New Election After Republicans Were Caught Trying To Steal A House Seat In North Carolina?

2 GOP crooks-- Mark Harris and Trumpanzee

By the end of last month, it was already obvious that North Carolina Trumpist, Mark Harris, had stolen both the GOP primary that ousted Robert Pittenger and then the general election in which he-- against all odds-- beat Blue Dog Dan McCready. The final 538.com forecast omg November 6, showed Harris with just a 12.1% chance to win (1 in 8).

Harris has been in DC pretending that he's the legitimately-elected congressman from North Carolina's 9th district, the state's southern tier, from Charlotte through Monroe, Wadesboro and Lumberton and up to Fayetteville. Everyone knows he tampered with the ballots and wasn't really elected. According to the election tallies that no one believes to be legitimate, Harris beat McCready 138,338 (49.4%) to 136,478 (48.8%). There are 8 counties in the district. McCready won 6, including the biggest (Mecklenburg). But it appears that the absentee ballot scheme that Harris almost pulled off, gave him wins in Bladen and Union counties. Congress-- meaning the Democratic majority-- will decide whether or not to seat Harris. I don't see Speaker Pelosi swearing him in. In all but Bladen County, McCready won among mail-in absentee ballot voters by at least 16 points. In Bladen County, he lost by 24. A Harris capo, notorious crook Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., led a crew of thugs who went door-to-door in Bladen County collecting blank or partially-completed absentee ballots, promising to finish and submit the ballots on the voters' behalf. This is an old Republican trick that they do all over the country. Harris was paying Dowless in untraceable cash-- and Dowless passed the cash on to his team for, in effect, buying the absentee ballots.

Yesterday, the district's biggest newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, urged the state to hold a new election from scratch, although it makes no sense to allow Harris to participate in one.

In the week since the state Board of Elections declined to certify the results of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District election, journalists and others have begun to fill in the details of a troubling case of apparent ballot fraud. In Bladen County-- and perhaps other counties-- individuals have interfered with the voting process by gaining access to others’ absentee ballots, according to witnesses and records. Investigators also are looking into the burgeoning scandal.

There may be no way, however, to know how widespread the fraud was, or whether it involved enough ballots to potentially change the outcome of the election-- a 905-vote victory for Republican Mark Harris over Democrat Dan McCready. But we do know enough. Unless new evidence somehow clears the clouds hanging over this election, the Board of Elections should toss out the 9th District results.

Calling for a new election would be an enormously significant decision for the board. It should be done with the support of N.C. statutes and without a whiff of partisan politics. Republicans from Raleigh to Washington would surely howl; already, they’ve noted that the number of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County falls short of the overall margin of victory in the 9th.

This is true. But witnesses have said that their ballots, which were collected by individuals apparently working for ringleader McCrae Dowless, were never submitted to the county or state. There’s little certainty about how many ballots were wrongly tossed or destroyed in Bladen County (there were more than 1,500 that were requested but unreturned) or how much Dowless and his workers may have done the same in neighboring Robeson County, as reports suggest. It might have been enough to change the outcome of the race. It might not have been.


That possibility, however, triggers a statutory threshold for holding a new election. North Carolina General Statute 163A-1180 authorizes the Board of Elections to intervene and “take any other action necessary to assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption and without irregularities that may have changed the result of an election.” The board should call for a new NC-09 general election. The U.S. House can and should order a new primary, given that results show Harris winning a startling 96 percent of the Bladen absentee vote in his narrow 2018 primary victory over then incumbent Robert Pittenger.

Questions remain about how much Harris knew about the work being done on his behalf. Both he and his chief consultant, Andy Yates, contend they weren’t aware of any election fraud in the 9th District, but Dowless was well-known as a dicey figure in N.C. political circles. He’s a convicted felon who had been investigated for similar fraud in 2016, and he even was featured nationally in a This American Life episode. Harris, at the least, should have seen the smoke.

Voters in the 9th District deserve the confidence that their election was free from fraud. North Carolina statute supports it. The evidence already demands it. The Board of Elections should start the election over.

Yesterday, Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who will be second in command on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a few weeks, wants the committee to call an emergency hearing immediately to look into Republican vote tampering in NC-09, calling it "real election fraud... Votes have been stolen by preying on senior and minority voters, and now a cloud of doubt and suspicion hangs over this election result. It is incumbent on Chairman Gowdy to hold an emergency hearing before the end of this congressional session so that we can shed light and understand what happened in this race."

The Hill reported last night that "Over a thousand absentee ballots from likely Democratic voters may have been destroyed... as allegations of fraud on behalf of the Republican candidate mount. 'You’re looking at several thousand, possibly 2,000 absentee ballot requests from this most recent election. About 40 percent of those, it appears, at this point may not have been returned,' Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told CNN... Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the next House majority leader, said Tuesday that Democrats will not seat Harris until the allegations are resolved."

What's at stake? I mean really at stake? Believe me, it's way more than just another North Carolina House seat. Here's Bernie talking about chutzpah to the Real News Network at Berniepalooza last week:




UPDATE: McCready Just Withdrew His Concession

In an exclusive interview, McCready told Joe Bruno that he thinks Harris not only knew what McCrae Dowless was doing but that he was bankrolling "criminal activity."

CNN interviewed Bruno (below). Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, was also on CNN where he hinted that the state party might support a new election if allegations of fraud are proven true and if it impacted the outcome of the race. If allegations of fraud are proven true, the perps shouldn't be allowed to participate in a new election unless it's from a prison cell. Woodhouse: "This has shaken us to the core. We are not ready to call for a new election yet. I think we have to let the board of elections come show their hand if they can show that this conceivably could have flipped the race in that neighborhood, we will absolutely support a new election."

NC-09-- It Appears That Neo-Fascist Candidate Mark Harris Stole The Primary From Robert Pittenger And Then The General Election From Dan McCready

Paul Ryan was whining Thursday about how the Republicans had only lost 26 seats when he went to bed on election night and wha wha now they’re down 40. So something’s wrong. Yeah, it’s called counting all the votes and conservatives hate the very concept. Well, there may be 41 soon. Seems there’s a little problem along the southern tier of North Carolina-- the 9th district-- where, ostensibly, it looked like far right extremist Mark Harris defeated Blue Dog Dan McCready by 905 votes. Or maybe not. Tuesday the state board of election unanimously refused to certify the results. And late last night Amy Gardner and Kirk Ros reported for the Washington Post that state election officials had no plans to certify them at their meeting today either. In fact, they wrote, “mounting evidence of voter fraud… could indefinitely delay the certification of a winner, as state election officials investigate whether hundreds of absentee ballots were illegally cast or destroyed. The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested. It is illegal to take someone else’s ballot and turn it in.”

The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board seems stunned and embarrassed— and demanding to know what happened.

We know that board members twice voted 9-0 not to certify the 9th District results. That means the board, which consists of Democrats and Republicans, was overwhelmingly persuaded of the seriousness of [Robeson County Democrat Joshua] Malcolm’s concerns.

We know that Elections board spokesman Patrick Gannon told the Associated Press Wednesday that the board is investigating “irregularities” involving absentee ballots in Bladen County, which Harris won by 1,557 votes. We also know that Bladen has what can charitably be described as a colorful political history of alleged arson and fraud.

We know that Malcolm’s move Tuesday was a surprise. Neither campaign knew Malcolm’s complaint was coming, which indicates that it likely doesn’t involve an election day complaint of fraud, at least not one significant enough to cause McCready to call for an investigation before conceding this razor-thin result.


Malcolm’s comments Tuesday also seem to indicate that the issues troubling him are ongoing. “I am not going to turn a blind eye to what took place to the best of my understanding which has been ongoing for a number of years that has repeatedly been referred to the United States attorney and the district attorneys for them to take action and clean it up,” he said. “And in my opinion those things have not taken place.”

Update, 11/28, 6:30 pm: Two sources tell the editorial board that the issue specifically involves a person who allegedly gained access to absentee ballots, perhaps through voters who request them from the county or state. The ballots were filled out for Harris. This individual was suspected of similar fraud in 2016, sources said, but investigators didn’t find enough to prosecute. The number of ballots involved in the 2018 race, however, wouldn’t be enough to swing the outcome to McCready, sources said.

Complicating this even further is that when Harris ousted a more mainstream conservative incumbent, Robert Pittenger, in the GOP primary there seems to have been the same monkey business in play. WFAE reported yesterday that ‘an elections law expert says Bladen County's results for the 9th district GOP primary also deserve attention, calling them unusual.’”

In May, Harris narrowly upset incumbent Robert Pittenger in the Republican primary by 828 votes.

Harris' win was powered, in part, by a surge of absentee-by-mail ballots from Bladen County, according to data from the N.C. Board of Elections. In the May primary, 22 percent of the votes cast in Bladen County in the Harris-Pittenger race were cast by absentee-by-mail, and Harris was the overwhelming winner of those ballots.

Harris won 96 percent of the 456 absentee-by-mail votes in Bladen, but won only 62 percent of all other votes in the county, according to state Board of Elections records.

Gerry Cohen, an elections law expert who was a state legislative attorney for more than 30 years, said the absentee-by-mail votes from Bladen are "unusual."

"Clearly there is something going on in Bladen County," he said. "It's the only county in the state with an organized, street-level vote-by-mail operation. And there is nothing necessarily wrong with that."

He said it's not illegal to help people request absentee by mail ballots, but someone can't collect the ballots, a process known as harvesting.

At 22 percent, Bladen County easily had the highest percentage of absentee-by-mail ballots in the district. Mecklenburg County was the next highest at only 1.6 percent.

Here are the percentages from the other counties in the 9th Congressional District: Union (.07 percent); Anson (0 percent); Scotland (1.5 percent); Robeson (1.1 percent); Cumberland (.08 percent); Richmond (.02 percent).

After reviewing the data, Cohen said there were a large number of absentee-by-mail ballots in the primary that were requested but never returned. Cohen says one possibility is that a third party promised to mail them for voters but failed to do so.

One More GOP Crackpot Who Probably Won't Get Into Congress-- Mark Harris (NC-09)

Keep digging' Mark

Dan McCready isn't my kind of candidate. He has already joined the Blue Dogs and New Dems, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and is likely to take a very conservative posture when it comes to crucial congressional votes-- more or less your father's kind of Republican but with a "D" next to his name, not a Trumpian fascist or 2018 right-wing extremist. With the connivance of the DCCC, he won the NC-09 May 8th primary.

The Republican incumbent, Robert Pittenger, a solid conservative, was defeated by a neo-fascist extremist, Mark Harris in that primary, probably making it easier for McCready, a Marine vet, to win the general election. McCready didn't just win his primary overwhelmingly-- 36,098 (82.8%) to 7,922 (17.2%)-- he won more votes than the 3 Republican combined!

• Mark Harris- 17,302 (48.54%)
• Robert Pittender- 16,474 (46.22%)
• Clarence Goins- 1,867 (5.24%)

As of the April 18 FEC reporting deadline, Pittenger had spent $1,000,061 to Harris' $465,043. McCready, who has raided the most money, spent $695,478 on the primary. Ryan's House Majority PAC spent around $75,000 attacking Harris. As of that last filing deadline, McCready had $1,220,648 cash on hand to Harris' $70,804.

The district takes up most of the state's southern tier that borders on South Carolina but much of the population lives in metro Charlotte-- Cherry, Colonial Heights, Eastover, Meyers Park, south into the cities suburbs and exurbs-- and most of Fayetteville and its suburbs. Although the district's PVI is R+8 and although Trump beat Hillary there 54.4% to 42.8%, demographics are trending blue. In a wave election, NC-09 would be a good pick to flip Democratic, especially this year when Harris had been unable to soothe the bitterness and rancor of the Pittenger backers. That's confirmed by a Civitas poll of likely voters released yesterday, showing McCready ahead by 7 points.

• Mark Harris- 36%
• Dan McCready- 43%
• Jeff Scott (Libertarian)- 3%

By 49-43% NC-09 voters disapprove of the way Trump is doing his job. But Harris' biggest problem is because women dislike him-- by 16 points. While the poll was in the field a Democratic SuperPAC, American Bridge, discovered a sermon Harris did as a Baptist minister, implying, strongly, that women belong in the home, not in the workplace. It was picked up widely by the local media. He questioned whether a career was the "healthiest pursuit" for women.

In the sermon, Harris, then pastor of Charlotte's First Baptist Church, spoke about "God's plan for biblical womanhood" and barriers to it.

"The first one... is that we’ve had in our own culture a new supreme pursuit," he said. "There is a new supreme pursuit from the traditional pursuit of being a wife or a mother... 
"In our culture today, girls are taught from grade school... that what is most honorable in life is a career, and their ultimate goal in life is simply to be able to grow up and be independent of anyone or anything," he said.

"But nobody has seemed to ask the question that I think is critically important to ask: Is that a healthy pursuit for society? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our homes? ...Is that the healthiest pursuit for the sexes in our generation?"

...In a statement, McCready said the sermon reflects someone "out of step."

"As a Christian, I believe that we are all created in God's image," he said. "That means men and women are equally valuable and equally capable and should be treated as such in their homes, careers, and in society. Mr. Harris' comments suggest otherwise. This is just another example of how out of step Mr. Harris is-- not just with this district but with this century."


...Harris' sermon came a year after he helped lead the successful 2012 push for what was known as Amendment One, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. It was later nullified when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

Crawling Through The Wreckage Of This Year's Republican Party Primaries

Although Dana Rohrabacher is a special case we can look at below, basically there are no Republicans in Congress who are being primaried because they are too Trumped-up. The most Trumpified lunatics in the House-- take Matt Gaetz (FL) or Devin Nunes (CA) as perfect examples-- have no mainstream Republicans trying to take them out. Mainstream Republicans are either a figment of our imaginations or being mighty quiet this year. Instead, Trumpists are savaging GOP incumbents who they claim aren’t sufficiently servile to Señor Trumpanzee. Even without Bannon running a purity jihad from the White House, right-wing extremists and on the attack.

NC-09 stretches along the southern border of the state, from the eastern and southern Charlotte metro, through Monroe, Wadesboro, Laurinburg, and Lumberton into eastern Fayetteville. The PVI is R+8. Obama lost it both times and the district went for Trump last year 54.4% to 42.8%. The incumbent is Republican Robert Pittenger, who has a solidly conservative voting record but been a target of Tea Party extremists since 2014 when he said he wouldn't support shutting down the government over an attempt to destroy Obamacare. They ran crackpot Michael Steinberg, who wasn’t able to get much traction. Pittenger won with 67%. Last cycle he had two GOP primary challengers from the right, Mark Harris and Todd Johnson, which proved to be a very tough primary for him:

Now that’s a close call for an incumbent-- 134 votes! This year the DCCC is running a Republican-lite Blue Dog, Dan McCready and as of the December 31 FEC reporting deadline, McCready had outraged Pittenger $1,221,979 to $780,250. Making matters worse for Pittenger, Mark Harris is primarying him again-- and raised some decent money-- $406,222-- forcing Pittenger to spend all his dough on the primary. A couple of weeks ago the biggest newspaper in the district covered the May 8th primary by running a PolitiFact smackdown with this provocative headline: GOP rival says Pittenger is among the 'most liberal' Republicans in Congress. False.

To close the voting gap before the May 8 primary, Harris is questioning Pittenger’s conservative credentials.

Pittenger has represented North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District since 2013, when he succeeded retiring Republican Sue Myrick. A Charlotte resident, Pittenger previously served in the state Senate and in 2008 ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor.

In a recent newsletter, Harris criticized Pittenger for supporting a spending bill that raised the debt ceiling.

“Robert Pittenger showed us yet again why he is constantly rated as one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress,” the newsletter says.

There are 535 voting members of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate). Republicans control Congress with nearly 300 seats: 238 in the House and 51 seats in the Senate.

The term "most liberal" is somewhat subjective. But we at PolitiFact North Carolina wondered whether conservative watchdog groups have consistently singled out Pittenger as liberal.

We contacted the Harris campaign to see what ratings systems he’s referencing in the newsletter.


The primary source for the statement is a rating by Conservative Review, according to Harris campaign spokesman Andy Yates. Conservative Review is a website edited by Mark Levin, a talk radio host who has referred to Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell as a "dummy" and "failure."

"Pittenger has a 55% F grade with them. It is the second worst grade of any NC Republican House member (McHenry is the worst)," Yates said in an email, referring to Rep. Patrick McHenry, who represents Western North Carolina. "Pittenger has consistently graded out as an F with this group which marks him as one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress."

Yates is right about Pittenger's standing among the 10 North Carolina Republicans in the House. Whether that puts him among the most liberal Republicans in these rankings depends on how one defines "most liberal."

According to Conservative Review’s scorecard, there are about 90 House Republicans-- about 36 percent-- who have lower "Liberty Scores" than Pittenger. Among those with lower scores than Pittenger: House Speaker Paul Ryan and majority whip Steve Scalise.

Yates also cited Pittenger’s 2018 rating with FreedomWorks, which is zero. FreedomWorks is a libertarian-leaning advocacy group. The scorecard mostly covers fiscal policy, civil liberties and regulatory issues, said Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs at FreedomWorks.

Pye referred to Pittenger as "unreliable" when it comes to reining in spending. Pittenger "generally votes with leadership, and they like to bust spending caps and bust the budget-- things we’re opposed to," Pye said. 
Pittenger has a "Lifetime Score" of 70 with the FreedomWorks. There are about 114 House members with lower lifetime scores than Pittenger. Pittenger's score places him slightly to the right of California Republican Devin Nunes and slightly to the left of U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, also of North Carolina.

Pittenger's Conservative Review rating and his lifetime rating on FreedomWorks aren’t extremely liberal (or conservative) compared to other congressional Republicans… Pittenger votes out-of-step with the majority of Republicans 5.5 percent of the time, according to ProPublica. The group says that’s close to the average for Republicans in Congress.

He has a score of 90 percent with Heritage Action for America, a watchdog group and think tank that says it “turns conservative ideas into reality on Capitol Hill.” The average score for House Republicans is 68 percent.

According to a vote tracker on FiveThirtyEight.com, Pittenger’s votes are aligned with Trump 96.9 percent of the time. And there are dozens of Republican House members who vote in-step with Trump less than Pittenger.


…PolitiFact ruling

Harris said Pittenger is "constantly rated as one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress." We can’t find the results to back that up. So we rate this claim False.

Pittenger has been handing out a campaign document to media: “Rep. Robert Pittenger: Unapologetically Pro Trump,” which detailed the “over 200” media appearances, six rallies, nine town halls and other instances in which Pittenger has offered robust defenses” of Señor Trumpanzee. Club for Growth, always looking to elect extremists and neo-fascists, is backing Harris. As in GOOP primaries around the country, the one in NC-09 has support for Señor T big factor for the dumbed-down Republican electorate, with both sides accusing the opponent of disloyalty to the fascist regime. The latest poll shows Pittenger absolutely crushing Harris so far, up 32 points over him.

Another mainstream conservative in the South, Alabama’s Martha Roby, is under attack for not being pro-Trump enough. Her district, AL-02-- the southeast corner of the state, including part of Montgomery, all of Greenville and Dothan-- has an R+16 PVI that has given Democrats about a third of its vote. Trump beat Hillary 65% to 33%. There are 5 Republicans primarying Roby, one being former Blue Dog Democrat Bobby Bright, who she beat in 2012, and is now a born-again Trumpist. Noe-fascist state Rep. State Rep. Barry Moore is even further right. Everyone is claiming to be Trumpier than Roby, who denounced Trump after the Access Hollywood tape. Another candidate attacking Roby from the (far) right is Rich Hobson, Roy Moore’s campaign manager.

Bright was exactly the kind of Blue Dog the DCCC is recruiting now. He describes himself to Alabama Republicans as having been more Republican in Congress “than several dozen Republican counterparts” and says he was “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and does not believe in same-sex marriage.” Thank God, he’s admitting he’s a Republican now or Lujan and Pelosi would be trying to lure him back to Congress as a Democrat. “Everything that you might think a Democrat believes, I wasn’t there,” he told the local media recently. The primary is June 5 and Bright can’t repeat often enough that he will help “President” Donald Trump any way he could in pushing the “president’s” America-first agenda.

The Staten Island/Brooklyn district (NY-11) that elected former D.A. Dan Donovan (R) after Mafia thug Michael “Mikey Suits” Grimm was sent to federal prison, may be ready to send Grimm, now out of prison, back to Congress. The district’s PVI is R+3. It was the only district in NYC Trump won, beating Hillary 53.6% to 43.8%, a district Obama won in 2012 by over 4 points. The DCCC recruited a very conservative Blue Dog, Max Rose, who would be a complete long shot except for this wave. But Donovan has a bigger problem now-- winning the primary, especially after he was exposed over the weekend in a shockingly sordid affair, perhaps typical for Staten Island but… well, not something voters are likely to forget. The NY Post scooped everyone about how Donovan used his official position to get his baby mama’s son out of a heroin arrest on Staten Island.

Donovan, a former district attorney who now represents Staten Island and part of South Brooklyn, stepped in after his domestic partner’s son was arrested with a friend for “criminal sale and possession of a controlled substance (heroin),” according to an allegation filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics last week.

Timothy O’Connell, son of Serena Stonick, was detained with the female friend after the bust, the allegation states. The friend’s name is being withheld by The Post.

“Later that evening, Donovan, while serving in Congress and as a former District Attorney, visited the 122 Precinct and used his position to illegally request that officers issue O’Connell and [the friend] a ‘desk appearance ticket’ instead of proceeding with normal arrest protocols,” the allegation says. “This intervention allowed the detained to be immediately released from custody, as well as the records to be sealed.”

A desk appearance ticket lets an arrested person show up in court at a later date to answer a summons and avoid being sent to central booking, jailed or arraigned.

…[Donovan spokesman Pat] Ryan noted that when Donovan first began dating Stonick in 2011, she told him that her daughter also struggled with addiction and was in drug-treatment court. As the DA at the time, Donovan requested and was granted a special prosecutor in that case.

Donovan and Stonick now have a young daughter together.

“This is a disgusting, vicious and false attack on a young man’s struggle with addiction to score political points two months before an election,” Ryan said, referring to June’s GOP congressional primary in which Donovan will face ex-con former Rep. Michael Grimm.

Ryan pointed to O’Connell’s arrest report, which shows the young man did not make a phone call after being collared.

O’Connell’s attorney, Joe Mure, said his client was charged with seventh-degree criminal drug possession, not sale. The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in jail. The charge was dismissed in March 2016.

Mure claimed four glassine bags of heroin were found in the woman’s wallet when police pulled her and O’Connell over and that marijuana was later found in her shoe at the station house. But the arrest report indicates O’Connell was seen buying heroin.

Ryan said, “We’re not saying [O’Connell] was charged without any cause.”

O’Connell denied doing drugs.

“No marijuana, no heroin. I don’t even drink . . . I go to church every Sunday,” he said.

He denied Donovan helped him get out of trouble. His friend would not comment on the case.

The tipster who made the allegation to the Office of Congressional Ethics said “multiple sources” contributed to the account, including a retired cop and an active detective on Staten Island, elected officials and someone close to the female friend.

The source close to the friend said the woman was driving O’Connell when he asked to go to a house in Great Kills. The source was told that “he went in, he came out. They continued driving. They were pulled over. They were found with drugs.”

The source said that if Donovan did quash the arrests, he made the wrong decision.

“I thought if these kids went through the system and you get a taste of prison... That’s going to scare you some, and maybe it was a chance to keep these kids off drugs,” the person said.

Ironically, when Grimm was in Congress he had the same kind of mainstream conservative record as Donovan does. But now Grimm is attacking Donovan for it and running as an extreme, off-the-cliff Trumpist. Democrats generally feel they can flip the seat more easily if Grimm wins the primary. No one seriously though he could until this weekend.



Todd Rokita is an unaccomplished Indiana member of Congress currently embroiled in a tough primary against Luke Messer, another unaccomplished Indiana Rep. They’re both running for a Senate nomination. Rokita’s new ad doesn’t mention anything remotely connected to issues or policy-- just that he’s the Trumpiest Republican in the race. Writing for the Washington Post today, Aaron Blake noted that the ad encapsulates the all-consuming tribalism of Trump’s Republican Party. “The ad,” he wrote, “titled ‘MAGA,’ is a remarkable little window into how at least one candidate thinks you win in today's GOP, and Rokita hopes it's his ticket to the Republican nomination to face Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) next month… [Trump] has turned a Republican Party that was all about conservative purity earlier this decade into one that is more about Trump purity. It's a party built on personality whose base has stood by Trump, even as he has shrugged off an antagonistic foreign power's incursion into U.S. elections. It's a party that almost instantly and universally dismisses every Trump-inspired controversy as unimportant and a media creation-- even ‘fake news.’… The problem with being the most ‘with Trump,’ though, is that what it requires can change depending on the day. Trump isn't just a political novice-- he's a chameleon. That may sound harsh and negative, but it's objectively true and even a testament to Trump's ability to hold his base almost by sheer force of personality. The prevailing ethos of Trump's presidency isn't conservative policies so much as ‘Trump will take care of it, and don't worry about the details. There's no question as to why candidates such as Rokita want to be associated with Trump. But just at its core, Rokita isn't subscribing to any specific policies; he's subscribing to supporting a president who might do all kinds of things he never expected. Yet Rokita has wagered that the most important thing is that he assures people he'll be along for the ride.”

And that brings us to Dana Rohrabacher in the coastal Orange County district (CA-48). Hillary narrowly beat Trump there and Rohrabacher has been successful exposed as a Putin puppet. California has open primaries and there’s aq slight chance Rohrabacher won’t even make it into the general election. New Dem Harley Rouda is favored to win among Democrats-- and he would for sure except for the support the DCCC is surrepticuousl funneling to another New Dem, Hans Keirstead, a candidate who looks good on paper but who has been a complete bust in the flesh. Rohabacher’s other problem in the primary, though, is former Assemblyman and former Orange County GOP chairman Scott Baugh. Now Baugh, a former Rohrabacher ally, is attacking him as a Putin puppet, likely to help Rouda if Rohrabacher makes the general. Trump’s unpopular in the district and he’s not really as much of a factor as he is in GOP primaries in the rest of the country-- unless Putin = Trump in the minds of Republican primary voters in South Brooklyn which is lousy with pro-Putin (and pro-Trump) Russian immigrants who are extremely disloyal to the U.S. and ought to be all deported as dangerous aliens.

Will Republican Cannibalism Do What The DCCC And DSCC Are Incapable Of?

A YouGov poll for The Economist last week showed congressional approval at 8% and disapproval at 71%. Yeah, Congress is not popular. An overwhelming majority of Americans see Congress as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. They're right. And congressional leadership is especially loathed by most voters-- all the top leaders' favorability has been underwater in every poll this year. A Morning Consult poll for Politico last month had Ryan's favorability at 32% and hs unfavorability as 45%-- almost as bad as Pelosi's, whose favorability was at 29% and unfavorability at 47%. McConnell was at 22% favorable and 43% unfavorable and Schumer was 26% favorable and 30% unfavorable. Worse yet-- for them and their parties-- voters are starting to say they will take out their dislike for the leaders on their own candidates for Congress. Look at this:

Asking voters the same question for Pelosi and Schumer yield about the same ugly results. On the other hand, registered Democratic voters still back their party’s legislative leaders. 45% said they’d be more likely to vote for a member who supported Pelosi, with 21% saying they’d be less likely. Among registered Republicans, 40% said they would be more likely to support a member of Congress who approves of Ryan Speaker, while 28% said they’d be less likely. Pelosi is facing more and more resistance to her leadership within congressional Democratic ranks. Texas Blue Dog Filemon Vela said that he thinks, "you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top. Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost. But she certainly is one of the reasons." Since then California Democrat, Linda Sanchez, a member of Pelosi's own leadership team, told her-- quite publicly-- it's time to say goodbye and make room for the next generation of leaders.

Over the weekend, The Hill reported that when Republican candidates for Congress are asked if they'll vote for McConnell they try to avoid answering. (The same dynamic is at play for Ryan and for the Democratic leaders.) Bannon has succeeded into turning McConnell into "a flashpoint" among Republicans.

The Hill asked nearly two-dozen Senate candidates this week if they would support McConnell as leader if elected. Not one campaign said outright that they would support McConnell, although two candidates appear to have expressed support for McConnell in the past.

Several candidates declared their opposition to McConnell and attacked their GOP primary opponents for not taking a stance on the question. Other candidates deflected, or spoke on background about the bind they’re in over the question of McConnell’s leadership. Most candidates were eager to avoid the question entirely, and ignored multiple requests for comment.

The candidate survey underscores the tricky balancing act facing Republican Senate candidates in 2018, which is shaping up to be a proxy war between the party establishment and its grassroots base.

On one side is McConnell and his deep ties to the national party’s donor network, a prized asset for any candidate facing a tough primary. On the other side is Breitbart chairman and former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the anti-establishment provocateur with the influential news outlet who is asking candidates to oppose the majority leader.

... In primary races in Ohio and Missouri, candidates with crossover appeal between the grassroots and the establishment have both declined to endorse McConnell but are under fire from their Republican opponents nonetheless.

GOP Senate hopeful Mike Gibbons is calling on state Treasurer Josh Mandel, the favorite in the race, to sign his petition demanding that McConnell retire.

Mandel, who received millions of dollars in outside support from the McConnell-aligned group American Crossroads GPS for his failed 2012 bid, ducked the question at a press conference this week and told reporters he’d address it when elected.

“Just like we would expect from the career politician that he is, Josh is refusing to take a position,” Gibbons said in a statement to The Hill.

Mandel’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

In Missouri, Austin Petersen, who is running against state Attorney General Josh Hawley, the favorite, is similarly on the attack. Hawley has dodged the question of whether he would support McConnell, even as Rove publicly boasts about how he and McConnell recruited Hawley to get into the race.

“Hawley refuses to say whether he’ll support him,” Petersen told The Hill. “That’s playing politics. I said two months ago I wouldn’t support McConnell and I had everything to lose when I did that.”

Hawley’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In Arizona and Nevada, insurgent candidates Kelli Ward and Danny Tarkanian are demanding Republicans move on from McConnell as they seek to upset incumbent Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Dean Heller (R-NV), respectively.

So too is Alabama’s Roy Moore, who won his September primary runoff against incumbent Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) even after the Senate Leadership Fund-- another McConnell-aligned group-- poured millions of dollars into the race to oppose Moore.

Wisconsin’s Kevin Nicholson and Pennsylvania’s Jeff Bartos both told The Hill it might be time for new leadership in the Senate. A spokesperson for Nicholson said, “he’s prepared to support new leadership because of the Senate’s failure to pass a conservative agenda,” while Bartos said he’d tie his vote to whether McConnell could “deliver for the people who support the president’s agenda.”

  McConnell’s allies say there is no need for prospective senators to weigh in on hypothetical leadership votes and believe there is more support for the majority leader than is being publicized by the candidates.

They don’t think primary voters care about who the candidates might support for majority leader and are frustrated by what they view as Bannon needlessly sowing division within Republican ranks. Bannon has vowed to put up primary challengers to every incumbent running for reelection with the exception of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, GOP strategist Karl Rove, who oversees the powerful Senate Leadership Fund that seeks to reelect incumbents, attacked Bannon as a “failed presidential adviser and alt-right sympathizer.”

Rove accused Bannon of launching a “jihad against incumbent Republicans” and singled out Ward and Tarkanian as surefire general election losers and part of Bannon’s “collection of misfits and ne’er-do-wells.”

Bannon’s critics say he is getting too much credit for swooping in late in Alabama, where they say Moore was already headed for certain victory over Strange, the McConnell-backed candidate.

They view Bannon’s efforts as a money-making scheme to raise his profile and note that the incumbents he plans to primary have voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time.

“If you’re a candidate wrapping yourself around an axle of who you’ll support in a leadership election that presumes you’ve already won a Senate seat, you’re doing it wrong,” said Josh Holmes, McConnell’s former chief of staff.

“Voters don’t have an ounce of interest in who wins a prospective leadership race, they care about jobs. This is nothing more than a vanity project for Steve Bannon and, like all vanity projects, it will go about as far as you can throw a thousand-pound stone. Bannon doesn’t have a movement behind him. The president does and without President Trump, Bannon is a nobody.”

Still, there is roiling anger at McConnell in some conservative quarters and those looking to harness that anti-establishment energy insist that running against the majority leader will be a winning issue for GOP primary candidates.

“Of course primary voters care about leadership elections,” said Adam Brandon, the president of FreedomWorks, which opposes McConnell. “They’ve seen failed leadership in the Senate for years and want to see the member they vote for be able to enact the agenda they ran on.”

The attacks between the two wings of the party are heating up and becoming increasingly personal.

“In 2018 we ought to revisit this question and find out if these people are still happy to be associated with Bannon,” said Holmes. “When you’re facing voters, I’d take one of the most successful majority leaders in history over a white supremacist any day.”

Andy Surabian, an adviser to Bannon, fired back.

“No amount of smearing can change the fact that not a single U.S. Senate candidate was willing to go on the record and say that they supported Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader,” he said. “Everyone can see right through the clearly desperate, unfounded and pathetic attacks coming from McConnell Incorporated.”

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, McConnell told Dana Perino that Bannon and his allies are "specialists at nominating people who lose... They've been out there for a number of years. They cost us five Senate seats in 2010 and 2012. We would have got the majority sooner but for the fact they were able to nominate people who could not win in November. In '14 they were defeated everywhere, in '16 they were defeated everywhere, and the difference is we've been in the majority in 2014 and 2016, two Congresses in a row... The kind of people who are supported by the element that you've just been referring to are specialists in defeating Republican candidates in November. And that's what this inter-party skirmish is about. Our goal is to nominate people in the primaries next year who can actually win, and the people who win will be the ones who enact the president's agenda."

Bannon is expanding his war against the Republican establishment-- and, as we hoped, he's involving himself in House races beyond just backing Mafia goon Mikey Suits against Ryan ally Dan Donovan in Staten Island/Brooklyn NY-11. His new target: former Crusade for Christ activist and North Carolina state Senator Robert Pittenger, who represents a Charlotte metro congressional district that has been largely ethnically-cleansed. Pittinger was elected to Congress in 2012 in this R+8 district that Obama lost both times and that went for Trump last year 54.4% to 42.8%. Pittinger, who has a solidly conservative voting record, has been a target of the Tea Party extremists since 2014 when he said he wouldn't support shutting down the government over defending Obamacare. They ran crackpot Michael Steinberg against him, and Pittenger won with 67%. He faced no Democratic opposition. Last cycle he had two GOP primary challengers from the right, Mark Harris and Todd Johnson, which proved to be a tough race for Pittenger:

Berniecrat Christian Cano ran against him in the general and Pittenger beat him 58-42%. Cano hopes to run again but the DCCC and the Blue Dogs have recruited a Republican-lite candidate named Dan McCready. Harris is primarying Pittenger again, this time, in all likelihood, with Bannon's help. There's even talk of fellow North Carolina Republican, Mark Meadows, head of the neo-fascist Freedom Caucus, endorsing Harris against Pittenger. The race is rapidly becoming part of the proxy war between Bannon and Rove.

Meadows, a deeply conservative North Carolina congressman, has “typically never been involved in Republican primaries against a sitting member, but Dr. Harris, he’s a credible candidate who would be helpful in the majority.” 
Harris is the former pastor of Charlotte’s First Baptist Church, who came within 134 votes of unseating Pittenger in last cycle’s congressional primary and outraised him in the last fundraising quarter. He told McClatchy he would like to join Meadows’ Freedom Caucus should he win-- and would “certainly be interested in being engaged and involved.”

Meanwhile, “Bannon now plans to meet with Harris,” said a source close to Bannon, in an interview Thursday after Rove’s op-ed posted. “Bannon has decided to target Pittenger.”


... [Rove] appeared with Pittenger publicly last week at a rally at Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant in Charlotte, and headlined two fundraisers for the congressman.

It’s an alliance his challenger is eager to exploit. Indeed, Bannon’s Breitbart already is referring to Pittenger as the “Karl Rove-backed” candidate.

"It, in many ways, draws the lines in this race,” said Harris, who also ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2014. “Karl Rove has certainly represented the establishment. He has been wrong as many times as he's been right in recent elections. Robert Pittenger has decided to set his stakes with the establishment and the status quo.”

Adam Brandon, the president of the conservative group FreedomWorks, said Harris had been his activists’ choice “for a while.”

“But gasoline was poured on the fire when this is becoming a proxy battle between Karl Rove and Steve Bannon,” he continued. “We were getting involved in that race regardless of what was happening, but this is kind of a choice between a typical establishment Republican guy and someone who reflects the grassroots.”

In an interview with McClatchy, Pittenger, a frequent and vocal Trump supporter, laughed when asked about the criticism he faced over his connection to Rove.

“How silly these guys are, grasping for anything,” he said. “Let’s take a reality check, OK? No. 1, look at the record. My record in voting [with] Trump. I have 95.6 percent. Higher than Congressman Mark Meadows, OK? So let’s be clear on that.”

Pittenger was referencing FiveThirtyEight’s “Trump score,” a tally of how frequently a member of Congress votes with Trump (Meadows’ number, by that measure, is 93.3 percent, though he has worked closely with the White House and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, attended a fundraiser for him last month).

Pittenger ticked through a long list of conservative endorsements he’s notched over the years, including the National Rifle Association and National Right to Life, and noted his efforts on economic and anti-abortion measures underway on Capitol Hill right now.

His campaign staff also passed along a document titled “Rep. Robert Pittenger: Unapologetically Pro Trump,” which detailed the “over 200” media appearances, six rallies, nine town halls and other instances in which Pittenger has offered robust defenses of the president.

“My conservative credentials are impeccable,” he said. “This is simply a little power play by a few people who are gaming this. I’ve stood for conservative principles. I will win this election because my positions, what I’ve stood for, will be validated, regardless of what type of smoke other people try to throw up there. Pure nonsense.”

Rove too was dismissive. Asked about Bannon’s reaction to his op-ed, Rove said: “Now he’s just making himself sound unhinged.”

But some conservative groups are paying attention to the contest for reasons that have little to do with Rove and much more to do with Harris’ last electoral performance-- and recent fundraising numbers.

“I can tell you that Mark Harris is a rock-ribbed conservative, and he posted one hell of a third quarter,” said Andy Roth, vice president for government affairs at the conservative Club for Growth. He was referencing Harris’ $251,000 fundraising haul. “That opened our eyes quite a bit.”

Pittenger, who also faces a well-funded potential Democratic opponent, reported raising $242,000, though in the interview, said “we haven’t really started” and added that he is sure he will outraise Harris next time as he ramps up his fundraising focus.

In a recent interview with the Charlotte Observer, Rove praised Pittenger as a “consistent conservative in Congress,” and a “defender of the president’s policies.”

One closing thought that points to the danger-- for Republicans-- of all this in-fighting. As Josh Kraushaar pointed out over the weekend at National Review things are staring to look more desperate for Ryan and his majority than anyone expected. He and his team, wrote Kraushaar, "are growing increasingly alarmed that some of their most vulnerable members aren’t doing the necessary legwork to protect themselves from an emerging Democratic tidal wave. In some of the biggest media markets, where blockbuster fundraising is a prerequisite for political survival-- most notably in New York City, Los Angeles, and Houston-- Republican lawmakers aren’t raising enough money to run aggressive campaigns against up-and-coming Democrats."

He pointed out miserable fundraising numbers for vulnerable Republicans Steve Knight (CA), Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ), John Culberson (TX), Dana Rohrabacher (CA), Claudia Tenney (NY) and Leonard Lance (NJ).

Gerrymandering Creates Corrine Browns, Debbie Wasserman Schultzes and Robert Pittengers

Corrine Brown-- a two-and-half decade win-win for the Florida Republicans

Just a tad over two years ago, we looked at 24 year congressional veteran Corrine Brown' and her grotesquely gerrymandered district. I described FL-05 as one that "twists and turns down from the African American neighborhoods of Jacksonville-- that aren't even contiguous-- along a narrow strip a mile or two wide along Rt 17 (which then disappears into Ted Yoho's district and through some sparsely populated rural areas until finally finding Palatka in the east and African-American neighborhoods of Gainesville in the west before chugging down into Sanford and Pine Hills in the Orlando metropolitan area." Much like Wasserman Schultz did, Brown used her position in the state legislature to work with the Republicans to create a seat that served her own purposes-- never having to worry about being defeated-- as well as theirs-- getting thousands and thousands of black Democrats out of neighboring districts that would be safer for Republicans.

Obama won the district both times with 73%. With a PVI of D+21 this district defines "safe." Republicans have trouble winning R+1 districts and they don't try-- not ever, not anywhere, when a district is D+6 or above. Brown is screaming and threatening to go to the Supreme Court because Judge Terry Lewis ordered the legislature to remove Sanford from her district, which might take her down from a D+21 to a D+19, depending on other factors. Republicans didn't bother running candidates against her in 2004, 2006 and 2008 and last year, when there was a Republican running with no support (and a campaign war chest of $19,941 against Brown's $613,190), Brown won with 71%. "We will go all the way to the United States Supreme Court," she thundered, "dealing with making sure that African Americans are not disenfranchised."

Give me a break. Instead of making deals with Republicans in states to create marginally red districts by agreeing to have ethnically-cleansed districts, Democrats like Brown could spread around some of her Democratic voters, still keep a deep blue district that she would never lose, and help the Democrats defeat John Mica, Dan Webster and Ron DeSantis. Marcia Fudge should know better, even if Corrine Brown can't see beyond her own careerism.

Since then, a court ruling forced her district into more rational boundaries-- east/west from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, instead of north/south, still safely Democratic and very friendly territory for an African-American Representative... except not Brown. Facing 24 criminal charges related to swindling people with a charity/personal slush fund-- not on a Trumpian level, but bad enough-- she was soundly defeated by conservaDem Al Lawson in her primary, 39,261 (48%) to 32,157 (39%), despite having outspent Lawson $465,720 to $134,206. Yesterday Fusion ran what could be the premise for a powerful film on a corrupt political system: The Rise And Fall Of Corrine Brown and had the insight into subtitling it, "The brash Florida congresswoman’s career begs the question: Do 'majority-minority' districts empower voters of color… or ghettoize them to benefit conservatives?"

Brown’s dramatic rise and fall highlights the dilemmas of “majority-minority” congressional districts-- political boundaries drawn to group voters of color together. On one hand, such districts have increased opportunities for minority representation in the House. On the other hand, they’ve been used by white majorities, primarily Republicans, to increase power in surrounding districts, effectively sidelining minorities so that the GOP can maintain control of Congress.

The recent push to broaden her district’s demographics, Brown said, amounted to racial discrimination. “It is clear that you all think that slavery still exists, and we can just take those slaves and put them in one area and forget about the people who didn’t have representation for 129 years,” she told reporters during the redistricting fight in 2015-- even though putting African Americans in one area was precisely what Brown had helped do in the 90s, and precisely what the new redistricting sought to correct.

But Brown’s power-- and by extension, that of her African-American constituents-- had always been limited by House Republicans; the majority-minority districting that had boosted her for a quarter-century also gave the GOP a lasting majority. Although Florida’s voters were split about 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats in 1992, the GOP took 13 of the 23 House seats in the 1992 cycle, leaving just 10 for Democrats.

Today, the disparity is even starker: There are 17 Florida Republican reps in the House, and still just 10 Democrats. This was very much by design.

The 1990 census showed that Florida’s population had boomed since a decade prior. The state got to add four congressional districts to its representation in Washington. Democrats controlled both chambers of Florida’s state legislature, which was in charge of the redistricting process, but couldn’t agree how to divvy up voters into new districts.

Miguel DeGrandy, a Miami attorney, was a GOP state representative back in 1992. He remembers how his Cuban American caucus of seven Republicans reached out to the black caucus with a very clear message-- and an overture to join forces: “Your community is being shafted. Our community is being shafted."

DeGrandy says that in drawing maps that laid out boundaries of Congressional districts, Democrats-- who had been in power in Tallahassee since Reconstruction-- used black communities by breaking them up into multiple districts and using them to boost electoral chances for white Democratic candidates, a practice known as “cracking.”

“The Democrats had had a patronizing approach,” he says. They assumed blacks would vote Democratic, essentially telling them, “Trust us-- we’ll take care of you.“

Working with the NAACP, DeGrandy became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Florida, citing the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required that minorities have the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. They argued that the state had an obligation to link together minority communities in districts to harness their collective power.

Federal judges ultimately agreed and created three heavily black “majority-minority” districts-- two in South Florida, plus District 3: a sprawling, horseshoe-shaped zone that stretched hundreds of miles to include historically black neighborhoods in 14 counties, from Jacksonville to Orlando to Gainesville. That one went to Corrine Brown.

The GOP came out looking generous. Jet magazine wrote that the “amazing breakthrough resulted not from any design of liberal Democratic leaders who control more than 90% of the U.S. Black vote, but from the late GOP chairman Lee Atwater, a White South Carolinian, who quarterbacked the new congressional redistricting effort in the South to atone for his past actions.”

Democrats “were caught flat-footed,” DeGrandy says. “They thought it was going to be business as usual. They underestimated our legal resources, our legal strategies. They also underestimated public opinion.”

Political scientists say you can draw a straight line from the growth of “majority-minority” districts to the nearly unbroken Republican stranglehold on Congress. “When a majority-minority district is created, the additional minority voters must be taken from somewhere, and that somewhere is the surrounding districts,” Grant M. Hayden, a voting-rights professor at Southern Methodist University’s law school, wrote in 2004.

This “packing” of minority voters leads to a phenomenon in the outside districts that redistricting experts have called “bleaching”[a]: those polities become whiter and more consistently conservative, or at least competitive for Republicans.

These developments stick progressives with a dilemma, Hayden writes, “by forcing them to choose between additional minority officeholders and additional Democrats, between descriptive representation and substantive representation.”

...[R]edistricting reform could never pass through a safe Republican majority in the state Legislature. So the Fair Districts team put the issue directly in front of Florida voters. In 2010, as the Tea Party wave swept America and Floridians voted in historic numbers for Republicans, they also overwhelmingly-- and a little ironically-- approved two state constitutional amendments barring legislators from drawing up new districts to favor a political party or an incumbent.

Republican critics like DeGrandy argue the hugely popular Fair Districts amendments were a “Democrat-sponsored” agenda, but “they were very intelligent in how they how went through the process.”

Corrine Brown, though, saw the move as a threat to the political livelihood she had built over two and a half decades. From 2011 to 2016, while still in Congress, she fought the Fair Districts plan tooth and nail-- in concert with Republicans and conservative corporate donors, and against the ACLU and civil rights groups. Changing her district would represent a “giant step backward to our state's Jim Crow days,” she argued.

African American rights leaders disagreed. "I like Corrine," Leon Russell, an NAACP leader, told the St. Petersburg Times in 2011, "but I wish she hadn't done this. I don't think you should frustrate the process purely on basis of your self-interest, no matter who you are."

Brown’s legal challenges ultimately came to nothing. In July 2015, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that her gerrymandered district violated the Fair Districts amendments and demanded that it be redrawn. It was converted to a more compact east-west shape that runs from Jacksonville to Tallahassee.

...On her blog, Brown conceded her loss with characteristic feistiness. “We fought a battle with one arm tied behind our backs. You know they’ve been after me for years,” she wrote. “We are a strong people. We’re descendants of people who survived the Middle Passage. We have survived centuries of abuse. We are strong. We are still standing.”

This kind of racial gerrymandering isn't, of course, just about Florida or Corrine Brown or her issues. There 809,958 people living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Almost 300,000 of them are African American. Because their city has been gerrymandered up to serve the interests of career politicians rather than the people who live there, listen to what one of the crackpot racist congressmen, Robert Pittenger (R), representing Charlotte had to say after the murder of a black resident by the police and the ensuing demonstrations:



Charlotte is 45.1% white and 54.9% non-white. But Pittenger has nothing to worry about. North Carolina's racist Republican legislature drew his district to be 73.8% white. Mecklenburg County has just about enough people now (over a million) for 2 congressmen of it's own. Instead it's divvied up among 3 districts, one overwhelmingly minority, the 12th, and two that are safely Republican, the 8th and Pittenger's 9th.

The 12th is very much like Brown's old 5th district in Florida. It twists and turns from Charlotte's urban core through Salisbury and Lexington (with sizable African-American populations) before forking off to the northwest to take in Winston-Salem's black neighborhoods and to the northeast to take in High Point and Greensboro's black neighborhoods. Look at this mess:

Without districts like NC-12, there wouldn't be extremist congressmen like Robert Pittenger, or at least there wouldn't be for more than one term. And by the way, in 2012 Obama won NC-12 with 250,719 votes (79%) to Romney's 66,291 (21%). Pittenger's 9th district gave Romney a comfortable 215,861 votes (56%) to 163,883 (43%) while Richard Hudson's 8th district gave Romney a 178,977 (58%) to 126,065 (41%) win. The 3 districts combined gave Obama 540,027 votes and Romney 461,129 votes.