WataugaWatch

From the NC 5th Dist. Republican site:

Rumor has it - that Jerry Butler attended a republican party meeting in Alexander County yesterday. The Boone dentist announced that he was planning on returning to the political fray to run against state Senator Steve Goss again in 2010. According to our sources Butler made an anthem of a speech to the local republicans asking them to expel "fringe" conservatives from the party and move in a more progressive direction.

Since this is a rumor and we don't know if its true, someone please tell us it isn't so! This mindset is exactly what lost Republicans the election. Moderate Congressman in the Midwest lost overwhelmingly to their democrat rivals, and where Conservatism was truly on the ballot it was victory! If Dr. Butler wants to be a progressive, maybe he should run against Goss in the primary. Either way we think this helps Goss raise money.

As with so many other things, the "fringe" is on top.

Labels: Jerry Butler, Steve Goss

The "miracle" state senator of the 2006 election, Steve Goss kept the miracle alive last night. He was marked for extinction by the state GOP, since -- after all -- he represents a heavily Republican senate district in the 45th. But if Goss can survive in a presidential year, which brings straight-ticket Republicans out in droves (witness the color red in every county surrounding the little island of blueness that has become Watauga), Goss can survive pretty much anything.

Here's how he did it: he took 61% of the vote in Watauga and 66% of the vote in Ashe, which meant he just needed to break 40% in both Wilkes and Alexander, where he actually out-performed that expectation by taking just over 46% of the vote in both those deep-red Republican counties.

Plus he was gifted with a flawed opponent.

There's already a movement forming to draft Goss to run against Virginia Foxx in 2010.

Labels: 2008 election results, Jerry Butler, Steve Goss, Virginia Foxx

Just this week has brought a plethora -- a PLETHORA, we tell you! -- of political mail, some of which deserves actual reading:

1. Today, a letter from John McCain: "Dear Friend, We've reached a critical juncture in the campaign...."

Surely you jest, Sir. An actual "critical juncture"?

"...I would not ask for your help if the circumstances were not so dire," John continues.

We know. We've been actually paying attention. Sarah Palin turned out to be a bit of a problem, right? and that Christopher Buckley endorsement of Obama was a bit of a slap.

But still, Senator, you're trying to get big bucks out of us and you don't even use the adjective "liberal" once? Not ONCE?? Just how desperate are you, anyway? And you don't even want the money yourself. You want me to send it to ... the Republican National Committee? Death by proxy?

2. Speaking of ambiguous gestures, one of our pieces (actually, we got two, which doesn't speak well about the GOP's wasteful habits) was from that selfsame Republican National Committee ... a four-color, four-page item headlined "AMERICA, The Land That I Love" ... at which point we have to turn the page to discover that Barack Obama will take away "our traditional American values." Then on the third panel, it quotes the National Journal, the very publication that yesterday accepted the resignation of Christopher Buckley for endorsing Barack Obama, because of his love of America. Ooooh. Damn inconvenient irony, that!

3. "Meet Jerry Butler," suggests a third piece, its message of friendly neighbor-over-the-fence introduction undercut somewhat by that big off-putting photo of the candidate. Eighty percent of success is good lighting, we've always heard.

4. The biggest, the glossiest four-color, four-page piece comes from The Madam, with multiple photographs of Virginia Foxx wedging herself into family reunion shots with lots of creeped-out children. If the goal here is to try to humanize the inhuman, we're afraid it doesn't quite work. While the people she's pictured with seem secure in their ordinary reality, Madam Foxx stares down the camera like a tensed up puma, waiting to spring.

5. Another big glossy mailing attacking Barack Obama, from the Republican National Committee. Looks like they've got plenty of money, John.

6. Dan Soucek, posing in his military uniform. Interesting special pleading, that. "Paid for by Soucek for NC House."

7. "Republican Dan Soucek: Proudly Pro-Life." "Paid for by the North Carolina Republican State Executive Committee."

8. through 13. Attack pieces against U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan (and suddenly, true political desperation has an outline). Heavy involvement here by outside groups. Three of these five pieces were paid for by the Associated Builders and Contractors Free Enterprise Alliance. One of their pieces is proud of Elizabeth Dole because she'll drill for oil everywhere immediately. The other claims that North Carolina has the highest tax burden in the Southeast and blames the patently pro-business Kay Hagan for that. (That first claim is just pure buffalo dust; the second, laughable.) The third uses "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" as though Kay Hagan were the Washington insider rather than Elizabeth Dole. The last two anti-Hagan pieces came from Freedom's Watch, which, according to Wikipedia, was formed in 2007 primarily to support the Bush administration and especially the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. Apparently, Kay Hagan is a threat to the Bush legacy.

Labels: Barack Obama, Dan Soucek, Elizabeth Dole, Freedom's Watch, Jerry Butler, John McCain, Kay Hagan, National Republican Party, Virginia Foxx

Now Republican candidate Dan Soucek is jumping on the push-poll "solution": When your campaign is going nowhere, pick up the telephone and start lying.

Many Democrats have gotten a call from an outfit that claims to be non-partisan but is obviously pushing Dan Soucek against incumbent state Rep. Cullie Tarleton. The main points:

1. Dan is some kind of war hero. Since when did graduating from West Point make you a war hero, when you were never in any war zone?

2. The big lie: Soucek’s push-poll claims that Cullie Tarleton voted for a land transfer tax. Cullie Tarleton never voted for a land transfer tax. He voted for the budget in 2007 that contained a provision that county commissions could put the land transfer tax on the ballot and let the people decide if they wanted it. Jerry Butler used this same lie against Steve Goss in his own push-polling.

3. Another big lie: Soucek’s push-poll claims that Cullie Tarleton was investigated by the Feds for a failed Savings & Loan. The truth: Tarleton was long ago on the board of a Savings & Loan but was never investigated for anything.

Dan Soucek is following the same sleazy path taken by dentist Jerry Butler with this underhanded, fundamentally dishonest means of campaigning. Both Soucek and Butler are following the lead of their presidential candidate, who now doesn’t seem to know the truth from increasingly desperate fictions.

Labels: Cullie Tarleton, Dan Soucek, Jerry Butler, push polling, Steve Goss

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx hosted a fundraiser last Saturday for State Senate candidate Jerry Butler at the Hound Ears clubhouse, and why wouldn't she raise money for the man who wants the seat she once warmed in the state legislature? No word in the article about how much they raised for Butler, who's been forced to loan his own campaign $36,000, according to campaign finance filings at the State Board of Elections. Third Quarter campaign finance reports are not due in Raleigh until Oct. 27th, so we'll have to wait until then to see how much Madam Foxx and the other pooh-bahs forked over to the Boone dentist.

We've been looking a little more closely into the disciplinary consent order handed down against Butler in 1990 by the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners, the document that suspended Butler's license to practice dentistry for 30 days and imposed a two-year probationary licensing period following that (Butler's primary opponent used this license suspension against him last spring). The order required Butler to publish an ad once a month for six months, "in a newspaper of general circulation in Watauga County," stating "I am NOT an orthodontist."

The requirement of the ad stating the negative about Butler's qualifications to straighten teeth followed on three separate illegal advertisements by Butler that he WAS an orthodontist and could fit little Susie or Johnnie with braces. According to the "Findings of Fact" in the consent order of 1990, Butler first advertised himself as an orthodontist in 1982, in the Boone telephone directory. Since Butler "has never been qualified under the Board's rules to advertise as a specialist in orthodontics," he was ordered to print a retraction of the telephone directory listing in the local newspaper and to "discontinue the advertisements in future editions of the directory."

Well, Butler did discontinue advertising himself illegally in the telephone directory for a while. Instead, in 1987 he advertised as an orthodontist in the "Big Wednesday" edition of the Watauga Democrat. He was told to "stop it" by the Dental Board. So in 1990 he went back to the classified section of the local telephone book and advertised again as an orthodontist. At which point the Dental Board had had enough and lowered the boom, such as it was.

Butler now wants to be our state senator, kicking out Steve Goss, one of the hardest working members of the state legislature in this or in any other state. Butler wants to achieve this goal (and Madam Foxx is helping him) by running against Goss in somewhat the same way he practiced orthodontics.

That is to say, dishonestly.

Labels: Jerry Butler, Steve Goss, Virginia Foxx

Back before the May 6th Republican primary between Jerry Butler and Dwight Shook (which Butler won), Shook sent out a postcard attacking Butler as a documented liar.

The message side of the card (pictured here) contained this text (reproduced below if you can't quite make it out):

Dr. Jerry Butler had his dental license SUSPENDED for Phony Advertising. THAT'S RIGHT. The NC Board of Dental Examiners ruled that Butler violated State Law when he admitted that he falsely advertised himself as an orthodontist on three separate occasions over an eight year period.*

*NC State Board of Dental Examiners Consent Order, 9/21/90

WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER DISHONEST POLITICIAN. DEFEAT JERRY BUTLER. ELECT DWIGHT SHOOK FOR NC SENATE ON TUESDAY, MAY 6TH.

Paid for by Dwight Shook for NC Senate

The campaign finance disclosure reports filed by the Dwight Shook campaign reveal that the heavy-lifters among NC Senate Republicans were backing the Shook campaign against Jerry Butler. In the first quarter filing, Republican Senate top-dog Phil Berger gave Shook $2,000, as did the deputy Republican leader in the Senate Tom Apodaca. Republican senators Peter S. Brunstetter, a Winston-Salem lawyer, and Dr. James Forrester, representing Gaston, Iredell, and Lincoln counties, gave Shook $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. The second quarter filing shows that both Tom Apodaca and Peter Brunstetter each gave Shook another $1,500.

Apparently, the Senate Republican leadership was just that desperate to save themselves the embarrassment of a Jerry Butler candidacy.

Not that Dwight Shook was any great shakes either. While Butler was losing his home county of Watauga to Shook on May 6, Shook was losing his home county of Alexander to Butler. Apparently, neither candidate got much respect from his home turf.

Butler is now turning the dishonesty that Shook warned primary voters about against Sen. Steve Goss, an ordained Baptist minister who has earned great respect in his first term in Raleigh for his hard work and responsiveness to his constituents.

CORRECTION
Sorry, Shook did win Alexander County. I looked at the wrong line.

Labels: Jerry Butler, Steve Goss

A "push poll" is a manipulation of voters via telephone, masquerading as a legitimate opinion poll. It' AIN'T an opinion poll and it AIN'T legitimate. The most famous instance of nasty push-polling was used by Karl Rove in 2000 in South Carolina against John McCain (remember him?) ... "Would it change your mind if you knew that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child? Answer 'yes' or 'no,' and try not to drool."

Local Boone dentist Jerry Butler is running against state Sen. Steve Goss in Dist. 45. Butler is conducting a push poll against Goss. We already have two sources on this and expect more.

The distortion we focus on this morning has to do with the land transfer tax option that the state legislature granted to counties. We stress the word option. Goss voted to give counties the option of passing a land-transfer tax. The Butler push-poll, however, is asking this question (wording is obviously approximate): "Would your opinion of Goss change if you knew he voted for a new tax of up to $1,000 when a homeowner sold their home?"

Goss never voted for a new tax. He voted to give local governments the right to ask their citizens if they thought the buying and selling of expensive second-home real estate in their counties might be a source of revenue for those counties, which are frequently expected to provide various services to those developments, from new schools to water/sewer hookups to sheriff protection.

A push poll is inherently a LIE ... masked as an innocent question. So what does that make Jerry Butler?

Labels: Jerry Butler, land transfer tax, push polling, Steve Goss

On the Democratic side, Obama won his match-up with Clinton in early voting, where some 3,185 votes were cast (including mail-in absentees), 1,974 of those for Obama to 1,174 for Clinton. That winning margin for Obama could not be overcome in precinct voting today, even though 11 of 20 precincts today went for Clinton.

Generally speaking, Clinton was strongest in the more rural parts of the county but not everywhere. For example, Elk and North Fork tipped to Obama. Watauga precinct (Foscoe and Valle Crucis) went for Obama. The three Boone precincts and New River 1 went for Obama. Blowing Rock and Blue Ridge turned in dead-even ties between Clinton and Obama.

Fifth Dist. congressional candidate Roy Carter carried Watauga by some 1,300 votes but appears to be slightly behind Diane Hamby district-wide (as of this writing).

U.S. senatorial candidate Jim Neal had an impressive showing in Watauga (2,291 votes), though he lost to Kay Hagan by a thousand votes in the county and to Hagan state-wide by a huge margin. Watauga was probably one of his best counties, perhaps because he made two visits here prior to the voting.

Likewise, Dan Besse came in second to Walter Dalton in Watauga. Good showing for Besse here, while he was losing the rest of the state.

On the Republican side, the most astounding local numbers were local dentist Jerry Butler's loss of his own county to Alexander Co. resident Dwight Shook in the State Senate Dist. 45 primary. Shades of Virginia Foxx! Butler can't carry his own county but wins the district and will be facing incumbent Senator Steve Goss this fall.

Oh, and Ron Paul didn't win the Republican presidential primary, though with 367 Watauga votes, he did out-poll "No Preference."

A total of 2,660 Republican ballots were cast, to 7,081 Democratic ballots. That may turn out to be the most significant bellwether of the night.

Labels: Barack Obama, Dan Besse, Dwight Shook, Hillary Clinton, Jerry Butler, Jim Neal, Ron Paul, Roy Carter, Virginia Foxx, Walter Dalton, Watauga County primary voting