And in this corner
I finally got my hands on the Petition for Judicial Review by Richard Morgan, who is challenging the decision in favor of Art Pope's electioneering organization by the North Carolina State Board of Elections earlier this year. As you may recall, Pope's money was poured into the contest between Morgan and Hairdresser Puppet Joe Boylan, tilting the playing field and handing Boylan a surprise victory.
For new readers to BlueNC, this has been covered exhaustively, and with good reason. What's at stake is the integrity of our elections. Specifically, the state board found that a rich guy with unlimited corporate cash can spend as much as he wants to influence the outcome of elections. To be clear, no one (in this case) is questioning Pope's ability to spend his personal money. That's not the issue. Rather, the money used to influence this election came directly from Pope's business - which means it's corporate money.
If Pope wins this appeal, businesses in North Carolina will be free to pour millions into elections, effectively swamping the voices of We the People who are limited by campaign contribution laws in the amounts we can give.
The petition for review is 11 pages long. I've excerpted part of the section called "Bases for Appeal," which you can see if you click on the image. It's a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, which you may find interesting, but there's an even more startling basis for appeal, which I wrote about on the day of the hearing.
Democracy took a sucker punch this week when the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted to allow the sale of legislative seats to fat-cat corporations. In an embarrassing display of incompetence, board chairman Larry Leake and his hapless colleagues went through the motions of hearing Richard Morgan's complaint with barely a nod in the direction of decorum or seriousness. Loony Larry even had this to say to a reporter from the Southern Pines Pilot:
Asked if the board could not really have ruled just the same way in about 20 minutes - without all the testimony and argument - Leake just smiled.
"Maybe five," he said. "But people have a right to a hearing."I'll bet he smiled ... just like he did throughout the sham hearing ... pretending to be taking the matter seriously, but having already made up his mind. This comment alone would seem sufficient for overturning the decision on appeal.
- James Protzman's blog
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Thanks for This
You do an excellent job staying on top of the Art Pope story. Something, maybe nothing more than sheer intuition, tells me that this story will be the gift that keeps on giving. Pope has seen his power increase to this point, in part because the media hasn't shown much more interest in his doings than keeping a place open on their editorial page for another opinion piece by John Hood. The Richard Morgan affair may be the moment where Citizen Pope over played his hand. Let's hope.
"Abuse of Discretion"
is the catch-all basis for appealing a bad decision from a judge or a Board-- and it usually goes nowhere. Bias has to be pretty outrageous to trigger that level of review.
I asked Harold Brubaker about this when it became public- he was the only one of Morgan's buddies not targeted by Pope- only because they couldn't find a Randolph County shill to take it on. He was disappointed in Morgan's Petition-- he'd been told that Morgan had found a real smoking gun, and this wasn't anything that would give Pope a sleepless night.
It's my understanding
that a bunch of internal RLM correspondence that showed coordination with Boylan's campaign was not admitted into the SBOE hearing. I've seen some of those emails, which are part of the public record even though they weren't admitted, and there's clear evidence that such coordination took place. Seems like a pretty extreme case of "abuse of discretion" for something that profoundly affects one pillar of democracy: free and fair elections.
Then again, I don't know squat about legal obfuscation. And I couldn't agree more with your final comment. Art Pope doesn't have a sleepless night about anything. That's the nature of sociopathological beings.
To my knowledge.