The last adult abandoned the clown car that is the North Carolina Republican Party. careening down the interstate with Chair Hasan Harnett driving and Ricky Diaz riding shotgun.
The powerful operation that Tom Fetzer built and took the GOP to victory is now where Democrats were when amateurs, egomaniacs, and ideologues took over their party. In his resignation, Poole says he’s leaving for other opportunities. After the success of the GOP in North Carolina, I’m sure he has them, but I’m also sure that he’s getting out before the wheels fall off.
Hasan has no real political experience and voted in the Democratic primary in 2008. Instead of making serious arguments, he’s been busy posting stupid stuff on twitter. He compared Hillary Clinton to the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, Diaz is waging war the Moral Monday crowd who are appropriately ignoring him.
The whole episode strengthens the Pope organizations. GOP donors and organizations will find work-arounds like the Democrats did. The third party groups that Pope and company built will most likely be the recipients. Expect to see more acrimony between the party and those organizations before 2016 is over.
It’s a sign of the times. Activists in both parties are frustrated with the establishment and want them to embrace more ideological principles. They have the numbers to drive the dialogue when the conversation only involves that relatively small number of people who are actively involved in party politics. It’s why Donald Trump is playing so large in the Republican primary, why Bernie Sanders is drawing huge crowds and why Black Lives Matter will likely influence the Democratic message.
Still, it’s an interesting reversal of fortune. As the Democrats seem to be getting their state party back on its feet, the Republicans’ party is tanking. The activist types in both parties think that politics is all about the base. In a state like North Carolina, though, you still have to win the fickle middle to get elected.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Let me see if I can translate some of this so we can get to the important takeaways.
“The powerful operation that Tom Fetzer built and took the GOP to victory is now where Democrats were when amateurs, egomaniacs, and ideologues took over their party.”
The only people in the political game other than amateurs, egomaniacs and ideologues are, by definition, the professionals that are in it for the money – like Fetzer.
So:
Ordinary Citizens = amateurs, egomaniacs, and ideologues
Political Mercenaries = powerful operation
Thomas is pointing out something very important to understand about our political system and parties here when he says: “donors and organizations will find work-arounds like the Democrats did”.
The Party does not exist as a mechanism for voters of that Party to select the best candidates for a given office. The Party exists to create the illusion that well-funded candidates are actually popular candidates.
The idea of being able to use the Party system as a counter-balance to the powerful influence of private money is quite simply a joke. The parties are designed to be responsive to that private money, providing in exchange a type of legitimacy through projecting “electability”. People of modest means can thus become “electable” if they make the donors happy, but will be branded amateurs, egomaniacs, and ideologues if they do not.
In a world where the rich routinely abuse the poor, and the rich man dances while the poor man pays the band, how could activists who dedicate their time and effort to a Party in an effort to make the world a better place find this “conditional electability” frustrating? They’re just so unreasonable, those amateurs, egomaniacs, and ideologues. Reasonable people only care about money, after all.
So Todd is just doing what any reasonable person in the political sphere would. The donors are not happy with GOP leadership, so they will be defunded – and thus, there is no future for Todd’s career at the GOP. He knows that the wheels are going to fall off, because he knows the people that are going to knock them off. He will move to one of the “work-arounds” to advance his career and make himself a more valuable mercenary.
Yep, sorta curious myself as to the identity of the “amateurs, egomaniacs, and ideologues” who took over the NCDP. I have no great love for the Tastee Freez liberals and their endless, miserable hairsplitting over inconsequential crap at state exec meetings–thank you so fucking much, assholes, for royally screwing many a fine Saturday–but they didn’t kill the party. The “old guard” killed the party when they elected David Young chair. Everybody focuses on David Parker and all that crap, but that was the ass-end (natch!) of the deal. David Young killed the party; the rest was just gravity.
And not to overly denigrate David Young. He had no idea. The consultants pushed it, the old guard fell in lockstep, and when it all went to hell, the real perpetrators got off Scott-free.
And the “old guard” country-club establishment set is still killing the NCDP, and many county parties as well. Party officers are taking paying gigs with unaffiliated candidates (many who have voted for Republicans in primary election) that are on the ballot with Democratic candidates – and no one is supposed to care about it! They are killing the party with their greed! And if you read Christensen’s “The Paradox of Tar Hell Politics”, they’ve been playing the same tune all along. The “old guard” didn’t want to share power in the state with African Americans and progressives in the 1890s – so they bought an Army-Surplus gatling gun and used it to kill off the opposition. Then they paraded it during Aycock’s campaign and inaugural parade. The “old guard” didn’t like the Fusion of African-Americans and Progressives winning a majority of elections for state and local public offices in the 1890s – and they didn’t like losing control of the Democratic Party to liberals and minorities in 2005. David Young didn’t really kill the party – OFA put out a contract on party activists starting in June 2008, and the “old guard” and their brain-damaged kids that got hired as consultants bought into it. They brought out their “red shirt” tactics to tear-down David Parker and Randy Voller. While Voller was clearly an “outsider” even though he was from the same neck of the woods as Kerr Scott. Parker was as much of an “insider” as you can get – very active in campaigns, President of the NC Young Dems, DNC member and superdelegate, etc. But he was always an activist, and siding with the District Chairs over the Caucuses (and consultants) over the taxpayer checkoff money was the real reason they were out for his blood – not the pretext of a bogus sexual harassment scandal. I guess the consultants figured out they could lose on Amendment One because the courts would one day overturn it. One day a book will be written about all this crap that’s been going on in the party leading up to the mess we are in today and history will not be kind to the consultants and their ilk who have blood on their hands both figuratively and literally!
Your comments have been very enlightening to me. Because all of my State and Congressional “Representatives” are Republicans, I need to know more about the inner workings of the NC GOP and will appreciate more updates.
I concur with Bob regarding Senator Sanders and businessman/personality Donald Trump: they are not equivalent. If one studies how the electorate thinks wealth and income is distributed vs. the reality a vast majority of Americans actually align with Senator Sanders’ views. The INDY and other publications have published stories in the past on this form of cognitive dissonance in the electorate.
Don’t be so sure that the Pope organizations and Harnett are on opposite sides these days. Word is that there was a clash between Harnett and Poole over the hiring of Kristen Laster, late of Southern Strategies and the Stewart Group, as the NCGOP Finance Director. Supposedly, Poole made a public announcement of her hiring, along with a couple of other hires, after having been instructed by Harnett not to do so until after a meeting of the NCGOP Central Committee, so that other candidates could be discussed.
Accounts of the meeting had the new Chair and Vice Chair on one side, with Poole and RNC Committeeman David Lewis on another. Evidently Poole felt he could buck his boss if he had backup from the people who were backing Harnett’s defeated opponent. Seems he was wrong, and now he’s checking the classified ads.
With regard to the Pope organizations, Civitas has asked the State BOE to investigate North Carolina Clean Energy Business Alliance PAC, which lists Kristen Laster as Treasurer, likely due to concerns about a conflict of interest. Since it seems Harnett didn’t want her working on Hillsborough Street to begin with, she may be the next to depart.
Not really surprised that Todd Poole left. Am sure that their ED works at the pleasure of the Chair the same way the NCDP ED does. And am sure that all the donors and others who got Harnett into office wanted someone they could trust to launder the money through NC GOP the same way the donors and big shots wanted their own money-laundering watch-dog at NCDP.
But Harnett’s voting record is VERY INTERESTING!
https://www.ncsbe.gov/webapps/voter_search/voter_details.aspx?voter_reg_num=000030039765&county=13
11/04/2014 GENERAL IN-PERSON CABARRUS
05/06/2014 PRIMARY IN-PERSON CABARRUS REPUBLICAN
11/05/2013 MUNICIPAL IN-PERSON CABARRUS
11/06/2012 GENERAL IN-PERSON CABARRUS
11/04/2008 GENERAL ABS-1STOP CABARRUS
05/06/2008 PRIMARY ABS-1STOP CABARRUS DEMOCRATIC
and calling Cabarrus County BOE for more detailed info, he first registered to vote AS A DEMOCRAT in Cabarrus County on 10/26/2005. Their records don’t indicate where he was registered to vote BEFORE registering in NC – other than there is no record in any of NC’s 99 other counties.
His voting history (like a few other party chairs at different levels) is somewhat spotty. After registering as a Democrat, Harnett didn’t vote in Cabarrus County or any other county in NC for nearly three years – in the May 2008 in the Democratic Primary. He then voted in the 2008 General Election, and then had a 4 year dry-spell – not voting again until the 2012 General Election.
Although he changed party affiliation (from D to R) on June 24, 2010, he didn’t vote in the 2010 General election, the 2011 municipal election, and the the 2012 primary election. After voting in the 2012 General election, Harnettvoted in the 2013 Municipal elections, and then in the 2014 Primary and General elections.
Why would anyone take seriously any candidate for party office who had such a terrible voting record – and had been a member of an opposing party not long ago? I understand the whole Tea Party thing, but wonder why the consultants aren’t taking control like they are at NCDP? Can he be that good of a figurehead for the NC GOP to handle the money-laundering that all the less than racially tolerant folks that make up the GOP base will accept him?
Chris if you look at the FEC report for Obama for America you will a Hasan Harnett as a payee.
gotta link for that? don’t have time to look up all this stuff on line.
Agree with most of this, but I’m getting tired of seeing “Donald Trump” and “Bernie Sanders” equated as equally far-out and appealing to the fringes. Trump, beyond his misogyny and narcissism, is … well, hard to get past his main traits. Bernie is the opposite of Trump, a guy who didn’t chase the money but did chase the dream of a better country, and is now being heard by thousands (millions) who share that dream and haven’t given up either.
I would hardly call Todd an adult if you look at his past…
http://dailyhaymaker.com/?p=5981
Former NCDP Executive Director, Casey Mann, and I knew Todd Poole and worked with him on some issues of mutual interests and concern. We were able to get Todd Poole and Claude Pope, the NCGOP Chairman, to support non-partisan contributions to each parties “building fund”, which essentially keeps the lights on at each HQ. I secured the first contribution that supported both headquarters. We also met to discuss how both parties could work together to find a replacement for tax check off funds, since its elimination was deleterious to the NCDP and the NCGOP. And although we differed greatly on a number of issues Todd and Claude were reasonable folks and we all agreed that we wanted to make North Carolina a better place for everyone. I even interviewed Claude Pope on the air at WIDU last October for my Tuesday show. Good luck, Todd.
Both myself, and I surely suspect other Democrats in the State of North Carolina would like to know more about “non-partisan contributions to each parties “building fund”, which essentially keeps the lights on at each HQ.”