Conventional wisdom held that the moment Larry Kissell unseated Robin Hayes in NC-08, the Repubs would throw everything that wasn't nailed down at this Charlotte-to-Fayetteville district. Well, the way it looks down here, the Repubs are instead in the process of tearing each other apart--and handing Kissell another term.
The Republican primary is headed for a runoff--a classic contest between a standard-issue Repub and a teabagger. The teabagger, Tim D'Annunzio, a businessman from near Fayetteville, won the first round. However, D'Annunzio makes Rand Paul look halfway reasonable. He wants to abolish at least 10 Cabinet agencies, for starters. He's also a 200 percent rabid Christianist who is a member of a Latter Rain-oriented church and regularly posts dominionist rants on his blog, Christ's War. Largely because of this and a checkered past, the state and national GOP establishment has a thumb on the scale in favor of the first round runner-up, Harold Johnson, a former sportscaster at WSOC-TV in Charlotte who moved from Statesville to Concord in order to run for the district.
All this has D'Annunzio making noises that, to my mind, point to a Doug Hoffman-style third-party run if he loses the runoff.
Yesterday, several teabaggers picketed the state GOP headquarters in response to the state and national establishment lining up so publicly behind Johnson. They're particularly upset that state party chairman Tom Fetzer went as far as to tell the Charlotte Observer that D'Annunzio was "unfit for office at any level."
D'Annunzio's response, to my mind, was a sign that he doesn't plan to support Johnson should he lose on June 22.
"The Republicans ought to be worried about the Republican Party," he said. "This is why the Republican Party has seen its day ... Both parties have seen their day."
He also recently pulled out of a debate with Johnson after claiming that the media was in cahoots with him to attack him. This after the Observer and other outlets dug up some pretty bizarre statements he made in court filings after his 1994 conversion. For instance, in a 1995 divorce case, his ex-wife said that he believed God would drop a giant pyramid on Greenland. And in a 1998 child-support case, he called the government the Antichrist. What's the matter, Tim? Don't like the media actually doing its job?
The way it stands now, one of three things is likely to happen--either one of which, in my view, will make this Kissell's race to lose.
- Johnson wins the runoff, and D'Annunzio's supporters stay home for the general.
- Johnson wins the runoff, and D'Annunzio launches a third-party bid. He certainly has the money to do it--he lent his campaign $1 million of his own money at one stretch.
- D'Annunzio wins the runoff, and the national Repubs keep him at arm's length.
This is shaping up to be yet another instance of Repubs giving a seat away--or in this case, kicking away a race that should be halfway competitive.