By all rights, North Carolina’s 9th congressional district should be one of the most reliably Republican seats in the House of Representatives. After all, the seat’s last Democratic holder, the unremembered Hugh Q. Alexander, was elected to the office in 1952, losing it in the tragicomically boneheaded Democratic gerrymander of 1961:
North Carolina lost a congressional district after the 1960 census, and the state legislature saw a chance to get rid of Charlotte-area congressman Charles R. Jonas, then the only Republican in the North Carolina delegation. In the process, however, they added several Republican-leaning areas to Alexander's district. The plan backfired disastrously in the 1962 elections, in which Jonas won easily in his new district and Alexander lost by less than a percentage point.
Since then the 9th, in its variously re-gerrymandered forms, has remained a coveted and cozy Republican sinecure — last home to nine-term Rep. Sue Myrick and, following her 2012 retirement, to three-term Rep. Robert Pittenger, who to universal surprise was successfully primaried last May by fundamentalist Baptist preacher Mark Harris.
Yet in the immediate aftermath of Harris’s apparent 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready on November 6th — and the immediately following election fraud investigation leading the State Board of Elections just last week to order a do-over election — state Republican strategists suddenly find themselves scraping the bottom of an empty barrel to field a replacement for the disgraced Harris, who has announced he will not run again in the special election.
There’s now a very real possibility that the state GOP may find it simply impossible to field anything more than an utterly hopeless placeholder candidate in the upcoming special, thus effectively ceding the GOP’s NC09 turf to Democrats.
In this new series of diaries I’ll be introducing you to all the best of the many utterly rotten choices the NC-GOP faces as it searches for a new white knight to trot into the tilt, replace Preacher Harris, and pull the GOP’s patrimonial fat from the fire in the 9th.
So with no further ado, let’s meet the star of our inaugural episode:
Pat McCrory
(One-term governor, 2013-2017; eight-term mayor of Charlotte, 1993-2009; three-term Charlotte city council member; former Duke Energy executive)
Clik here to view.
Far and away the best-known and most reviled name on our list, McCrory’s single term as governor of North Carolina is best remembered for his signature on the disastrous HB-2 (known elsewhere across America as North Carolina’s notorious ‘bathroom bill’), which barred transgender folks from public restrooms other than those of their assigned birth genders. ‘Potty Pat’ is also famed for tirelessly abetting numerous execrable GOP voter suppression schemes during his term as governor.
Ex-bathroom-monitor McCrory currently hosts the conservative talk-radio Pat McCrory Show on Charlotte’s WBT AM where, to briefly boost his ratings, earlier this week he bamboozled listeners by promising “a major announcement” regarding his plans for the NC09 race (wherein listeners learned that his plan was to not enter the race).
One can hardly fault McCrory for wishing to keep clear of the NC09 dumpster fire. He’s still shell-shocked from his loss to Roy Cooper (D) by a slender 10,000-vote margin in the same election in which Trump carried the state by more than 170,000 votes.
In the weeks following that 2016 election shocker, McCrory — then drowning in Nixonian depths of denial — signed off on a plan to have the election’s result overturned by asserting widespread voter fraud in 50 of the state’s 100 counties. And in that spectacularly unsuccessful 2016 scheme McCrory climbed straight into bed with the now-alleged election fraud operative at the heart of this year’s NC09 scandal, Bladen County good-ol’-boy McCrae Dowless. At the urging of McCrory and other GOP worthies in 2016, Dowless filed a quixotic protest of his own election victory for Bladen County soil and water commissioner, claiming mysterious and undocumented election irregularities. Dowless was represented in that odd protest by McCrory campaign attorney John Branch (who last week also represented Mark Harris in this year’s spectacular election-fraud hearing, won by Democrats). Bizarrely, Dowless took the Fifth in 2016 while testifying in support of his own protest of his own election victory — an event that key GOP officials like executive director Dallas Woodhouse now disclaim any memory of. According to the 2016 hearing’s Kafkaesque transcript:
MALCOLM: So since you're the winner -- apparent winner, pending canvass by the Bladen County Board of Elections -- why are you protesting the contest?
DOWLESS: I know that I have won the election. But Mr. Malcolm, my point is, say years down the road, say it could be your grandson or another person that would likely run for office. I'm not saying there's any wrongdoing here. I just wanted it investigated because it was a high volume of write ins. I had no means of knowing who the write ins was.
[….]
DOWLESS: I think when this came about with the high volume of write ins, it was on election night. I was getting the results. The next day, I got with the Republican chairman. He says “I’m going to make a call, and somebody will be giving you a call.” So I think it was the next day, two days after the election, that...I can’t think of the gentleman’s...it’s Steve. I can’t remember his last name. Worked with Pat McCrory.
BRANCH: Objection to the extent that….
MALCOLM: Steve who, sir?
DOWLESS: Steve.
MALCOLM: Steve from the Pat McCrory campaign?
DOWLESS: Yes, sir.
MALCOLM: So do you mean he was the one that called you and told you about this?
DOWLESS: No, no, no, no.
BRANCH: Objection! Don’t...don’t...stop, please. I’m going to object. The Steve he’s referring to, I believe, is a gentleman by the name of Steve Roberts, who is a lawyer for the Pat McCrory committee. Any conversations with Mr. Roberts would be subject to the protections of attorney-client privilege.
[….]
MALCOLM: Are you referring to campaign finance reports?
DOWLESS: I’ve seen that, yes. I didn’t actually get that, but somebody else had it and I seen it.
MALCOLM: Someone gave that to you?
DOWLESS: Yes.
MALCOLM: Who?
DOWLESS: Sir?
MALCOLM: Who gave that to you?
DOWLESS: I’d rather take the Fifth on that, who gave that to me.
MALCOLM: Okay, so to make sure I’m clear, you’re taking the Fifth as it relates to who gave you copies of disclosure reports?
DOWLESS: Yes.
Potty Pat McCrory no doubt feels he can’t run in NC09, whether he’d like to or not — because his own electoro-erotic relationship with Dowless would keep today’s election fraud scandal front-and-center in the upcoming special election, instead of putting it behind the GOP.
As well, no Republican name on the ballot could more effectively mobilize NC09 Democrats to turn out at the polls in a special election than could McCrory’s. He’s universally despised by NC progressives, who are well represented in NC09’s easternmost majority-minority communities.
And finally: even to many conservative Republicans, McCrory is today little more than the dimly remembered punchline to a best-forgotten bad joke.
But as we shall see in following episodes in this series, all of the GOP’s other choices are even more spectacularly dismal than McCrory. Thus, despite his current protestations of disinterest, it remains a real possibility that a desperate NC-GOP might just have to prevail upon McCrory to fall on his sword as their last best hope — and perhaps only possible white knight — in NC09.
In North Carolina’s switchblade-style politics, it ain’t over till it’s over...and it’s never over. So don’t count Peepee Pat out of the running just yet.