NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD for Sunday, November 1, 2020
285th Weekly Edition
This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. We hope this weekly platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we work on taking back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please join us every week as we try to Connect, Unite, Act with our North Carolina Daily Kos community. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads.
Colorado: Mondays, 7:00 PM Mountain Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern Missouri: Wednesday Evenings Kansas: Monday Evenings
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Please jump the fold for stories I found useful. Thanks for reading and contributing, please stay safe.
The floor is yours…
11/1/2020 1:00 PM
NC 274,635 4,378 231,611 38,646
New Poll: Cunningham leads Tillis by 10 points in Senate race
With less than a week until election day, a new NBC News/Marist poll shows Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham up ten points over Sen. Thom Tillis.
The senate race is one of the most-watched in the nation, one of a handful that could lead to Democratic control of the U.S. Senate. The poll has the race at 53-43 in Cunningham’s favor among both registered voters and likely voters. Cunningham’s lead is more than double the poll’s 4.7 point margin-of-error.
The results mirrors a WRAL News poll from earlier this month that found Cunningham leading Tillis 49 percent to 39 percent. That poll came after text messages revealed Cunningham had an extramarital affair. The affair has been heavily featured in negative ads against Cunningham. But his lead has increased since those revelations, despite his refusal to answer questions about whether there have been other affairs.
Cunningham, a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, is facing an investigation for possible violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in relation to the affair.
Tillis, who tested positive for COVID-19 early this month, is running for a second six-year term in the senate.
The NBC News/Marist poll also shows Gov. Roy Cooper with a 59-40 lead over his Republican challenger, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.
See the full poll results, including info about methodology, here.
Mysterious ‘pop-up PACs’ attack Cunningham, other candidates as Election Day draws near
Obsolete laws allow big campaign spenders to hide their identities until after Nov. 3
WASHINGTON — A super PAC financed tens of thousands of dollars worth of digital ads in late October soliciting allegations that North Carolina Senate hopeful Cal Cunningham engaged in extramarital affairs.
But because of a loophole in campaign finance laws that were written in the era of typewriters, voters won’t know who paid for the ads until after the election. That’s because the money came from a so-called “pop-up PAC,” a political action committee created so late in an election cycle, it won’t have to disclose who funds it until after Nov. 3.
In the final 20 days before an election, candidates for office are required to disclose to the Federal Election Commission within 48 hours if they take in a donation of more than $1,000. Pop-up PACs, however, don’t have to, and there are several dozen of them that have sprung up around the country in 2020.
So any money they take in after Oct. 15 of this year doesn’t have to be revealed until the next legal disclosure deadline, which isn’t until mid-November.
Editorial: Trump's spin only promotes COVID-19's deadly spread
Against all reason, evidence and even concern for the safety and health of Americans, President Donald Trump and his White House echo chamber continue to treat the COVID-19 pandemic as a political problem and not a life-and-death global crisis.
VOTE! IT'S A RIGHT & DUTY
While Trump’s public relations operations release mission accomplished statements concerning ending the pandemic, numbers of COVID-19 infected and dead Americans continues to expand – and at an increasing rate (8.8 million cases and 226,000 deaths nationwide; 264,000 cases in North Carolina and 4,236 deaths).
To anyone listening to the comments spreading virally from Trump and the White House in the last few days, it is hard to tell if they’re declaring victory, announcing “mission accomplished” or simply accepting surrender.
“We’re rounding the turn, we’re doing great. Our numbers are incredible,” Trump said during his appearance last Saturday in Lumberton.
Tuesday, The White House’s science policy office ranked “ending the Covid-19 pandemic,” Trump’s top first-term accomplishment. The statement claimed Trump, regardless of evidence to the contrary, had taken “decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.”
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” North Carolinian Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, told CNN on Sunday. It seemed to be in a moment of likely unintended candor.
The truth is that the United States ranks fourth globally – behind only Brazil, Spain and Mexico, in COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population. By comparison, North Carolina ranks 38th among the 50 states (along with Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico).
North Carolinians aren’t buying Trump’s spin. The latest WRAL statewide survey reveals 53% disapprove of Trump’s response to the pandemic while 43% approve.
This judge isn't on the ballot, but she's on a GOP mailer
RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina Republican Party featured a Mecklenburg County judge who isn't even on the ballot this year on a recent political mailer, beseeching voters not to choose "liberal activist judges." Superior Court Judge Karen Eady-Williams is Black, and the North Carolina Democratic Party blasted the mailer Thursday as "just the latest racist dog whistle from the state Republican Party."
"This mailer is a disgusting example of the bigotry and discrimination that has permeated the North Carolina Republican Party for years," Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Goodwin said in a statement. "It’s dishonest, deceptive and blatantly racist."
North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Tim Wigginton said those "wild false accusations ... do not merit a response." "We run campaigns on the issues," he said in an email. As for why the state party featured Eady-Williams on a mailer about this year's judicial elections, Wigginton said her "radical decisions have made her infamous and worthy of attention, especially when law and order is on the ballot."
Eady-Williams granted a temporary restraining order this summer against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, limiting its use of chemical agents against protestors after a controversial maneuver where police boxed people in in downtown Charlotte and used chemical agents to subdue the crowd.
The judge said afterwards that she received threats online and blamed the police department, saying they mischaracterized her order.
The mailer features a Charlotte Observer file photo of Eady-Williams, identifies her by name and says she is "known for overstepping her boundaries." Voters who unfold the mailer will find a slate of Republican judges that the state party wants them to vote for. Eady-Williams last ran in 2018, winning an eight-year term, and she won't be up for re-election until 2026.
Wigginton said the judge's restraining order against Charlotte-Mecklenburg police is "a concrete example of how the liberals will utilize the judicial system against law enforcement if they are successful on election day."
Goodwin said the state GOP should apologize, calling the mailer, "nothing more than a dog-whistle for the lowest common denominators among us." An attempt to reach Eady-Williams for comment Thursday afternoon wasn't immediately successful.