So I've noticed a pattern in the races I've been covering for a while. It's always a very few specific factors that determines who will win their races. In the case of the 2014 North Carolina U.S. Senate race, the two factors are voter ID laws and a Libertarian candidate. First, here's the latest news on North Carolina's voter ID laws aimed to suppress minority and youth voters:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
A federal judge will be asked on Monday to block key provisions of North Carolina's overhauled voter law, including fewer early voting days and the elimination of same-day registration, from remaining in effect for November's midterm elections.
The groups challenging the law argue the court needs to act ahead of a full trial next year to ensure no eligible voters, particularly African Americans, are denied or restricted of their right to cast a ballot.
Attorneys for the state have countered that some of the electoral changes were in place for the primary election in North Carolina in May and results showed no disproportionate hardships being imposed on minority voters.
North Carolina is among several states forced to defend changes to voting protocol, including whether requiring voters to show photo identification is constitutional. Judges have handed a string of victories to challengers in recent months, overturning voter ID laws in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arkansas.
The photo ID requirement adopted last year by North Carolina's Republican-led legislature takes effect in 2016. But critics say it already has caused confusion and want election workers barred from discussing it at the polls this fall.
Challengers also will ask U.S. District Judge Thom Schroeder in Winston-Salem this week to put on hold parts of the law that shorten the early voting period by seven days, ban same-day registration and end a program allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote.
The changes were designed to discourage minority voters, who typically vote Democratic, from going to the polls, argue groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Justice Department. - Reuters, 7/7/14
North Carolina House Speaker and current U.S. Senate candidate, Thom Tillis (R. NC), was instrumental in getting these voter suppression tactics pushed through. This, plus his latest remarks about minorities in North Carolina, should give him plenty of reasons to be sweating heavily:
http://www.salon.com/...
Last month in Mississippi, in an attempt to stave off a Tea Party challenger, Republican Sen. Thad Cochran appealed to African-American voters in his state and won his runoff primary. If Cochran’s successful outreach to African-American voters were replicated by the rest of his party, the political consequences could be significant. But no one should hold their breath.
To get a sense of why Cochran’s effort will not be the norm for the Republican Party any time soon, look at North Carolina’s GOP Senate nominee, Thom Tillis. The state representative recently said African-American and Latino populations were growing faster than “traditional populations” — a comment that not only reeks of racial dog-whistles but also demonstrates a misunderstanding of history.
Tillis’ campaign responded to the ensuing backlash by saying “traditional” refers to groups that have been in North Carolina for a few generations. What his campaign ignores is that its definition aptly describes African-Americans, who have been in the Tar Heel State for more than a few generations, albeit not by their own accord. North Carolina did not have as large a slave trade as neighboring Southern colonies, but by 1767, there were more than 40,000 slaves in the colony with 90 percent of them doing agricultural work. Tillis’ whitewashing of slaves from history has a long tradition. Even the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university and called the University of the People, had slaves almost since its inception.
In 1715 slave codes in the early colony prevented slaves from meeting in groups, even for religious ceremonies, and from leaving their master’s properties, and required slaves to carry a ticket whenever they left the plantation. In the 1800s, laws were so restrictive that runaways were forced to wear iron collars when hired out and even free black men were forbidden to preach and slaves were forbidden to learn how to read and write by other slaves. Because they were not considered part of the white power structure, African-Americans could be disregarded as pure property and not as humans.
Of course, the end of slavery was not the end of the injustices faced by African-American North Carolinians. Under Jim Crow laws, blacks and whites were forbidden from exchanging textbooks. After the decision of Brown v. Board of Education, North Carolina’s Legislature tried to work around integration through a plan that recommended the state consider applications to pay private school tuition grants to parents of children assigned to integrated schools.
Perhaps most disturbing, though, was the amount of forced sterilizations African-Americans went through in the state. According to the Charlotte Observer, between 1955 and 1966, 80 percent of the people sterilized in Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, were African-American under the auspices that living conditions were so poor in low-income neighborhoods.
It is in this context that Tillis’ remarks must be understood. He is excluding African-Americans from the narrative because they aren’t part of who he generally thinks of as belonging in the state. - Salon, 7/7/14
Tillis is the face of the insanely radical and deeply unpopular GOP controlled General Assembly. Tillis has already given North Carolina voters plenty of reasons not to vote for him but the voter ID laws have enraged minority voters and youth voters and his comments on race are sure to motivate Black and Latino voters to come to the polls.
The other factor that will be a headache for Tillis is this guy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The Libertarian Party candidates running for U.S. Senate seats this year don’t fit the typical profile of a politician. One is a pizza delivery guy with a taste for microbrews. One is a former Republican legislator from another state. Another is an arctic biology field station camp manager. And a fourth has a criminal record.
But taken together, the candidates who have achieved ballot access in 11 states with competitive Senate contests have the potential to sway control of the chamber at large. In close contests, even a handful of votes one way or the other can alter an outcome. Karen Tumulty and I take a look at the broader dynamics at play in today’s paper, but here’s a closer look at some of the Libertarian contenders on the ballot this year:
North Carolina: Sean Haugh has run for office five times before, never successfully. He’s a pizza deliveryman who’s raised about $4,000, including one-tenth of a bitcoin. And in four recent surveys, Haugh has pulled between 8 and 11 percentage points, enough to make a big difference in the race between Sen. Kay Hagan (D) and state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R). - Washington Post, 7/6/14
It was evident in PPP's last poll that Haugh is taking away votes from Tillis and this should have the GOP nervous:
http://www.mediaite.com/...
By night, Sean Haugh is a pizza deliveryman; but by day, the man films YouTube videos waxing poetic about government spending, war, abortion, same-sex marriage, etc., while gulping from a pint glass bearing the image of libertarian icon and Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard.
While his videos have barely made a dent in viewership, WaPo reports that his campaign is pulling between 8 and 11 percent of voter support, putting him in a position to affect the outcome of the race. One polling director told the paper that if the election comes down to a one- or two-point margin, Haugh could ultimately hand the seat to Hagan.
With Hagan’s current polling lead between one and four points, I can already hear it now come November: Partisan Republicans attack libertarians for helping hand a Democrat retain her seat by sucking voters away from the GOP.
It happened last year when Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe by a slight margin. Partisan blowhards of the usual variety blamed Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis for the GOP loss, despite it being mathematically impossible for Sarvis to have cost Cuccinelli the election.
So what actually costs the GOP the vote? Not offering better candidates that appeal to the disillusionment voters feel on both sides of the aisle. That’s the main reason libertarianism has seen a rise in prominence over the last 5-7 years.
And yet it does feel like while libertarian-leaning Republicans like Rand Paul and Justin Amash have taken the spotlight in recent years, there really might be no room for a wide-scale acceptance of more tried-and-true libertarians in the GOP. - Mediaite, 7/7/14
Karl Rove, the Kochs and Art Pope will all spend even more money now to buy Senator Kay Hagan's (D. NC) seat because theya re in panic mode. We have to be ready for them. Click here to donate and get involved with Hagan's re-election campaign:
http://www.kayhagan.com/