Welcome to the 649th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today, we’ll be talking about former North Carolina House of Representatives member Rayne Brown, who served in the Tar Heel state’s legislature from 2011-2016. She did so as a member of ALEC, the conservative group that brainstorms all manner of insanely extreme hard-right legislation around the country backing her (and later getting her help in trying to block renewable energy laws in North Carolina), as well as by way of having her campaign and the North Carolina GOP send out fliers during her 2010 campaign for office that made the Willie Horton ads from 1988 look like a walk in the park. Because it wasn’t just that the legislator in question that she was accusing of being soft on crime, Hugh Holliman, actually was alright enough with capital punishment that he had watched his daughter’s murderer be executed for the crime, but that Henry McCollum, one of the two supposed murderers that Holliman’s “weak on crime” stance would not be executed would be released from prison was, in reality, innocent of the crime that he was convicted. And that Holliman’s support for the Racial Justice Act would have easily aided in the wrongful execution of McCollum.
Well, after Rayne Brown took office and established several years’ worth of votes on some of the worst state-wide legislation in the nation (more on that in a minute), Brown also decided that it was wrong that the city of Ashville, North Carolina, could have women protesting Republicans’ policies by showing up topless, as it was legal. So she thought to remedy that with the small-government solution of making it not just a criminal offense for a woman in North Carolina to have her nipple exposed, but a FELONY OFFENSE. The bill she submitted to do so died in committee, mercifully, but not before Brown became notoriously nutty.
Then again, when a legislator is willing to take out editorials to scold liberals for being… y’know, liberal…
“You are acting as willful and petulant children deprived of a treat, impotently flailing their little arms and legs about. It seems that you liberals have been hoisted on the tip of your own petard, and you don’t like it one bit. Liberals are not content to effect change by convincing others of the rightness of their cause by the force of their arguments. Government has and continues to be the instrument by which they force the rest of us to concede to their vision of the world.”
You may now be imagining what her voting record is like, and odds are, the reality is worse than you think. Her fingerprints are all over some of the worst and most notorious bills from North Carolina during her tenure:
- April 11th, 2013: Rayne Brown votes for HB 392, another of those insane GOP bills that seek to drug test welfare recipients, then lose a state a ton of money on the cost of drug testing only to find no significant drug use until lawsuits against the laws succeed to prove the law is a violation of the 4th Amendment rights of those it seeks to test.
- June 5th, 2013: Brown votes for the Repeal of the Racial Justice Act.
- July 11th, 2013: Rayne Brown votes for SB 353, an extremely restrictive anti-abortion bill that was amended by the North Carolina GOP from a motorcycle safety bill into an anti-choice measure.
- July 25th, 2013: Brown votes for HB 589, one of several “stricter Voter ID laws” North Carolina Republicans push during her tenure aimed at suppressing the vote.
- June 3rd, 2015: Rayne Brown votes for HB 465, a TRAP law aimed at creating abortion regulations so restrictive that they would effectively force the closure of all abortion clinics in the state for failing to be able to meet them.
- June 11th, 2015: Brown votes for SB 2, a bill to allow state officials to refuse to perform “certain marriage duties” if they have a “sincerely held” religious objection.
- July 21st, 2015: Responding to the South Carolina state legislature voting to remove the Confederate flag from their state capitol after the mass murder of nine African Americans at the historical Charleston AME Church, Rayne Brown is one of several North Carolina Republicans who vote for SB 22, and to make it harder to remove Confederate monuments in North Carolina.
- March 23rd, 2016: Brown votes for HB 2, North Carolina’s disastrous anti-LGBT law, and boycotts over the law cost the state well over a trillion dollars of revenue from business boycotts and the tourism industry.
North Carolina was thrilled to learn only a few months into Rayne Brown’s third term in office that she announced that she would not be running for re-election. We’re not expecting her to return to elected office any time soon, and that’s a damned good thing.
One Year Ago, February 21st, 2017: Isaac Latterell (SD)… 2017 Update
Two Years Ago. February 21st, 2016: Isaac Latterell (SD)… Original Profile
Three Years Ago, February 21st, 2015: Scott Beason (AL)