Carolina Politics Online

Since the Nov. 4 election, thousands of people have flooded gun dealers because of the belief that an Obama presidency - backed by Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress - will bring tighter gun control laws. After seeing that Obama supports making permanent the 1994 assault weapon ban, gun lovers are determined to beat him to the punch.

The result has been Christmas come early for dealers. Jim’s Gun Jobbery in Fayetteville sold more guns on a recent Saturday than on last year’s Christmas Eve, typically one of the busiest days of the year.

The Sun News

This doens’t surprise me.  Barack Obama’s record on guns is abysmal.  He has supported just about every gun control or confiscatory law that he has voted for in his political career.  The assault weapons ban was a joke to begin with.  The classification of what makes a gun an assault weapon has mostly to do with the grip, not the amount or speed of rounds that are fired from it.  Furthermore, only about 3% of gun crimes were committed with so called assault weapons prior to the 1994 ban which expired a few years back.

The local Republican Party is protesting the results of this month’s Cumberland County commissioner race, arguing that thousands of voters used fictitious or incorrect addresses.

GOP Chairman Ralph Reagan is calling for a new election in the commissioner race. He said a customized database comparing addresses of registered voters with information from by the Postal Service shows thousands of discrepancies.

Among the alleged problems, he said, were voter registrations with streets that don’t exist in Cumberland County or incorrect address numbers. In many cases involving the questionable votes, he said, people moved somewhere else before their ballot was cast.

The Fayetteville Observer

Votes with fraudulent addresses and registrations where people no longer lived should be thrown out most certainly, but I don’t support the idea of a new election.  The issue can be resolved by eliminating the bad ballots.  I think Reagan is calling for a new election because he knows it would favor his party without the Obama momentum as a factor.

Over the weekend, Harris apologized to the girl’s parents, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Thompson and Angela Moore. She also apologized to their daughter and to the Cumberland County school system.

Moore said Harris has nothing to apologize for.

“She made a truth known,” Moore said Monday. “Our daughter knows what her dad does and is in support of her dad.”

Sgt. Thompson said he is angry, but not at Harris, whom he praised as a dedicated educator.

“Whoever put that clip together, I am very upset with,” Thompson said on Fayetteville gospel radio station WIDU-AM. “I’m just sickened by the thought that somebody would take a minor child to exploit their views on a political situation, the way they have.”

Thompson and Moore said the videotaped classroom discussion has been blown out of proportion by bloggers and the news media.

“After talking with my child, she didn’t have a problem with it,” Thompson said. “So I don’t see why anybody else should.”

Moore said she wishes Harris could teach her daughter for the rest of her schooldays.

The Fayetteville Observer

So as I have been saying all week, this isn’t at all what it seemed.  The girl’s parents are not upset and they think rather highly of Ms Harris evidently.  People need to let this go and move on.

The producer of a film that features a former Asheville schoolteacher talking presidential politics in the classroom defended the teacher in an interview today.

Swedish filmmaker Folke Ryden said teacher Diantha Harris was “exaggerating” when she told a child her father would stay in the military for 100 years if McCain won the election.

Bloggers are off the mark in saying Harris was “belittling” a child during the May lesson in her Cumberland County classroom, he said.

Harris is a dedicated teacher who used humor – like saying “Oh Lord” and “Oh Jesus” when the fifth-grader said she supported McCain.

That language was intended to fire up her class and engage students in a discussion, Ryden said in a telephone interview from Sweden.

Asheville Citizen-Times

Like I said in the other post, there may have been more to this other than what is seen in the video.  Yeah, this guy could just be saying this to cover the teacher’s ass, although what would we have to gain from it.  The girl in the video was definitely uncomfortable by what the teach was telling her and I don’t think the teacher went about this discussion the right way, but I don’t get the impression watching this video that she was intentionally trying to belittle the girl or berate her.  There was nothing mean spirited about her attitude.

This is really why unless you’re teaching a political science class politics should just be left out of the classroom.

The teacher is Diantha Harris. Use your own judgment.  I think it’s clear that the child was definitely uncomfortable, but we didn’t hear the entire conversation.  The video was edited. She may not be the bully that some on the right are depicting her as.

It’s not just the next President we’re electing on Tuesday; we’ve got all kinds of races going on in both states from the U.S. Senate down to your local school board.  I have put together a list of state and Federal races that should be carefully followed Tuesday night as I imagine they will be close.

• President - Obviously everyone knows we’ll be choosing our next President.  I think John McCain is going to carry both North and South Carolina, North by a hair and South easily, however I think Barack Obama will end up becoming the next President.
• NC US Senate Race - This has been a brutal race between Elizabeth Dole and Kay Hagan.  I think Hagan is going to emerge the victor in this in no small part by the Dole campaign’s “Godless” ad.  I think that hurt Dole more than Hagan.
• NC Gubernatorial Race - Another nail biter, but I think and pray that Pat McCrory ends up the next governor and I am going to make a very bold prediction here.  I think his Lt Governor will end up being Democrat Walter Dalton, not Pittenger.  McCrory has been leading by three or four points in the last few polls that have come out.  If people really are change oriented as they claim then McCrory should prevail.  He is the candidate of sorely needed change in Raleigh.
• NC 5th Congressional District - Virginia Foxx has received a tougher than anticipated challenge from Roy Carter, but I think Foxx will be reelected.
• NC 8th Congressional District - If Robin Hayes pulls out a reelection victory Tuesday night I will be stunned.  I just don’t see it and I think that Larry Kissell will be the 8th District’s new Congressman.  I think this will be the only Congressional District to flip in both states.
• NC Auditor General - I think Les Merritt will be okay, but it will be a close victory.  As I have stated in recent days, voters would be doing a disservice to themselves by replacing him.  He is the only watchdog the people have had against the majority party in Raleigh.
• NC Labor Commissioner - I think Cherie Berry is going to lose.  I think people will make a mental connection between Labor Commissioner and a soured economy.  They have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but when you think of a bad economy you think of job losses, hence labor, and people tend to relate to Democrats better than Republicans on labor issues.
• NC Senate District 9 - I think Julia Boseman will come out on top in this one, but I still expect a close race considering the money that has been spent on it on both sides.
• NC Senate District 25 - Tony Foriest just won this seat in 2006 and faces a challenge from Rick Gunn to take the seat back for the GOP.  I think Foriest will get reelected.
• NC Senate DIstrict 46 - This is Walter Dalton’s Senate seat that he is vacating to run for Lieutenant Governor.  This should be a Republican pickup.  It’s fairly conservative and has leaned Republican for some time now, but Dalton has hung on due to incumbency and having a more conservative voting record.
• SC Senate District 10 - This is John Drummond’s seat and he decided to retire after many years in public service.  The seat is being strongly contested on both sides with Dee Compton as the Republican candidate and Greenwood Mayor Floyd Nicholson on the Democratic ticket.  This has the potential to go either way, but I think the Democrats will hold this seat.
• SC Senate District 25 - I think this will be the closest race of all of them.  Republican Shane Massey won this seat last year in a special election after the former Democratic Senator Tommy Moore resigned from the Senate for a more lucrative career opportunity.  This seat actually leans slightly Democratic, but Massey has never really stopped campaigning since he won it.  He faces Democrat Greg Anderson.  This is too close for me to make a call on how this will turn out.
• SC House District 115 - Wallace Scarborough almost lost his seat in 2006 when his challenger came within a little over 300 votes of him.  He faces another strong challenge this year from Anne Peterson Hutto, but I think Scarborough is going to hang on by a larger margin than ‘06.

A Fayetteville man shot and wounded an intruder who was breaking into his apartment, then performed first aid on the suspect while waiting for authorities, Fayetteville police said.

Police said Pope Air Force Sgt. Jared Johnson came home to his apartment on the 400 block of Acacia Circle about 2:30 p.m. to find two men inside.

Johnson confronted the intruders and shot one of them in the leg, police Sgt. Samuel Oates said. The man who was shot was identified as Christopher Pittman of the 7800 block of Laura Ann Court, Oates said. Pittman was charged with the break-in, police said.

The Fayetteville Observer

Johnson made one mistake.  He shot the guy in the leg.  He should have shot him in the head and killed him.  Now he runs the risk of some ambulance chasing pig with a law degree seeking out Pittman and convincing him to sue Johnson for shooting him.  It’s happened.

U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes is dealing with what could be a damaging distraction in the election’s final days – his remark about liberals hating working Americans.

“I made a mistake I should not have made,” the Concord Republican said Thursday at the Mallard Creek Barbecue. “I wasn’t thinking.”

By day’s end, Hayes had to deny a report that his own party had forsaken him. But there’s at least one sign that national Republicans aren’t as invested as they planned to be – they’ve backed off buying television time to run an independent ad in the 8th Congressional District race.

Charlotte Observer

Hayes remarks were completely stupid, no doubt.  You don’t out and say something like that when you’re running for reelection in a swing district, but what he said isn’t entirely off base.  The Obama campaign and some other leftists in Congress have made wealthy a dirty word.  Obama runs around the country making disparaging comments about successful people and he paints a picture that achieving and being rich is wrong and makes you a bad person.  Of course, Obama says that’s not what he means, but what other logical conclusion can be drawn?

On Thursday, U.S. News & World Report said it had obtained a memo that suggested House Republicans had abandoned hope for Hayes and several other GOP incumbents.

But a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee dismissed any suggestion that party leadership had discounted Hayes.

“Absolutely not. Robin Hayes is well positioned for re-election,” Ken Spain said. “Any reference to the contrary is simply not based on fact or any relevant data. This has become a race about Robin Hayes and Democrats in Washington.”

Let’s not be fools here.  If Hayes wins reelection it will be rather surprising.

Republican Rep. Robin Hayes said yesterday that he was wrong to tell voters at a John McCain rally that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.”

Hayes, a five-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, made the comment Saturday in Concord before McCain’s appearance. He is being challenged for re-election in the 8th District in south-central North Carolina by Democrat Larry Kissell, who almost beat him in 2006. “I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way,” Hayes said in a prepared statement.

Winston-Salem Journal

It doesn’t matter what Hayes says at this point.  The damage was done and Hayes is going to be retired from Congress in two weeks.  This has become Kissell’s race to lose.

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

Many of the damaged vehicles were parked on Wilkes Road. Representatives from Obama and Sen. John McCain’s campaigns said they were unaware of the acts.

The Fayetteville Observer

State Rep. Margaret Dickson said Wednesday that North Carolina’s budget is heading for a shortfall because of the international financial crisis.

Gov. Mike Easley has directed agencies to hold back 2 percent in spending to minimize some of the impact, Dickson said.

Although no decision to eliminate funding has been made, Dickson said, state monies going to programs, including the Military Business Center at Fayetteville Technical Community College, are being reassessed.

Dickson’s remarks came as part of a state House District 44 debate with Republican Lou Huddleston at Fayetteville State University.

Huddleston blamed the potential budget woes on “wasteful spending” that, if elected, he vowed to change.

“We were going to face a shortfall before this crisis,” said Huddleston to the approximately 50 people listening in Shaw Auditorium. “I simply don’t think they have been good stewards of the taxpayer’s dollars.”

The Fayetteville Observer

Dickson is partially correct.  The economy as a whole effects everyone down to the average citizen and that in turn effects state revenues.  However, Mr. Huddleston also points out an unflattering fact about business in Raleigh and that is they spend too much money on waste, earmarks, and large government bureaucracies.  The Senate Budget proposed for 2008 increased spending over 13%.  It’s the same issue here in South Carolina with our legislature.  Columbia spending has increased over 40% in the past four years and we are facing a budget crisis worse than North Carolina.  If legislators in both states had been more fiscally responsible when the economy was up they wouldn’t have to be scrambling to fix their finances while it’s down.

It’s 49% for second-time challenger Larry Kissell (D), 41% for fifth-term US Rep. Robin Hayes (R), says a SurveyUSA poll taken in the Tar Heel State’s 8th District (Concord, etc.) on October 4-5 for Roll Call newspaper. The poll is in line with a Democratic poll, taken September 28-29 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which gave Kissell a 54% to 43% lead. In 2006, Hayes edged out Kissell by a razor-thin 329 votes.

Southern Political Report

The news is bad for Hayes this year and it keeps getting worse.  With the election clearly having moved towards Obama’s favor and his lead growing in some polls it’s looking less likely that Hayes is going to hang on again like he did in ‘06.

The NRCC sent out a press release this morning accusing Larry Kissell of not supplying his campaign staffers with workers’ compensation insurance as required by North Carolina law.

But a review of the database from the North Carolina Industrial Commission shows no record of Kissell having workers’ compensation coverage for his employees - placing him in violation of North Carolina law.

According to the last Federal Election Commission (FEC) report, Kissell had six employees on payroll

I went to the North Carolina Industrial Commission’s Q&A Web site and found the following information regarding which employers are required to provide this insurance to their employees.  Here is what it says:

In order to determine if you are required by law to carry workers’ compensation insurance, you must first determine your business entity, i.e., sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), corporation, agricultural operation, business with radiation, estate, trust, etc.

If you are a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, estate, or trust, you are required by law to carry coverage once you have three (3) employees who are regularly employed, in addition to the sole proprietor, partners, formulators of the LLC, executor of the estate, and bearer of the trust. It does not matter if these employees are full time, part time, regular seasonal or family members.

If you are incorporated, including all forms of corporations and those which have non-profit status, you are required by law to carry coverage once you have a total of three (3) people in the corporation. Everyone is included in the headcount, including corporate officers.

Businesses with radiation are required by law to carry coverage when they have one (1) employee. An agricultural operation must carry coverage when there are ten (10) or more regular, non-seasonal employees. Any other business entity not mentioned above would use the three (3) or more employees rule.

Being that Kissell for Congress is not an agricultural operation, it would appear that Kissell is indeed required to have this compensation if he has at least three employees.  The press release lists six employees on hand for Kissell and point to an article in The Fayetteville Observer discussing Kissell’s hiring of five campaign workers back in June.

I went to the North Carolina Industrial Commission’s online database and when I do a generic search just on Kissell under employer I get 12 hits, but none are for Kissell’s campaign.  If you put in Robin Hayes he does come up, as does Heath Shuler and others.

It would appear that these allegations against Kissell are true, unless his campaign can come up with some kind of tangible proof that they haven’t skirted the law here.  If indeed he has, where is the law enforcement?

I received the following press release from the NRCC:

For Immediate Release: Contact: Press Office
September 25, 2008 (202) 479-7070*

Kissell Still Coming Up Empty on Energy

No Drilling, No Solutions

Washington - Despite an ongoing energy crisis in North Carolina and across the country, Larry Kissell adamantly insists that all will be wall as long as the country comes together to agree on a mysterious program, the details of which he refuses to divulge. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hit the North Carolina airwaves with an ad attacking Kissell’s opponent on energy, but no one not even Kissell himself can seem to figure out Kissell’s so-called energy plan.

Kissell likes to spin his non-plan as a solution to the country’s energy crisis, but every time he opens his mouth, it’s clear that he has little to offer the North Carolina voters who struggle with high gas prices every day.

When discussing the energy crisis at a campaign event, Kissell insisted upon giving a non-answer to a question about his non-plan:

Larry Kissell: We’ve got to have a program, not just bits and pieces.

Audience Member: Well what is your program?

Kissell: To pull everybody together and create a program that works.

Though Kissell refused to give any answer about what his “program” actually entails, his appearance
on WDYT Charlotte’s Mornings with Jon Robinson spells out a clear picture of just how big of a disaster Kissell’s energy non-agenda would be for North Carolina.

Jon Robinson: You mentioned energy. How about, would you support offshore exploration for natural gas off the North Carolina coast.

Larry Kissell: (Interrupting) No.

Robinson: or oil refineries…

Kissell: (Interrupting) No.

Robinson: What’s that?

Kissell: No.

Robinson: No? But you want energy independence… This is the power of the United States. What about oil refineries in the United States?

Kissell: (Interrupting) We can get it without having to do that. We do not have to sacrifice everything.

Robinson: ANWR…

Kissell: We do not have to sacrifice everything for the future, things for our kids? We’ve done enough of that already…

Robinson: So, the taxpayers have to pay more money?

Unfortunately for Kissell, this do-nothing, drill-nothing approach doesn’t hold water with North Carolina voters who demand immediate action toward lower gas prices and energy  independence.

I’m not a fan of Robin Hayes, but I am certainly not going to show Larry Kissell any support when he refuses to address this issue in a serious manner. North Carolina and the rest of the country is hurting over these high gas prices and this jackass refuses to support any common sense solutions and instead insists on speaking in platitudes about fantasy alternatives and a plan that doesn’t exist.   Kissell has so far proven that he isn’t a quality candidate for Congress and will be just another twit mucking up the works in D.C.

No thanks!  We have enough of those.

Congressman Dave Loebsack (D-IA) is giving away to various charities, campaign money he has received from the scandal plagued Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY).  Rangel has been found guilty of failing to pay thousands of dollars in taxes on income he earned from property he’s been renting out in the Domincan Republic.

According to an NRCC press release, both Daniel Johnson and Larry Kissell are still holding on to contributions given to them by Rangel for this election year.  Additionally, the NRCC accuses Kissell of having “been caught skirting tax laws before, by not paying Social Security, Unemployment or Medicare tax on any campaign worker from 2005 until June 2008–cheating his employees and North Carolina taxpayers by avoiding the payroll taxes employers are required to pay on workers.”

I don’t really think that this is that big of a deal.  When McIntyre first ran for office in 1996 he pledged to serve only six terms in the House.  It was a popular idea at the time spilling over from the 1994 elections when Republicans sweeped both the House and Senate.  Many of them ran on a three term, term limit pledge.  Some of them honored it, others didn’t.

In reality, we do have term limits in Congress.  That’s you and me and every other voter who goes to the polls every two years in Federal elections.  If we decide to keep reelecting the same representative election after election that is our decision whether wise or stupid.  If an actual Constitutional amendment were proposed, however, to implement legal term limits I would support that, but don’t hold your breath.

Of all of the companies facing major transitions over the last week, lawmakers owned the most stock in AIG. Twenty-seven lawmakers owned stock in AIG last year, worth between $6.4 million and $20 million. Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), one of the richest members of Congress, was at the top of the list of congressional investors, owning stock worth between $2.8 million and $11.5 million, while Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) followed with stock valued around $2 million.

Open Secrets

If Robin Hayes still owns this stock then he has a duty to recuse himself from voting on this bailout bill when it comes forward.  If he votes on this legislation there is a clear conflict of interest amounting to millions of dollars from your every day Joe Schmo going to bail out his investments.  As far as I’m concerned, if he were to vote for this it’s plain and pure corruption.

Two men were charged Tuesday with stealing railroad tracks.

Cumberland County sheriff’s deputies arrested 23-year-old Kenneth Ray Watts Jr. of the 1400 block Middlesbrough Drive, and 38-year-old Terry Walton Green of the 100 block of Williams Lane in Roseboro.

The pair were arrested around 7 p.m. at the CSX railroad tracks along Camden and Crystal Springs roads. They were walking along the tracks after driving a black SUV about 100 yards from the Camden Road overpass, according to a news release.

Detectives found 40 steel plates, 25 railroad spokes and five 3-foot sections of railroad tracks in the vehicle, all belonging to CSX, the release said.

The Fayetteville Observer

I wonder what the street value is of a railroad track these days.

Two years ago, U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes of the 8th District defeated Larry Kissell by 329 votes. This is the first of a two-part series in Inside Politics looking at this year’s rematch. Next week’s column focuses on Kissell.

Robin Hayes says the No. 1 issue this election is not Iraq. It’s the skyrocketing cost of gasoline.

The Republican from Concord says one way to begin lowering energy costs is to open more areas in the U.S. to drilling. The five-term incumbent agrees with President Bush and this year’s presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain, who are calling for more drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“My opponent won’t allow drilling,” Hayes said in a telephone interview.

Kissell wants oil companies to drill more on existing land leases — not in new areas of the country.

The Fayetteville Observer

I think this will be a huge issue and Republicans as well as pro-drilling Democrats can capitalize on it.  Most people really don’t understand how the oil markets work.  They just know that the price of oil is skyrocketing and costing them at the pump.  Politicians who run on a platform of opening up offshore drilling to increase supply and thus reduce the price will definitely hit home with the voters.  Kissell is foolish to oppose this in my opinion.  This isn’t an overwhelmingly left wing district and home to lots of extreme environmentalists that would support Kissell’s opposition to this.