Dunn on Charlotte City Council's new member & the nature of politics (05-20-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow dot com, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. News Talk eleven ten ninety nine three WBT and on Tuesdays at noon, we start the show off with chatting with Andrew Dunn, who is the publisher of long Leaf Politics and a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer. Andrew, how are you, sir? I'm fantastic. Happy mechtach Day to you as well. Well, thank you. I did not get you anything, but nor do I expect anything from you either, So we're even on that score. Are you going down to any of the any of the festivities or celebrations. In and on it? Okay, we expect a full report then next week. They always do it at like noon, and I like, I can never go because I'm on air, you know. So uh, Tusky work. Yeah. Yeah, so all right, Well, uh, I'm sorry about your defeat at the City council last night. Did not get the city council post that you had applied for? Did you? Did you like your chances going into the council meeting? No, I didn't like my chances at all. You know, I knew going in it was a super long shot, but no hard feelings. And you know, I'm happy that I took part in the process. Yeah. Did you learn anything about the process. Well, you know, I saw. I'm actually just getting to watch the meeting from last night now, you know, like you, I have a job as well that keeps me from from going to early afternoon meetings. And I guess they voted in secret and then just revealed the results at the meeting. I don't it's it's a convoluted process. I think the City of Charlotte could use a little bit more transparency. Oh well, yes, on many fronts, absolutely, I agree. Yeah, I don't like this. Uh. And this has been sort of referred to over the years as the Charlotte Way where there was an old county commissioner, very controversial Bill James, and he used to call uh he said Charlotte suffered from dysfunctional civility where they would do a lot of this stuff behind closed doors and then come out with a united front kind of a vote or an announcement, so you would never hear the arguments or know which way the votes, you know, split in the closed sessions, and they would come out and just make an announcement to make it seem like they're all on the same page, you know, and that's not the case. I don't think that's how how our government is supposed to work. No, it's supposed to be messy. That's what a democracy is all about, I thought. So. Yeah, apparently the mayor had to split the tie because tark Bakari vacate the seat took the job up in the Trump administration. So it was a five to five split. And that's interesting because it kind of crystallizes the voting blocks generally, not on all issues, but on the city council where you've got dimple edgemere to Juanna Brown, Renee Johnson, Victoria Watlington. That's sort of one camp. I feel like Ed Driggs Republican, the only Republican on the council until last night that he he probably had to go along with all of the endorsements that Chrystal Bocari had racked up, right, like the local GOP, she had state lawmakers, So there may have been some pressure not overt but you know, you could definitely see where the wind is blowing within the GOP on who they wanted, and it wasn't Edwin Peacock. Right, And you know, to be honest, I've known the Bocaris and Edwin Peacock for a long time. I think they both would have done a great job. So yeah, at this point, you know, I'm in supportive of that one. So yeah, well yeah and so and he's a perfectly capable council member. He was a council member, ran for mayor a couple of times, and so and he says he's not going to run for the seat again, just like you said you wouldn't. And I think a lot of council members preferred that they didn't want somebody who was going to be in there to then run for reelection, because that's kind of what they've done in the past. They always they always say, we don't want somebody that's looking to run in the election itself. Just a placeholder until the voters can have their say. So I get it, but again, sorry for your loss, Andrew Dunn. I appreciate it. Yes, all right. Well it's interesting though, because you had this other piece, a very lengthy piece at long Leave Politics that that spoke to me in a way because I have gotten involved in my neighborhood HOA and and you actually say some stuff in here that I try to tell my fellow neighbors in the ho which is this is political, like we are engaged in politics. You may not have viewed it like that when you first signed up, but this is a level of politics. There. There's like fourteen thousand hoas across America, so or no, no, fourteen thousand across the state of North Carolina. So it is by far the largest sort of elected body if you just look at all of the membership combined. So this is governance. And you point out in this in this piece politics is the same at every level. So what do you mean by that? Yeah, So, you know, people like to think of politics as something that you know, happens in Raleigh or happens you know, at the government center. But you know, really all that politics is is how groups of people make decisions together. And you know, I've been involved in campaigns and elections and covering government at all sorts of different levels for years, and there's really not all that much difference in the pettiness and the you know, divisiveness, the factions, you know, whether you're running for governor or running for HOA president. And you know, I was, you know, marginally involved in a swim club board election here in my neighborhood over the past couple of weeks and just got me thinking, you know, there were just so many parallels to what we see at the state and national level. Well, you do mention the the hot topic in virtually all hoas with court the pickleball players versus the tennis players, although in my neighborhood we've got some we've got some pickle versus pickle action going on too there. You know, there's a disagreement about some of the rules and reserving court space and stuff, and so like you end but it's true, like you end up in these political situations where you're trying to you know, work out compromises and solutions. You also mentioned I've said this for years too. You mentioned something along the lines I felt like you were speaking my language when you said that so much of politics is personal relationships. And I've told people this for years. You don't understand if you're not like following politics or in politics. So many things come down to just petty grievances, slights. They forgot my name, they didn't invite me to something, and then like this whole rift develops between these two candidates or offices or something, and it's it really is sometimes that silly. Oh absolutely. You know. The biggest parallel that I saw was having to do with arguing over the rules of the election. So you know, our swim club board is governed by a charter or what have you. It's got their bylaws, and so there were proxy ballots, you know, you could consider them absentee ballots, and there was all sorts of bickering over what ballots would count, what ballots wouldn't count. And you know, I've been covering extensively the Jefferson Griffin election challenge, and I just couldn't help but see them as one and the same. Right, Yeah, what's the postmark or there hanging chads on the proxy votes to swim club. You said also that people don't crave power as much as they want recognition, gratitude and deference. And it's so much of this stuff, whether it's at the HOA level or all the way up. I mean, you see it with Joe Biden too, right, the crafting of a narrative around legacy. They want to have made a difference. People want. It's why you know, they take charge of certain projects to you know, build buildings or amenities or you know, set the economy right or whatever. They want to be known, you know, for posterity for something that they did. And you say, power also does not flow through formal channels. It flows through familiarity, and a lot of people just don't get engaged and that's probably at all levels. And then you know they complain about the way things are, but they don't they don't engage except to complain like on a Facebook group. Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. And you know, the way I think about it is, you know, there's always conversations, especially around people who've been in office for years and years and years, like why did you know, why is it so important to them? Why don't they just retire? Why don't they just make way for somebody else? But you know, you have to think through it at the personal level. You know a lot of these folks, you know, they are well meaning in general, and they are trying to craft that legacy, like you were saying, and it's hard not to take it personally. You know, if somebody is challenging you and saying you're doing a bad job, you know, it just becomes intensely personal. And that's why you fight so hard to stay in office. So did you win the swim club election? Were you running for the swim club? I was not running, Thank goodness. I don't know if I have the stomach for that. You'll serve on city council, but you won't serve on the swim club board. Your that's your line. Okay, that's fair enough, And I also thought it was good advice. At the very end, you said the whole system runs on the people who show up, and that is absolutely true. And I've told people in the neighborhood also that if you if good competent people do not step up and volunteer as you did for city council, we will be governed by bad incompetent people. So like there needs to be some recognition of that. Yes, it's a it's a devotion of your time. Yes, it's a sacrifice, but good competent people need to do it because otherwise the results are are not optimal. So absolutely long Leaf Politics. Longleafpol dot com is the website. Andrew Dunn is the publisher of long Leaf Politics. You can also read his work at The Charlotte Observer in the op ed section. And Drew, good to talk with you. Happy Mecdec Day. And we'll see you next week or no, next week is Memorial Day? Right, next week's Memorial Day? I think, Oh, Monday is Memorial Monday. I can still come on Tuesday. Yeah, sorry, Tuesday. Sorry, I forgot what day it is. Okay, yeah, Tuesday. We'll talk to you Tuesday. All right, thanks Andrew Dunn, appreciate it. That's Andrew from long Leave Politics. It is Tuesday. Yeah, I don't know why I thought it was Monday. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Asheville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Aashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. So thanks again to Andrew Dunn for making time for us, as he always does on Tuesdays at noon. Tuesdays at noon, so WSOCTV reported last night that Charlotte Mayer vy Lyles broke the tie in a vote to replace Tarkbookari. Tarkbookar one of only two Republicans on the eleven members Charlotte City Council. Bokhari took a job up in DC for the Trump administration, and a bunch of people had submitted applications, including Andrew Dunn, to serve on the city council, just for the remainder of the unexpired term, which is only about five or six months, because the elections in November and then the new council members get sworn in in December, so it wasn't there's not a lot of time left, and so a lot of people had pitched themselves as just a placeholder, not somebody who was going to be running for the seat, which my guess is, and I don't know if she has announced or not, but my guess is that one of the applicants tark Bookari's wife, Christa, who we spoke with about a week ago, I suspect she wants to run for that seat. So that's part of it. I think the other part of it is that she is, you know, Tarc Bookari's wife, and Tarc Bacary you know, I don't know if there are people on the Charlotte City Council that don't like him and took it out on her. Yeah. So, and also Tarc Bacary was at the center of this h you know, this fight over the vests, the bulletproof vests for law enforcement officers last year that then prompted the text message exchanges with the chief of police and Tark Bacari. And then the Charlotte City Council just paid out the police chief three hundred thousand dollars really for no reason. And so now they're trying to deflect away from that scandal. So having Christo Bacari on the council with you when you're trying to deflect away from that scandal, that's probably not ideal, let's say. And so when you look at the way the vote broke down, it was the Mayor pro tem Dante Anderson, Malcolm Graham, Lawana Slack Mayfield, James Mitchell, and Marjorie Molina. That was the block of five that voted for Edwin Peacock, who perfectly qualified for the post. He was a Charlotte City councilman. He was the last at large city councilman of a Republican persuasion ever elected back in what two thousand and seven, So he yeah, that's the last time a Republican has won an at large seat on Charlotte City Council. He was it. He then ran for mayor twice, he lost, and so they named him. So it's been a while since he's been in city Hall, but you know, he does have familiarity with the post, as did one of the other applicants, Andy Doolan, also a former city council member, So there was talk that he might be the pick. But I look at the way the votes broke down, and when you have a five to five split, obviously they were whipping votes right because any like had any one of the other five dimple Ajmera Tijuana Brown, At Driggs, Rene Johnson, Victoria Watlington had that block splintered and voted. If one of them had voted for like Andy Doolin or anybody else Andrew Dunn, if they had voted for any other applicant, then you would have had the majority of the vote going to Edwin Peacock initially, So obviously there was some coordination going on among the council members. Like the extent of the coordination, who is involved, I don't know. But when I see a five to five split like this for just two candidates and you know one of them has four Democrats and one Republican, like that's that is indicative of this power struggle that is occurring inside Charlotte's City Council. And because nine of the eleven members of Democrats, they keep all of that stuff sort of behind the curtains because they don't want to damage the Democrat brand. So they have these fights over text messages or phone calls or you know, face to face, but out of the public view. They don't really get into this stuff in public. That's one of the problems with having a body that is dominated by one political party like this. So congratulations to Edwin Peacock on his appointment. We'll see how it goes, all right, If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, and you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why. Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You could check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So today is Mechdeck Day. Mecklenburg Declaration Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence. May twentieth, That's why it's on our flag in North Carolina marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence or the mech Deck for short reading this piece over at the Charlotte Ledger by Tony Mescia and Christina Balling. The references to Charlotte. When you see seventeen seventy five, if you see the name Captain Jack, that's another one. Uh, James Jack, Captain James Jack. There's a pilsner at Old Neck Brewery called the Captain Jack Pilsner. That's what that's. That's all in reference to the Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence, which depending on So you know, this is where I get into trouble because to acknowledge a controversy means I'm taking a side, even though I have said that we should lean into this. This uh, this legend. It is the thing of legend because there's no physical proof because the document doesn't exist. It burned in a fire. And people who believe it, they say the all, there's enough circumstantial evidence to lead you to believe that it did exist, it did happen. There are people who disagree. They say this was a faulty memory of old people decades after the fact, and uh, they're you know, they're trying to besmirch the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, so simply going over And I feel the need to point this out because every time I do this, every single year, I get people yelling at me about you need to just accept the historical thing where they say I'm an idiot and you're just lying or whatever. I'm giving you that I'm laying out the controversy for you to decide. My position has been for years, for years, and it changed when I first came to Charlotte in nineteen ninety nine and heard about the mech Deck got the book chain of Errors, was reading through it and all that, and at the time it was not fully embraced as the event that it is now. I mean there's now a we have a like party going on in Charlotte today that never used to happen. I mean I shouldn't say never used to happen. There. There would be like some small gatherings and stuff, but it's because a bigger thing, and it should because, as I have said four years, when the truth, when the when the legend becomes truth, you print the legend right and Charlotte neat should lean into this and make it their thing. It ties us to history. It unites us in a common vision. There's so there's a lot of good to be had from it. So it's been a hotly debated topic though for roughly two hundred years. Okay, so this is this is not me I've been accused of, like, oh, just trying to stir the pod to make myself relevant. I think somebody said once it's like, yeah, talking about two hundred fifty year old document doesn't make one relevant. But the debate has existed. The debate over Mecklenburg's role in America's founding is so old that even Jefferson and Adams weighed in on it. Now, keep in mind at the time when they weighed in on this, Jefferson and Adams they used to be friends. Then they became bitter enemies for a very very long time. And then I think, if memory serves correctly, John's wife, Abigail, like said, you need to reach out and you guys need to you need to mend defenses here in your old age. And so they started writing letters and such, and that's when you know, Adams wrote this letter to Jefferson like, hey, I found this newspaper article here talking about the Meckelberg Declaration of Independence a full year before you wrote yours. What's up with that? Tom? Did you steal it? Like? That's that was the nature of the letter, you know, And of course Jefferson's like, that's spurious, that's probably like in an old English accent or something, but very angry at it. And and so there isn't any physical copy of the declaration of independence. But you have these people who were alive at the time, who years later then gave an account of what they said happened two hundred and fifty years ago today, which was that they drafted a declaration of independence. They gave it to Captain James Jack and he rode his horse all the way up to Philadelphia to the side of the convention and he was like, hey, Mecklenburg County, you know we're declaring independence. Check us out, and here's our declaration of independence. Now. I don't know if there was a copy that got lost up there. Maybe there was a fire up there too, I don't know. They I believe they said at the time that it was premature, so they would not look at it. Now last year, I think it was last year, or maybe it was. Yeah, No, I think it was last year. I had gone up to New York to visit the folks over the summer, and we stopped halfway, and we picked different places to stop when we drive it, and we picked Chambersburg. I did not pick Chambersburg, I forget. Who is my brother and his family or my wife? I forget. But it was like halfway, so we stopped there and we're walking around the little downtown area and I look up and there's a sign and it says the John Jack Tavern. On this site stood the John Jack Tavern, operated by the family of James Jack, courier of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The tavern was used from seventeen eighty four until seventeen ninety four as a courthouse and jail for Franklin County. Side note, I think that we should start having court in taverns again. I think this is what No, I'm just kidding, although it would it would for some interesting reality TV. So they have a plaque to James Jack citing the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Did I say Virginia earlier? Is Pennsylvania. When the legend becomes truth, you print the legend. And this is a good legend for Charlotte. All right, So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and especial days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos slides? Are they preserved? Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digit ties your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generations to come. I urge you do not wait until it's too late this spring, celebrate your past. Visit Creative Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the love and care that it deserves. Creative Video Preserving Family Memories since nineteen ninety seven. Located in mint Hill, just off four eighty five mail orders are accepted to get all the details that create a video dot com according to mechdeck dot org. And do believe the K goes in there. I know some people write it without the K, but the K belongs mech deck, but no K on the end of it. It's I don't make the language rules here people. Anyway, between seventeen seventy five and eighteen nineteen, the Mecklumberg Declaration of Independence was remembered and celebrated in Mecklinberg County and to some extent in North Carolina, but no one outside of the state new or care much about it. Only the declaration was remembered, and of the United States Declaration, only that was remembered, And there was no mention of the twenty one Resolves during this period, because there was another document called the Mecklenburg Resolves, which was written up like I think ten days later or something like that, or it came out shortly after. And so the argument has been that you would draft the declaration first and then you would do the resolves after. Now that's what supporters say. Detractors skeptics. They say that the people who forty years after the fact are asked to recount whether or not this thing did occur. The document was drafted, is it legit, did it actually happen? And the eyewitness accounts that were given again forty years after the fact, that they confused or conflated the resolves with the Mecklamberg Declaration, so they called it a declaration, but they were actually thinking about the results. So that was the disagreement. The people had been busy building a new country and had paid little attention to their history. However, by eighteen nineteen thirty six years after the end of the war, people were beginning to be interested in the history of the revolution. A debate arose as to whether the revolution was started in Virginia or in New England. The North Carolina Assembly entered the discussion by asking doctor Joseph McNitt Alexander to go through the papers of his father, the late John McNitt Alexander, who was the secretary of the May twentieth meeting, and write up the story of the mech Deeck. He did so, and his report was printed in the Raleigh Register on April thirtieth, eighteen nineteen. That would have been the end of it, except that former President John Adams saw a copy of that report and then sent it over to Thomas Jefferson, implying that Jefferson had copied words and phrases from the Mech Deck for his own July fourth, seventeen seventy six declaration of independence. Jefferson responded at length, saying that he thought the mech Deck spurious and that he was an unbeliever in the document. This exchange was a private correspondence known only to those two men. Again, the Mech Deck would have remained an interesting footnote in history, except that Jefferson's letter was then published after his death and thereby publicized. Jefferson's condemnation had to be answered, and so the North Carolina General Assembly appointed a committee to gather all of the documentary evidence available and publish an official North Carolina state pamphlet on the subject in eighteen thirty one. Since then, there have been twelve books published on the subject, maybe more by now lists, magazine and newspaper articles, and chapters in more general history books. Again, according to the Mecklenburg County this is James Williams at the Mecklenburg Historical Association. He said today there is a difference of opinion as to the authenticity of the text of the Mech Deck. Many prominent historians assert that the Mech Deck is spurious and they remain unbelievers, but others judge that a preponderance of evidence confirms the stated facts, and I say, lean into it, Charlotte. This is a uniquely Charlotte kind of a story. So keep the legend, keep the facts, make the case, do the panel discussions, you know, debate the controversies, all of that, absolutely, but own the mech Deck. So I'm glad to see that the celebrations are getting bigger, and there's one today actually going on right now. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.