How Politics Works, The Inside Story
BY: HOOD RICHARDSON
We are at the beginning of a two-year political party leadership cycle. This is how it works. We will have a county convention, a district convention, a state convention and finally a national convention. All of this before the end of the summer of 2025. This is the same schedule for Democrats, Republicans and all of the splinter parties. From these conventions we will elect county, state and national party (Democrats, Republicans and all other splinter parties) leadership. That leadership consists of county chairmen, district chairmen, national chairmen and their various executive committees.
The political savvy, character and skill of these chairmen and elected executive committees will determine about 80 percent of the success of all political races. The other 20 percent involves the ability of individual candidates to be politically effective.
This system of electing leadership is designed to be from the grass roots upward. On March 22nd of this year the Beaufort County precincts will meet and elect delegates to the county convention. Those who are registered by party affiliation (Democrat, Republican and all the splinter parties) are members of their local precinct. Every person who is registered has the right to attend their political party’s precinct meeting and vote for delegates to go to the county convention. For example, there are 21 precincts in Beaufort County and each precinct will be allotted a number of delegates based on the number of votes cast in certain races during the last election. Do not be concerned about being left out, there are rarely enough people to fill all of the delegate and alternate positions.
Delegates assemble on the day of the county convention (March 22) to elect a new county chairman, officers and an executive committee. They then elect delegates to the district and state conventions. The state and national conventions do the same thing. This is how county, state and national parties select leadership for the coming two years. This is the basic system for all political parties (Democrat, Republican and the splinter parties).
This is a good system. It is based on our democratic-republican form of government. Why does it not appear to work so well? Because. People have different opinions about how things should be done. People have selfish goals and ambitions. People are not all honest. People do not subscribe to fair play or honesty or democracy at the same level. Some people believe it is their job to decide what is good for all others. Some people are socialists and communists, etc, etc, etc. Then there are the big contributors with the money.
An example of the human element in our political process is that there is little or no public service advertising by the political parties to get more people to participate in political party precinct, or county or state conventions. That is because the fewer people there are at the meetings to make decisions, the more power those who attend have to decide who will have the political power. In theory, if only one person shows up at the convention, they can make all the decisions. The political power brokers only try to recruit their like-minded people. This is how we get a lot of bad decisions. However, the same leaders will spend millions to get you to vote for their favorite candidate.
The American political system is designed for all to effectively participate (when they understand the system). Teaching this political system should be done in the public schools. There is no reason for me to discuss the shortcomings of public schools here. If our political system was working effectively, I would not need to write this article.
We all know there are a lot of problems within our present-day political system. If everyone were honest, of high character, understood democracy and worked to ensure its perfection we would not have the extreme abuse by our political leaders of our system of government.
Our Beaufort County Republican Party did not support all Republican candidates during the last two elections. Two years ago, about $14,000 raised to support county candidates was donated to state wide candidates to keep it from being used to support Beaufort County conservative Republicans. During the 2024 elections Beaufort County Republican Party volunteers advised the public to vote for the Democrat candidate for school board. They failed to support conservative Republicans for County Commissioner. The Beaufort County Republican Party did a “slap down” to conservative Republicans when they used Party funds to run advertisements against a Democrat Commissioner candidate because they were afraid the two liberal Republicans running for Commissioner would be defeated. They gave no money to support conservative Republican Candidates for either school board or Commissioner. They actively campaigned for John Rebholz and Randy Walker and against Tandy Dunn and Hood Richardson. They managed to save Randy Walker, but Rebholz lost. Conservative Republicans Tandy Dunn and Hood Richardson were elected.
With five Republicans out of seven Commissioners on the County Commission, Randy Walker and Fake Frankie Waters joined with Democrats Jerry Langley and Ed Booth to put RINO Fake Frankie Waters in as chairman. Republicans Fake Frankie Waters and RINO Randy Walker then voted to put Democrat Jerry Langley in as Vice Chairman. Even though more than 60 percent of the voters in Beaufort County vote Republican, Beaufort County is still run by Democrats. One proof of this is the more than four million dollars paid by Beaufort County to benefit telephone companies to install the internet (broadband, an Obama program) in Beaufort County last year. In addition, we are increasing spending by 2.5 million dollars each year. Sooner or later taxes will go up.
The Chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party, Carolyn Garris, and the executive committee refuse to do anything about the disloyalty on the County Commission. They refuse to discipline members of the Executive Committee for making donations to Democrats. This situation can be changed by changing either, or both, the chairman or the makeup of the Executive Committee. Fake Frankie Waters has refused to sign a pledge supporting the Republican Platform.
Executive Committees are important. They fill vacancies of elected officials between elections. This has been an open door for RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).
Those who want to support Trump and Trump conservatism need to attend the Beaufort County precinct meetings on March 22 at Southern Acres (on NC Highway 92 near Bath), get themselves elected a delegate to the Beaufort County Republican Convention and vote to elect conservative candidates to the Beaufort County Republican Executive Committee.
We have the method to fix all that ails our political system simply by showing up and doing the right thing. Will we be criticized? Yes. But right is on our side.
Those who are interested are invited to attend the Beaufort County Conservative Club meetings. We meet on the third Thursday of each month at King Chicken Restaurant in Washington. You may call 252-975-3472 and request to be put on the email list.
For the most part, the local GOP, filled with nominal Republicans that favor the Center-Left Coalition because these GOP "Nominal Republicans" are in favor of wasting taxpayers money at the local level. I do not know why the current local Beaufort County GOP desire the abject waste of taxpayer dollars, but this is who they are, and it is well proved.
I actually do not need the local GOP to get elected or re-elected, and when certain elements of these Nominal Republicans work against this Conservative, it generally helps my vote totals rise.
Where these active RINOs hurt the Conservative cause is when they go out of their way to damage other Conservatives that are new to the Political /Governing Avocation, just to keep long standing original Conservatives, like me and Hood Richardson, from having the help of real conservative Republicans, to gain control, whereby we would demonstrably change the governing dynamic here in Beaufort County.