Make House Majority Leader Brendan Jones the Poster Boy

Democrats should wrap the GOP around Jones and educate voters about Republican values.

Representative Brendan Jones, the GOP Majority Leader, is a hateful man. He’s the type of person who should never get power and yet has it today. Republicans in the legislature have offered up the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools as a punching bag for Jones and a bunch of his intellectually challenged colleagues. I guess they need to keep them busy and out of other mischief.

Jones has been dragging CHCC Superintendent Rodney Trice in front of his committee to yell at him for any number of things, but especially about books in the libraries. The legislator from Columbus County cites the Parents Bill of Rights as a reason to ban books from Chapel Hill schools. It’s a performative act for the angry ignorant mob that makes up his base. Jones hopes he can make them mad enough to go to the polls in November. Hate’s a big motivator.

He should really watch what just happened in Virginia. Republicans here and in Texas and Missouri heeded Donald Trump’s call for mid-decade redistricting to squeeze out a few more GOP Congressional districts. At the time, Republicans were excited about the prospect, believing they were offsetting gains Democrats would make in the midterm election. Instead, it looks like Democrats will gain about four seats because of a miscalculation.

As a resident of Carrboro, I can think of few things that will motivate Democrats to go to the polls more than bigoted legislators from far-off counties banning books in the public schools that attract people to live here. That increase in voters might not threaten Jones and his Neanderthals, but Michael Whatley will almost certainly pay a price and the broader GOP will, too, if history is any indication.

North Carolina today is a macrocosm of Mecklenburg County and RTP in the 1990s. Back then, new residents were moving into the area at a rapid pace, many from northern states with high taxes and strict regulations. They arrived voting Republican because they blamed Democrats in the states they left for what they considered burdensome taxes and restrictions. Throughout the 1990s, Raleigh and Charlotte were dominated by Republican leaders who benefited from the newcomers.

It didn’t last long. While those coming here might have wanted a little more freedom, they had little in common with the Republicans who would impose their version of morality and embraced thinly veiled racist attitudes. Within a decade, Republicans had lost control of the fastest growing regions of the state. They blew their advantage by embracing reactionary populists with a mean streak. Today, Republicans have almost no representation in the counties that drive most of North Carolina’s growth and income.

Brendan Jones and his compatriots are having a similar effect on the state as a whole. North Carolina is one of the fastest growing states in the nation. Those newcomers today are landing in exurban counties that have been reliably Republican. Like those who arrived in RTP and Mecklenburg in the 1990s, many are fleeing states they consider heavy-handed. Within a few years, they realize how little they have in common with book-banners and bigots. The effects are already clear in counties like Johnston and Cabarrus where Republican margins shrink visibly every election cycle.

Democrats should make Brendan Jones a poster boy. He’s already got the looks of a stereotypical good ol’ boy — porcine and with the rare ability to make an expensive suit look cheap. Stick one of his asinine quotes under his photo and let everybody in suburban and exurban North Carolina know that he’s what Republicans consider a leader of the state. Not many will follow.

Mean, dumb, and ethically challenged may play well in the poorest parts of the state, but it doesn’t work with the people who are shaping it now. Democrats should make Jones and his colleagues the wedge issue. Not many people with any level of education or common sense want to be led by people who ban books and spout bigotry.