Not too long ago, conservatives were so concerned about their free speech being squashed at UNC-Chapel Hill that they established the School for Civic Life and Leadership to give themselves a safe space to express their views. Now, they’re trying to suppress the speech of the campus newspaper. What a bunch of hypocrites.

On April Fool’s Day, the Daily Tar Heel ran a series of satirical articles with titles like “Satire: Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents” and “Satire: UNC brings back DEI — for whites.” I couldn’t find the articles because they’ve been censored, but what’s offensive is that a school as powerful as the University of North Carolina would pressure the newspaper to pull them.

They also put up a video mocking white students who live on North Campus for having little contact with students on South Campus where the population is darker. I watched that video. I didn’t find it very funny, but I didn’t find it offensive, either. They were trying and they were exposing an issue that’s got more than a grain of truth to it.

The University issued a statement condemning the satirical edition, calling it “racist and insensitive.” I read it and it was neither. In a world where the so-called Secretary of Defense is demoting African American and women officers because of their race and gender, hand-wringing over the sensibilities of white students is ridiculous. The Harvard Lampoon would never make it on today’s campus.

I wish the Daily Tar Heel had stood its ground. The editor issued an apology and pulled the edition. I don’t fault her. She was under pressure from a behemoth. She shouldn’t have been put in that position.

The whole episode makes me want to go ridicule the administration. I suspect the real problem was the DEI article. It’s pretty close to true. Their School of Civic Life and Leadership is little more than confirmation bias for conservative, mostly white, students and faculty.

The conservative establishment is bringing its victim mentality to the Ivory Tower. They’ve captured the university system and now they are going to shut down anybody who’s mean to them.

I blame Chancellor Lee Roberts. He should learn to turn down jobs he doesn’t understand. He’s the preppy gopher the reactionaries running the GOP. He might be able to balance the books, but he has no familiarity with university culture. He’s doing the bidding of his conservative masters on the Board of Trustees and the General Assembly when he should be leading the next generation of North Carolina leaders, including those at the paper.

Back in September 2024, Roberts wrote an op-ed supposedly championing free speech. He wrote:

“[N]o one person’s freedom of expression is more important than another person’s right to teach, learn, discover, work or speak free from harassment and discrimination. No one has the right to disrupt campus operations, threaten or intimidate others or vandalize public property. Policies must and will be consistently applied to everyone, regardless of content or viewpoint, so that Carolina remains a steadfast supporter of free expression while fulfilling our mission of teaching, research and service to the state and society.”

As far as I can tell, the Daily Tar Heel didn’t “disrupt campus operations, threaten or intimidate others or vandalize public property.” They just put words on paper — or pixels, as it may be. They didn’t offend me. If they offended Roberts, then the articles are the epitome of the free expression he claims to support. I hope I’m offending him now.

Roberts should be standing up for the students. Instead, he seems to see his job as protecting the delicate feelings of the snowflakes paying his salary. He should do something useful like firing Bill Belichick or his girlfriend.

I appreciate the new Thom Tillis. His principled stand of blocking any replacement for Attorney General Pam Bondi who doesn’t condemn January 6 is welcome. Of course, it should be a no-brainer, but in today’s Republican Party, Tillis is the exception.

I wish I could say that Tillis was courageous, but he’s not. He’s really a coward. A courageous man would have stood up for principles when he had something to lose. Tillis waited until the stakes were almost nil. He voted for all of the miscreants who make up Trump’s dysfunctional and dangerous cabinet. Voting against them would have been brave — or at least principled.

If Tillis wanted to show courage now, he would hold Donald Trump to the same standard that he holds the nominee for attorney general. He doesn’t. His criticism of Trump has been veiled or tepid at best. He says that he wants the president to succeed without really defining what that means. He takes shots at Trump by criticizing those around him.

A principled man would have voted to impeach Donald Trump in the wake of January 6. Tillis voted to acquit. In those days in early 2021 when Trump was already planning his return to power, a leader would have rejected the would-be dictator. Tillis was silent.

As I have regularly described him, Tillis is a guy who knows what’s right and does what’s wrong. He’s not alone, though. As one journalist overheard in the Capitol last year, the Senate is full of people who want to be John McCain but are really just Thom Tillis. In short, they lack the courage of their convictions.

I’ve spent the last two months re-reading blog posts I wrote thirteen years ago. The exercise has sent me down rabbit holes of old newspaper and magazine articles from the pre-Trump era. The GOP was a fundamentally different party than it is today — or at least they claimed to be. I’m not sure what to believe now.

Some of the conservative writers and thought leaders stuck to their principles and have largely left the Republican Party, even if they find themselves politically homeless. Most of the Republican politicians and operatives chucked the values they openly espoused to become MAGA. Pragmatism, accountability, and compromise lost.

Congressman Tim Moore was the pragmatic successor to Tillis in the NC House, initially avoiding culture wars and defending North Carolina’s “brand” before he embraced Trumpism. Dan Bishop was always a staunch conservative, but social media exposed a bullying streak and tolerance for bigotry that he wore on his sleeve. And Phil Berger probably knew better than to endorse a moral midget like Mark Robinson, but by the end of the decade, that’s who excited Republicans.

The pundits who have stayed with the GOP are even worse. All of their writings are documented. It’s hard to know whether they never had core values or if they are just shills. Erick Erickson is probably the worst. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a commentator less consistent in his views. Like Tillis, he knows what’s right and does what’s wrong. It’s hard to understand why he’s still taken seriously other than that he’s a smart guy.

Today, they all overlook atrocious behavior that they never would have tolerated in 2010. Or maybe they would have — that’s what I don’t know. Were they lying about their commitment to personal accountability and the rule of law or did they always believe it didn’t apply to them?

Republicans’ main defense is whataboutism. They claim Democrats did it first, but that’s just not true. In North Carolina and in Washington, Democrats have held their own accountable. In the first decade of the 21st century, North Carolina Democrats resigned and even went to prison for crimes that seem quaint compared to what Trump is doing. Al Franken was forced out of the U.S. Senate by his fellow Democrats, not Republicans.

No, Republicans have given up on closely held principles. They have allowed themselves to be led by a con man and grifter who plays to the ugliest instincts of a reactionary populism animated by grievance and resentment. Like Tillis, too many know what’s right and do what’s wrong.

I doubt I will ever trust what Republicans tell me they believe again. Right now, though, I’m just struggling to find the grace to either pity or respect them. After reading what I’ve read, it’s hard.

They aren’t today who they were back then. Or maybe they were.

The Supreme Court threw out the Leandro ruling. The case has been in the courts since the 1990s, when the court ruled that children in poor rural counties were denied a sound, basic education as guaranteed by the constitution. The ruling ordered the legislature to adequately fund schools in those areas and set up mechanisms to determine the amount needed.

The decision is another blow to public education in North Carolina. Republicans came into office in 2011 screaming that our public schools were broken despite plenty of evidence to the contrary and proceeded to break them. Ending this case will hurt children in rural counties.

Since then, they lifted the cap on charter schools, removed the accountability required of public schools, and created a for-profit charter enterprise in North Carolina. They enacted a voucher program with the promise that the goal was to offer poor families the economic means to escape failing public schools and then lifted the income cap on vouchers so that most of them now go to wealthy families. Finally, they’ve cut per pupil spending to among the lowest in the nation.

In essence, they dismantled a functioning and improving public school system to create a new one that rejects the notion of shared responsibility. In rural counties, we run the risk of bringing back the separate-but-unequal schools of the Jim Crow South. Children from more affluent families will travel to wherever the best school is located while children from disadvantaged families will go to where the bus takes them. Expect to see white flight from schools in rural counties — or maybe green flight, the people with money leaving public schools to the people without.

The ruling should offer Democrats an opportunity to build relationships in rural counties. Republicans are taking money from poor public schools and giving it to rich private ones. They are giving tax breaks to wealthy families to keep their children out of public schools. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s a fact.

Leandro may have been an imperfect ruling but it was made because the legislature was not providing the resources necessary to offer children their constitutional right. Without some sort of enforcement mechanism, a ruling to that effect would mean nothing. Now, the words in the state constitution are largely worthless.

Gallup released numbers this week showing that the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republican or Republican-leaning independents is lower than at any time since 2015. The number identifying as Democrat or Democrat-leaning is higher than it’s been since 2020, right after Biden won. Democrats hold a ten-point advantage, 49% to 39%.

That almost 40% of the country could still identify with the party of Trump is disturbing, but I’ll take the advantage. We still have a ways to go before the election and we don’t know where the Republican floor is yet. It’s already low enough to scare a lot of incumbent Republicans out of running again, though.

Democrats shouldn’t get too confident about their advantage. They still make up less than half the country and with the electoral college and Senate maps, they have a long way to go before they can be confident of anything. None of those 39% who are still Republican and the 12% or so who don’t know who they support are clamoring for any sort of transformational programs. They just want to be able to live relatively comfortably with a little job security and a future for their kids or grandkids.

That said, the situation is probably not going to get better for Trump. His war in Iran is going to cause gas prices to rise and they could be far higher than when he was elected. His affordability agenda is in the toilet. His no-more-wars promise was clearly just a lie. His deportation program alienated most of the country. The only thing he’s gotten right is closing the border and nobody’s talking about that too much anymore.

I worry that Democrats will promise either what they can’t deliver or deliver what will turn Americans against them. I was dismayed to see U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen introducing tax breaks for middle class families. Why in the world are they playing on Republican turf?

The idea that somehow we can tax billionaires into oblivion while giving huge tax breaks to the middle class is just folly. It’s bad economics that will end up bankrupting the safety net programs that we need for a healthy middle class. We don’t need to be figuring out how to pay for a better health care system and help families that need day care.

Republicans are the party that offers tax cuts they can’t pay for and then claims they need to cut worthwhile government programs to pay for them. Just look at North Carolina schools. They cut revenue and then watched teacher pay and per pupil spending sink to the bottom of the national barrel.

I’m struggling with Democratic proposals that seem to think money grows on trees. The Democratic Socialist wing of the party seems to have little understanding of how the countries they admire work. The middle class pays far more in taxes in Scandinavian countries than we do here. They get great services and have a high quality of life but it’s not cheap and it’s certainly not paid for by billionaires.

If Democrats want to build on their growing popularity, they need to get back to basics and make government work again. They have an opportunity. Take advantage of Republicans’ embrace of the carnival barker in the White House and make them pay a price. Then build on their support by notching small, tangible wins. Making promises they can’t keep or that will end up hurting the people they’re trying to help won’t work out very well.

A poll released on Friday shows Roy Cooper with a commanding lead over Michael Whatley, 50-32. I wish it were true, but it’s not. The Carolina Journal poll released a few days earlier is probably more accurate. That poll has Cooper leading by eight, 49-41.

Outliers always exist in polling and the one released by Healthier United showing Cooper with an 18-point lead is one of those. It’s just a hazard of polling. Besides, what a poll says today has little relevance to what will happen next fall. Polls are just a snapshot in time.

That said, a look across polls shows Cooper and Democrats in general in a strong position right now. A Public Policy Polling survey released in mid-March showed Cooper up by three, but indicated that most other Democrats were in good shape. The only Democrat trailing in the PPP poll is Court of Appeals Judge Toby Hampson and he’s within the margin of error.

Cooper and Governor Josh Stein both have positive favorability ratings while Whatley breaks even. People still don’t know much about Whatley, giving Democrats an opportunity to define him negatively. It’s a tough place to start a race.

The Carolina Journal poll shows the political environment favoring Democrats slightly. On the generic ballot for legislature, Democrats hold a two-point advantage and for Congress they hold a four-point lead. Both numbers are within the margin of error.

The Healthier United poll shows Democrats with a substantial lead. For state legislature, that survey says voters prefer a Democrat by eleven points. Again, that’s probably not realistic, but it follows the general trend that the political environment is tough for Republicans right now.

All three polls show Donald Trump underwater in North Carolina. That’s a bad sign for the GOP. The election will most likely be a referendum on the party in the White House. Trump could drag Republicans down in November if he doesn’t right the ship.

One factor that doesn’t get enough discussion is that Cooper is the first Democrat running in a midterm with a Republican president in the White House since 2002. I’m not sure how much that’s worth, but I’ve got to think it’s at least a point or two. Cooper’s position is remarkably strong. He’s better known with a higher favorability rating. Whatley has not proven himself as a candidate yet. Whatley is still largely undefined in the minds of voters. Trump is unpopular. The year is trending to be a good one for Democrats.

I’d put my money on Cooper.

With Phil Berger and Thom Tillis both exiting the stage at the same time, they and their supporters are trying to define their legacies. Berger fans were all over Twitter praising him for what he did for North Carolina. Tillis told PBS about what amazing things the two of them did when Republicans took over the legislature.

To hear them tell it, North Carolina was a liberal bastion, swimming in high taxes and struggling to get by. It’s all a myth. They certainly changed the state, but most of it was around dismantling our public education and university system while shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class.

Republicans took power in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. North Carolina got hit especially hard because of its reliance on manufacturing. Instead of offering much stimulus, Republicans cut taxes. Our recovery was slower than that of our neighbors.

For years, Democrats warned that if the GOP got control of the state, they would cut funding to public education. Republicans screamed that we were using scare tactics. Then, when they won the legislature and governor’s office, they did just that.

Once they were in control in Raleigh, they started a Big Lie. “Public schools are broken!” they cried. Then they went about the business of breaking them. They slashed per pupil spending and cut teacher pay. Where North Carolina traditionally sat near the middle of the country in those rankings, today we’re at the bottom of the barrel. When Republicans cry that our public schools are broken today, you can thank 15 years of GOP budgets for that.

They did the same thing to the university system. When they took power, they cut per pupil spending on university students by almost half. The people who were hit hardest were those least able to afford it.

Those weren’t scare tactics. They were warnings and today they’ve come true.

Of course, to fix the schools they broke, they’re continuing to shift tax dollars out of public schools to subsidize private ones. When they first implemented their voucher scheme, Republicans swore they were trying to give poor kids the resources to escape failing public schools. Within just a few years, though, they lifted the income cap and much if not most of that money flows to families who were already affluent enough to afford private education.

The voucher program was really just a scheme to keep cutting taxes for the wealthiest and shifting the tax burden to the poorest North Carolinians. After Republicans flattened the income tax and expanded the sales tax, the state is essentially upside down. The top 1% pay only about 6% of their income in taxes while the lowest 20% pay about 10.5%. Republicans call that a fair tax.

Revenue in the state has grown at a relatively healthy 2.6% since the Great Recession but it grew by an average of 8% a year in the 35 years prior to Republican rule. I’ll grant them that the 1990s were especially generous boom years and the recession changed the equation, but they haven’t done anything spectacular — other than reducing the tax burden for rich people.

Republicans like to crow about their economic success, but they haven’t done anything amazing. The state is essentially on the same trajectory it was on when Democrats ran the state, just without the support of public education. Since the tax restructuring, GDP in the state has grown at about the same pace as it did during the years immediately preceding the Great Recession — about 2.5%-3%. Those are solid numbers, but there’s no evidence that North Carolina was struggling economically under its previous progressive tax system.

Income in North Carolina increased nominally but not exceptionally. We basically tracked the national average and trailed our neighbors. That’s nothing to brag about.

What Republicans did really well was cause division in the state. For decades, the state navigated sticky social and cultural divides better than most of our neighbors. Thom Tillis and Phil Berger decided to exploit them. They put Amendment One on the ballot. They passed HB2. They added strict abortion limits. They used modern tools to gerrymander the state more than any other in the nation, long before the redistricting wars playing out today.

They exploited the rural-urban divide with a steady stream of bald-faced lies that gave them political power at the expense of a unified state. They told people that our schools were broken when they weren’t. They claimed there was rampant voter fraud when it was almost nonexistent. They swore Democrats were coming for their guns when nobody was doing that. They did little to disabuse their base of the lie that COVID was a hoax and the vaccine was dangerous. They callously watched infection and death rates among Republicans dwarf those of Democratic areas because they didn’t want to contradict the lies coming out of the White House and they opposed mask mandates.

The lying all came to a head during Hurricane Helene. Instead of coming together to help people in dire straits, they allowed disinformation to proliferate, damaging the recovery effort and fomenting distrust of the government agencies that were there to help.

Republicans didn’t improve our state economically. It was already one of the fastest growing in the nation and routinely rated one of the best states for business. They didn’t significantly increase incomes. In fact, the people who support them in rural communities have watched theirs fall. They didn’t improve our standing in the country. They sullied our reputation with culture wars and anti-democratic policies.

Their single biggest accomplishment was unleashing an ugly populism that moderate policies had kept at bay since the end of the Civil Rights Movement. They made bigotry great again in the name of free speech. They blamed immigrants for taking jobs and costing taxpayer money when in reality they are a net benefit to our economy and often the only thing propping up rural communities. They brought clowns into a Subway in Raleigh, brandishing guns and dressed in militia gear.

That’s their legacy. It took more than sixty years to beat the populists back from about the turn of the 20th century until the Civil Rights Era. It may take that long again. This time, the North Carolina populists were the vanguard of the national movement that became MAGA. You can thank Thom Tillis and Phil Berger.

It’s over. Phil Berger conceded to Sam Page after a random hand recount of 3% of the districts didn’t indicate the results would change. Sam Page will likely represent Rockingham and parts of Guilford County in the state Senate next year.

I appreciate that Berger conceded graciously and without drawing out the process. Involving the courts in every close election to disqualify voters is unseemly and undermines faith in our system. Senator Berger went through the process and is now stepping away.

I’ve had a grudging respect for Berger since he first became President Pro-Tem. As leader, he ran a tight ship. Over his fifteen years, the body has been plagued with very few scandals or improprieties. There was also very little grumbling or leaking coming from his caucus. That’s saying something and he gets credit.

I’m sure people will remind me that he’s got a bunch of former staffers who are leveraging their connections to him and his office. They are getting rich and their clients are getting access. Unfortunately, that’s how the system works. Nobody’s doing anything illegal, even if the business of governing is often unseemly.

I’ve been disappointed in Berger’s embrace of the right-wing populism that’s infected the Republican Party. It’s very hard to maintain respect for somebody who endorsed Mark Robinson knowing what he knew. It’s also disappointing to watch his embrace of Trump knowing what he knows about him, too. Of course, that applies to all of the Republicans who know better but have sold their pitiful souls to worship false idols. It’s not really a patriotic party anymore.

But back to Berger’s concession. If we’re ever going to get back to more normal politics, we need civility instead of threats and denials. Berger delivered. Governor Josh Stein did, too.

After Berger conceded, Stein put out a tweet saying, “I thank our election officials for ensuring that all votes were counted and that the people’s voice was heard. I congratulate Sheriff Page on his victory and commend Senator Berger for his service. While we didn’t always see eye to eye on the issues of the day, I appreciate Senator Berger’s deep love for North Carolina.”

That’s classy and acknowledges that we can agree to disagree while sharing some broader goals. Stein is playing his politics right, both for his own purposes and as a state leader. He’s getting back to a level of decorum that’s been missing at every level of government.

I’m probably not the best messenger here, since I’m not very civil. Still, I want to see our politics work. One of the first steps is restoring faith in our institutions. Berger’s concession and Stein thanking the board of elections is a start.

Back in 2020, Cheri Beasley trailed Paul Newby by less than 500 votes out of more than 5.4 million cast. She followed protocol and asked for a recount. When that process reduced the margin to about 400 votes, she asked for a hand recount of 3% of the precincts. Republicans jeered her, claiming that she was doing the same thing Donald Trump was doing in Washington, questioning the results of the election.

Here’s the difference. When the hand recount showed the margin would likely increase, she graciously conceded, publicly congratulating Newby and wishing him well. Today, her response seems almost quaint.

Four years later, when Justice Allison Riggs defeated Jefferson Griffin, not only did he refuse to concede, he tried to change the rules of the election after the fact. He almost succeeded because Paul Newby and his Republican court sided with Griffin’s anti-democratic claims. A federal judge had to step in to protect democracy from Republicans in North Carolina.

And 25 years ago, Al Gore gave up his fight for the presidency, conceding to George Bush even though the ballots in Florida still hadn’t been counted. Gore said that he was concerned about violence in the streets. Donald Trump sicced a mob on Congress.

Today, we’re watching Phil Berger drag out the process, trying novel procedures to change the outcome of the election. He wants the board of elections to do a hand recount of all the ballots and take a special look at 220 ballots that the board rejected either because nothing was marked or too many candidates were chosen. The state board rejected his request last week, but he’s continuing his claim.

Berger is also challenging the votes of 13 people, citing various irregularities. Using disenfranchisement as a tool to alter elections is a bad precedent.

The problem with Berger’s claims is threefold. First, he essentially gave the board of elections to state Auditor Dave Boliek. The board is full of Republican operatives instead of election professionals, many of whom probably have some connection to Berger, either directly or indirectly.

Second, Boliek campaigned for Berger during the election. He defends it by saying that the governor used to support candidates in races. The difference is that, as stated, Berger gave Boliek his power.

Finally, if the case goes to the Supreme Court, Berger’s son is a justice. I would hope that Berger Jr. would recuse himself, but the case should not go to the court at all. Berger should respect the process. When he’s gone through the allowed recounts, he should gracefully concede.

Unfortunately, I don’t think many Republicans have grace or humility anymore. The party that once insisted that we respect institutions now trashes them. Elections are no exception. On the contrary, they are the main event.

Republicans have been casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections ever since Barack Obama got elected. Much of their base just could not accept that a Black man could be elected president. There must be fraud.

They also couldn’t believe that Donald Trump could possibly lose an election because Fox News and talk radio insisted he was leading by miles. Besides, everybody they knew supported him. Self-awareness is not common among MAGA.

People like Phil Berger exploit these fears and misperceptions for personal advantage. Berger is doing that now. However, the conspiracy theorists who would otherwise be storming the boards of election support his opponent, Sam Page. He might be able to pressure lawyers and bureaucrats but he won’t be able to gin up anger among the base.

Berger would be wise to step down once a hand recount of 3% of the precincts shows that he’s still losing by a handful of votes. He could go out with the grace that his party so badly needs. Going down attacking the system and voters is just not a good look.

If there’s one thing that’s consistent about Mark Robinson, it’s that he craves attention. Yesterday, he released a new podcast where he admits, explains, and defends his porn habit. I’m not watching it, but I thank Bryan Anderson for falling on his sword so I don’t have to.

The most preposterous statement Robinson makes is blaming his campaign team for his troubles. He says if he had changed consultants he would have survived and won the election. That’s delusional. He lost to Josh Stein by 15 points.

It’s hard to know, but Robinson is probably trying to creep back into public life. This podcast is his trial balloon. It’s not going to fly, but I wish it would.

Mark Robinson is the candidate the GOP deserves. He was a creation of the outrage machine that excites the right. He got his start with a viral video when he made a gun rant before the Greensboro City Council. Knowing little about him, conservative influencers and groups like the NRA turned him into a rock star, drawing cheering crowds at gun shows and conventions. Robinson turned his fifteen minutes of fame into a political career.

North Carolina Republicans had numerous chances to stop him, but they didn’t. They encouraged him, electing him lieutenant governor and then nominating him to be their gubernatorial standard bearer. He defeated State Treasurer Dale Folwell, a mainstream conservative politician, in the primary.

In that primary, the GOP leadership in North Carolina lined up behind him. Senate President Pro-tem Phil Berger was among the first to sign on and showed up at his campaign kickoff rally. Before it was over, Republicans were clambering to get their photos with Robinson. Of course, after it was over, they were scrubbing their social media feeds of him.

Republicans knew exactly who Mark Robinson was. He had a long history of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic social media posts. He made outrageous comments like “Some people just need killin’.” The base ate it up and the politicians ignored it.

Around the general assembly the year before the election, Republican lobbyists and legislators were giddy. By their calculation, Mark Robinson would split the Black vote, defeating Josh Stein. The party that talks about the “soft bigotry of low expectations” applied the theory to politics. They assumed that skin color would take precedence over positions and values for a large number of African American voters.

They also wanted desperately to say, “See, I’m not racist. I support the Black guy.” They would overlook all kinds of awful behavior to tell themselves that subtle lie. Instead, they just confirmed their prejudice.

Mark Robinson is a symptom of the disease that’s infected the GOP. They created Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, and a host of other deeply flawed on-air personalities. For years they coddled them and cheered them. As Fox News and talk radio lied, misled, and incited their base, once responsible Republicans either looked away, trading truth for votes, or embraced the carnival show.

The conservative message machine built up grifters and liars as credible messengers, telling their base for years that the Tucker Carlsons of the world were shooting straight with them. They were creating monsters from whole cloth. As long as they attacked Democrats with distortions, half-truths, and outright lies, Republicans were fine with them.

When Tucker and company either turned on the GOP or, in the case of Candace Owens, their flaws became too apparent to ignore, Republicans recoiled in horror. Today, the monsters are routinely bashed by the people who nurtured and created them. They claim the Carlson’s of the world have changed, but that’s not true. And the Republicans haven’t, either.

They are the same party that lacks the judgment to walk away from a Mark Robinson. They’re still embracing Donald Trump even as the Epstein files make clear that Trump was probably at least aware of the abuse and may well have participated in it. Power, though, matters too much. Accountability is no longer a Republican value.

As for Mark Robinson, I hope he can make a comeback. The people who embraced him knowing his flaws should welcome him back into the fold, but they won’t. Maybe he can build some sort of relationship with the GOP base. They’ll believe anything. He’s a good representation of what the party has become.

I sure am enjoying the unleashed Thom Tillis. I wish he had shown up earlier. Of course, if he had, he might well be on his way to re-election, something I definitely would not enjoy.

Yesterday, he missed the vote to open debate on the SAVE Act, though he said earlier he would oppose it. Tillis knows what’s right and he’s doing it, despite Donald Trump. It’s refreshing to see his candor and watch him embrace principles instead of bungling politics.

The SAVE Act is an anti-democratic and deeply flawed voter suppression bill. Republicans claim it will prevent illegal immigrants from voting, though they’ve never been able to prove it’s a problem. States already do a good job of reserving access to the ballot box to citizens. We don’t need a heavy-handed federal bill that will probably disenfranchise a lot of citizens.

The act would require voters to bring either a birth certificate or passport to register to vote. That’s an undue burden for people who have already proven their citizenship when they registered in the first place. Only about half of Americans hold passports. Birth certificates can be burdensome to obtain.

The bill requires the information on the birth certificate or passport to match a photo ID like a driver’s license. In a blog post yesterday, former North Carolina Republican House Majority Leader Skip Stam explained the problem.

Many constituents don’t have a copy of their birth certificate and will need to get it right now. Think of the married constituent whose name on her photo ID doesn’t match whatever birth certificate she has. Many women (and a few men) have four names. Some include last names from prior marriages.

I pulled out my three government-issued photo IDs: my passport, driver’s license and my military ID from 1974. None of them are identical to what is on my birth certificate. None are identical to the name on my Board of Election voter card.

Stam says tens of thousands of people could be denied the right to vote, far more than the tiny number of non-citizens who might be voting.

About ten years ago or so, I needed to get a birth certificate. I had to go to the Anson County Register of Deeds office to pick up a notarized copy. For me, that was about a two-hour drive. For my friend in Colorado, that’s a much longer trip. I’m not sure those rules still apply but I doubt seriously there’s any uniformity in getting birth certificates across all fifty states.

Growing up I knew an African American woman born before World War II who chose her own birthday. She did it because she didn’t know exactly when she was born. She didn’t even know her exact age. She would be unable to produce a birth certificate because there wasn’t one. I’m sure she doesn’t have a passport.

In her case, she was born into the Jim Crow South where she was systematically denied the right to vote. Because of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act she gained the opportunity to enjoy her citizenship. In the twilight of her life, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress would disenfranchise her again. I’m sure she, more than the “illegals,” is their real target.

Which gets to a broader point. The Roberts Court has been whittling away at the Voting Rights Act for more than a decade. John Roberts, despite all evidence to the contrary, wants to believe we live in a post-racial America. Republicans in North Carolina and now in control of Congress and the White House have shown how wrong he is. As soon as the court strips a protection, the GOP exploits it.

The MAGA form of the Republican Party is following the playbook of the populists who disenfranchised African Americans for most of the 20th century. They are trying to shape the electorate by eliminating access to the ballot box for people who might vote against them. They aren’t interested in winning the battle of ideas. They want to rig the system so they can impose their point of view. In North Carolina, they’ve done a pretty good job already.

Republicans are trying to cast the SAVE Act as a simple voter ID bill. It’s not that at all. I’m not opposed to requiring voters to show an ID at the polls, but I think it needs to be broad to protect people’s right to vote. The SAVE Act is designed to prevent people who should be able to vote from voting. Fortunately, it will almost certainly fail.

Thom Tillis and Skip Stam are standing up for democracy. I appreciate that. They are telling because more Republicans probably think like them than are willing to admit it. They know the act is wrong. They just aren’t willing to do what’s right.

This year, the North Carolina Association of Educators recruited six members to run in Republican primaries for the legislature. They didn’t really expect to win, but they wanted to elevate the conversation about public schools and give Republicans and independents a choice in Republican primaries.

They filed in Republican primaries because the districts are so Republican that no Democrat could win. I applaud it, but I think there are more effective ways to counter gerrymandering and alter the conversation. Democrats need to start trying them.

The biggest problem with running in Republican primaries is the electorate. Primary voters are the most engaged and usually the most ideological citizens. They believe in Republican principles, whatever those are, and they are going to support GOP candidates they know. They get their information from sources they trust who see the world similarly. They are the Republican base and essentially unpersuadable.

A better way to challenge Republicans in heavily gerrymandered districts is to run centrist independents. Democrats should clear the field for them. With no Democratic candidate in the race, independent candidates will get the vast majority of Democrats to vote for them. Their job becomes to persuade fellow unaffiliated voters to come to their side.

It’s not an easy process. First, unaffiliated candidates need to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot. In the case of legislative races, they need 4% of the total that voted in the last gubernatorial race. That’s a lot of signatures and takes a lot of time.

Next, they have to build an infrastructure that the two parties offer to their nominees either for free or at a vastly reduced price. It’s expensive and takes expertise.

Then, they have to raise money without a donor base. Both parties have reliable contributors who will fund competitive races. Independent candidates will need to peel off some of those donors while also building their own network.

Finally, if independent candidates are successful in all of those tasks, they have to convince a majority of unaffiliated voters to support them in the election. That may be the easiest part of the task, depending on the year and the district. They are targeting people who have already eschewed both parties and will likely find many who hold similar views among unaffiliated voters.

I wish Democrats and their allies would think more strategically. I agree that they need to contest every race, but not always as Democrats. In districts where the Republican candidate is likely to get 55% or more of the vote, no wave is big enough and no candidate good enough to put Democrats into office.

There are lots of reasons to run for office and not all of them involve winning. I ran for Congress in 2016 because I believed Democrats needed to fill the ballot. Now, with the state Supreme Court allowing partisan gerrymandering, Democrats need to think differently. Independent candidates are worth the shot.

After the 2018 election, in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, Charlotte pastor and Republican Mark Harris appeared to have eked out a victory over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready. After provisionals were counted, Harris led by just over 900 votes. Then, people started noticing something was off in one of the counties.

In Bladen County, Harris won by a significantly larger margin than any other Republican on the ballot. A deeper dive revealed that most of his margin came from mail-in ballots. Republicans requested only 19% of the ballots, but won 60% of the vote. In addition, the return rate on mail-in ballots was far less than other counties, indicating something happened to some of the ballots.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced that her office was already investigating voting irregularities in the county from previous elections. Bladen had a long history of shady dealings. A man named McCrae Dowless kept showing up in the middle of them.

The State Board of Elections voted not to certify the result pending an investigation. By the end of November, the AP rescinded its call of the race and then McCready retracted his concession. Republicans had a different take.

Executive Director of the North Carolina Republican Party Dallas Woodhouse demanded that the votes be certified and called on the chair of the state board of elections to resign, claiming he was “hyper-partisan.”

Chair Andy Penry did just that, saying, “The investigation of criminal conduct and absentee voting fraud in the 2018 Republican primary and 2018 general election in Congressional District 9 is a matter of vital importance to our democracy. I will not allow myself to be used as an instrument of distraction in this investigation.”

The board, including Republicans, still voted to delay certification.

As the scandal unfolded, the fraud became increasingly evident. The Bladen County board of elections had apparently counted absentee ballots before election day and shared the information. It was too much for even Woodhouse and GOP State Party Chair Robin Hayes. They both said that if the accusations were true, they would support a new election in the district.

Then came a stunning reversal. Just a week later, they demanded the board certify the election and blasted the board for not resolving the issue fast enough. It would be the beginning of a two-month attack on the state board of elections, attempting to undermine its credibility in the midst of a massive election fraud scandal.

Woodhouse and Hayes likely folded under pressure from their right flank and Washington Republicans.

Over the next two months, the details of the scheme became clear. The Harris campaign hired Dowless who, in turn, hired friends and family members to collect absentee ballots in violation of state law. Some of the people he hired admitted to filling out ballots that supported Republicans. In addition, the return rate for African Americans was far lower than for white voters, indicating many may have been discarded.

Still, even up until the day of the initial hearing, Republicans bashed the state board and called for Harris to be seated. Harris, for his part, repeatedly denied knowing about the fraud.

The hearing was dramatic. At the time, I wrote:

Yesterday saw stunning developments in the State Board of Elections hearing in NC-09. The day played out like a Greek tragedy with a son exposing the sins of a supposedly pious father. In an apparently surprise move, Mark Harris’s son, John, took the stand. Neither Harris, his wife nor Dan McCready’s lawyer, Marc Elias, knew he was going to testify. John, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, directly contradicted statements made by Harris and his campaign team.

In emails and phone conversations, John warned his father numerous times that McCrae Dowless was crooked before he was hired to work on the Harris campaign. John went as far as to email his father the statute that says collecting absentee ballots is a felony. His father dismissed the concerns, saying he believed McCrae Dowless when Dowless said everything was above board. The picture that emerges is one of a man so consumed by ambition that he’s willing to accept lies to further his own quest for power.

John had turned over the emails in pre-trial testimony, assuming the board already had them from the campaign. But the Harris campaign had never shared them, despite a subpoena requiring them to do so.

As his son testified, Mark Harris sat in the audience with tears running down his cheek. John concluded his testimony by saying he loved his mother and father but would have done things differently.

After the testimony, Spectrum’s Tim Boyum posted a video of Mark Harris vehemently denying that anyone had ever warned him about Dowless.

The next day, Mark Harris took the stand. He said that he was not mentally or physically up for testifying. He admitted to making misstatements and said that he believed a new election was warranted. He could have either lied to the board, admitted he had been lying in the past, or walked away. He chose the latter.

The state board of elections voted unanimously for a new Congressional election.

Again, I wrote:

The trial underscored the political inclinations of the current GOP. Both Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse and Party Chair Robin Hayes defended Harris and the campaign to the end despite overwhelming evidence that fraud occurred. They attacked the press, the Democratic Party and implied that the work of the SBOE was part of a partisan smear. In another era, the party leadership would have been more measured and cautious, asking people to reserve judgment until the investigation was complete.

Despite Harris’s admission and the preponderance of evidence, Republicans kept up the attack on the state board of elections, trying to undermine its mission and credibility.

Robin Hayes warned McCready, “You will be held responsible for…your role to erase more than 283,000 legal votes by citizens of the Ninth Congressional District.” Dallas Woodhouse accused the state board of elections on Twitter of wanting to “get Dowless so bad after a decade they chose a sting operation over protecting the democracy.” Even Mitch McConnell weighed in, blaming Democrats for the fraud.

The fraud was heavily documented. North Carolina reporters Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner wrote a book, The Vote Collectors: The True Story of the Scamsters, Politicians and Preachers Behind the Nation’s Greatest Electoral Fraud, detailing their work to uncover the scheme. The podcast “Serial” covered it in “The Improvement Association.”

For years, Republicans had insisted the state had rampant voter fraud but never proved it. When their side was caught in the act, they denied it existed.

In the special election that summer, state Senator Dan Bishop defeated Dan McCready. After January 6, Bishop was a vehement defender of Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims.

McCrae Dowless died of cancer before he went to trial.

Six weeks after Harris called for a new election, the FBI announced that Republican Party Chair Robin Hayes was under investigation for bribery. He pled guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Donald Trump pardoned him on January 20, 2021.

Dallas Woodhouse now works for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, serving as liaison to county boards of elections.

Mark Harris is now the Congressman for North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District.

This primary in State Senate District 26 is a big test of the new state board of elections. Phil Berger, the most powerful Republican in the state, trails his opponent Sam Page by 23 votes. The race will probably go through at least a couple of recounts and may end up in court. This state board has never been through a full election cycle, much less a race as contested as this one.

State Auditor Dave Boliek, who appoints the state board of elections, campaigned in Rockingham County for Berger. He and his staff claim that’s no big deal. Before this year, they claim, the governor appointed the state board of elections and Roy Cooper campaigned for candidates. The difference is that the constitution gave the governor control over the board of elections. Berger gave it to Boliek. At the very least, the move shows incredibly poor judgment. Maybe they just don’t care.

Over the past fifteen years, the GOP has consistently tried to undermine democratic norms in North Carolina. They’ve taken a systematic approach to holding power and have shown no indication of stopping now. They’ve attacked checks and balances to remove the accountability that’s supposed to be built into the system.

They passed the most extreme gerrymandering in the country after the 2010 census, giving themselves veto-proof majorities in the legislature and a 10-3 majority in Congress, even though Democrats garnered more votes across the state. They’ve continued to draw districts that protect their power while limiting the will of the voters.

They passed a voter suppression bill that tried to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. They researched the methods that Black voters used most frequently and then restricted them. They figured out which kinds of identification Black citizens use and then disallowed them as a form of voter ID. They moved early voting sites away from African American communities. When the law was struck down by the courts, they attacked the judge, vowing that his ruling would be overturned by another court. It still stands today, though the Republicans have successfully implemented many of the provisions piecemeal over the past decade.

Republicans have been trying to take over the board of elections ever since Roy Cooper defeated Pat McCrory in 2016. They first tried to shift the authority of the board to the legislature, but the courts shot that down. When that didn’t work, they tried to create a nonpartisan board evenly divided between the two parties, creating a toothless agency like the Federal Election Commission, which is an essentially nonfunctioning agency consumed by deadlock. They even put a measure on the ballot as a constitutional amendment but the voters rejected it.

After losing in court so often, the Republicans decided to try to rig the judiciary. In 2018, they gerrymandered judicial and prosecutorial districts in the middle of the decade to favor GOP candidates. They passed a law reducing the size of the state Court of Appeals by preventing Roy Cooper from appointing replacements for vacancies.

They also made statewide judicial races partisan. When they realized that their MAGA base might nominate an unelectable candidate, they eliminated primaries, setting up a winner-take-all general election.

After haggling over how to rig the judicial races for much of the year, the Republicans set a filing period for court races that ended in late June. Democrat Anita Earls and Republican Barbara Jackson filed to run for the Supreme Court seat. On the last day of filing, a man named Chris Anglin filed for Supreme Court as a Republican. He had changed his registration from unaffiliated just weeks before. With no primary, he would likely split the Republican vote, handing the seat to Earls.

Republicans were apoplectic. They had stepped on a rake. In an effort to fix it, they passed a law in July that would require a candidate to have been registered with a party for at least 90 days before filing. They applied it retroactively, effectively disqualifying Anglin. The courts struck it down, but it would not be the last time the Republicans tried to change the rules of an election after the fact.

While Earls won in 2018, the Republicans’ maneuvers would pay off. By 2022, they had a majority on both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. After Josh Stein won in November, the legislature again stripped the board of elections and gave it to the auditor’s office, now controlled by Republican Dave Boliek. This time, the compliant Supreme Court allowed the move, ignoring the will of the voters and judicial precedent. That’s an activist court.

In the race for Supreme Court in 2024, the Republicans again tried to change the rules of the election after the fact. Jefferson Griffin, narrowly trailing Alison Riggs, tried to disqualify tens of thousands of voters based on a technicality even though they had shown voter IDs and been allowed to vote by boards of elections. While lower courts dismissed Griffin’s complaint, the higher courts allowed it.

Fortunately, a federal judge — a Trump appointee, no less — overruled the Supreme Court, almost mocking them by saying, “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done.”

I’m afraid the GOP sees controlling the state board as a political advantage, not as a way to protect our freedoms. Boliek didn’t appoint election professionals. He appointed partisan warriors to oversee the election system.

Chair Francis X. De Luca oversaw independent expenditure campaigns targeting Democrats when he was president of the Civitas Institute. He sued to disqualify 90,000 voters after the fact when Cooper won in 2016.

Dallas Woodhouse served as executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party and worked for numerous independent expenditure groups that supported Republicans and attacked Democrats. Today, he is the state board’s liaison to the county parties. While leading the NC GOP, he sent an email to Republican county election boards urging them to make “party line” changes to early voting sites.

The executive director, Sam Hayes, seems to be a serious fellow and I hope he oversees a fair process. Still, he worked for two Republican House Speakers and was very involved in drawing the rigged maps that protect GOP majorities by reducing democracy. He needs to prove his mettle.

So, no, I don’t trust the state board of elections, because I don’t believe the Republican Party respects democracy. They’ve been trying to undermine elections in the state for 15 years. When they’ve been stopped by the checks and balances that are supposed to preserve our way of government, they’ve attacked the very system that has sustained our country for 250 years. Our state is failing the stress test of democracy and I’m afraid nobody is noticing.

In January 2011, State Senator Phil Berger and then-State Representative Thom Tillis entered the North Carolina political stage at the same time. As Republicans took control of the legislature for the first time in more than a hundred years, they led their respective chambers. If Berger loses his primary, they will exit at the same time.

They were very different leaders then and they still are. Berger had sat quietly in the back row of the Senate, watching his predecessor, Marc Basnight, competently lead Senate Democrats for years before he took the reins. Thom Tillis was only beginning his third term when he skipped the line to become speaker of a rowdy Republican caucus that would become even rowdier in years to come.

Berger seems introverted and reflective, mostly shying from the press except for planned interviews or press availabilities. Tillis is gregarious, often bantering with reporters in hallways. Berger rarely needs to make retractions. Tillis’s mouth occasionally lands him in the news.

Together, Tillis and Berger steered North Carolina hard to the right in the early days of the state’s version of the Republican revolution. At first, they seemed to be in sync. They held press conferences together and shared an agenda. They also had a Democratic governor who mitigated their most extreme instincts and gave them a common adversary.

In 2013, Pat McCrory won the governor’s office and Republicans gained complete control of both the legislature and executive branch for the first time in more than a century. Cracks in the unity emerged as both Berger and Tillis were considered as potential candidates to challenge Democratic U.S. Senator Kay Hagan in 2014. The two men also had conflicting legislative priorities.

Tillis and McCrory were both from Charlotte and moderate, business-friendly Republicans more interested in cutting taxes and regulations than taking on social issues. Berger was a small-town lawyer from rural Rockingham County and more of a hardliner. When Tillis and McCrory started making plans to set up a state insurance exchange and expand Medicaid under the newly enacted Affordable Care Act, Berger killed the move and opposition to Medicaid expansion became the GOP party line for another decade.

Berger ran a tight caucus operation that looked a lot like the one Basnight ran. Members didn’t leak and generally stayed in line. Ambitions were kept in check, though senators must have felt they had enough say or there would have been more grumbling.

Tillis oversaw a rowdy bunch of house members who proposed crazy legislation like a state religion and withdrawing from the Federal Reserve. Members spoke freely to the press, often garnering embarrassing headlines. Before he was halfway through his second term as Speaker, Tillis was running for U.S. Senate.

Berger emerged as the most powerful man in the state, outflanking the hapless Governor McCrory, who spent four years unsuccessfully trying to figure out how Raleigh worked. Tillis became the luckiest politician in the country, narrowly beating Hagan when ISIS and Ebola tanked the political environment in October 2014. Six years later, he looked poised to lose his seat when his opponent got caught with his cyber pants down in October of 2020.

Tillis never really figured out how to navigate Trump’s Republican Party. He wasn’t MAGA but he spent a lot of time pandering to them or to Trump. Instead of currying favor, he just looked insincere. Trump obviously didn’t trust him and the base could sense it.

Tillis’s views of the world never really changed. He’s still the business-friendly Republican who went to Raleigh from the suburbs of Charlotte. In other words, he’s part of a dying breed — or at least one in serious decline.

As I’ve said repeatedly, he knows what’s right, but often does what’s wrong. Every time, he’s betraying his better instincts to pander. He knew people like Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and RFK, Jr., have no business anywhere near the levers of power, but he lacked the courage of his convictions to vote against them. Of course, he was still worried about a primary back then. He’s like Louisiana Senator John Kennedy without the political skills.

Berger, for his part, morphed into the MAGA world a bit more easily. Berger probably does have less respect for the democratic norms that Tillis still respects, but he also knows better. He embraced Trump and endorsed Mark Robinson knowing full well the guy was unqualified to get anywhere near the Governor’s Mansion. His capitulation to Trumpism was disappointing and, really, beneath him, but power is intoxicating and getting on the wrong side of the base would have complicated his political life.

Berger is the fish that outgrew his pond. He may have been the most powerful Republican in the state, but he was still beholden to the voters of a provincial rural district. He lost touch with the people back home and should have read the writing on the wall.

Berger would have been smarter to have retired with the changing of the guard that brought in a new governor and new council of state. Instead, he’ll either lose in a humiliating manner after spending more than $10 million to try to hold his seat, or win in a race that will forever be suspect to the voters who see him trailing after votes have been counted. It’s an inauspicious ending for a politician who has climbed so high.

Tillis, for his part, seems like he’s auditioning for a second act. He’s all over cable news, speaking his mind. He sounds sincere finally, but if he is, it brings into question his record of flip-flops and pandering. He may find a place on Fox News or some podcast while he lobbies and becomes a gazillionaire, but I have doubts about a future political career.

Tillis can leave the political stage with some impressive bipartisan legislative accomplishments. He also survived twelve years in a chaotic GOP political transformation that ended the careers of like-minded colleagues like Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. Eventually, though, he fell victim to MAGA. He decided not to run because he lost the trust of the conspiracy-minded authoritarians in his own party.

I was never going to agree with either Phil Berger or Thom Tillis politically, but I wanted to find some common ground for the good of the state that I love.

In the beginning, I respected Berger for the way he ran his caucus and for his humility. In 2013, when Moral Mondays were roiling the state, he invited William Barber to meet in his office, saying the protesters’ concerns deserved to be heard. Maybe it was an insincere political move, but it’s what leaders should do. I doubt that would happen today.

With Tillis, I could respect his desire to make government work through compromise and bipartisanship. I couldn’t take his habit of saying one thing and doing another. I detested watching him pander to the worst instincts of his party for political gain. At a time when his party needed people with political courage to stand up, he was always just a little too late. Berating Kristi Noem last week in the Senate may have been good theater, but keeping her away from the position she left in the first place would have been the right thing for the country. He knew better, but lacked the courage of his convictions.

As both men leave the state stage, the biggest threats to the country are not the taxes and regulations that were the focus when they took power in 2011, but an anti-democratic reactionary movement that has taken root deep in their party. Neither man stood up to it, though Tillis tried more than Berger. Both leave with legacies of accomplishments, for better or worse, that transformed North Carolina.

I wish them well in retirement, but I can’t say I hate to see them go.

The ballots aren’t even counted yet, and the first Republican has resigned from the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Former state Senator Bob Rucho stepped down after making campaign donations to two sheriff’s candidates in violation of state law. Rucho was already under fire for making posts on social media that indicated he supported his old boss and colleague Phil Berger in a race the senate president pro-tem lost by two votes to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.

First, let me say I’m glad Rucho resigned and that Auditor Dave Boliek and SBOE Chair Francis De Luca accepted. It was the right thing to do. It’s far from enough.

Rucho’s very appointment cast doubt on the judgment of the whole operation and reminds everybody, or at least should, of why the organization has a trust problem. Bob Rucho should never have been on the board in the first place. He was the primary architect of the gerrymandered districts drawn in 2016 that led to the lawsuit known as Rucho v. Common Cause that allows states to use partisan gerrymandering. In other words, he was rigging elections almost a decade before he was appointed to oversee them.

In appointing Rucho, Boliek showed poor judgment if he wanted to instill confidence in the state board of elections. Unfortunately, I don’t think he or his Republican colleagues care about public trust. They treated the control of our election system as political spoils.

The only reason Boliek has oversight of the SBOE is because Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall gave it to him after Josh Stein won the governor’s election in 2024. Then, a complicit and compliant state Supreme Court upheld the move despite a similar maneuver being found unconstitutional by another court. They see the board of elections as a partisan advantage, not a public service.

Rucho is not Boliek’s only bad hire. He appointed Francis X. De Luca to chair the state board of elections. De Luca, former president of the Art Pope-funded Civitas Institute, has long supported voter suppression efforts that restrict access to the ballot box. In 2016, he filed a lawsuit to disqualify 90,000 voters who registered using same-day registration after Roy Cooper defeated Pat McCrory.

De Luca and Civitas were major supporters of the so-called “monster voter suppression” bill struck down because it targeted African American voters with “surgical precision.” After the decision, Phil Berger and then-House Speaker Tim Moore released a statement that accused the judge of allowing “Roy Cooper and Hillary Clinton to steal the election.” In a classic Orwellian twist, the people who rigged elections through extreme gerrymandering and attempted to shape the electorate by denying people access to the ballot accused the courts of trying to “steal” the election.

And the problems just continue. The board hired former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party Dallas Woodhouse as liaison to county boards of election. In 2016, when he led the GOP, Woodhouse sent an email to members of those same county election boards urging them to restrict early voting sites by using “party line” changes.

The people overseeing our elections have been trying to give Republicans an electoral advantage for more than a decade.

As for Boliek, he was in Rockingham County campaigning for Phil Berger before the primary. He’s tried to deflect criticism by saying that governors campaigned for people when the SBOE was under their office. The difference is that Phil Berger gave Boliek that authority just over a year ago. Sound judgment should have told him to stay out of that primary.

And that’s the problem. The primary on Tuesday was the first statewide election his SBOE has overseen. He hasn’t earned anybody’s credibility or confidence yet. On the contrary, he’s left doubts about his judgment and commitment to fair elections. If he’s willing to go to bat for Republicans in a primary, imagine what he will do to Democrats in a general election.

Boliek had an opportunity to begin to restore trust in our institutions. He could have hired election professionals to oversee the state board of elections. He could have stayed as far away from elections as possible, at least until he earned the people’s trust.

Instead, he hired campaign operatives to run the board of elections and inserted himself into the most expensive, controversial, and consequential primary in modern North Carolina history. Those moves don’t only undermine his judgment, they bring into question his motives. Unfortunately, I don’t think he cares.

Ever since Republicans took control of the North Carolina legislature in 2011, they’ve been trying to give Republicans an unfair advantage in elections. They pioneered the extreme gerrymandering that now has their colleagues in other states crying foul, tried to limit access to the polls for African Americans, and, in 2024, attempted to change the rules of the election after the fact. They’ve become an anti-democratic party undermining a democratic system.

To regain the trust he has squandered, Boliek should demand more resignations. I’m not holding my breath.

Last night, Roy Cooper squeaked by his opponents with 92% of the vote to capture the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. On the Republican side, more than 35% of Republican primary voters did not vote for Michael Whatley. Whatley thanked Donald Trump.

There were a total of 824,798 votes in the Democratic primary for Senate and only 610,850 in the Republican one. In the 2022 primary, 766,648 people showed up in the GOP primary that nominated Ted Budd and only 618,775 came out on the Democratic side. It probably doesn’t mean much, but I enjoyed writing it. Maybe it’s a measure of enthusiasm. I’ll take it as a sign.

The real race was, and still is, in the GOP primary in Senate District 26 where Rockingham County sheriff holds a two vote lead over Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Berger. According to reports, Berger and his allies may have spent $10 million trying to fend off Page. That’s a staggering amount of money that would make it the most expensive primary in North Carolina history.

Berger only received 33% of the vote in Rockingham County, home of both candidates. He received more than 67% in Guilford. The provisional ballots will determine the outcome of the election. Expect a recount. We won’t know the outcome of this election for a long time to come.

I’m sure I’ll write more about this race but the outcome shows the limits of money. At some point, there were diminishing returns. Much of Berger’s money was wasted, but I doubt that’s the lesson anybody, especially Berger’s political team, will take away from the result. It will be interesting to see if he can replenish his war chest to help keep his colleagues hold off Democrats in a year that’s shaping up to favor them.

In the 4th Congressional District Valerie Foushee held off a challenge by Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam by just 1,200 votes. Outside groups spent heavily on both sides, blanketing Triangle airwaves. It would have been the most expensive primary in state history, except that Berger and his folks spent $10 million.

Foushee was able to hold enough of the traditional African American vote in Durham to dampen Allam’s margin. However, she won her home county of Orange by less than I’m sure she would have liked. Allam won Durham by 4.5% and Foushee won Orange by eight. Northern Chatham County delivered for Foushee. While it was the smallest part of the district, it gave her more than 62% of the vote and an almost 2,500 vote margin. Southwestern Wake County went to Allam by 822 votes.

I’m glad Foushee won. She’s been a reliable and consistent legislator and Member of Congress. That said, she should read the tea leaves. If the trends continue, she will lose in another primary in 2028, especially one packed with young people choosing a presidential nominee.

In other Congressional races, Jamie Ager won big in western North Carolina. He will challenge incumbent Republican Chuck Edwards in a district still struggling to recover from Helene. Ager has run a stellar campaign and brings a solid resume to the race. The DCCC has already put him on their Red-to-Blue target list.

In eastern North Carolina, Republican Laurie Buckhout will take on Democratic incumbent Don Davis in NC-01. Republicans redrew the district in an attempt to steal another seat and make Congressional races even less competitive. It always kills me that the party that lectures us about the virtues of competition doesn’t like to compete in the battle of ideas.

The big winner in legislative races was party discipline. Democratic House members who have been siding with Republicans to overturn Josh Stein’s vetoes lost big. Mecklenburg Representatives Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed couldn’t garner even 30% of the vote in their districts. Shelley Willingham lost in his northeastern North Carolina district by more than ten points. In another northeastern district, incumbent Rodney Pierce beat former Representative Michael Wray by almost 30 points. Wray had cut side deals with Republicans when he served. Finally, Amanda Cooke held onto the seat she was appointed to fill after Cecil Brockman resigned in disgrace for sexual abuse charges.

Cunningham, Majeed, Willingham, Brockman, and Wray bucked the party to cut deals with Republicans that benefitted either them personally or their districts specifically, often at the expense of core Democratic priorities. With them gone, Democrats have more leverage in the fight with the GOP. If Democrats pick up a few more seats in the general election, they will have a significantly stronger hand in the legislature, especially in shaping the budget.

Their defeats were a win for Josh Stein, House Minority Leader Robert Reives, and Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. The losses send a message to members who might be tempted to break with their leadership when Republicans show up with goodies to buy votes. Primaries are the one leverage the minority party has to enforce discipline and party leaders used the discipline effectively.

I don’t mind legislators or Members of Congress who break with their party over deeply held beliefs or for their political lives, but the legislators who lost have just been rogue. Republicans have gerrymandered themselves power in the state legislature. Democrats may win statewide races, but to make that power effective in a state with a weak governor, the party has to stand together.

My overall impression of the primary is that the Democratic Party is in the midst of a generational transformation. It’s becoming more activist oriented, in part because of frustration with actions of the Trump administration and in part because of structural issues causing economic uncertainty. People want change. They are supporting people who promise something different.

I don’t think the change is a shift to the left necessarily. It’s a general frustration with the status quo that has been with us since the Great Recession and exacerbated by technological upheaval. People are looking for signs of hope. Their choice for change is a sign they are seeking optimism in the midst of deep pessimism.

In Texas last night, state Representative James Talarico defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett to become the US Senate nominee in the country’s second largest state. In Maine, an oysterman named Graham Platner seems poised to defeat 77-year-old Governor Janet Mills, though that primary isn’t until June. In Michigan, a state Senator named Mallory McMorrow is leading a field that includes Congresswoman Haley Stevens, but there’s a long time between now and the primary in August.

In Texas, Talarico was probably the more conservative choice. In Maine, Platner is quite obviously the more progressive one. McMorrow is seen more as a fighter than the rest of the field. The difference is more about tone and approach than ideology. The American people want something different, so much so that they re-elected a conman to the presidency.

Democrats can ride this wave of angst and dissatisfaction to victory in 2026 and maybe 2028, but they better deliver something different if they want to hold any gains.

It’s all over but the cryin’. Tomorrow is the primary election in North Carolina and nothing will change between now and then except the number of people who go to the polls. People’s minds are made up and outcomes rest in the hands of people who will vote on Election Day.

Polls are open from 6:30am to 7:30pm. If you don’t know where to go vote, this voter tool will give you the location. I would hope that if you’re tuned in enough to be reading this blog, you’ve either already voted or are planning to. If not, change your plans and cast a ballot.

The biggest race of the primary is a state senate race in Rockingham and Guilford Counties. President Pro-tem Phil Berger is in a fight for his political life. He’s the most powerful Republican in the state and he’s struggling against his own sheriff. If he loses, it’s a story for the ages.

Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page is the most popular politician in the county. He’s been in office for almost 28 years. One friend with ties to the area says that Page knows far more people personally in the county than Berger. He’s apparently a sheriff who spends more time in the field than in his office, making him a beloved figure.

Berger has built a political machine. He’s been in office for 25 years. He has one son on the county commission and another on the state Supreme Court. In an anti-incumbent age, the power he’s amassed may be a liability.

Berger and his dark money allies have spent an unprecedented amount of money trying to save his seat. I suspect it will be the most money spent in a legislative primary in North Carolina history. It may not matter in the relatively low-turnout affair.

The early vote numbers look pretty daunting for Berger. Almost two-thirds of the votes cast in the Republican primary so far have come from Rockingham County. Berger’s path to victory is winning Guilford by more than he loses Rockingham. He’ll need a hefty Election Day turnout in Guilford and hope that most of Page’s Rockingham supporters have already voted. It’s a barn burner.

Down in eastern North Carolina, five Republicans are vying to become the nominee in the latest Congressional district that the GOP is trying to rig. In a virtually unprecedented move, Republicans in the legislature bent over for Donald Trump and redrew Democrat Don Davis’s seat to make it more favorable for a Republican. Davis is running for re-election despite the longer odds.

The Republican field is well-heeled. Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army Colonel, is running again after narrowly losing to Davis in 2024. State Senator Bobby Hanig is in. So is Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck. Lenoir County Commissioner Eric Rouse is also running after losing a race for Congress back in 2019. Finally, Ashley-Nicole Russell is a first-time candidate who was motivated to run by the assassination attempt on Charlie Kirk.

All of the candidates except Russell bring constituencies or past supporters to the race. I would guess there’s a good chance this one goes to a runoff with nobody garnering the 30% necessary to win the primary outright. It’s one to watch because the general election will be a top race to watch in the fight for control of Congress this fall.

When Republicans redrew Davis’s district, they made the neighboring NC-03 held by Republican Greg Murphy slightly more competitive. Two Democrats, Raymond Smith and Alison Jaslow, are vying to take on Murphy in November.

I don’t know much about the race, but I know a little about the candidates. Raymond Smith is a former legislator who has been around eastern North Carolina politics and government for years. Jaslow is an Iraq War veteran who has worked in Congress and for the Obama administration. She’s most recently been working with an advocacy organization representing veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

My take is that Jaslow would probably be a better general election candidate because she would raise the money and build the organization that could take advantage of opportunities that might arise in a wave election. Smith, though, is the stronger primary candidate because of his deep ties to his community and across the district. In a primary where a large portion of the electorate will likely be older African Americans, Smith has the advantage.

In the Triangle, incumbent Congresswoman Valerie Foushee is being challenged from the left by Nida Allam. The race is the most expensive House primary in history with more than $4.2 million in outside spending. It’s the epitome of what’s wrong with our campaign finance laws. The candidates are reduced to mere proxies for interest groups instead of real people doing the hard work of representing constituents.

Allam has the energy of young people and the national progressive zeitgeist behind her. She’s the choice of Bernie Sanders and her positions mirror those of left-leaning politicians like Zohran Mamdani. She also lives in Durham, home to the largest group of voters in the district.

Foushee is a more traditional Democrat who has spent most of her life working her way up in politics from the local level to Congress. Her politics is based more on personal relationships and understanding of issues than ideological adherence. She’s known more as a workhorse than a show horse. In a change election, her experience may be a liability.

The winner of the primary will represent the district because no Republican could win it.

In the mountains, Democrats have an emerging star to take on Chuck Edwards. Jamie Ager is running a stellar campaign that has put him on the DCCC target list. First, he has to get through a primary. None of his opponents has really emerged as a serious challenger, so Ager should be okay. I look forward to following his race once he’s the nominee. So should you.

While I don’t know the ins-and-outs of all the legislative primaries, there are a few to watch. In particular, Democrats are trying to enforce discipline in primaries by taking on incumbents who have been siding with Republicans, especially in overturning Governor Josh Stein’s vetoes.

In a Mecklenburg County race, incumbent state Representative Carla Cunningham is being challenged by Rodney Sadler. That one may have gotten the most attention because immigration has seeped into the conversation.

In another suburban Mecklenburg district, Valeria Levy, who has been around Democratic politics in the area for years, is challenging incumbent Nasif Majeed. Majeed is another Democrat who has sided with Republicans far more than his peers.

In northeastern North Carolina, Representative Shelley Willingham faces Patricia Smith. Smith says Willingham is disloyal for his six votes to override Stein’s vetoes.

The final race that I’m watching is another eastern North Carolina re-match. Representative Rodney Pierce defeated Michael Wray two years ago and now Wray wants his seat back. Democrats, including Stein, are lining up behind Pierce.

The more loyal Democrats believe that unity is key to pressuring Republicans. The ones who tend to vote with Republicans claim they are looking out for their districts. Others would say they get bought off. The outcome could determine how easily Democrats can sustain Stein’s veto power and force Republicans to the negotiating table on important issues.

There are other races, too, but I’m not informed enough to talk about them. Look up what’s on the ballot in your area and go vote. Our democracy depends upon it.

I’ve now received four mailers from a dark money group funding a candidate for sheriff in Orange County. One is a positive piece, the second is positive on one side and negative on the other. The last two are straight-up hit pieces, misleading but probably effective. I expect to see at least one more.

When everybody screams at me for writing this piece, just remember that those anonymous pieces will reach and influence far more people than this newsletter.

I spent much of my professional life providing direct mail to candidates and interest groups. I can say with confidence that the organization is spending well over $50,000 and probably closer to $100,000 on the race. We don’t know who is paying for the campaign because of Citizens United.

The group sending them, Local Accountability PAC, is from Washington, DC, but has ties to Durham. I can’t find a record of how much they spent or when, but I did find that a group called Sheriff Accountability Action with a Durham address has been sending them money for more than a year, including $50,000 this past October.

The only name I can find associated with either organization is Juan Cuba, a self-described “organizer, advocate, and leader” from Miami, Florida, with no obvious ties to Orange County. His group says it wants to reform sheriff’s departments across the country. I suspect he really is just another person who has figured out a good gig separating rich people from their money and spending it in elections on behalf of a cause. It’s a thriving business in the world of political consulting and activism.

The recipient of all the dark money is David LaBarre, who is challenging Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood. Before the independent expenditures, I didn’t have much of a dog in the fight. I would probably have voted for Blackwood anyway because I think he’s done a good job and the people I most trust in Orange County politics all support him.

Now, I’m not just for Sheriff Blackwood, I’m against Mr. LaBarre. As far as I am concerned, he’s damaging our politics and our democracy. The end result of this election will be that sheriff and other local races will get increasingly expensive. Outside groups will begin to have more influence on elections than the people who are served by the candidates. That’s the history of dark money at every level of politics. Once it seeps in, it rarely goes away.

When I wrote about this race earlier in the week, I got a lot of pushback from people who claim Mr. LaBarre had no knowledge of the dark money group’s participation. That’s incredibly naive. No group is spending as much money as Local Accountability PAC is spending without knowing what they are getting.

I’m not accusing Mr. LaBarre of doing anything illegal. Campaign laws today are all just a wink-and-a-nod. He can work with them, raise money for them, and have all sorts of interaction with them without violating campaign finance laws. They are trying to buy the election for him. I can almost guarantee you that he knew they were coming.

As for the issues in this campaign concerning ICE detentions and the Orange County jail, I believe they are fair game. Sheriff Blackwood is the incumbent and his tenure as sheriff is on the ballot. I just don’t believe that groups with no apparent ties to Orange County have any business dominating and shaping the race. I just wish Sheriff Blackwood had raised enough money to defend himself and his department against the distortions.

I’m not opposed to money in campaigns or politics. I believe it’s necessary to educate the public and for candidates to effectively make their case. I’m against unaccountable third-party groups, often with no ties to a district, that spend more than either candidate. I also understand that’s how politics works today. Hell, I’ve participated in it, but I don’t have to like it and I don’t have to support it.

What’s happening in the sheriff’s race will probably change local politics going forward. Candidates will have to raise more money. Some may set up third party organizations that can take larger, undisclosed sums. If Mr. LaBarre wins, he’s the beneficiary of this new paradigm.

There will be consequences, though. If he wins and four years from now some shady group with little accountability attacks him for being owned by a Washington PAC, that’s the new normal. That’s what this campaign has wrought.

My fellow blogger and erstwhile political consultant, Gary Pearce, and a group of Democrats have commissioned an in-depth poll of North Carolina. It’s more detailed than almost any public poll you will see from a media organization and it’s not tainted by the partisanship of a campaign poll. They’ve offered all the data, both toplines and crosstabs for anybody to see. In other words, it’s a very transparent poll.

I’ll be going through the crosstabs for days to come, but I’ve got some initial thoughts.

First, North Carolinians are a pessimistic bunch right now. People think both the state and nation are heading in the wrong direction. Almost 60% believe their income is falling behind the cost of living. More than 75% say they are feeling pinched by rising costs.

They think the problems that we face have been with us for a long time and will continue. A plurality, 40%, believed the first 25 years of this century have been a failure and 56% think children will be worse off when they are grown than people are today. That’s a pretty bleak place and helps explain why almost every election is a change election.

The poll hints at what may be causing such malaise. People have lost faith in most of the country’s institutions. They don’t trust the state or federal government, the news media, business leaders, election officials, or social media. In other words, they don’t believe the places they are getting their information.

The military and doctors and nurses are the only groups tested that receive universal trust. By wide margins, Republicans don’t trust teachers and educators or scientists, but have faith in religious leaders. Democrats, who are generally more educated, overwhelmingly trust teachers and scientists but are skeptical of religious leaders. Independents, in general, seem a skeptical lot. They have less trust in law enforcement and religious leaders than people affiliated with a party. For candidates thinking about validators during the election, this poll is a good reference.

Overall, the poll describes a terrible political environment for incumbents. People are pessimistic about the future and they’ve lost trust in institutions that once guided them. That’s a recipe for a change election. Republicans should probably be girding for a drubbing.

The political questions reinforce that opinion. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular in the state. His favorability rating is underwater by 16 points and his job approval rating is underwater by 13. In both ratings, 55% of the people disapprove of him. Among independents, only 11% have a favorable opinion of Trump. The midterm election will largely be a referendum on Trump.

To boost Democrats in North Carolina, Governor Josh Stein is broadly popular. His approval and job performance ratings are both positive. Independents approve of him by solid margins and Democrats are united behind him. Voters trust Stein more than the GOP legislature to do what is best for the state.

In the top of the ticket race in North Carolina, former Governor Roy Cooper leads likely Republican nominee Michael Whatley by ten points, 50-40. Cooper has a net favorability rating while Whatley has a negative one. The difference is that most people know Cooper and most do not know Whatley. Democrats still have an opportunity to define Whatley while Republicans will have a more difficult time defining Cooper.

In the race for Supreme Court, incumbent Democrat Anita Earls leads Republican Sarah Stevens by a narrow two points. Both sides have consolidated their bases, but more than half of self-identified independent voters are undecided. The ones who have chosen break for Earls by 15 points. This race will likely be highly influenced by the political environment and the Senate race above it on the ballot.

Voters narrowly choose Democrats in the generic ballot for legislature by three points. That said, independents break for Democrats by 23 points even though a majority say they are not sure or would not vote. That might not be enough to overcome heavily gerrymandered districts, but it’s enough to break veto-proof majorities.

I’ve just scratched the surface of the information in the poll. It tells a lot about attitudes and opinions, hinting at underlying motivations. The crosstabs also show divisions that are broader than just partisan. The generational and gender divides are visible in a number of questions. It’s a great resource to understand the voters in North Carolina.

That said, all polls are a snapshot in time. A lot can change between now and the election and that’s what I’m focused on in this analysis. Republicans have an uphill climb because they will get blamed for the problems we face today, unless we see an unprecedented reversal of fortune.