guilford county

We had fun at first organizational meeting. So now all we need is for you to bring a friend! We will be going over sample canvassing scripts and we will be talking about putting fliers up at some strategic locations. Also we have some yard signs for those that asked. llawsonguilford@gmail.com is my email.

Here's my first post. I've been lurking for a year or so, and I hope to post regularly on Greensboro politicking, local issues, and the 08 races.

I'm an Edwards backer, but I'm also interested in what's coming out of the woodwork for the 08 Senate race.

And maybe you guys can help me understand the General Assembly.

Rory Blake, the Democrat who ran against Howard Coble got a taste of "Florida style elections" in Guilford County.

Excerpts from the Dec 7 issue of Yes Weekly:

The forgotten Democrat: Rory Blake tries to ride blue wave into red territory

...Blake pokes his head around the corner and summons his campaign staff - Smith and Gaddy - into a back room. In front of him sits a pile of sample ballots lifted from several 6th District precincts. His race tops the ballot, but his name doesn't appear on the paper.

"You can either choose Howard Coble or Howard Coble," Blake says, his temperature rising.

He's heard secondhand that a Democratic observer at Edgefield Baptist Church encountered the same non-choice during the actual touch screen voting and he's livid. Guilford County Board of Elections Director George Gilbert assures Blake the mistake had been taken care of and does not appear on the screens, but Blake doesn't buy it. The candidate is on his cell phone, trying to bend the ear of sympathetic journalists and gin up some last-minute support for what he now thinks might have been a stolen election.

Rory Blake, Democratic Candidate for US Congress for NC-06 is holding a rally-a-day, every day until the election (except Sunday) to express his views and give the voters in this widespread district a chance to gather one last time to support him and each other.

Blake feels strongly that: “We need to elect a democratic congress, both to stop the missuse of the power of the federal government and to stop the war in Iraq.”

The rally will be held at noon in the county seat of every county represented in the sixth district, beginning in Carthage in Moore County on Tuesday, October 31st and finishing in Greensboro on Monday, November 6th. Full rally details will be posted on Rory's website at by 3:00 on Monday. Please join us - let your voice be heard, and help send Howard Coble home for good!

Julia Hejazi is the Guilford County prosecutor who was fired with a quickness because she planned to run for DA. The News & Record article on Jan. 4 quoted former prosecutor John Nieman saying that Hejazi's boss did what he had to do, that "it would be untenable for him to perform his duties" otherwise. Now Nieman has sent a letter to the editor ("Hejazi had a choice") in which he continues to pump up the current DA while offering Hejazi backhanded compliments.

Guilford County has a new district attorney, Doug Henderson. Among his first official acts: firing staff attorney Julia Wolf Hejazi. Hejazi plans to run for DA when the job comes up for election in November, and Henderson offered her the choice of resigning or being fired. She didn't want to resign, so there you go. Here's the Greensboro News & Record's story, which quotes a Guilford public defender saying "it would be untenable for him to perform his duties when one of his assistants is out there campaigning against him."