Rough news week for NC Dem candidates
Sanitizing a Black official's office, a sex offender hug, and sign stealing arrest
It was a rough news cycle this week for three NC democratic candidates.
A racist campaign ad
State Senator Rachel Hunt, the Democrat candidate for NC lieutenant governor, came under fire for an ad she put out that has her grabbing hydrogen peroxide and a broom out of a closet to 'sanitize' the office of the current, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the first Black man to hold that office in state history.
Hunt's opponent, Republican Hal Weatherman called out Hunt for the ad on X, sparking a flurry of X users also calling the ad racist.
Robinson issued a lengthy reply to Weatherman’s post that began with, “Jim Hunt must be beyond embarrassed to see this ad playing on North Carolina airwaves.”
The ad is part of a $2 million ad buy in the race against Republican Hal Weatherman.
The ad uses abortion to try to tie Weatherman and Robinson together as being able to enact a mythical abortion ban in the state despite neither position having lawmaking powers. Hunt appears at the end, raiding a broom closet for the cleaning supplies.
Watch:
In the days following publication of this article, the Hunt campaign made the above video “private” on YouTube, essentially blocking the public from viewing it.
Hugging a sex offender
Video emerged this week of Democratic Congressman Jeff Jackson (NC-14) hugging a known convicted sex offender at an LGBT awards ceremony in 2022.
The Daily Wire dropped the footage and story online on Friday.
The clip comes from a December 2022 Carolinas LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce event. At that event, Jackson gave remarks while receiving an award and then Chad Turner, a registered sex offender.
Turner's full name is Chad Sevearance Turner. He was convicted in 2000 of fondling a 15-year-old kid in South Carolina in 1998; Turner was 20 at the time and was in the role of a "youth minister."
Governor Roy Cooper was also photographed with Turner at the same LGBT group gala two years earlier, in 2018. Not a single media outlet picked up on the connection or reported on it back then - except me.
The photo below of Turner smiling at Cooper, was posted to the Charlotte LGBT Chamber’s official Facebook page but has since been deleted.
Jackson's campaign has claimed they didn't know that Turner was a sex offender at the time, yet Turner became well-known for his sex offender status back in 2016 when reporting on his status forced him to resign as President of Charlotte’s LGBT Chamber of Commerce.
The Daily Wire cites NC Values' President Tami Fitzgerald outlining the media attention Turner received and saying, "It is inconceivable that Jeff Jackson did not know.”
Then again, the Charlotte Observer admitted to quoting Turner in dozens of articles yet never bothered to mention his sex offender conviction.
NC Values also has a statement up about it on their website, which includes a number of media reports. Included in NC Values' links is Snopes "debunk" that Turner led opposition to HB2 (the bathroom bill).
HB2 was the legislative response to the Charlotte Ordinance, which essentially made bathrooms and locker room areas inside the city limits unisex. The Ordinance applied to both public and private facilities, opening up women's spaces to men claiming to be females which sparked heated debate across the state at the time.
Turner was definitely vocal about HB2 as president of the LGBT Chamber and there were questions as to his level of involvement in the Charlotte Ordinance's creation
Jackson is running for state attorney general against fellow Republican Congressman Dan Bishop (NC-08). Bishop helped author HB2 when he and Jackson were both serving in the NC General Assembly.
Campaign sign stealing arrest
Democrat Lowell Simon, a candidate for NC House District 78 and Moore County Democratic Party chair, was arrested in Moore County for stealing campaign signs on Friday. Lowell, 69, was charged with two counts of misdemeanor larceny of political signs.
"On October 10, 2024, at approximately 5:25 PM, a sheriff’s deputy working in the West End area observed Lowell Simon removing campaign signs from the roadside along Seven Lakes Drive," a press release by the Moore County Sheriff's Office states. "The deputy, who was responding to an unrelated call at the time, later followed up at Simon’s residence, where the signs were found in his vehicle. Simon admitted to removing the signs, which were then recovered and returned to their original owner."
"My worse angels got the better of me and I removed the signs," Simon said about stealing the signs. "I shouldn't have done that. I didn't do it in the stealth of night or anything. I did it when it was five o'clock in the afternoon."
Simon also reportedly said he's been telling people for years not to touch opposition signs but blamed his actions on being "mad."
“We acknowledge that Lowell Simon was caught doing something we don’t condone," The Democratic House Campaign Caucus said in a statement. "We’re addressing it and moving forward.”
Simon is challenging incumbent Republican Neal Jackson for the District 78 seat. The seat is not even remotely competitive for Democrats and has a +23 Lean Republican rating from the Civitas Partisan Index.
More To The Story
Bishop, an attorney by trade, recently filed a lawsuit against Jackson, the NC Democratic Party, the Democratic Governors Association, Dynata, LLC, along with several progressive organizations and 10 unnamed individuals.
The lawsuit starts out hitting Governor Roy Cooper and current Attorney General Josh Stein by noting that they both defamed their opponents in the weeks leading up to their elections for attorney general.
Some explanation and backstory
Cooper was sued by one of his attorney general candidate opponents, Dan Boyce, for defamation. Cooper litigated the case for over a decade and it eventually ended in a $75,000 settlement payout to Boyce and an apology from Cooper.
Stein was sued by his opponent Forsyth District Attorney Jim O'Neill for making false and defamatory claims in a campaign ad against him. The case also involved Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman, a fellow Democrat, who considered bringing charges.
Stein was sued for libel under a North Carolina law dating back to around 1931 that makes it illegal to deliberately disseminate a false “derogatory report” that could harm a candidate’s chance of election.
The lawsuit centered on the state's rape kit backlog, which I have written about extensively over the last four years.
An ad Stein ran said O'Neill “left 1,500 rape kits sitting on a shelf," when in reality district attorneys have nothing to do with the testing of rape kits; law enforcement related agencies and labs actually test them.
Stein's ad was likely a distraction from O'Neill hitting him over the fact that North Carolina was number one in the nation for 15,000 untested rape kits. Those untested kits piled under Cooper and now resided with Stein to clear, which he eventually did — near the end of his second term as attorney general.
Stein fought to overturn the 1931 law in his defense. In the end, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals let Stein off the hook. The rationale essentially used to make it go away was that the law being applied to Stein's activities was old and likely unconstitutional, so why bother upholding it.
Back to Bishop's lawsuit
The complaint says that on or about July 29, 2024, Delaware-based marketing research firm Dynata did political research calls in Union County. Specifically, a push poll conducted by Dynata included a misleading question about Bishop’s legal representation, falsely implying he represented clients who stole from the elderly.
The complaint further contends that defamatory assertions were also published in an article by The New Republic, which inaccurately characterized Bishop’s legal work. Although the article was later amended to address some inaccuracies, it continued to contain harmful statements about his professional conduct. The complaint says the New Republic story was likely the result of receipt of "opposition research."
The complaint argues that these actions constitute defamation per se and civil conspiracy, as the defendants knowingly disseminated false information with malice, leading to harm and financial repercussions for Bishop.
Recap: It appears the complaint's civil conspiracy allegation is tying together Dynata's survey and The New Republic article and then linking it back to opposition research likely provided by the other plaintiffs; Jackson et al.