Will the NCGOP’s new chairman stem the party’s tide of corruption?
Last week, the NC Republican Party — at least those members who aren’t currently under indictment — held a convention in Raleigh to elect a new chairman after the old chairman, former GOP congressman Robin Hayes, was indicted on federal bribery charges.
The incoming chairman, an oil and gas industry stooge named Michael Whatley, takes the reins of a party with a long history of openly flouting campaign finance and election laws, bending to wealthy special interests, and weaving a culture of corruption in Raleigh.
- In 2014, the party’s now-former executive director Dallas Woodhouse openly bragged on television about breaking campaign finance rules to elect Thom Tillis to the U.S Senate.
- And just last year, the NCGOP covered up warnings of the rampant ballot theft committed by the Mark Harris campaign months before the fraud was discovered by the media.
- Of course, that’s to say nothing about the illegal and unconstitutional voter suppression and racial gerrymandering that NC Republicans have engaged in for nearly a decade.
- Meanwhile, new court filings by Common Cause of North Carolina accuse Republican lawmakers of lying in federal court about the existence of updated redistricting maps so the GOP could avoid a special election in 2017 after their racially gerrymandered maps were struck down.
We certainly hope the Whatley era of the NCGOP involves significantly fewer crimes than in past years, but we won’t hold our breath. Really, the only surprising thing about the NC-GOP’s latest illegal activity is that this time someone actually got indicted for it.
