Dan v Dan in North Carolina-- It Doesn't Matter Who Wins, Not Even A Little; Both Candidates Suck

Dan the crackpot Republican vs Dan the untrustworthy Blue Dog

No one is forcing me to write this post but if there's one congressional race whose outcome I could care less about, it's the re-do for NC-09, a swingy district that borders South Carolina and shoots from Colonial Heights in Charlotte to Savoy Heights in Fayetteville. The 9th was severely redistricted in 2016, and now encompasses rural areas to the east of Charlottesville as well as the Fayetteville part of the district. The African-American population went from 13% to 20% but the overall political lean remained Republican. The PVI was R+8 and is still R+8. In 2012 Romney took the district 55.4% to 43.8% and in 2016 Trump beat Hillary 54.4% to 42.8%.

What shook things up there is that far right crackpot Mark Harris, a Trumpist, stole the Republican primary from relatively mainstream conservative incumbent Robert Pittenger. On May 8, 2028, Harris was declared the primary winner, with 17,302 votes (48.5%) to Pittenger's 16,474 (46.2%). By the time the scope of Harris' vote theft operation became known, Pittinger seemed tired of the whole process and just let it slide. There wasn't much of a primary on the Democratic side, the DCCC having already picked a very conservative, Republican-lite Blue Dog, Dan McCready as the candidate. He spent close to $700,000 to Fernando Cano's $41,000 and crushed him on primary day 38,098 (82.8%) to 7,922 (17.2%). It may have scared Harris that on primary day more people voted for McCready than for he and Pittinger combined.

Harris kept the firm on that had stole the primary election for him so that it could also steal the general. Harris claimed a 139,246 (49.3%) to 138,341 (48.9%) victory, but on November 27 (2018), the North Carolina State Board of Elections, which is comprised of four Democrats, four Republicans, and one independent member, voted unanimously not to certify the results and Harris wasn't sworn in. After Harris' ballot-tampering was proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the state Board of Elections threw out the results and declared there would be a new election. Harris knew he couldn't run but he endorsed another neo-fascist crackpot and Trumpist like himself, Stony Rushing, AKA Boss Hogg. Club for Growth endorsed state Senator Dan Bishop, author the state's "bathroom bill," who decisively beat 9 other primary candidates last Tuesday. He needed 30% to avoid a run-off and he took 14,178 votes (47.7%) to Rushing's 5,820 (19.6%) and will face McCready on September 10. Whoever wins that, will have just over a year before being forced to compete in the 2020 general election.

So that's where we are. The Republicans have a terrible right-wing nut and the Democrats have a Blue Dog who has the potential to do more harm from inside the party to the progressive movement than any Republican serving in the minority ever could. Both candidates suck. If I lived in the district I wouldn't consider voting for either. AP ran a piece yesterday by Emery Dalesio, North Carolina Candidates On The Attack In Election Redo. Yawn. Dalesio wrote that they both launched their new campaigns Wednesday "deflecting questions about controversial policies and refusing to rule out a bid for higher office in the near future."

In a bit of guerrilla theater, Bishop appeared outside McCready’s campaign headquarters with a cardboard cutout of the Democrat. Bishop described McCready as a liberal who has been as mum as the prop when it comes to talking about his views on current issues.

“I think what voters expect and need is contrast and clarity on issues,” Bishop said. “So that’s exactly what we’re going to do is be clear about the issues from my perspective and we invite Dan McCready to be clear about where he stands.”

Both candidates dodged questions, however.

At his own news conference minutes after Bishop spoke, McCready refused to pledge not to run for U.S. Senate next year. Bishop said McCready is using the congressional election to angle for a 2020 shot against Republican Senate incumbent Thom Tillis.

Bishop, meanwhile, deflected questions about his sponsorship of the headline-grabbing “bathroom bill,” which cost the state billions in projected economic activity. The 2016 law known as House Bill 2 voided anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and also directed transgender people to use public bathrooms matching their sex at birth.

“HB2 is an old issue and there’s a lot of fantasy about it, including a lot in the media, but I think voters are tired of hearing about it,” Bishop said. “We’ve got a lot of new issues in this campaign we’ve talk about.”

McCready cited a 2017 analysis by The Associated Press estimating that the law cost North Carolina more than $3.76 billion, primarily from businesses that decided to skip intended moves to the state.

“His agenda is nothing but a track record of making things worse for people here in North Carolina,” McCready said of Bishop.

Bishop said he agrees with President Donald Trump that the country should build a wall on the Mexican border and that the current high rate of Central American citizens seeking asylum in the United States amounts to an emergency.

McCready responded that he supported comprehensive immigration reform, one version of which passed the U.S. Senate in 2013 but died in the House as Republican hard-liners opposed legal status for immigrants living in the country illegally.

“It’s absolutely important that we secure the border,” McCready said. “It’s also important that we uphold American values at the border.”

That's how McCready talks-- very general terms that allows the listener to read whatever he or she wants into it. I've watched slippery Blue Dogs like him for years and years. They never make good Representatives. Never! But speaking on Thom Tillis, the current Republican senator who has to face the voters in 2020, he just got a primary challenge from the right, announced on Sean Hannity's Hate Talk radio show. The wing nut running is Garland Tucker III, formerly a very wealthy Never-Trumper but now claiming to be the defender of Trumpanzee from Tillis, who hasn't always been loyal enough.

The White House, which is sending Pence to North Carolina next week to help shore up Tillis, and the NRSC are sticking with Tillis. NRSC spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez didn't mince any words: "This primary is nothing more than an opponent of the president’s agenda with money to burn teaming up with a past-his-prime political consultant [Carter Wrenn] who is desperate to cash a paycheck."

Tucker is a big right-wing donor who backed Scott Walker, then Rubio, then Ted Cruz and finally Kasich before finally facing up to the fact that his party had been taken over by the fascists and that Trump was the nominee. He mostly writes $1,000 checks to garden variety conservative candidates but he spent major money on Scott Walker and Walker's PAC.

Tucker already has his first ad up on Fox-- attacking Tillis for not being slavishly committed to Trump:





The Raleigh News & Observer reported that Tucker only voted for Trump in 2016 because he saw him as the lesser of two evils. (In other words, he decided to vote for someone he recognized as evil to be president. There's something wrong with that-- which is why I would never consider voting for either Dan McCready or Dan Bishop in the NC-09 congressional special election.)

Tucker, who turns 72 in June, called the federal debt “immoral” and criticized votes by Tillis to raise the debt ceiling and go over budget spending caps. In 2015 and 2018, Tillis voted yes on budget deals that raised the spending caps. Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina’s senior senator, voted no on both. In February, the federal debt reached $22 trillion, up $2 trillion from when Trump took office in 2017.

Tucker, who founded Triangle Capital Corporation in the early 2000s and was on the board when it was sold last year, is putting his own money into the campaign as it ramps up fundraising. He would not disclose how much he has committed to spend.

“I’m committed to do whatever it takes to get the operation up and going,” he said.

He has donated to Republican candidate for years, including giving $2,600 to Tillis’ first Senate campaign in 2014, according to federal election records. He said Tillis ran on “a good solid conservative platform. In a couple very important areas, he’s really failed to deliver.”

Despite that record of Republican giving, the National Republican Senatorial Committee called Tucker’s campaign a “quixotic adventure for a wealthy, out-of-touch liberal.”

The Tillis campaign and its allies have tagged Tucker as an “anti-Trump activist” for a September 2016 opinion piece he wrote for the News & Observer. In it, Tucker outlined his concerns about Trump, whom he called a “flawed candidate,” and expressed doubts about his character, temperament and consistency on policy. But Tucker said he would vote for Trump over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.


“I wouldn’t retract anything I said in that,” Tucker said. “Since then, it has been one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve ever seen. Trump’s policies, forget the tweets and any noise around him, his policies are right in line with my conservative heroes.

“I’m really pleased he got elected and I shudder to think there’s any chance he might not get re-elected.“
 Carter Wrenn, the longtime Republican political strategist who is working for Tucker, said the early television ads are aimed at giving Republican voters a choice.

“Garland needs to become well known. We need to say to voters here’s where Garland stands, here’s where Tillis stands,” Wrenn said. “If you’re a challenger to an incumbent senator, not unusual to try to go on television early.”

Elect any of these guys to Congress-- to the Senate or to fill the laughably empty NC-09 seat-- and you get more of this... more and more and more and more. Something needs to be done to break this cycle. And it's NOT just about Trump and impeachment. It's about polarization and enforced, systemic deadlock and, as Steyer says, a broken system. If the corrupt political parties don't give you a choice, don't vote in their elections. Boycott their elections. Starting with NC-09 in September. It's a good place to begin, because it makes no difference at all. Imagine if no one showed up. Cheri Bustos and Nancy Pelosi want to primaries? How about if we delegitimize their hold on the Democratic Party by ignoring their wretched general election candidates? No more lesser-of-two-evils elections.