Wednesday, March 30, 2005
The Wayne County GOP Convention
On 28 March I went down to Goldsboro to see how a real county convention should be run. It was properly impressive; they had booked a nice hall, set out chairs with signage about showing what precinct delegates should sit where, preprinted their agenda/schedule, got two people from the Sheriff's office's honor guard to turn out in splendiferous dress uniforms to troop the colors, why, they even had a lobbyist, er, Legislative Liaison, up from Orange County (Kathy Hartkopf from NC Freedom Works/Citizens for a Sound Economy, http://www.cse.org). And guest speakers!
Ed Wharton was in charge in his capacity as Wayne County GOP chairman (he's also the 1st Congressional District, that is, our immediate superior, Executive Committee Chairman). Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) was there to speak (Wayne County is split into both the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts); he asked Wayne County Republicans to continue turning out the vote to help him keep insisting on fiscal sanity in Washington, and gave an upbeat assessment of the chance for passage of his bill, HR235 (see http://www.hr235.org/) "Returning Freedom of Speech to Our Nation's Houses of Worship". This bill died in the House last year, but now he says it is virtually certain of passage soon, though he didn't speculate on its chances in the Senate.
NC Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby and NC (Circuit Court?) Judge Rusty Duke also spoke. Both complained of the fact that, since Republican judges started winning all the statewide judicial races over the last 20 years or so, our gerrymandering General Assembly saw fit to cause all future judicial races in NC to be "nonpartisan". Justice Newby pointed out that this caused a worrisome phenomenon: all judicial races except his had been won by the first female on the ballot for that seat! Sure, Republicans are all for giving the ladies a chance, but it looks like many voters were at a loss to know whom to vote for, and just picked the nicest names. Justice Newby says he managed to squeak through because there were TWO women in his race; presumably they split the 'uninformed voter' vote. The plea for better voter education was underscored by Judge Duke's quip that we should be able to remember his name, as "Rusty" and "Duke" are America's most popular names... for dogs! Both judges are very concerned that this 'uninformed voter' problem could continue in 2006, when we will see at least three, and possibly FOUR, of the seven NC Supreme Court seats on the ballot. This in an off-year election when we've got not even a US Senate race to help get our Republican voters to the polls. Judge Duke will be running for one of the NC Supreme Court seats in 2006, and if anyone out there is an experienced court watcher, he's actually going to be trying cases here in Halifax County next week... I didn't get it written down because I didn't think I'd have a chance to go watch, but I think he said Tuesday or Thursday; not sure if he'd be in the Halifax courthouse or somewhere else.
Ah, how I mourn for the halcyon days of last week, when I was relieved to find out that judicial races are nonpartisan these days, one less load on my mind: I had no idea where I'd go to learn how to find Republican judicial candidates if that were to be part of my job as county chairman... Now I know that 'nonpartisan races' will be the most important voter-education and turn-the-vote-out projects for 2006!
The local sheriff and two Wayne County Commissioners turned up to thank and praise the assembled activists. Must be nice to win local races, eh? Maybe someday that'll be us, too.
Then came perhaps the climax of the convention: they had five minutes scheduled for 'other speakers'. And who should rise to speak but NCGOP Chairman Ferrell Blount! He told everyone what a great job they were doing in Wayne County, praising especially the Republican Womens' organizations as 'the backbone of the party' (hearty standing ovation here). He also said something which seemed a bit out of place at the time, I paraphrase: "some people are saying that the NCGOP spent all its money promoting President Bush's reelection and didn't support our gubernatorial nominee (Ballantine) properly. Well, when the Presidential campaign came through, we had a joint fundraiser with them and raised $750,000 for the our state races AND the same amount for the Presidential reelection campaign, and don't let anybody tell you different." This combative tone wasn't in sync with the rest of his speech, and I'm thinking Chairman Blount may've said this upon seeing who ELSE had come to speak, 'cause it was about this time that I first noticed a great huge black man in a red shirt shaking lots of hands over by the entrance.
Turns out that man was the next speaker to take the podium: he was Vernon Robinson (see http://vernonrobinson.com/) of Winston-Salem, the Republican nominee in the 5th Congressional District in 2004. He started by getting a rousing response to what seems to be his slogan: "Jesse Helms is BACK! And he's BLACK!" The man doesn't much fear the 'arch-conservative' label they used to hang on our dear Senator Helms, heehee! Mr. Robinson gave what sounded every bit a campaign speech. He definitely got my attention by being one of only two speakers to mention that our nation is AT WAR (the other, I think it was Justice Newby, zipped past the War on Terror reference to ask for help in our 'other war', the Culture War) and was the only one to even bring up illegal immigration. (So I appreciated his being there, at least: as I may've told some of you, I'm not the most socially conservative Republican out there, and I may not know much about our local or state issues yet, but I'm a regular frothing-at-the-mouth proAmerican on National Security.) Rumor has it that there are going to be up to four candidates for NCGOP Chairman Blount's job at the state convention in May; I don't think Mr. Robinson actually SAID he wanted to head our state party, but he was sure trying to outflank SOMEONE on the right... And he did have lots of criticism for the state party organization.
Mr. Robinson said NC Republicans should have done much better in the 2004 elections, given the President's coattails in such a conservative state. He said our new (Republican) State Auditor, Les Merritt, barely squeaked into office, and Steve Troxler's election (for Agriculture Commissioner) was so close that the Democrats in the General Assembly may yet manage to steal it, although both of them ran against 'scandal-ridden' opponents. He charged that NC Republican money went to President Bush's reelection rather than to our gubernatorial nominee (i.e., just what Chairman Blount said didn't happen), that we somehow managed to lose to a lesbian in the race for the Senate seat Mr. Ballantine was vacating to run for governor, and that the state GOP was refusing to share its fundraising database with county parties. I don't know about any of that (I mean to keep my head real low while folks with some experience fight for control of the state GOP), but perhaps I ought to say that this wasn't the first time I'd heard hints that the state party organization wasn't doing enough to help subordinate party organizations: it seems there are more than a few local party functionaries who don't expect much help from the state party; whether they've just been beaten too often here in northeastern NC and want to shift blame elsewhere, or have just noticed a justifiable reluctance by the NCGOP to pour money into races we're likely to lose anyway, I don't know. It won't matter to me, as I'm telling everyone who'll listen, "one informed neighbor ought to outweigh all the 30-second spots anyone could ever buy". That might be our county party slogan, if no one likes my William the Silent quote: "No need to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere." I hope to run an all-volunteer county party and solicit no money at all. We'll put up signs people give us, of course.
Anyway, the rest of the convention was pretty much what I'd have expected, just that they had more people doing it than we're likely to have for a good while: the Plan of Organization Committee reported on all the little changes they had to make to conform their Plan of Organization with the new one from the state GOP, the Credentials Committee reported on the 104 delegates they'd confirmed while everyone was coming in (by now it had been over two hours since the convention started, so there were about half a dozen people who'd arrived late and there was a bit of procedural wrangling while they got themselves officially 'seated', too), and then the Resolutions Committee caused a bit of a stir: their first resolution condemned a plan they'd heard of to make the positions in the Council of State, that is, Labor Commissioner, Agriculture Commissioner, State Auditor, etc., into appointed positions (like our national Cabinet) rather than having them elected directly ('cause Republicans have been making inroads on Democratic control there) as well as the plan (House Bill 386 is what they mean, I think; I got an email from an NCGOP listserv alerting me to this plan) to apportion North Carolina's electoral votes in accordance with our Congressional delegation (this is dastardly clever of the General Assembly Democrats: since they won six of our 13 US House seats with their gerrymandered districts, they want to split our electoral vote that way, too. If this'd been in effect in 2004, NC would have sent nine electors to the Electoral College to vote for President Bush, and six electors to vote for Kerry. You may've heard of this sort of plan before, Colorado turned it down in a referendum in 2004).
Umm, where was I... that was their first Resolution, against appointment of Council of State members and the splitting of our state's electoral votes. It passed unanimously by voice vote. The second Resolution caused a little discussion, though: it called on Congress to cut off all funding for the UN and for the United States to withdraw from the UN entirely! It passed, also by voice vote, with about 60 or 70% supporting it. I'm a little nervous even mentioning this in public. I read an article in some magazine a while back (probably around January 2004, when the Iowa caucuses were in the news) about precinct meetings and caucuses; the author's rather condescending position was that these were groups of activists getting together and doing the 'sausage-making' of politics, taking a bunch of sometimes really radical positions and arguing them out into a consensus position which wouldn't scare the average voter. The author, in short, said that local party meetings wouldn't look at all good if the public could see them. But, well, it was a RESOLUTION, it has no legal force, but the Wayne County GOP passed it specifically in order to GET it publicized, right? So I feel free to mention it.
If I'd been a delegate, I'd have spoken strongly against this second Resolution. Don't get me wrong, I am as disgusted by the U.N. as anyone can be, but occasionally slowing their funding is as far as I'd go. For one thing, stomping out of the Security Council is a bad idea; Stalin did it once, and while he was gone (1950), the U.N. actually approved the use of force for a change! That's why you see the U.N. flag in M*A*S*H reruns, lack of a Soviet veto allowed the Security Council to give legitimacy to our side in the Korean 'police action'. Who knows what they might come up with without a U.S. veto, "Zionism is a form of biological warfare", maybe? Besides, as corrupt and inefficient as the U.N. is, there are functions only a global authority can fulfill, like ignoring genoci... oops, bad example. I mean, like international postal regulations (the first function that brought about a supranational authority, there's a monument to it in Berne, I think it was), allocation of international radio callsigns and frequencies (can't have Mexico putting satellite TV signals on NORAD's downlink frequencies, for instance), coordinating seismic and weather observations, certifying seagoing ships' masters, telling us that international airlines that lose our bags are only liable for a maximum of $750 per bag (maybe another bad example)... In short, if we didn't have a U.N. we'd have to create a bunch of expert organizations, and we'd have to let everybody in, and we'd still have many of the same problems, just smaller, and they'd grow like any bureaucracy anyway. So we might as well reform the one we have, and despite what America's antiAmerican Left says, I think our new ambassador (maybe he's not been confirmed yet), John Bolton, is just the man to go do it. At least all the howling should tell us our President is following a no-nonsense approach this time.
Then they elected officers for the next two years, and adjourned. It has been a long post, but if anyone is still reading at this point, I hope you learned something. I sure did. Thanks for letting me visit, Wayne County Republicans!
Update 1: As no one has pointed out yet, the election that NC Democrats are still trying to steal over the objections of our Supreme Court is in fact that of Bill Fletcher to be Superintendent of Public Instruction, not Steve Troxler's election as Agriculture Commissioner. My bad, Vernon Robinson himself only took the position that Steve Troxler's election was unnecessarily close against a 'scandal-ridden' opponent.
Ed Wharton was in charge in his capacity as Wayne County GOP chairman (he's also the 1st Congressional District, that is, our immediate superior, Executive Committee Chairman). Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) was there to speak (Wayne County is split into both the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts); he asked Wayne County Republicans to continue turning out the vote to help him keep insisting on fiscal sanity in Washington, and gave an upbeat assessment of the chance for passage of his bill, HR235 (see http://www.hr235.org/) "Returning Freedom of Speech to Our Nation's Houses of Worship". This bill died in the House last year, but now he says it is virtually certain of passage soon, though he didn't speculate on its chances in the Senate.
NC Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby and NC (Circuit Court?) Judge Rusty Duke also spoke. Both complained of the fact that, since Republican judges started winning all the statewide judicial races over the last 20 years or so, our gerrymandering General Assembly saw fit to cause all future judicial races in NC to be "nonpartisan". Justice Newby pointed out that this caused a worrisome phenomenon: all judicial races except his had been won by the first female on the ballot for that seat! Sure, Republicans are all for giving the ladies a chance, but it looks like many voters were at a loss to know whom to vote for, and just picked the nicest names. Justice Newby says he managed to squeak through because there were TWO women in his race; presumably they split the 'uninformed voter' vote. The plea for better voter education was underscored by Judge Duke's quip that we should be able to remember his name, as "Rusty" and "Duke" are America's most popular names... for dogs! Both judges are very concerned that this 'uninformed voter' problem could continue in 2006, when we will see at least three, and possibly FOUR, of the seven NC Supreme Court seats on the ballot. This in an off-year election when we've got not even a US Senate race to help get our Republican voters to the polls. Judge Duke will be running for one of the NC Supreme Court seats in 2006, and if anyone out there is an experienced court watcher, he's actually going to be trying cases here in Halifax County next week... I didn't get it written down because I didn't think I'd have a chance to go watch, but I think he said Tuesday or Thursday; not sure if he'd be in the Halifax courthouse or somewhere else.
Ah, how I mourn for the halcyon days of last week, when I was relieved to find out that judicial races are nonpartisan these days, one less load on my mind: I had no idea where I'd go to learn how to find Republican judicial candidates if that were to be part of my job as county chairman... Now I know that 'nonpartisan races' will be the most important voter-education and turn-the-vote-out projects for 2006!
The local sheriff and two Wayne County Commissioners turned up to thank and praise the assembled activists. Must be nice to win local races, eh? Maybe someday that'll be us, too.
Then came perhaps the climax of the convention: they had five minutes scheduled for 'other speakers'. And who should rise to speak but NCGOP Chairman Ferrell Blount! He told everyone what a great job they were doing in Wayne County, praising especially the Republican Womens' organizations as 'the backbone of the party' (hearty standing ovation here). He also said something which seemed a bit out of place at the time, I paraphrase: "some people are saying that the NCGOP spent all its money promoting President Bush's reelection and didn't support our gubernatorial nominee (Ballantine) properly. Well, when the Presidential campaign came through, we had a joint fundraiser with them and raised $750,000 for the our state races AND the same amount for the Presidential reelection campaign, and don't let anybody tell you different." This combative tone wasn't in sync with the rest of his speech, and I'm thinking Chairman Blount may've said this upon seeing who ELSE had come to speak, 'cause it was about this time that I first noticed a great huge black man in a red shirt shaking lots of hands over by the entrance.
Turns out that man was the next speaker to take the podium: he was Vernon Robinson (see http://vernonrobinson.com/) of Winston-Salem, the Republican nominee in the 5th Congressional District in 2004. He started by getting a rousing response to what seems to be his slogan: "Jesse Helms is BACK! And he's BLACK!" The man doesn't much fear the 'arch-conservative' label they used to hang on our dear Senator Helms, heehee! Mr. Robinson gave what sounded every bit a campaign speech. He definitely got my attention by being one of only two speakers to mention that our nation is AT WAR (the other, I think it was Justice Newby, zipped past the War on Terror reference to ask for help in our 'other war', the Culture War) and was the only one to even bring up illegal immigration. (So I appreciated his being there, at least: as I may've told some of you, I'm not the most socially conservative Republican out there, and I may not know much about our local or state issues yet, but I'm a regular frothing-at-the-mouth proAmerican on National Security.) Rumor has it that there are going to be up to four candidates for NCGOP Chairman Blount's job at the state convention in May; I don't think Mr. Robinson actually SAID he wanted to head our state party, but he was sure trying to outflank SOMEONE on the right... And he did have lots of criticism for the state party organization.
Mr. Robinson said NC Republicans should have done much better in the 2004 elections, given the President's coattails in such a conservative state. He said our new (Republican) State Auditor, Les Merritt, barely squeaked into office, and Steve Troxler's election (for Agriculture Commissioner) was so close that the Democrats in the General Assembly may yet manage to steal it, although both of them ran against 'scandal-ridden' opponents. He charged that NC Republican money went to President Bush's reelection rather than to our gubernatorial nominee (i.e., just what Chairman Blount said didn't happen), that we somehow managed to lose to a lesbian in the race for the Senate seat Mr. Ballantine was vacating to run for governor, and that the state GOP was refusing to share its fundraising database with county parties. I don't know about any of that (I mean to keep my head real low while folks with some experience fight for control of the state GOP), but perhaps I ought to say that this wasn't the first time I'd heard hints that the state party organization wasn't doing enough to help subordinate party organizations: it seems there are more than a few local party functionaries who don't expect much help from the state party; whether they've just been beaten too often here in northeastern NC and want to shift blame elsewhere, or have just noticed a justifiable reluctance by the NCGOP to pour money into races we're likely to lose anyway, I don't know. It won't matter to me, as I'm telling everyone who'll listen, "one informed neighbor ought to outweigh all the 30-second spots anyone could ever buy". That might be our county party slogan, if no one likes my William the Silent quote: "No need to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere." I hope to run an all-volunteer county party and solicit no money at all. We'll put up signs people give us, of course.
Anyway, the rest of the convention was pretty much what I'd have expected, just that they had more people doing it than we're likely to have for a good while: the Plan of Organization Committee reported on all the little changes they had to make to conform their Plan of Organization with the new one from the state GOP, the Credentials Committee reported on the 104 delegates they'd confirmed while everyone was coming in (by now it had been over two hours since the convention started, so there were about half a dozen people who'd arrived late and there was a bit of procedural wrangling while they got themselves officially 'seated', too), and then the Resolutions Committee caused a bit of a stir: their first resolution condemned a plan they'd heard of to make the positions in the Council of State, that is, Labor Commissioner, Agriculture Commissioner, State Auditor, etc., into appointed positions (like our national Cabinet) rather than having them elected directly ('cause Republicans have been making inroads on Democratic control there) as well as the plan (House Bill 386 is what they mean, I think; I got an email from an NCGOP listserv alerting me to this plan) to apportion North Carolina's electoral votes in accordance with our Congressional delegation (this is dastardly clever of the General Assembly Democrats: since they won six of our 13 US House seats with their gerrymandered districts, they want to split our electoral vote that way, too. If this'd been in effect in 2004, NC would have sent nine electors to the Electoral College to vote for President Bush, and six electors to vote for Kerry. You may've heard of this sort of plan before, Colorado turned it down in a referendum in 2004).
Umm, where was I... that was their first Resolution, against appointment of Council of State members and the splitting of our state's electoral votes. It passed unanimously by voice vote. The second Resolution caused a little discussion, though: it called on Congress to cut off all funding for the UN and for the United States to withdraw from the UN entirely! It passed, also by voice vote, with about 60 or 70% supporting it. I'm a little nervous even mentioning this in public. I read an article in some magazine a while back (probably around January 2004, when the Iowa caucuses were in the news) about precinct meetings and caucuses; the author's rather condescending position was that these were groups of activists getting together and doing the 'sausage-making' of politics, taking a bunch of sometimes really radical positions and arguing them out into a consensus position which wouldn't scare the average voter. The author, in short, said that local party meetings wouldn't look at all good if the public could see them. But, well, it was a RESOLUTION, it has no legal force, but the Wayne County GOP passed it specifically in order to GET it publicized, right? So I feel free to mention it.
If I'd been a delegate, I'd have spoken strongly against this second Resolution. Don't get me wrong, I am as disgusted by the U.N. as anyone can be, but occasionally slowing their funding is as far as I'd go. For one thing, stomping out of the Security Council is a bad idea; Stalin did it once, and while he was gone (1950), the U.N. actually approved the use of force for a change! That's why you see the U.N. flag in M*A*S*H reruns, lack of a Soviet veto allowed the Security Council to give legitimacy to our side in the Korean 'police action'. Who knows what they might come up with without a U.S. veto, "Zionism is a form of biological warfare", maybe? Besides, as corrupt and inefficient as the U.N. is, there are functions only a global authority can fulfill, like ignoring genoci... oops, bad example. I mean, like international postal regulations (the first function that brought about a supranational authority, there's a monument to it in Berne, I think it was), allocation of international radio callsigns and frequencies (can't have Mexico putting satellite TV signals on NORAD's downlink frequencies, for instance), coordinating seismic and weather observations, certifying seagoing ships' masters, telling us that international airlines that lose our bags are only liable for a maximum of $750 per bag (maybe another bad example)... In short, if we didn't have a U.N. we'd have to create a bunch of expert organizations, and we'd have to let everybody in, and we'd still have many of the same problems, just smaller, and they'd grow like any bureaucracy anyway. So we might as well reform the one we have, and despite what America's antiAmerican Left says, I think our new ambassador (maybe he's not been confirmed yet), John Bolton, is just the man to go do it. At least all the howling should tell us our President is following a no-nonsense approach this time.
Then they elected officers for the next two years, and adjourned. It has been a long post, but if anyone is still reading at this point, I hope you learned something. I sure did. Thanks for letting me visit, Wayne County Republicans!
Update 1: As no one has pointed out yet, the election that NC Democrats are still trying to steal over the objections of our Supreme Court is in fact that of Bill Fletcher to be Superintendent of Public Instruction, not Steve Troxler's election as Agriculture Commissioner. My bad, Vernon Robinson himself only took the position that Steve Troxler's election was unnecessarily close against a 'scandal-ridden' opponent.
