Meet Rep. Michael Speciale - the proven, tried and true constitutional conservative candidate for the US Congress from eastern North Carolina. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    There are several candidates who are seeking the Congressional seat from the 3rd District that was held by the late great Walter B. Jones, but only one is a tried and true conservative. And that is Rep. Michael Speciale. Michael has served the people and the state faithfully and has supported and promoted conservative values unwaveringly as a representative in the NC General Assembly.

    Many candidates play the game of politics and court political favor by campaigning on what they know the particular party or group of voters expects them to say and what they know voters want to hear. Sometimes it is necessary, for political purposes, for a candidate to seek the support of Tea Party groups and other groups like them. But as we have also seen, sometime being associated with such groups can hurt a candidate. Over the years, we in the Tea Party/constitutional conservative movement have been terribly disappointed in candidates who have openly mocked the movement or who have courted the Tea Party only to later feel embarrassed by the association.

    Michael is unabashedly a Tea Party conservative. He serves his constituency and his state with a conscience and with strong principles.

    Michael is a retired US Marine who lives in Craven County and is currently serving his fourth term in the NC House from NC house district 3. House district 3 now consists of Craven County, but previously it represented Beaufort and Pamlico Counties as well. Until he went to the NC House, the people of eastern NC had never been represented by anyone whose values were so well-aligned with their own. He ran on a simple platform - limited government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, less regulation of businesses, growing the economy by respecting free market principles, protection of the Second Amendment in NC, eminent domain (property rights), education reform, and opposition to government mandated healthcare.

    For those who don't recognize this platform, it is essentially a restatement of the Mission of the Tea Party movement. These aren't principles that Michael threw out there at election time to impress voters or to curry favor with conservatives. These are principles that he believes in to his core and which he has a firm grasp of.

    These also happen to be the principles and positions embraced by our founders as they struggled to ground them firmly in state constitutions and in our US Constitution. They were the principles and positions that were responsible for the greatest degree of individual and economic freedom in our country's history and were responsible for the historic growth and success of the United States. We study history to know what works and what doesn't. Michael knows his history.

    While serving in the NC General Assembly, Michael has worked on many different levels to secure and even expand our Second Amendment rights, to secure our First Amendment guarantees to religious liberty and to free speech (requiring protection of free and equal speech on NC college and university campuses), to require Founding American History to be taught in the state's public high schools, to get rid of Common Core once and for all (it is still alive in our public schools, cleverly re-named "Carolina Core"), to require parents to be notified and to give or withhold permission for their children to be given instruction on sex education and the practice of safe sex (brilliantly, his bill wouldn't require parents to permit their child to opt out of such a class, but would be require them to give permission to allow them to opt in), to protect our commercial fishermen's ability to earn a living, to fight sanctuary policies for illegal aliens, to amend the state constitution (to enlarge gun rights, to remove offending language, including the Literacy Test requirement for voting, which is an offensive remnant of Reconstruction, and to remove the stigmas of defeat imposed on NC by the post-Civil War US Congress), to remove unnecessary regulations and to reduce taxes for all businesses, to reduce the tax burden for citizens and to provide a favorable economic climate to attract businesses and other employment opportunities to NC, to reign in the once-irresponsible spending of state government and to apply fiscal restraint to its spending decisions and policies, to protect private property rights, and to secure and expand the rights and liberties of all North Carolinians in general.

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    Michael promised he would do those things when he was running for office, and when he was elected, he went right to work on them, never once equivocating on his position or changing his position when called to vote. Quickly, Rep. Speciale became known by those who serve with him, by the communities he serves, and by conservative policy and thinktank institutions such as NC Civitas and the John Locke Foundation as a strong and principled constitutional conservative. He has worn that distinction with honor.

    This new session (Michael's fourth term) of the NC General Assembly is no different. In just a month's time, Michael has sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to: secure and strengthen Second Amendment rights, to allow certain teachers/school administrators to be trained and to carry a firearm on school campuses), to protect places of worship, to require all schools in NC to allow and respect diversity of opinion, thought, and religion (or lose state funding), to require NC to comply with immigration laws and to create a private cause of action when officials, towns, universities etc do not), to incentivize educational freedom (tax credits for those who operate a home schooler), to re-assert state Sovereignty (especially as it helps maintain the proper balance of government between the federal government and the States), and to protect the rights of the living yet unborn. He has opposed bills which spend recklessly and needlessly, which would create or enlarge social programs, which would place a financial burden on the state (such as the $2 billion bond issue), which would raise the minimum wage to $15 (which Democrats have introduced; which would cut jobs in the state), and which would dumb down our public school education system (such as he bill introduced again by Democrats to alter the grading system to a 15-point system thus allowing students to be considered passing as long as they score over a 40).

    Michael founded the House FREEDOM CAUCUS and serves as its Chairman. He is also the Chairman of the Homeland Security, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, Vice-Chairman of State and Local Government, and a member of the Transportation, Elections & Ethics Law, Appropriations and Appropriations Justice and Public Safety Committees.

    The reason I write so passionately about Rep. Speciale is because he has been such a loyal and strong supporter of the Tea Party and such a treasured friend and servant to all who call themselves true constitutional conservatives. Again, Tea Party principles are principles that a candidate or representative firmly believes in and guide his words and his votes, and are not simply a campaign line. One can tell a true Tea Party conservative by his history of voting. One's voting record is the best evidence of what principles guide him in deciding whether the particular bill is something government is entitled to legislate on or should legislate on. And Michael's record tells that story. It gives us the assurances that he has the intuition to introduce proper legislation and to vote responsibly within a strict constitutional framework.

    I like to think I know what I am talking about when it comes to principled politicians and constitutional conservatives. I started the Tea Party in Pitt County (including Lenoir and Greene counties) back in 2009 and have been running it faithfully ever since. We meet every month to be educated and to remind ourselves why and how conservative principles work. I am a member of the Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association and I am the Legislative Action Committee Chair. I spend a lot of time in contact with my legislators, reviewing bills and committee meetings, writing in favor of bills and against others, and even writing model bills and resolutions. I've been active with my state legislature for many years. I have spent many years on the leadership committee of the Republican Women of Pitt County and also with the Pitt County GOP. I am a lawyer (conservative one; my Con Law professor was NJ Judge and Fox Senior Analyst Andrew Napolitano), writer of history and conservative topics, blogger, speaker, and I am a panelist on a weekly Talk Radio Show (WAKE UP CALL) serving eastern NC. I interact with hundreds of conservatives on an almost daily basis but reach far more.

    But no one has to take my word. NC Civitas gives Michael the highest rating for conservativism and the John Locke Society applauds him for his principled leadership when it comes to fiscal responsibility. When I spoke recently to a board member of the John Locke Foundation about his positions with regard to spending bills that others have submitted (including fellow Republicans), he agreed with Michael. The gentleman, a fiscal conservative, told me he is right to oppose those bills. Civitas has recently written articles expressing concern over the positions that Republicans are now taking - seemingly becoming a more "recklessly spending" group, including one also running for the US Congress from District 3. Civitas policy analysts have spoken to conservative groups (including mine) and have spoken to me personally about this concern. They don't understand what is going on.

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    We in the Tea Party movement and those of us who call ourselves true conservatives or constitutional conservatives know the Constitution, we understand what government can do and can't do, we recognize abuse and over-reach and we especially see the widespread abuse and the utter ignorance and the willing disregard and the disgrace and dishonor by members of the federal government over the past few years. We know our history, we've studied the roots of our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and even our common law. Twice a month we are educated, either on an issue, a history lesson, a civics or US government lesson, or a deep-dive into a court opinion. If we can be educated and informed, how much more of a responsibility do those elected to represent us have to also be educated and informed?

    What is most important to us is that our representatives are so sufficiently informed on the Constitution they are sworn to support and uphold and principled and disciplined to do the right, the ethical, and the moral thing in passing and voting on laws that we can trust them to do the right thing by us and for the country (and for the "millions unborn and generations to come") when we take our eyes off of them.

    And that is what Michael does week after week and what he has done for over 6 years now as a state representative.

    If you doubt Michael's sincerity, just visit his office in Raleigh. It is full of books and articles that he uses to educate himself and to become fully informed on the many issues that he legislates on. For example, when he opposed a call for a Convention of States (and he was right to do so), the leading experts in the field (Publius Huldah, Don Fotheringham) were impressed by his breadth of knowledge and understanding of the topic.

    When I spoke to him earlier this afternoon about some new bills that were introduced in the General Assembly, he talked to me a bit about his decision to leave the NC General Assembly and seek the seat in the US Congress. He said he looks forward bringing the same approach to government, to promoting constitutional conservative values, to respecting essential liberty rights such as free speech, religious liberty and the gun rights, to fiscal restraint as he took in Raleigh to DC, and he also looks forward to helping to educate fellow lawmakers on what the Constitution allows Congress to do and what the proper role of government is. He says the people need more representatives in Washington who have such knowledge rather than lack it.

    In a flyer he recently put out, this is what he summarized as what he believes in and what his positions would be if elected to the US Congress:

    Michael Speciale believes:

    The number one purpose of government is to protect the rights of the citizens.

    The right to life is not to be compromised.

    America must remain a free market economy.

    We must remain a Republic and Socialism must not be allowed to creep into our government.

    We must BUILD THE WALL! Immigration laws currently on the books must be enforced and the wall along the border must be built to close the holes where human trafficking and drug running is coming through.

    We must give the President the tools and the support that he needs to work with North Korea and other rogue nations to craft a lasting peace.

    We must strengthen our military, and we must stop using our Armed Forces as a proving ground for social experiments. They are a war fighting force and must remain so!

    Our religious freedoms must be maintained and strengthened, and that includes not being forced to do business that is against one's religious beliefs.

    The US Constitution is not a living, breathing document as the left believes, but a firm binding agreement between the people and the government.

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    Our rights are given to us by our Creator, not by government.

    The 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not negotiable. Nowhere in the US Constitution does it give the federal government any authority over our rights under the 2nd

    I write this article from personal knowledge; I've known Michael for many years and I have been following what he has been doing in Raleigh since the day he was first sworn in. He is humble and down-to-earth. He is not an ambitious politician type, does not take credit for anything he did not do, and does not say things just to make himself a more attractive candidate. No vote is worth him selling out his principles.
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