Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now
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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
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Commented on Great ExpectationsMany school boards elected a solid conservative majority this year, and many of those hit the ground running with new policies and firing some of the bureaucracy. In Beaufort County, we elected three out of nine on the conservative slate. Five of the seats, a majority, were not on the ballot this year. There are four more Republicans on the board, so hopefully they can find two more stand up conservative among those four. I can see the need to feel them out so that they can put together the votes to move things forward. However, waiting too long may end up making some of those votes harder to get. A wise move would be to go for some of the low hanging fruit soon.
Commented: Thursday, December 29th, 2022 @ 7:26 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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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
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Commented on Congress to spend billions on Gun ControlGreat video from Gun Owners of America to highlight the anti-gun provisions of that awful omnibus big spending bill. Gun Owners of America (GOA) is the most trustworthy gun rights organization out there, much more reliable than the NRA. Every Republican who voted for the omnibus or otherwise helped pass it needs to be ashamed of themselves.
Commented: Saturday, December 24th, 2022 @ 2:19 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Rare Opportunity: President And Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt’s Revolver Goes Up For AuctionWhat Teddy Roosevelt did in the 1912 election is a big reason I do not care for him. He ran on the Progressive Party ticket, and as a former Republican president, he split the Republican vote, allowing another obnoxious progressive, Woodrow Wilson to become president, which had a huge list of negative consequences. It was all about Teddy's ego, not what was good for the country. Roosevelt's platform in 1912 was quite far to the left, but he drew most of his votes based on his personality, not his platform.
Commented: Saturday, December 24th, 2022 @ 2:15 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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This article obviiously was written by a very left wing source. One very glaring example of that is its calling the far left pressure group "Common Cause" an "anti-gerrymandering group" which is downright laughable. Some I know on the right call it "Communist Cause", as its ideology is not too different than Antifa, just better behaved.
Photo voter ID is international best practice in ballot security, used nationally in elections in all developed countries of the world except the US, and used by a majoriy of US states. It has been approved by the US Supreme Court. The only racism in this process is the racism by the partisan Democrat members of the NC Supreme Court accusing black voters of not having ID's. That is just nonsense. The only voters this law "discriminates" against are the dead voters, the fictitious voters, and the illegal alien voters, none of whom should be voting in the first place.
Commented: Sunday, December 18th, 2022 @ 6:17 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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This is a vicious and uncalled for attack on our heritage. My own great grandfather, William Pinckney Rader, served in the 38th North Carolina in General A. P. Hill's corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. It is an insult to all southerners.
Commented: Friday, December 16th, 2022 @ 8:59 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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This has been going on for more than just the last few years. The Democrats have been poaching commissioners who ran as Republicans as long as the current election system has existed.
Even when Republicans were a minority on the county commission this was a problem. Of the first two sets of GOP commissioners, two of the four, Gene Hodges and Mickey Cochtan, not only got seduced into voting with the Democrats but to actually changing parties to Democrat while serving terms elected as Republicans. Neither succeeded in getting reelected after switching parties, however. When we first elected a Republican majority, we got word that a group of Democrat party leaders were exploring whether they could peel off one of the Republicans to put their party back in control. Our two most senior GOP commissioners neither wanted the other to be chairman, so a former GOP legislator and I put together a caucus of the four Republican commissioners and commissoners-elect where they hashed out an agreement on one of the newly elected GOP commissioners being the chairman, and one of the senior GOP commissioners being vice chairmam. That first year of the GOP majority was the only time that our Republicans have been able to work together. When a vacancy as county manager came up a year later, the Democrats on the commission used that to divide the Republican members, and they have been playing divide and conquer ever since. It is time real Republicans put a stop to that nonsense.
Commented: Monday, December 5th, 2022 @ 3:26 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Democrats Messaging Strategy Curbed Red WaveIt sounded like McCarthy was going to do something like the Contract with America, but it was watered down and not promoted, only a flash in the pan. Better messenging would have brought better election results. And McConnell? The only messenging he did was trying to talk the Republican ticket DOWN and pulling money out of competitive races, sending the wrong signals. Worse, not only did he pull money out of competitive races, he kept $40 million in the bank that he could have spent on winning races. I wonder if McConnell even wanted to see a Republican majority. The way he approached the campaign did not seem like it. We really do need better leadership than this pair.
Commented: Monday, November 21st, 2022 @ 4:39 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Mark Levin: Why there was no Red WaveHere is how you can help replace Mitch McConnell as a result of his role in our 2022 loss.
We need our new senator, Ted Budd, to help end the reign of Mitch McConnell, whose actions and lack of actions, both legislatively and politically, have failed us and were a big part of why we did not win control of the Senate. The Senate GOP caucus is meeting in the next few days to consider leadership and there will be an effort to put McConnell back in. Please call Budd's congressional office at 202-225-4531 and urge him to vote to replace McConnell. It is probably a waste of time, but you can call Tillis' office, too.
Commented: Monday, November 14th, 2022 @ 1:43 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Didn’t your momma teach you better?Campbell is little more than a mouthpiece for the Democrat narrative but he is a slicker wordsmith than Biden's speech writers. This is the "dark Brandon" Philadelphia speech rewritten where it may take in people without their realizing it. He talks a lot of generalities that could apply to both sides, talks out of both sides of his mouth on free speech, and in doing so draws more poople in. Instead of openly blasting "Republican", "mega MAGA" or whatever, he sets his partisan trap by only condeming things that the left blames on Republicans (although in reality those were NOT Republican orchestrated). Campbell's more subtle way of attacking Republicans is more seducing than Biden's "in your face" attacks. Campbell's partisan attack is the same as Biden's just written in a more tricky fashion.
Democrats always tend to accuse Republicans of what they themselves are doing, in this case, acting like fascists. One hallmark of fascism is the "corporate state" where government and big companies work together on political objectives. I cannot think of a more apt example of the corporate state than what is happening today with big corporations parroting the Democrat political line on so many subjects and the collusiion between Big Tech and Big Government to suppress our free speech.
Commented: Monday, November 7th, 2022 @ 7:58 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Democrat vote buying in Belhaven todayIt doesn't look like the fish fry drummed up many votes. Saturday was the lightest day of voting during the four days that early voting was open in Belhaven, with 121 voters, compared to 193 on Wednesday, 138 on Thursday, and 159 on Friday.
I have seen the same tactic when I worked with pro-western political parties in Moldova. The Communists would take around goodie bags to older voters to try to create a sense of obligation that they owed them their vote in return. This is not a southern thing or an American thing but a corrupt political practice employed in too many countries. I recall seeing it directly while I was an International Election Observer in a Moldovan parliamentary election. Around lunch time my observation team pulled into a polling station in the city of Comrat, capital of the Gaugauzia automonmous region. Soon after we arrived several older voters came in carrying white plastic bags with a red hammer and sickle printed on them, obviously filled with things like canned goods. A German international observation team that was also present questioned the first woman who came in with the bag, and she said she had just come from church (Moldova votes on Sunday) and the priest had told them there were some presents for them at the front of the church and they should go and vote (in Moldova the Russian Orthodox Church supported the Communists while the Romanian Orthodox Church was supporiing the Christian Democrats at first but then switched to the Liberal Party). The German team made notes for their report, but since my organization had trained the poll observers of the pro-western parties, I spoke with them and they made a formal complaint to the election officials. The election officials then told the voters with the bags that they could not enter the polling station with them, could not leave them outside, and could not stand around with them outside. They had to leave with them. This was largely due to the fact that election law there did not allow party symbols in or around the polling station on election day. Maybe some of them came back after taking the bags home, but probably not all of them. That was unlikely to have been the only Russian Orthodox Church where that happened. I also remember the Moldovan Democratic Party fighting fire with fire in some local elections in northern raions of Moldova. The Communists made a practice of giving goodie bags to older voters to create an obligation to vote for them, so the Democrats made up their own goodie bags and took them to the same profile of voter. On election day, there was a huge spike in spoiled ballots because a lot of those voters then felt obligated to both parties and thus voted for both, spoliing the ballot so that it counted for nobody. That led the Democrats to pick up a fair number of seats from the Communists.
Commented: Sunday, November 6th, 2022 @ 7:39 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Having worked at high levels in politics for half a century, I have seen the influence of money on politicians. Some outright prostitute themselves to big contributors, but more often it is more a matter of buying access and influence. Major contributors will have their phone calls answered and their views considered by just about any politician. When I worked as a political appointee in Governor Jim Martin's administration, I was well aware that the governor's political consultant, Brad Hayes, kept a printout on his desk of all of Governor Martin's contributors that he looked at any time someone contacted him about pushing a proposal or a person. He also kept a printout of all the people who contributed to Martin's opponents. Brad drove to Raleigh once a week to work on policy and personnel and getting his support assured that something or somebody would get consideration. At the state level there were lots of "heavy hitter" contributors so the influence this brought was very spread out. With a local race, however, a single heavy hitter in a campaign can have a very outsized influence on the politician contributed to if they are elected. One must always look at the agendas of such major contributors because they would not have given that money if they did not think the politicians would adhere to that agenda.
So, in a race like our local sheriff's race, one outsized contributor is a concern, and when they are tied to other political forces so will be the politician they contribute to. The very strong willed might resist that influence, but many would not. If that contributor were also a "bundler", someone who also brought in contributions from others, their influence would be even heavier. This is absolutely NOT a good situation for Beaufort County.
Commented: Sunday, October 30th, 2022 @ 8:18 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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We do have an overspending problem in Beaufort County government, and you have identified the source of it, but this article leaves a false impression that liberal Democrat Corey Rogerson has significant support among the Republican leadership and that is just not true.
One executive committee member, who is widely believed to have been offered a job, did publicly endorse Rogerson. Chairwoman Garris demanded his resignation and he resigned. Three others including two county commissioners and the party 1st vice chairman "liked" the Facebook post endorsing Rogerson, which creates grave doubt about their support of the Republican Party. One of them attended a Rogerson fundraiser, which creates more doubt (if he gave money, that would resolve ALL doubt. Someone should check the campaign finance reports). All of that may need to be sorted in the future. That being said, however, this does NOT constitute a significant part of the GOP leadership. Only one of the five party officers is tainted, and two of the approximately 30 at large members of the executive committee. Chairwoman Garris and 2nd vice chairman Patricia Garrison, for example, have been working very hard for Scott Hammonds. And the county party has helped facilitate a coming mailing raising questions about Rogerson. The Beaufort County Republican Party is doing all it can to elect our conservative sheriff candidate. We may have a handful obsessed with sour grapes from their candidate's primary loss, but they are not significant. Scott Hammonds is far and away the conservative choice and the qualified choice for sheriff.
Commented: Monday, October 24th, 2022 @ 8:30 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on School Board member E.C. Peed ducks candidate forumCharles, a "candidate forum" with rigged questions does little for the public. The public is shut out of being participants and only allowed to be spectators, and that is not fair to the public. A better format is to have questions come from the public, not canned questions from the forum sponsors.
Indeed, it is better to have a real debate. I like the format of the Lincoln - Douglas debates, where half of the questions were composed by each candidate, and there was no moderator to throw his / her spin into it. A moderator's role should only be to keep order, not inject their opinions into debates. That is why the Republican National Committee has voted NOT to have its presidential candidate participate in debates sponsored by the bent Commission on Presidential Debates, which since it has existed has used only liberal moderators and given them far too much control of the process. Future presidential debates will now be negotiated directly between the parties.
Commented: Saturday, October 22nd, 2022 @ 8:37 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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The only way to find out if these things are indeed out there in our schools is to elect the conservative pro-parent slate of school board candidates - Gary Carlton, Charles Hickman, and Donald Shreve. Too many of our current school board members are little more than rubber stamps for the school bureaucracy.
Commented: Friday, October 14th, 2022 @ 7:46 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on The embarrassment of two sets of rulesChairwoman Garris advised me of the Kerry Cox endorsement of the Democrat for sheriff soon after it happened when I called her on another matter. She told me in that conversation that she was going to call Cox and insist on his resignation from the executive committee. Later, she told me Cox had agreed to resign and drop a resignation by headquarters.
Cox dragged his feet on getting the resignation in, but when the BO article was published, he emailed a resignation to chairwoman Garris, and she shared it with the executive commmittee. The issue of the posts of other executive committee members did not come up in our conversation. While some may quibble that those posts are not full blown endorsements of the Democrat, the fact is that the posts create the impression that these executive committee members are supportive of the Democrat. Appearances matter. What is important is that these executive committee members clear up the ambiguity they created by publicly showing that they do actually support the Republican candidate. Attending the Hammonds fundraiser would have been a good way to do it, but for whatever reason, they did not. The best remaining alternative is to do it by Facebook posts, and that would be particularly appropriate since the original questionable posts were made on Facebook. The county commission setting the date that the nomination for the Register of Deeds vacancy had to be in during the critical final weeks of the vital mid-term election campaign has created a major distraction for the local Republican Party at a time when we need to be concentrating our efforts on winning an election. The vacancy does not occur until January and there is no good reason that the county should have not set a date AFTER the election period. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this timing would be adverse to the Republican Party. I am surprised our GOP commissioners did not push back on this partisan setting of an unnecessarily early date. One wonders who came up with it, one of the Democrat commissioners or one of the liberal upper bureaucracy of county government?
Commented: Tuesday, October 11th, 2022 @ 12:08 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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I just sent Kelly Tshibaka a hundred dollars for her campaign. I urge all local conservatives to do likewise. She is ahead in the polls and can beat Murkowski.
www.kellyforalaska.com
Commented: Monday, October 10th, 2022 @ 6:19 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on More Republican EmbarrassmentHaving attended the Scott Hammonds fundraiser today, I can attest that none of those mentioned above who posted on Facebook were in attendance for Scott. I cannot myself say why they were not there, but am told they were at other events elsewhere. One or more of them may have made contributions to the event.
Party leaders who were in attendance and present for almost all of the event were county GOP chairwoman Carolyn Garris and county GOP 2nd vice chairwoman Patricia Garrison. So was headquarters manager Jody Forrest. County commission candidates who were there were Stan Deatherage and Tandy Dunn. School Board candidates who were there were Charles Hickman, Gary Carlton, and Donald Shreve. One county commissioner present who is not running this year attended and that was Hood Richardson, and one School Board member not running this year, Carolyn Walker. The fundraiser was successful, and sold out of barbeque.
Commented: Saturday, October 8th, 2022 @ 9:18 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on More Republican EmbarrassmentThe resignation of Kelly Cox arrived this afternoon, dated today, by email, short and to the point. He should have done this BEFORE endorsing Rogerson, but he has belatedly done the right thing.
Commented: Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 @ 6:22 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on More Republican EmbarrassmentThis is an issue as to several individuals, not as much as to the party since the ExCom has not met since this matter came up. It is my understanding that the resignation of Cox was demanded by Garris a week or so ago and he agreed to resign. I have not heard if the resignation has actually been received yet. Cox totally lacked integrity as to what he did. The issue as to the others has developed more recently.
The second worst offender is the party's first vice chairman, Paul Varcoe, who in that position certainly should have known better than to post what he did. Even if it were argued that he was just supporting Cox's act of party disloyalty, rather than Rogerson's campaign, that is NOT what we expect the county party's second highest officer to be doing. He should be condemning acts of party disloyalty by executive committee members and joining Garris in a demand for resignation of Cox. As to a hired county police force, that is a bad idea. These "professional" police forces "follow orders" and can be politicized much easier than an elected sheriff. The sad state of the current FBI is a good example. So is the Ottawa police who cracked down on the Canadian truckers. Their original chief was very vocal on rhetoric against the truckers but was reluctant to bust heads, so they just replaced him with a new chief who was all into police state tactics. The pandemic lockdowns are another good example. Elected sheriffs in many states, including ours just said NO to the overreach of governor's executive orders and refused to enforce them. With hired police, the only places that happened were where they followed the lead of the local elected sheriff. The same is true of elected sheriff's coming out and proclaiming they would not enforce unconstitutional gun control laws, something no hired police chief has ever done. Having a hired county police chief instead of having a sheriff directly responsible to the voters is a very, very bad idea.
Commented: Wednesday, October 5th, 2022 @ 8:18 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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The city of Kherson is the main target of Ukraine's southern counterattack. It is a place I drove through a bit over a decade ago on the way to a vacation in Crimea. From the map, it looks like Ukraine's forces are a bit over halfway to Kherson from the point where they started down the main highway. On that trip, I also drove down that highway and over one of those three bridges over the Dnipro River that the Ukrainians have destroyed.
Commented: Tuesday, October 4th, 2022 @ 8:00 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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When I served as a political appointee in the administration of Governor Jim Martin, I worked in the department that oversaw Certificates of Need, and CON is an appropriate abbreviation for them. The preceding Democrat Jim Hunt administration had sold CONs in return for political contributions. It was a totally corrupt system, and one that the Martin administration tried to correct by setting objective standards to receive a CON instead of a political contribution. Since Hunt came back for 8 years after Martin, I have no doubt that the system was reverted back to its old corrupt ways.
I actually got telephone calls while I was serving as the Department's General Counsel where hospital attorneys would ask where the political contributions needed to be sent to secure a CON and how much it should be. I told them that political contributions were not required or accepted and if they wanted to win the CON, they should work on sending in the best application instead. The CON arrangement encourages corruption and has needed to be abolished for a long time. During the Martin administration, we never had any luck convincing a Democrat controlled legislature of that, however.
Commented: Tuesday, August 30th, 2022 @ 8:44 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on FBI leader behind Trump raid apparently oustedI suspect the reason Thibault was pushed out of the FBI had to do with the recent revelation that the FBI worked to kill the Hunter lap top story and he was the one who had played coverup on that issue within the FBI. He likely had something to do with the contacts with Facebook to suppress the story, and he was shown the door before that came out in the open.
Commented: Tuesday, August 30th, 2022 @ 7:19 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Is this fair to those of us who paid off our student loans? Is it fair to those who did not go to college but now are socked with extra inflation for a giveaway to those who did?
Commented: Wednesday, August 24th, 2022 @ 7:56 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Temporary rules for 2022 election observers passed the state board. Here’s what you need to know.This is a common Democrat scheme to keep observers too far away to see what hanky-panky may be going on. Similar things have been done in other states to thwart effective election observation. This is a banana republic ploy by our Democrat-controlled state Board of Elections.
I have served as an International Election Observer, certified by foreign election commissions, in eight foreign elections. If a rule like this had been in place in any of those elections, I would have flagged it in my report as an indicator that the election was not free or fair. I am appalled that Locke only told the Democrats' fabricated side of this issue.
Commented: Thursday, August 18th, 2022 @ 7:21 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Beaufort County, Two Republican PartiesDonald, I support your candidacy and think you will make a great school board member. In looking at the most effective and efficient use of party funds to elect the Republican ticket, we looked at the big picture for the entire ticket, and in a non-presidential year encouraging the Republican base to turn out and vote is the most important goal in electing the entire ticket. The right mix of issues are the right key to do that.
From what has happened in elections around the country, and Virginia is a good example, school issues are red hot, so a focus on them helps not only our school board candidates but also the whole Republican ticket. It helps turn out those base voters for everybody on the ticket while giving our school board candidates a lot of bang for the buck. Of course, the program also focused on other issues that the polls show as very hot with voters like crime, which resonates particularly on the judicial races and sheriffs race, and Bidenflation which helps the federal candidates. All of these by pulling out more GOP base voters help the whole ticket. Maybe Mr. Varcoe thought we were spending more than he wanted on school issues, but those are the very issues in Virginia that elected a Republican governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and legislative majority. They resonate strongly for school board candidates but give a huge push for the entire ticket. It is unfortunate that the Varcoe plan has put much of our local party financial resources into the hands of the very establishment consultant whose strategic blunders in the 2016 reelection campaign of Justice Bob Edmunds cost us our Supreme Court majority in the first place. The failings of this very same establishment consultant also played a major role in the GOP losing another Supreme Court seat two years before in 2014. This election campaign is far from over, and those of us who want to see Republican victory are going to keep pushing for effective and efficient use of party resources going forward.
Commented: Sunday, August 7th, 2022 @ 8:34 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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Commented on Beaufort County, Two Republican PartiesThe rejection of the plan put forward by a committee of local Republican leaders and activists with strategic campaign experience on utilization of local party resources was a big disappointment to those of us who recognize the importance of turning out the Republican base in a critical off year election. In non-presidential election years, it is the party that does the best job in turning out its base that wins.
While we have many Republican voters who vote each and every election, Beaufort County also has thousands of voters who are dependably Republican IF they go to vote, but who have a history of regularly voting in presidential years while being hit or miss in non-presidential years like this one. Every county in the state faces the same situation. Motivating these voters to go to the polls should be the first duty of any county Republican organization. That is done by identifying the issues that will drive them to the polls and then engaging with local voters on those issues. Those issues can usually be woven in with the candidates in races that the party wants to target. This was the approach taken by the committee's proposal. Beaufort County has a very recent lesson on how party advertising to turn out the vote is more critical to actually winning campaigns than just passing out checks to candidates. In the 2021 municipal elections, three registered Republicans were running in contested races. The local party sent checks to two of them, who were running in races that by the numbers were the most winnable. Both of those candidates ended up losing. In the third race, which was demographically much tougher, the party did a get out the vote mailing to Republican voters. In that race, the candidate the party supported won. That candidate himself says it was that letter that put him over the top, a view shared by other observers of that race. In that race, too, there were members of the county GOP executive committee who just wanted to send him a check, but if they had prevailed, he would have lost. In statewide races, failures of local parties to properly use their resources can cause losses of close races. The narrow loss of a state Supreme Court seat in 2014, for example, could have been saved if the local party in Cabarrus County had not screwed up. There were likely scenarios in other counties as well, but that is one that got particular attention in the aftermath of that race. Cabarrus County alone could have changed the outcome of that race to a Republican victory. Polling and political experience both point to the issues that can make a difference in turning out our base. School issues have been on fire across the country. In last year's elections in Virginia, they were the main driver of bringing out Republicans who do not usually vote in off years and electing a Republican governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and state House majority (the Senate was not up for election). Promoting our Republican school board candidates here in Beaufort County would not only help those candidates win, but also bring out more base Republican voters to help the ticket up and down the ballot, as it did in Virginia. There are other potent issues shown by polling that could also help bring out those base Republican voters to help win the critical races for US Senate and state Supreme Court. Winning a Senate majority is essential to stopping the Biden disaster, and our state Supreme Court's hard left majority needs badly to be changed. Turning out our Republican base on a county by county basis is what is going to accomplish those things. The court races are ones that are best won by promoting a Republican judicial team than by a piecemeal approach candidate by candidate. That is why the state GOP in 2020 set up a Judicial Campaign Fund and why the local Congressional district GOP in 2020 ran radio advertising promoting the entire GOP judicial ticket as a team. That is a more effective and efficient way of deploying resources, and it worked. All of the Republican judicial candidates won in 2020. That was the approach that the local party campaign committee proposed for using our resources this year, but instead they were scattered, candidate by candidate, which is much less likely to actually get the job done. When it comes to judicial races, another huge factor is the ability to use issues that drive votes. Due to very strict judicial "ethics" the judicial candidates themselves are hamstrung in the issues they are allowed to use in campaigning. Party committees, however, are not so bound, and CAN use those issues. For example, one of the Democrat state Supreme Court candidates has been a director of a North Carolina gun control organization, the North Carolinians against Gun Violence. The GOP judicial candidates themselves cannot use that as an issue, but the party CAN, and it would be a potent one in eastern North Carolina. Frittering away so much of our resources in less effective or efficient ways is distressing, but there are still opportunities to try to use resources on getting out our base vote. A half century experience in politics has taught me that this is what will make or break us in November. I have already begun discussions to try to get some more productive use of the resources we still have. This election is far too critical to the future of our country to just give up. Indeed, if we are not successful in this election, there is an open question as to how long we would even still have a country that we would recognize. There is one part of the above article, I take particular issue with and that is the comments on Rep. Keith Kidwell. The Kidwells are not johnny-come-latelies. Keith himself has long been active in the party, and is currently a member of the county executive committee where he does not have to be "invited". One of his parents was a very active and very conservative member of the Beaufort County Republican executive committee during the four years I served as county Republican chairman back in the 1980s. In the issue of use of party resources, Keith made contacts with the state party to assure that we could get access to the state party's ultra-cheap mail rates so we could most efficiently carry out the committee proposal. Turning out our base vote, and using our resources effectively to do that is something all Republican activists should be concerned about. We have to engage with local voters on issues that matter to them in order to do that.
Commented: Thursday, July 28th, 2022 @ 9:56 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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This is a very good example of why it is better to have law enforcement in the hands of an elected sheriff rather than an appointed police chief. Is there any appointed police chief in the country who would have stood up to the FBI to protect citizens the way this elected sheriff has done? We saw the same thing on Covid overreach by governors. Many elected sheriffs around the country, including many here in eastern North Carolina, refused to enforce the Covid overreach decrees of overbearing governors. The only appointed police chiefs who did so were in counties where they did not want to be taking a different stance than their local sheriffs.
Beaufort County has a great candidate for sheriff, Scott Hammonds, and I completely trust him to stand up for citizens rights against government overreach.
Commented: Saturday, July 23rd, 2022 @ 10:08 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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In the House, NONE of our Republican congressmen from NC voted for this gay marriage bill. Tillis would be out of step with NC Republicans in the House if he voted for it, but this would not be the first time Tillis did that.
Commented: Thursday, July 21st, 2022 @ 4:24 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
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For Badenock to get to the mail-in vote by Conservative Party members, she first has to be one of the top two among Conservative members of parliament. Right now, the Daily Mail, a generally conservative leaning newspaper, Rishi Sunak, an ethnic Indian who is very wealthy and a former Chancellor of the Exchequer is leading among MP's with Badenoch one of three contending for second. Polls show that middle class and working class Brits have a hard time relating to Sunak because of his wealth, and conservatives should beware of him because he has the strongest ties to the WEF, as well as being backed by the Chinese. Sunak is attacking another of the contenders, Liz Truss over her history as a Remainer, while Sunak backed Brexit. Another contender, Penny Mordaunt is losing traction due to remarks she made supporting transgenderism in the past which are now being used against her. Here is the latest from the Daily Mail: www.dailymail.co.uk
Boris Johnson was a globalist, likely through the influence of his wife. Hopefully, the new prime minister will not be. Sunak would likely be another Boris.
Commented: Sunday, July 17th, 2022 @ 11:58 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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This is a great idea to send a message on that gun control bill AND get a big improvement in that Alaska Senate seat. I have gone to her website and sent a contribution to Kelly.
Commented: Sunday, June 26th, 2022 @ 7:29 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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When I was actively practicing criminal law, I observed how this concept of denying gun rights to those with domestic violence convictions is overbroad and denies due process. This comes from the wide divergence on standards used by judges for such cases. Some judges take the attitude that in a "he said, she said" case, there is no proof beyond a reasonable doubt and a vercidt of not guilty is appropriate. Other judges take the "believe all women" or "believe all alleged victims" approach that results in knee jerk convictions.
I once had a case in front of a "believe all women" judge. My client had to be able to carry a gun or he would lose his job. His wife had taken out an assault on a female warrant contending that my client had "grabbed her foot causing her to fall down". Fortunately, the wife's yelling at her husband before the incident had attracted a neighborhood child who watched it go down through a window and we were able to put the child on as a witness. What actually happened was that the wife tried with great force to kick my client in his testicles and he put out his hands to block the kick. The wife's force was so great that the blocking of her kick caused her to fall down. With our child witness, we got the proper not guilty verdict. Without him, in front of that judge, he would have just been screwed by an outright lie from his wife. Here is another scenario I have seen happen all too often. An actual incident of domestic violence occurs. The victim flees to a friend's house. The perpetrator figures out that he may be on the receiving end of a criminal warrant, so the perp rushes down to the magistrate and takes out a domestic assault warrant against the victim. When the victim later arrives at the magistrate, it is the victim who is arrested, and then told that s/he cannot take out a "cross warrant" against the perp. If anyone loses their gun rights in those situations, it will be the victim, not the perpetrator.
Commented: Friday, June 24th, 2022 @ 9:22 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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We are seeing the true colors of our legislators on some of this liberal legislation. Rep. Keith Kidwell, as chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has been leading the fight against the Medicaid expansion and the gambling bills. The gambling bills went down in flames this week, and he is coordinating efforts to do the same with the Medicaid expansion. On the Senate side, our soon-to-be state senator, Jim Perry is a completely different kettle of fish. A delegation on GOP activists from Craven County, which he is currently running to represent went to talk to him at his office on Medicaid expansion, and Perry cut them off with "I don't care what you think". Is THAT the attitude we want to see in legislators?
Commented: Friday, June 24th, 2022 @ 7:09 am
By: Steven P. Rader
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