference in complicated medical situations and the doctor-patient relationship. Cooper’s veto held.

The situation is both complicated and very simple, with the North Carolina voter split mirroring the urban-rural divide across the country. In 2018, Republicans in the state suffered major losses in dense counties and big cities. For example, Democrats swept the county commissioner races in Mecklenburg County, Charlotte’s home.

Looking at the landscape of the population and voting preferences in North Carolina cities, the new GOP leadership has yet again promised more minority outreach, with appeals to family-oriented and faith issues. “Their urban outreach is zero,” Derek Partee, an African American and former vice chair of the 12th District GOP, said in The Charlotte Observer. “There isn’t a person of color in leadership positions.”

Because of this track record, characterized by criticism not just from political opponents but also from African Americans within the party, the latest professed efforts resembled parody or came off as insincere. Voters, particularly those who are poor, young, elderly and African American, have hardly forgotten GOP gerrymandering, now being fought in the courts, and repeated efforts to pass voter-ID restrictions.

The ambivalence about outreach is similar to the national Republican reset that wasn’t, with Trump’s often race-based appeals quieting the post-Barack Obamasoul-searching the GOP promised.

The re-election campaign of GOP Sen. Thom Tillis shows the back-and-forth of coming up with a winning strategy. Wary of a challenger from the right, Tillis is trying to show as little daylight between him and the president as possible, while his office churns out releases showing a more bipartisan side, listing collaborations with Democratic colleagues. (This week, it included presiding with Sen. Chris Coons over a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the state of patent eligibility in America.)

But the uncertain nature of the state means Democrats aren’t exactly in the clear. Cooper’s veto of the “Born Alive” bill might hurt him, despite supportive voters afraid that a bill like that would pave the way for abortion laws as restrictive as those being passed in other Southern states. Opposing the move are pro-life activists and voters, and politicians such as Bishop, who is accusing Democratic opponents of endorsing “infanticide.” North Carolina is still part of the Bible Belt, with deeply held religious beliefs informing the political choices of some voters.

Will the Republican rebranding in North Carolina work in time for a Trump repeat victory in 2020? The results in the September special election in the 9th District, tainted by gerrymandering that still favors the party, may provide only part of the answer.

More likely, even after Republicans arrive next year to party in a Democratic city where the mayor has had to defend her choice to welcome them, no one party will have all the answers.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. On June 11, she received a 2019 Dateline Award for excellence in journalism from the D.C. pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

IMAGE: Mark Harris, who stepped aside as Republican nominee in the NC-9 following exposure of a vote-rigging scandal that involved GOP operatives in his campaign.

North Carolina Election Scandal To Conclude With ‘Battle Of The Dans’

North Carolina Election Scandal To Conclude With ‘Battle Of The Dans’

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

After an election fraud scandal, North Carolina Republicans lost a House candidate. After an indictment and questions about possible bribery, the state GOP lost its chair.

But all that didn’t stop a gaggle of Republicans from vying for the chance to run for a House seat that, thanks to gerrymandering, still favors their party — that is, of course, if voters stay interested in a special election that now will be decided on September 10, if everything goes as planned.

Whatever happens, the race has offered a national blueprint for what voters will see in 2020, with the majority of Republicans clinging close to Donald Trump and trying to brand Democrats as far to the left as imagination allows. Meanwhile, Democrats proclaim their independence and ability to stand up to the president and his bending of constitutional norms while doing the other business of Congress and helping constituents.

In North Carolina’s 9th District, state Sen. Dan Bishop avoided a runoff by taking close to 50 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s GOP primary, which featured a scrum of candidates whose primary mission was showing who was most loyal to Trump and his policies.

Bishop will next face Democrat Dan McCready, the former Marine who ran unopposed in his primary, and two third-party candidates.

McCready was the Democratic nominee for the seat last fall when he at first appeared to have narrowly lost to Republican Mark Harris. An investigation of that election found irregularities and possible illegal activities regarding absentee ballots cast on behalf of Harris, a former Baptist pastor, and a do-over was ordered. Citing health issues, Harris bowed out of the special election.

In a campaign that looked to the general, Bishop of Mecklenburg County broadcast TV ads that tried to link McCready with Democrats in Washington, such as the right’s favorite villain, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Expect to see his label for them, “clowns,” pop up again through the summer.

McCready’s team has labeled efforts to make him a part of some supposed Washington left-wing agenda as ridiculous, pointing to his pledges to work across the aisle. He also cited his military experience as proof of his ability to work with folks from different backgrounds. He’s been accused of being fuzzy on the details of his own positions, a charge sure to reappear between now and September.

The 9th District race drew national money, on behalf of different candidates. In primary debates, though, when it came to policy, the Republicans were emphatically on the same page. To answer the problem of gun violence, especially relevant in a state still mourning those killed and injured in a shooting at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the candidates’ solutions were more guns, in the hand of the “good guys” and increased mental health services.

Stony Rushing, a county commissioner in Union County, which also contains huge chunks of voters in the circuitous district, portrayed the scandal that brought down Harris as a hit job. (Harris had endorsed his candidacy.) The gun range owner emphasized gun rights and his pro-life credentials in the race, and landed in second place.

Bishop is the proud sponsor of North Carolina’s infamous “bathroom bill,” or HB2, which required people, in public buildings, to use bathrooms that matched the gender on their birth certificates. (The law has since been repealed.) He would like to move on from that legislation, which drove businesses and entertainment and sporting events from North Carolina before it was changed.

But McCready is reminding voters of that bill and the negative national and international attention it brought. And North Carolina Democrats won’t let anyone forget the scandal that caused the special election, which brought more negative attention to the state.

Yet Bishop’s HB2 stance might resonate with the GOP base. That’s important, as this race ultimately will be decided on turnout and passion. The September general election, though it will be closely watched, will clash with a new school year and more pressing concerns of those seeking a rest from politics. Democrats no doubt were hoping for a runoff, which would have pushed the general election to Nov. 5, coinciding with municipal elections in Charlotte, a heavily Democratic city.

No matter how low the turnout, the battle of the Dans will certainly preview 2020 races across the country, with Republicans trying to take down those first-term Democrats who won last fall in GOP-leaning districts, many of which Trump won in 2016, by portraying them as extreme. Some of those Democrats have already tried to insulate themselves from that line of attack, joining together to proclaim their independence and service to districts they represent.

Trump loyalty as a strategy in North Carolina, a politically divided state whose blue cities are constantly at odds with more conservative rural and suburban areas, is not a sure thing, though it makes more sense in congressional races, with gerrymandered districts being challenged in the courts.

Trump won North Carolina in 2016, yet Democrats wistfully remember President Barack Obama’s narrow win in 2008 and his narrow loss to Mitt Romney in 2012. So they have hope, though when Washington Democrats act cautiously in order not to scare away moderate Democrats, one of the places they are thinking about is North Carolina.

Though North Carolina’s embarrassingly delayed 9th District race failed to excite many voters Tuesday — turnout was less than 10 percent — expect to see copycat campaigns in a 2020 election season that will make 2016 look tame by comparison.

Mary C. Curtis is a columnist for Roll Call. An award-winning journalist, she has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, and as national correspondent for Politics Daily. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

IMAGE: Dan McCready, who won the Democratic nomination in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on Tuesday.

 

Official Uncovers Election Fraud Scheme In North Carolina

Official Uncovers Election Fraud Scheme In North Carolina

An investigation by North Carolina election officials has uncovered evidence of an illegal election-rigging scheme orchestrated by an operative working for Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris.

“The evidence will show that a coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme operated during the 2018 general election,” North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach said in her opening statement of a Monday hearing to consider the evidence of election fraud.

Investigators have been looking into suspicious circumstances surrounding the race in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, where the most recent tally of results showed Harris ahead of Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes.

The state board of elections refused to certify those results and declare Harris as the winner after evidence emerged that McCrae Dowless, an operative hired by Harris, illegally collected mail-in ballots from voters in order to throw them away or alter them.

Harris won 61 percent of the mail-in vote in Bladen County, but Republicans made up only 19 percent of the voters who registered to vote by mail. NPR noted, “For Harris to have ended up with that 61 percent, he would have had to win every single Republican and unaffiliated voter and some registered Democrats as well.”

Strach said that the evidence — which includes testimony to investigators from 140 voters and 30 witnesses — shows Dowless paid people to pick up ballots, and took other actions designed to “obstruct the investigation and testimony provided at this hearing.”

One woman who testified in the hearing, Lisa Britt, signed her name as a witness to many of the ballots illegally turned in by Dowless. She said the Republican operative paid her between $150 and $175 for every 50 absentee ballot request forms she picked up, and said Dowless instructed her to fill in blanks for races on the ballots she took in.

After the election, Dowless reportedly told his hires not to admit to the illegal ballot collection. A typed-out form, which Britt said Dowless gave her, instructed ballot collectors to refuse to testify to investigators and to plead the Fifth if necessary.

The national Republican Party, led by Trump, has often baselessly accused Democrats of stealing elections. But the North Carolina case shows Republicans doing just that — at the same time as the national party pushes for laws to restrict voting to help them win elections.

Harris is also a Republican very much in the bigoted mold of Trump. Harris has said Muslims worship “the anti-Christ,” argued Jews and Muslims should convert to Christianity, and once delivered a sexist sermon that said women should be subservient.

Democrats in the House leadership have said they would refuse to seat Harris until the election fraud dispute is resolved.

As Republicans desperately tried to keep control of Congress in the 2018 midterms, they lied and pushed absurd fantasies about Democrats stealing elections.

When the dust settled, they still lost — and the only race actually stolen was a scheme put together by Republican operatives.

Published with permission of The American Independent. 

IMAGE: Mark Harris, Republican Congressional candidate in North Carolina’s 9th District.