Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now

The 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

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

I 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

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

The 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

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

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

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

It is very simple, Stan. In a county-wide limited voting election, it is hard to get traction running an issue-based campaign. Candidates win with far less than a majority of anything, and they can run on things like what zip code they are from. A district campaign is less costly and therefore it is easier to recruit candidates. All candidates are from the same zip code anyway, so that is not a something any candidate can use as a crutch The school board primaries this year are a good example of how candidates feet can be held to the fire on issues in a district race.

An at-large system with full voting rights also enhances how much issues play, but not as much as a district plan. Limited voting is the worst of the lot.

Commented: Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 @ 6:58 am By: Steven P. Rader

Stan, District races are friendly to candidates who do what they say and are strong on the issues. They are unfriendly to those project one thing on the campaign trail and do another in office. You would have no problem getting reelected under a district plan unless you got gerrymandered into a Democrat district. The same is true of Hood Richardson.

The election system that is the friend of the political chameleon is limited voting, which is why we have the type of majority we have had under that system. The lack of accountability that exists under that system is what creates the lack of responsiveness to the voters.

Commented: Tuesday, June 14th, 2022 @ 5:27 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Even though the preclearance requirements with the US DOJ are gone, having been ruled unconstitutional, Beaufort County is still subject to someone filing a motion in the old David Moore lawsuit, so we have to be very careful about the impact on minority voters. This limits our options but either a district plan or an all at-large plan are viable within certain parameters.

A district plan will need at least one majority minority district to be viable. It should have two but demographics have changed to the point that it is no longer possible to construct such a district in the eastern end of the county by jumping the river, as it had been in years past. In fact the only such district feasible is in the Washington area with 7 districts. With 6 districts, it would be highly problematic there.

Under an at-large plan, the more seats running in the same grouping gives minorities better mathematic odds. With seven seats and voters having seven votes, all would need to run at the same time and in the same group. Splitting these in any way would be seen as diluting the minority vote.

I like the idea of letting the voters rather than the politicians choose the commission chairman, especially if the chairman is a full time job, negating the need for a county manager. Buncombe County had such a system in the 1970s with conservative Republican Curt Ratcliff as full time county commission chairman until he left to run for Congress. the county never had a tax increase under his leadership. An elected official drawing up proposed budgets is always going to be more responsive and accountable to the citizens than an unelected bureaucrat.

As a practical matter, carving out a separate seat for the county commission chairman would mean having to raise the number of commissioners to nine, which may not go over so well. In an at-large plan, it would reduce the number of seats in the grouping to 6, therefore reducing mathematically the chances of election of minorities. With a district plan it would reduce the number of districts to 6 in a 7 member commission, making it problematical to draw a majority minority district.

Personally I could go with a district plan or an at-large plan. With an at-large plan, we could also restore the two year terms for commissioners that Beaufort County had for many many years until the backroom deal that gave us limited voting. Two years terms are much better for responsiveness and accountability, and what justification is there for four year terms for commissioners when US Congress, State Senate, and State House all serve two year terms?

Commented: Friday, June 10th, 2022 @ 7:55 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Countrygirl, what you suggest is a lot like the old system, where there were five districts , each township being a district, and candidates had to live in the district but all voters in the county voted on each district race. They all ran at the same time and had 2 year terms, which makes for a more responsive set of politicians. Unfortunately, the courts have held such systems racially discriminatory, so we are blocked from going back to that.

Limited voting is the same system the Red Chinese proposed for Hong Kong in their negotiations to end British colonial rule, but the British rejected as totally undemocratic. US courts have ruled that limited voting cannot be imposed on a local government by court order because it is such a questionably democratic system. The only way a local government can get stuck with it is by agreement to settle a lawsuit. We can thank our former all Democrat board of commissioners for getting stuck with it here, because they were the ones who proposed it, to try to save chairman Frank Bonner from having to run in a majority black district. David Moore proposed a district plan, and the GOP would have almost certainly won two of the districts he drew and had a shot at two more.

So what are out options now? There are really two of them, a district plan and an all at-large plan, with all commissioners running at the same time in the latter. Dividing an all at-large system into two groups elected at different times is discriminatory as it reduces to odds of electing minority candidates.

If the numbers were different here, I like the plan that Buncombe County used to use. They designated one seat as the chairman and candidates ran for that seat to be the chairman, so that the chairmanship was decided by the voters instead of the politiicians. The chairman's seat was a full time job and he also served as county manager, so there was no one powerful bureaucrat in the system. Conservative Republican Curt Ratcliff held the commission chairman's seat under that system for many years and the county never had a tax increase under it. Unfortunately, doing that in Beaufort County would set the numbers for six seats that would prohibit a minority-majority district, and that would probably be considered discriminatory. To have a separate chairman's seat would probably require increasing the number of commissioners to nine. I really like that system but I do not know that having nine commissioners would fly with the voters.

Because of David Moore's lawsuit, and the Democrat commissioners' foolish settlement of it, we have to be particularly careful of impacts on minorities. If the Democrat commissioners had not hired a surrender monkey for an attorney, whose goal was always negotiating the surrender instead of fighting the case, we had a really good chance of winning it in court.

Commented: Saturday, June 4th, 2022 @ 7:58 am By: Steven P. Rader

The 3rd District Republican Party has sent out a legislative alert asking Republican activists to contact their legislators to oppose SB149, the Obamacare Medicaid expansion bill. A legislative day of action for party leaders to go to Raleigh to fight this liberal bill is being organized.

Conservatives should contact Republican legislators to communicate their opposition to this bill. In our district, Keith Kidwell is solidly in opposition to the Medicaid expansion but Jim Perry in the Senate is heavily funded by Big Medicine and he needs to hear that Republican voters oppose this bill.

The main number at the General Assembly to contact any legislator is 919-733-4111

Area legislators to call include Steve Tyson (Craven), Bob Steinberg (Senate - Chowan), Jim Perry (Senate), Bobby Hannig (House - Currituck), Michael Lazzara (Senate- Onslow)

Senator Norm Sanderson and Representative Keith Kidwell both prominently mentioned opposition to Medicaid expansion in their campaign advertising for the primaries this year.

Commented: Tuesday, May 31st, 2022 @ 7:31 pm By: Steven P. Rader

As to crossover votes in NC, those can only come from Unaffiliated voters, NOT from voters registered in another political party. We are not like Wyoming.

Allowing Unaffiliated voters to vote in Republican primary came about by act of the state Republican executive committee, not by the legislature. There had been a federal court case in another state ruling that parties could make the decision on who could vote in their primaries, and then state GOP Chairman Jack Hawke suggested opening the Republican primary to Unaffiliated voters to make them more comfortable voting Republican in the Fall. I was one of the Executive Committee members who voted for it. The Democrats later opened their own primary to Unaffiliated voters.

There are presently a number of grassroots Republican activists urging that primaries be closed again. This has been spurred on by several instances of Democrats switching to Republican to run for office and then organizing a campaign to get other Democrats to switch to Unaffiliated to vote for them in Republican primaries. That has been regarded as dirty pool, even though none of them have won a GOP nomination that way so far. On the other hand, state party leadership has worked to prevent the issue even coming before the executive committee, fearing a backlash from Republican-oriented Unaffiliateds.

Contrary to some opinions, most Unaffiliated voters are not ticket splitters. If you calculate Republican and Democrat base votes and then the swing vote (ticket splitters), the largest group of Unaffiliated voters actual voting behavior is straight Republican. The swing vote is often the smallest component.

Commented: Monday, May 9th, 2022 @ 5:01 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The idea that a Republican sheriff candidate or his supporters would recruit a substantial Democrat to run for sheriff does not make much sense in my view. Both GOP sheriff candidates think they will win the primary, so why would they or their supporters want a more competitive Democrat in the race for them to have to run against in the Fall? That simply defies logic.

Commented: Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022 @ 6:24 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Fixing 2020? NC overcame the Democrat cheating in our state, carrying for key conservatives and Republicans including President Trump in spite of Democrat shananigans. Some of the things the Democrats did here have needed to be fixed so we do not have that risk again in future elections. Apparently you have not been following Rep. Kidwell's high level of attention to this issue. He has become the point man in the legislature on election integrity issues. Indeed when a local election official discovered modems in their voting machines which were not supposed to be there, it was Rep. Kidwell she called and he blew the whistle on it, exposing the presence of modems in voting machines in several other counties.

As long as Cooper can sustain vetoes, we are not going to get legislation approved that will be as strong as we really need, but a veto proof majority in 2022 will open up the possibilities of much stronger action to clean up some of the shady election practices. I am sure Rep. Kidwell will be right there to take advantage of that opportunity to strengthen our election laws.

Oh, and I encourage Rep. Kidwell to seek a leadership position. Conservatives are not well represented in the General Assembly leadership at present.

Commented: Tuesday, April 26th, 2022 @ 11:11 am By: Steven P. Rader

April Wood and Donna Stroud are solid conservative strict constructionist judges and deserve our votes. They have proven conservative records.

Commented: Saturday, April 16th, 2022 @ 12:20 pm By: Steven P. Rader