An email circulated last Thursday by Matt Bales, political director for the NC state legislature’s GOP House caucus (and quickly leaked to the tealiban Daily Haymaker blog) reveals a state party in panic over the prospect of losing its nearly decade-long control of the state’s lower house.
Bales’ pearl-clutching memo warns GOP legislators:
Last night, there was a special election in Pennsylvania [….] The outcome is yet another example of the Democratic base being fired up and the Republicans not turning out their voters. The momentum on the Democratic side is real [….]
Based on last night’s results, here is the 2019 makeup of the NC General Assembly:
Democrat Seats = 74
Republican Seats = 46
The looming outcome Bales warns of for November would represent not merely a loss of the GOP’s current veto-proof super-majority in the state House, but a literal revolution, flipping the body head-over-heels from its current R:75 / D:45 composition.
Bales’ memo listed 23 especially vulnerable incumbent House Republicans (whose districts supported Trump in 2016 by 20 points or less), including some of the most despised GOP legislators in the state:
Rep. Speciale, Rep. L. Johnson, Rep. Szoka, Rep. Hardister, Rep. Faircloth, Rep. Conrad, Rep. Yarborough, Rep. Riddell, Rep. Davis, Rep. Pittman, Rep. Grange, Rep. Clampitt, Rep. Sauls, Rep. Lambeth, Rep. Brisson, Rep. Jordan, Rep. Murphy, Rep. Brawley, Rep. Ross, Rep. Bradford, Rep. Dollar, Rep. Stone, Rep. Dulin
Notables named on Bales forward-looking butcher’s bill include the always headline-grabbing representatives Michael Speciale and Larry Pittman. Pittman recently achieved his fifteen minutes of nationwide fame by declaring in a Facebook post (since deleted) that the alleged Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass murderer was part of a conspiracy by Democrats to “push for gun control so they can more easily take over the country.” In 2016, Pittman responded to the Orlando Pulse mass murder in an equally meatheaded manner, authoring a proposed state constitutional amendment to do away with the state’s permit requirement for ‘good guys’ wishing to carry concealed firearms in public. Pittman also recently compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler in yet another inspiring Facebook post.
Endangered state house representative Speciale, in contrast, is an aspiring constitutional scholar, whose long legislative career has focused on authoring state constitutional amendments that even his Republican colleagues won’t take up for votes, such as his failed bills last year to remove the prohibition against secession from the state constitution and to (once again) ban same sex marriage in the state. He recently dismissed women’s marches across the state and the nation as “a joke.” Speciale, a Marine veteran, holds an associate of arts degree from Craven Community College and, in his day-job, works behind the counter of a local welding supply store.
Most serious political observers in the state still doubt the likelihood of the lopsided November revolution forewarned by Bales in his memo, but many feel increasingly confident of breaking the Republican super-majority this November (thus handing Democratic governor Roy Cooper a veto pen with some ink in it). And essentially no one doubts that state Republicans will lose seats in the coming election.
Among not-serious political observers, NC-GOP executive director, Dallas Woodhouse, in a tweet last night characterized Bales’ doom and gloom scenario as “not accurate:”
I believe democrats will pick up legislative seats, but NCGOP will retain majorities large enough to govern.
No word yet regarding Woodhouse’s definition of the word ‘govern.’
