Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

Politics should be about policies and principles, NOT personalities. When politics get driven by personalities, it leads to factionalism and devisiveness. Unfortunately in the last few years we have been seeing the personality demon raise its ugly head, and it has been coming from both directions here in Beaufort County. Neither group is innocent, although only certain individuals in either group are the main sources of discord. If we are going to maximize our Republican vote in the critical 2024 election, we need to unite the party and drive a stake through the heart of the personality monster. That is going to take some work from both sides if it is to succeed.

We have seen people with solid conservative records on both sides falsely denounced by some on the opposing side as "RINOs" (Republicans in Name Only). Granted that there are some liberal Republicans who would seem to fit that definition, but the term has been applied also to some of both sides who clearly do not. There are players on each side that want to completely eliminate the other from county politics. There are some who want to denounce anyone who does not join their own hatred of a major player on the other side and even broadly apply derisive names to them. None of this is healthy for building a united party to beat the Democrats. We need to find a foumula to tone down the fighting and name calling and start working together.

The first Beaufort County Republican convention I attended in 1979 was a good example of how things ought to go. In spite of a rather personal battle between the Wilkinson and Ratclliff factions, after the county officers were elected, all the key players of both groups were welcomed onto the executive committee and the party went forth united to battle the Democrats. That has been the way it has been with most county conventions since that time and the way it should be.

The stakes are incredibly high in 2024. Our base Republican vote in Beaufort County is high enough that the danger of actually losing the county is virtually non-existant, but we must maximize the GOP vote in counties like Beaufort if we are going to carry the much closer state of North Carolina. A divided party is less able to do that.

The first set of GOP conventions, county to state, that I attended in 1973 was a formative experience for me as to the imperative of avoiding factional bloodbaths. That year the new Republican governor, Jim Holshouser, decreed he was entitled to handpick the state GOP chairman, and many in the grassroots cried BS on that. That led to bitter "take no prisoners" winner take all battles in many counties and districts in the state to totally eliminate whichever side ended up in the minority in that particular county.

I had a front row seat to all of that because state GOP chairman Frank Rouse appointed a College Republican to each of the state convention committees and as state CR vice chairman, I drew the Credentials Committee. I heard many hours of credentials challenges and what happened in county after county. Our committee meeting adjourned about 4AM. My own county, Mecklenburg had been relatively peaceful because our county plan of organization was structured so that a total cram down by one side was not possible, so I was shocked and appalled by what I was hearing from so many counties around the state.

I also had a front row seat for the consequences of that intra-party bloodbath that played our in the 1974 election. As the new state chairman of the College Republicans, I had a seat on the state Republican Central Committee for that election. A bitterly divided party could not get its act together to properly support our candidates. We lost 14 of our 15 state senate seats, 27 of our 35 state house seats, 2 of our 4 congressmen, and our one statewide incumbent on the ballot, Attorney General Jim Carson, as well as having our US Senate nominee trounced.

Both sides comprehended that we needed to get things back together, and representatives of both agreed to back Bob Shaw of Greensoro as a unity candidate for state chairman in 1975. At county and district conventions, those who had been kicked out two years before were welcomed back into the fold and the party started to heal and build back.

Having watched that play out in 1973-74, I am not at all pleased with seeing the same demons arise in my own county.

This convention, I stayed out of the chairman's race to concentrate on major issues with the plan of organization I cared deeply about. One was preserving a formula for the at large members of the county executive committee that was crucial to preserving party unity. I had successfully led the fight to stop a similar change at the 2013 county convention that came from a different group. Unfortunately, this time with a more polarized convention, we were not successful. The other involved a provision on party disloyalty that butchered a provision that I had myself written during one of my stints on the state Republican plan of organization committee. Unfortunately, standing up for principle on the Plan of Organization seems to have put a target on my own back.

If we want to maximize our Republican vote from Beaufort County in 2024, it is time to bury the hatchet somewhere other than in the back of the other side. We need to find a formula to get people back together and concentrate on fighting the Democrats.

Commented: Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 @ 4:41 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Buzz, I don't think any of the potential GOP candidates for governor is a lawyer. Dale Folwell is a CPA. Mark Robinson worked in private business. Mark Walker is a pastor. Even Tillis worked in private business.

Commented: Saturday, March 25th, 2023 @ 7:04 am By: Steven P. Rader

In truth, there is a lot of middle ground on how the local party used its resources in the last election. There were three major groups of spending party funds, as the published reports to the Board of Elections show. The first one, the $14,000 that has been mentioned, was a very poor use of resources, but the other two were effective. The second set of expenditures was made up of party raised money and second in size, while the last one came from two generous contributors and was around $5,000.

Chairwoman Carolyn Garris played a major role in seeing that the second set of expenditures was used for what it should have been. She took the bull by the horns to head off any attempt to use it like the first round, the $14,000. As a result, the second round provided funds for a get out the vote mailer to Beaufort County GOP voters for the entire ticket, funds for mailings for the two contested school board races, and money for a radio campaign on behalf of the sheriff candidate, Scott Hammonds. That money was directed at local voters. Thanks to a couple of very generous contributors we also got the third wave of spending, which included a mailer on behalf of the sheriff's race, and a radio campaign for the school board candidates. Chairwoman Garris was also very involved in getting all of that accomplished, too.

The diversion of the $14,000 mostly to statewide judicial campaigns was orchestrated by First Vice Chairman Paul Varcoe. There are guesses at who else may or may not have been involved but they are only guesses. Unfortunately, one of the proposals of the orginal committee that was cast aside when Varcoe prevailed was a radio campaign on the issue of crime that had been designed to help both the statewide judicial ticket AND our local sheriff candidate. This would have given both a lot more punch than just writing checks to a statewide campaign committee.

Because judicial ethics rules largely prevent judicial candidates from running on issues, it is always more effective to spend money on their behalf raising issues that they are hamstrung on raising themselves from their own campaigns. This is why the NC Republican Party has a Judicial Campaign Fund, so they can run their own advertising raising issues that the candidates are prevented from raising directly. It is also why many other GOP organizations do the same thing. It is why giving most of that $14,000 directly to the official campaign organizations of each judicial candidate was the least effective way that money could have been spent on those races in terms of trying to do something to actually win those races. And the campaign records show that when those Supreme Court candidates were distributed shares of that Beaufort County GOP $14,000, each one was already sitting on well into six figures of cash on hand, with professional fundraising consultants out beating the bushes statewide for more. They were NOT "out of money" as the county executive committee was falsely told to try to justify diverting the money to them.

The county commission race was not a logical place to spend money because the math dictated that there would be two Republicans and one Democrat elected. The Democrat base vote will always elect one Democrat if only one Democrat is on the ballot. If three Republicans equally divide all of the swing vote plus the Republican base vote, that equals significantly less than just the Democrat base vote. This awful limited voting system guarantees the Democrat that seat as long as their vote is united in one candidate. The only real question in that election is which two of the three on the Republican ticket will join that Democrat. We need to either hope more Democrats file to split their base vote or change the system if we want a shot at winning all the seats.

In my opinion, county GOP efforts contributed siginificantly to at least one of the school board victories and to the sheriff's race victory. We had a first rate candidate in Scott Hammonds, but we had some usual GOP voters with their noses out of joint from the primary. The efforts by the county party and by Rep. Keith Kidwell helped get those voters upset from the primary back into the GOP fold for the general election. The county party funded the early Kidwell ads on behalf of Hammonds, and then Keith got out and raised more money where by election day, his efforts had brought in even more than the party put into it. Working as a team we helped solidify Republican voters behind our nominee.

The bottom line? Are people rightly upset about what happened to that $14,000? Absolutely. But in other respects, did the party spend money efficiently and effectively to elect our local ticket and to turn out local votes for our statewide ticket? Absolutely.

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 10:51 am By: Steven P. Rader

At least in our local House seat, we have a legislator in Keith Kidwell, who has been reprsenting our interests well, and that includes voting and working against the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Hooray for Keith!

Commented: Saturday, March 11th, 2023 @ 1:32 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Bob, I have been credentialed as an International Election Observer in eight foreign elections, all in eastern Europe, and produced reports in all of them. I have actual experience in election integrity that I strongly suspect you lack. From what has come out on the 2020 US national election, it was conducted under standards far below those eastern European elections, and there are quite a number of suspicious things I would have flagged if I were on an election observation mission in the US in 2020. Do those things prove the 2020 US election was fraudulent? No, not without a full investigation, and that unfortunately did not happen, largely because US courts are very squeamish about doing so.

Foreign courts are more supportive of investigating suspicious activity that raises questions about election integrity and then taking action on it. A couple of elections ago, the British courts threw out the results of the London election in the Tower Hamlets district and ordered the election re-run. Ukraine's Constitutional Court threw out the results of the election that led to the Orange Revolution and ordered a new election due to irregularities. German courts have twice thrown out election results and ordered new elections due to irrgularities, most recently with a new election for the state of Berlin last month. American courts would do well to watch what their European cousins are doing to protect election integrity and stop burying their heads in the sand.

Can the US do a heck of a lot better in running our elections than was done in 2020? Absolutely! Should we? Absolutely! But it is not happening, as shown by the mess in Arizona's 2022 electoin.

Commented: Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 @ 12:24 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The WHO cannot just assume this level of control. In the United States most powers over health issues are within the purview of state governments, which could tell the WHO to go take a flying leap. Even as to the national level, without Senate approval as a treaty, it would NOT be Constitutionally binding on our federal government.

The WHO is heavily influenced by Red China, and the US should drop its membership for that reason. The Biden regime is in the ChiCom's hip pocket, so they are going along with this fiasco.

Commented: Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 @ 9:25 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Two other groups that will suffer from the Obamacare Medicaid expansion are small business and county government. I attended a meeting of an NCGOP convention committee on which I serve in Raleigh yesterday, and everyone was aghast at this Obamacare Medicaid expansion. A couple of committee members who are small businesspeople said they had already heard that their group health premiums would be going up 30% to 40% due to their groups being smaller after some of their employees are involuntarily transfered to Medicaid. Another who is a county commission chairman said that their county budget will be strapped to pay for the new eligibility workers at Social Services for the Medicaid expansion, as well as the county share of the actual medical payments. The Obamacare Medicaid expansion is a very serious blunder that the Republican base is furious over.

Commented: Sunday, February 19th, 2023 @ 7:03 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The 3rd Congressional District Republican Executive Committee passed a resolution against the Obamacare Medicaid expansion today, and the vote was unanimous. Party leaders do NOT want this legislation.

Commented: Saturday, February 4th, 2023 @ 9:10 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I keep waiting for Yale University to change its name. Its namesake, early benefactor Elihu Yale, was both a slave owner and a slave trader, and as a British colonial official was responsible for changing the law to end a ban on exporting slaves.

Elihu Yale was much more bound up in slavery than any of the people who are being cancelled in the South.

Commented: Tuesday, January 31st, 2023 @ 10:38 am By: Steven P. Rader

Stan, I don't think you would make it writing a curriculum for the education industry. They don't seem to want anyone to the right of Bernie Saunders. The sad thing is that all of this should be neutral and non-partisan but it is not. I like the British school law that requires as a matter of law that on controversial subjects, all sides be presented to students in a neutral manner. Our education industry in the US is not even close to doing that.

Commented: Saturday, January 28th, 2023 @ 7:26 pm By: Steven P. Rader

SAVVAS pushes Herbert Marcuse's radical Critical Theory, a scheme to divide society, with this curriculum instead of unifying it. That is not wise for our students or our society.

Herbert Marcuse, the cheif ideologue of the German Communist Party in the Weimar republic, fled to America after the Nazis took over. The communists sought to divide society between the bourgeois and the proletariat, and when the proletariat did not rise up to overthrow the Nazis, Marcuse decided that they needed to push other divisions within society that the communists and other far left could exploit, so he came up with what he called Critical Theory to do that. Critical Race Theory is just one facet of Critical Theory, devised by other Marxists from Marcuse's work. All of it is equally noxious.

SAVVAS' Director of Professional Curriculum Content, Meg Honey, openly advocates Marcuse's Critical Theory, and its components like "intersectionality" and dividing society into "oppressors" and "victims". She has also worked with the radical left hate group Southern Povery Law Center, which has been successfully sued mulitiple times for smearing conservatives.

Education should be uniting society into our identity as Americans, not dividing it to be exploited by the far left. As Dr. Martin Luther King's neice said in her opposition to Critical Race Theory, the only race that matters is the human race.

In a poll by the Civitas Institute last year, it was found that 71% of parents in North Carolina are concerned about political indoctrination of their children in the schools. Politically engineered curriculums like this one are the reason for their concern.

Commented: Saturday, January 28th, 2023 @ 8:41 am By: Steven P. Rader

Jann, that link you provided just reeks of wokeness, and its author is SAVVAS' Director of Professional Learning Content, someone who will have a lot of influence in the direction of their content. Most alarmingly it pushes sexualized content with no age appropriate critera and that is a huge red flag. But if you drill down in what this woman has to say, she also pushes "Critical Theory", "intersectionality" (a concept of Critical Theory). and "overlapping experiences of oppression". This woman's leftwing radicalism is shown by her involvement with one of the most vicious far left groups in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Critical Race Theory is just one part of the Marxist developed Critical Theory. Dr. Herbert Marcuse was a leading Marxist theorist of the German Communist Party during the Weimar Republic and fled to the US in the early days of the Nazi regime, taking a professor's position at a leading American University. He had expected the proletariat to rise up against the Nazis and when they did not, his goal was to create further divisions in society that the communists could exploit. The result was his devlopment of Critical Theory. Some years later, a group of Marxist professors developed Critical Race Theory out of Marcuse's Critical Theory.

An education group that has a hardline leftist like this as its Director of Professional Learning Content is not one whose product we should be putting in front of the children of Beaufort County.

Commented: Friday, January 20th, 2023 @ 1:15 pm By: Steven P. Rader

anyone pushing wind and solar energy is supporting Red China. Why? Becasue that is who makes most of the wind and solar equipment and supplies the key raw materials for it. Wind and solar makes the US more dependant on China than oil and gas make us dependant on the Middle East. A lot of China's wind and solar products are even made with slave labor. They push this stuff off on us and Europe, but are going gangbusters on building coal fired power plants for themselves. They know what makes affordable and dependable electricity and it is not windmills or solar panels. One has to question the intelligence, sanity, or patritotism of all those who push wind and solar in the US.

Commented: Friday, January 13th, 2023 @ 8:37 am By: Steven P. Rader

It will be interesting to see what transpires in the upcoming re-run of the state election in the city-state of Berlin, which is being held in a few weeks because the Constitutional Court threw out the results of the last election for voter fraud (something the pathetic Arizona courts should have done for the last election in that US state). The Social Democrats and their allies have been taking a beating in the polls in eastern Germany but Berlin is a mix of east and west.

Commented: Friday, January 6th, 2023 @ 10:16 am By: Steven P. Rader

A retired British Lt. Colonel also provides good regular analysis of the war in Ukraine in the Daily Express of London. www.express.co.uk

Commented: Monday, January 2nd, 2023 @ 12:18 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Elections are won by use of effective messages that communicate the differences between your party and the opponent to the voters. In 2022, polls showed that the GOP had the issues, but they failed miserably in the messenging. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDnaiel was asleep at the switch on this, and Kevin McCarthy made only a feeble effort at it, but Mitch McConnell was downright awful on it, and that showed in the disappointing election results. McConnell did almost nothing to put up distinctions between the GOP and the Democrats, and instead tried to almost blend them together, the exact opposite of what one does if they want to win. The only real messenging McConnell did actually helped the Democrats with his whining we were going to lose due to "candidate quality". That is long time McConnell code for candidates more conservative than he is, ones who actually care about issues instead of just playing the game. Several election cycles ago, McConnell publicly vowed "to crush them [conservatives] everywhere" and this cycle it appears McConnell was more interested in seeing GOP conservatives lose than Democrats lose. McConnell pulled money out of close Senate races and kept $40 million in the bank after the election rather than spending it to help Republicans win. Even after the election, McConnell joined with the Democrats to hamstring the new Republican House majority by eliminating their power of the purse for the first year of their two year term, through his treacherous omnibus deal.

Commented: Saturday, December 31st, 2022 @ 10:44 am By: Steven P. Rader

Alberta's sovereignty challenge to Trudeau may have more going for it than would appear. As one of those articles speculates, the courts would likely strike it down. But Canada has something the US does not, and that is a precedent allowing provinces to vote on independence (secession) from Canada. That was established by allowing Quebec a referendum on that subject which was only narrowly voted down. Alberta's premier is openly speaking of achieving sovereignty either inside Canada or outside it. If Trudeau moves in the courts against Alberta's Sovereignty Act, he may well trigger the secession of Alberta. And if Alberta goes, how long would Manitoba and Saskatchewan remain? British Ckolumbia would also be questionable. Alberta, if they maintain their backbone, may be playing a much stronger hand than appears on the surface.

Commented: Thursday, December 29th, 2022 @ 8:33 am By: Steven P. Rader