Duane Hall is dropping flyers and robocalls in his district. What they could say to allay the disgust of progressive voters, I do not know. I am not convinced he knows. But he clearly wants his political career to continue.
This is narcissistic delusion. Hall was never the political talent he thought he was, hence why a former legislator eclipsed his US Senate trial balloon. (A woman, by the way.) He hasn’t been on the scene long enough to have earned staying power. Few allies exist within his party, and progressive opposition to him is hardening daily.
The 2020 field for lieutenant governor will be crowded. Politicians covet the position, now more so than ever as Dan Forest has demonstrated the office’s potential. Few, hopefully none, of Hall’s rivals will be burdened by ethical allegations. Most Democratic primary voters will be women. Unless sexual-propriety norms go into reverse, Hall has no political future.
Representative Hall–who should already be former Representative Hall–seems to think he can survive by copying the Bill Clinton model. Clinton weathered a long storm of sexual harassment allegations, and emerged from the maelstrom as president. Hall should not expect the same fate for himself. He isn’t a tenth of Clinton, talent-wise. More importantly, Democratic Party norms have shifted so decisively that even the former president himself has been repudiated by star figures.
Why, then, does Hall insist on staying in? Almost no one believes his defenses–and it is unlikely anyone ever will. The longer this scandal lingers in the news, the more his private-sector client base will erode. He has already damaged the lives of women, and now, ironically, his obstinacy in clinging to a failed political career is bringing harm to his own life. An odd justice indeed.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
I would have thought the Governor would re-issue his call for Hall to resign if he feels strongly aobut this, but he hasn’t as far as I can tell. I expected to hear an avalanche of harrassment allegations after the governor and others called for his resignation, but nothing more came out. I asked a lot of people who should know if he was a harrasser. The worst I heard was lasvicious behaviour, not harrassment. Hall has carried a lot of progressive water for education, the environment, and the courts. I’m in his district and I will certainly vote for him over a Republican if he wins his primary. I probably won’t vote for either of the candidates in the primary as his opponent has no experience in politics.
Fair points, although we seem to disagree about the endgame.
Perhaps you missed the standing ovation Rep. Hall received at the last meeting of the Wake County Democratic Women. Those stalwart Democratic women do not believe in “guilty until proven innocent”, and Hall has paid his dues side-by-side with them in the Party trenches for years.
If Rep Hall is destroying himself and is “already out”, why do you feel the need to write this article?
It looks to me like you think Rep Hall will win re-election. After all, the story has already dropped completely out of the news due to the unwillingness of the victims to actually pursue the matter, and Hall’s incumbency, along with his Progressive advocacy, makes him a near shoe-in.
It will be interesting to see if McCarthyite tactics CAN result in a political death sentence for an incumbent legislator who chooses to defend himself – without any actual legal proceedings, no opportunity to face ones accusers, and a burden of proof that consists of a simple declaration that “he made me uncomfortable” so case closed. “Odd justice indeed” – under those circumstances, it is difficult to imagine any man alive that could successfully defend himself.
I also find it fascinating that in my own informal discussions with my peers, the older and more experienced a person is, the less they are inclined to declare “off with his head”. The wise don’t seem to want to summarily pass judgement for some reason.
The strangest thing to me is that for all the talk of women’s empowerment, girl power, and “the old ways are over”, we still seem to be in a 1950’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” situation where women somehow require special extra-judicial protection from those who “give them the vapors”. And where there are still plenty of men who are willing to forget that there is a justice system, and go vigilante on their behalf, to insure that “street justice is done”.
That was quite an impressive smackdown. I would ask you whether Governor Roy Cooper counts as “wise.”
No, I think the way I would describe Gov. Cooper is “cautious to a fault”.
Have to agree here. Whether it be Hall or someone like Roy Moore, I’m stunned that we’ve come full circle in 400 years from the Salem witch trials to today where simple allegations alone and with no hard evidence, by-pass indictment and trial and goes straight to conviction and sentencing. At least the poor victims of those hysterical accusations 400 years ago, got something resembling a trial, albeit with a foreordained outcome.