Moe Lane

I don’t know. IS he done?

Real short version: this all started when Jay Parmley, the former executive director of the NC Democratic party, was allegedly accused of sexually harassing a male staffer. Reportedly, Parmley had sent said staffer pictures of genitals*…

Hold on: let me stop for a moment and make a PSA for politicians.  DON’T DO THAT.

…anyway, Parmley effectively got tossed out on his ear, but there’s still a lot of speculation of just how far a hypothetical coverup of the alleged incident could have spread. This isn’t of academic interest: Lt. Governor Walter Dalton might even be involved, and not coincidentally Dalton happens to be running for Governor this year. He’s doing so because current governor Bev Perdue abruptly decided earlier this year to not seek another term… do people see where this could be going? Anyway, there was a lot of pressure put on NC Democratic chairman David Parker to resign, and yesterday he did so. Cue the relieved-but-still-slightly nervous press releases from the Lt. Governor and Secretary of State Elaine Marshall**, congratulating Parker for doing the right thing, here. (more…)

(Via Hot Air) Specifically, North Carolinian voters on Tuesday’s Amendment One vote banning same-sex marriage:

African-Americans voted 2-1 in favor of the North Carolina amendment banning gay marriage Tuesday, but the White House is betting that black voters there and beyond will stick with the president, despite broad resistance to legalization.

…and that’s it. There’s no backup for that at all in the article.  The question is of some interest – African-American opposition to California’s same-sex marriage laws gave social conservatives a completely unexpected victory on 2008′s Election Night – but if there are actual exit polls publicly available then I have yet to see them.  For that matter, ABC News reported today (May 10, 2012) that there was no exit polling in North Carolina for Amendment One.  At all.

So where did Politico get that number?

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

(H/T: AoSHQ) Clear your schedules, folks: because there’s gonna be some tap-dancing today.

President Obama, who is under mounting pressure to clarify his thinking on same-sex marriage after top aides publicly embraced it in recent days, will sit down for an interview with ABC News on Wednesday during which he is likely to be pressed on his “evolving” views on the issue, according to people familiar with the matter.

The interview, to be conducted by Robin Roberts, an anchor on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. and was secured in the wake of a declaration by Mr. Obama’s vice president, Joseph R. Biden, on Sunday that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriages.

Well, let’s see.  What are Barack Obama’s options? (more…)

While I see Ed Morrissey’s point (I don’t know if I agree with it, but I see it) about whether it’s a big deal right now whether or not Barack Obama comes out in favor of same-sex marriage or not…

…it’s unimaginable that enthusiasm for Obama among black voters would suffer much, even if he reversed himself on gay marriage.  Even a slight reduction in turnout would be a rather doubtful assumption.  If Obama’s hold on this demographic is that fragile, he’s already lost the election.  The swing-state vote is a more realistic concern, but the current vacillation won’t help if those voters are keying on this topic, either, and they almost certainly aren’t.

(more…)

How bad is it for Democrats in North Carolina right now?  This bad:

The gist of the video is as follows:

When asked if he supported Obama, [Rep. Mike] Mcintyre told the reporter he wasn’t doing “political interviews” at a prayer breakfast because “it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

But – as the video later notes – Rep. McIntyre will talk about how he’s for North Carolina’s Amendment 1 banning same-sex marriage!  He’s for it.  Dear God, please, people need to believe that he’s for it*… (more…)

…alas, I don’t really get a seat at this table. 

To refresh people’s memories: allegations came out last week that NC Democratic party Executive Director Jay Parmley had sexually harassed a male staffer (the Daily Caller noted yesterday that local reports are saying that said staffer was also allegedly fired after making a complaint; if that’s true, then there’s a bigggggggggg problem going on in North Carolina right now for the Democratic party*).  Anyway, Parmley has decided to leave his job – and is he bitter about it?  Well, perhaps a little:

In his resignation letter, Parmley denied the sexual harassment allegations and blamed TheDC for tying the alleged incident to him.

“As you know last Friday, Tucker Carlson’s right-wing blog Daily Caller and Art Pope’s Civitas Institute began spreading a false and misleading story about a supposed incident of harassment at the NCDP,” Parmley wrote.

Hey, I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know the answer: does a declarative sentence like that itself violate non-disclosure agreements? (more…)

Do North Carolinian Democratic politicians have personal space issues, or something?  There was John Edwards and his impregnation problem; Bob Etheridge and his assault problem; and now there’s this unfolding story about NC Democratic Party executive director Jay Parmley allegedly sexually harassing former staffer Adriadn Ortega. Note the use of the word ‘alleged:’ the principals are not confirming that Parmley harassed Ortega, or that there was a settlement made to sweep the whole thing under the house.  There’s just a lot of emails floating around, many of which center around the problematical nature of having a potential same-sex harassment scandal appearing during the same electoral cycle as a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Via Tom Maguire of Just One Minute, who is perhaps justifiably cynical that the media is going to cover this situation with the same vigor and determination as they would if the principals were all members of the Republican party.  Which is a fair cynicism, to be sure… but it may not really matter.  As Ed Morrissey notes here, the North Carolina Democratic party is already facing tough times; it’s an open question about how this much this actually makes things worse for it…

North Carolina’s Eighth District is currently held by Larry Kissell, with an emphasis on ‘currently;’ some long-overdue redistricting reform in that state ended up making the two-term Democrat’s seat… precarious.  I talked to one of the conservatives running for the Republican nomination: Dr. Scott Keadle, a dentist and former county commissioner from the region.  We talked about the race, as well as a little about its wider implications:

Scott’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

And it sounds like it’s not to run for Governor of North Carolina, either.  The relevant text:

This was not an easy decision. However, I am confident that it is the right decision. It is a decision I have weighed heavily over the past few months. I have always said family comes first, and I never intended to be a career politician. I am ready to refocus my priorities and spend more time at home with my wife Nikol and two young children.

Translation: redistricting had doomed Heath Shuler, anyway, and it’s a bad year to be a Democrat in North Carolina.  Just ask Bev Perdue.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Man, Charlotte’s going to be all kinds of fun during the Democrats’ convention this year, huh?  Whose idea was that, anyway?  Joe Biden’s?  It kind of feels like a Joe Biden kind of decision.

That’s the word: no official confirmation yet, but expect a press conference at about 10:30 or so.

By the way, the sound that you are hearing is the sound of a thousand Democratic political operatives glumly scratching North Carolina off of their ‘in-play’ lists.  In 2008 Perdue eked out a 50/47 win over Pat McCrory (who is running again); since then, of course, her poll numbers have plummeted, the GOP has taken control of the state house, and the ludicrous redistricting of 2000 has been repaired by the new state legislature.  In short: Bev Perdue has presided over the wreck of the North Carolina Democratic party version of the Costa Concordia wreck, and now she wants to just get out and take a taxi home.

And she’ll be joined by NC-13′s Brad Miller, who is unsurprisingly admitting today what was already known: to wit, that the duly-elected state legislature has decided that Miller’s overstayed his welcome in Congress and needs to go home now.  As one of my colleagues has privately commented, the DNC at Charlotte is going to be a wake.

Moe Lane

PS: [UPDATE]: Ed Morrissey helpfully reminds us all that Bev Perdue wanted to cancel elections in 2010. Amazing what the Democrats think that they can get away with, isn’t it?

Background here: Governor Bev Perdue (D, NC) was talking specifically about cancelling 2012′s Congressional elections, but you get the feeling that cancelling, say, some gubernatorial ones would be a mitzvah in her eyes.  Anyway, my take?  Well, if I were a governor polling this badly for the last year and not really expecting things to change anytime soon then I might be inclined to endorse putting off as many elections as I could.

(pause)

No, wait, I wouldn’t, at that.  I’m a Republican.  We don’t do that sort of [expletive deleted].

When the first North Carolina redistricting map came out at the beginning of July,  Democrats of course bawled like stuck calves.  Speaking objectively, this wasn’t a surprise: the way that it was set up, it put four Democratic Congressmen – Larry Kissell, Mike McIntyre, Brad Miller, & Heath Shuler – at a serious disadvantage in the 2012 elections.  Put simply, the map threatened to flip NC from 6/7 GOP/DEM to 8/5 GOP/DEM, or even 10/3. If you examine the previous map, you’ll understand why such a dramatic shift; the Democrats went notoriously overboard in gerrymandering in 2000, when they controlled the process.  In short, we had a humdinger of a karmic adjustment going on in North Carolina.

But then something interesting happened: Rep. GK Butterfield (D, NC-01) started complaining.  Rep. Butterfield is a beneficiary (along with Rep. Mel Watts of NC-12) of the racial gerrymandering system set up in response to the Voting Rights Act; and he made some rather pointed objections to the first map, arguing that it ‘disenfranchised’ some of his former constituents by moving them into majority-white districts.  North Carolinan Republicans thought about it – and must have decided that they agreed, because they went into the maps again and redrew both Butterfield’s and Watt’s districts to make them more in line with the VRA’s perceived guidelines.

Of course, that meant that they had to… make some unavoidable choices: (more…)