Time for the NCGOP to rewrite the rules again
Digby has a post prepped for later today on Republican sore-loserism in Georgia (based on a Rolling Stone piece). It’s the sort of tactic with which we are well familiar next door in North Carolina. It’s simply this: If Republicans lose under established election rules, change the rules.
Judd Legum spotlights the latest Republican effort in North Carolina to tip the governor’s race in favor of Lt. Gov. Mark “Choking on my own blood” Robinson, the freaky Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist. He’s trailing in fundraising behind the state’s Attorney General Josh Stein (D).
“The most recent campaign finance reports show that Stein has raised over $19 million, with $12.7 million cash on hand,” Legum begins. “Robinson, however, has raised less than $11 million and has $4.5 million in cash.”
Time to change the rules:
Republicans in the North Carolina legislature have responded by introducing legislation that would dramatically alter the state’s campaign finance rules in the middle of an election.
Under existing North Carolina campaign finance law, corporations and labor unions cannot contribute directly or indirectly to state campaigns or committees. This prevents the main national fundraising vehicles for gubernatorial campaigns — the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) and the Republican Governors Association (RGA) — from donating to North Carolina political committees. These committees, known as 527s, accept unlimited contributions from corporations and individuals.
The changes proposed by North Carolina Republicans would allow the RGA and the DGA (or any other 527) to donate unlimited amounts to any “[s]tate, district, or county executive committee of any political party or an affiliated party committee.” Should these changes become law, the only requirement is that the 527s must create two “accounts”—one accepting corporate money and another accepting individual donations in any amount. The Republican proposal would allow the 527s to donate unlimited amounts to North Carolina committees from the account that accepts individual donations.
Bob Hall, a veteran North Carolina campaign finance expert, explained that the new rules would allow “wealthy individuals with new ways to give tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars to support a North Carolina candidate without their name being identified with the donation.”
Didn’t see that coming, didja?
Anonymity is important to deep-pocketed donors committed to maintaining Republican control but who don’t want their fingerprints on money supporting Mr. “It’s not your body anymore.”
In June 2021, for example, Robinson called LGBTQ people “filth” and said exposure to LGBTQ people and issues in schools was child abuse. In a sermon later that year, Robinson said “straight” couples were “superior” to same-sex couples and compared being gay to “what the cows leave behind.” Robinson has also called LGBTQ people “devil-worshiping child molesters”
On Facebook, Robinson repeatedly minimized the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. “I am so sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were,” Robinson wrote on Facebook in 2017. He accused unknown forces of “pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years.”
In 2019, Robinson said that abortion rights were “not about protecting the lives of mothers” but “about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” Robinson said women choose to have an abortion so that they can keep living “on easy street” and “keep running to the club every Friday night.” He favors an abortion ban from the moment of conception.
The ad above is part of a seven-figure buy by Stein’s campaign, NBC News reports:
“Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers,” Robinson says in the clip used in the ad. “It is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”
(You might send Robinson a message about that via Stein at ActBlue. )
By any means necessary
Gerrymandering, of course, is an age-old tradition in which both major parties partake to gain advantage. Gotta credit Republicans for their 2010 REDMAP program to flip legislatures all over the place ahead of 2011 redicstricting. But since the election of the first Black president, they’ve really taken their game to the next level (or two) in states David Pepper calls “Laboratories of Autocracy.”
Democrats have been playing Whac-A-Mole ever since against some deviously clever efforts to squeeze every advantage out of existing rules and rule tweaks. From strategically starving blue cities of revenue to purging voter rolls to erecting barriers to voter registration to making voting itself harder to Thomas Hofeller’s computer-aided gerrymandering to trying to rig the 2020 census, the GOP has pulled out all the stops. Lest we forget, they instigated a violent insurrection after losing the 2020 presidential election. We have to implement these changes, Republicans insist, to restore public confidence in election integrity (their buzzword) that they’ve spent relentless decades undermining.
Dramatically altering North Carolina’s campaign finance rules is just another clever tweak. Watch for that mole to pop up its head in your Republican-controlled state.
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