Mayor Lyles quits; Porter says the quiet part out loud | Hour 1

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 I daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. So yes, the big news in Charlotte today is the announcement from the mayor, vy Lyles, who had won four elections as mayor, most recently twenty twenty five. Last year she won reelection and about six months now, I guess into her fourth term, she quit. She is out. The statement says she will resign from the office of mayor effective June thirtieth, and she said quote serving as Charlotte's mayor has been the honor of my life. I am proud of our record navigating various challenges, strengthening our economy, investing in our neighborhoods, and building a foundation for Charlotte's continued success during a time of rapid growth. Now it is time for the next phase of my life, to spend more time with my grandchildren and for someone new to lead us forward. So she was first elected back in what twenty seventeen. I want to say, I'm okay, so a couple things, and I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this, mainly because it I think everybody kind of people were questioning whether she was going to run for election this time, and so now she's not even going to fill out the rest or serve the rest of her term. She made it, you know, a quarter of the way through her term. Pat McCrory's record as longest serving mayor still stands. Somebody else is going to have to start all new try to get five consecutive terms. She became Charlotte's first African American female mayor when she unseated the incumbent Jennifer Roberts in the Democrat primary in twenty seventeen. And then this being Charlotte, you know, Pat McCrory was the last Republican the city has ever elected as mayor or. I think in any at large capacity, now there may have been one. Edwin Peacock may have won one more city council race. But no, the at large races. If you're running city wide, Republicans do not win. It's just Democrats prefer anybody over a Republican. It doesn't matter how loathsome that person might be, doesn't matter. But in the primaries, yeah, they can whack somebody, and they did Jennifer Roberts. So this was twenty seventeen. Correy was the governor at this point, and you'll recall that was when Jennifer Roberts. In order to win her term in the first place, she had to, you know, build a coalition, and she relied heavenly on the LGBT community. I know, it sounds very phobic because they don't include the plus Q I A or sorry, the plus two I A whatever. All the other letters are now, but these were different days. Let's not judge modern people. By the time they were living in Back then, it was just LGBT. We added the Q and the plus and the two and the IA and yeah. Anyway, so she needed that coalition and she made them promises. And this was after Obergefeld, so the gay marriage issue was pretty much settled, and so this was then the fight over access to bathrooms locker rooms, showers right for trans people, and the city implemented an ordinance despite the Republican controlled legislature telling them, do not do this. If you do this, we're going to drop the hammer. And they did. Charlotte did it, and they passed a law that they were going to find private businesses. I think it was like one hundred dollars a day if they did not comply. And so if you're a private gym and your members are let's say you're running a female gym, like you only cater to female people who want to work out, so you have just female bathrooms, that sort of thing. If a guy walks in claims to be a woman, then you have to let them into the showers and the changing rooms and the locker rooms and the facilities. And if you don't comply, then they're going to nail you three hundred and sixty five dollars a day. So ostensibly a three hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a year fine. Right, So is that right? Check my math on that. That doesn't sound right. Thirty six five. No, it is three hundred and sixty five. Now, no, it's I think it's thirty six five. Anyway, you're gonna put businesses, You're gonna put these businesses out of business. And so the state came in and they passed HB two, right, HB two, which we all know that then prompted all of the marches, gave rise to Roy Cooper's run for governor. Right, he weaponized the HB two thing. He whipped up a boycott against the state, against his own constituents. He was Attorney in General at the time anyway, So like that's sort of the that was the that was the environment at the time. And when Vililes came in, and as I repeated many times here, you know, the old adage in Charlotte politics was that there are three parties, the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Chamber, and there's only one of those. You don't cross. And I don't know how strong the Chamber is versus how strong it used to be. I mean, you've lost you know, Hugh McCall ed, Crutchfield, Bill Lee. Right. So there were all of these big time business leaders that were here and took an interest in making sure that you know, the business of Charlotte was business, and the business community was not happy with what Jennifer Roberts was doing. She was governing as a radical leftist as mayor, and it wasn't a good look. It made a lot of businesses not just uncomfortable but cut into their bottom line and stuff. And anyway, so along comes by Lyles. Now Lyles had been I remember her when she was a budget analyst in Charlotte. When I was a reporter covering the city beat, I would go to the city council meetings and she was in the budget office, she was in the she became an assistant city manager. And so then she went off after she retired out of that, and she went off I think for like the Foundation for the Carolinas, which is you know, uber powerful NNGO and Charlotte and then or nonprofit I guess. And then she made this run for office in order to unseat Roberts, and that the fact that she won and she governed as sort of this at least on the on the exterior as like this you know, grandmotherly figure, this technocrat, bureaucrat kind of background. You know, she was comfortable around budget numbers and she you know, knew the language of the staff and all of this. That she was a much more palatable option, you know, for for the business crowd that wanted things to kind of just settle down and not be so radicalized. And so she, yes, she did. And so I heard Pat McCrory's comment there in the top of the hour newscast where he said that she was like a stabilizing force. And she was because remember before Jennifer Roberts, there was Dan Cloudefelter, state lawmaker. He was appointed to fill the mayorship after the indictment of Patrick Cannon. Right, Patrick Cannon went to prison and in national scandal, and so then Dan Claudefelter gets in and he at first he said, oh, I'm not going to run for the office, and then he ran for the office, and then everybody got mad. Jennifer Roberts ran against him. She was a county commissioner. And before that it was Anthony Fox. Anthony Fox got elected mayor over John Lasseter, and then he quit the job and went to work for the Obama administration. He was the He went to work in the in I think in the like the rail area. He's working on trains, and so, yeah, there was a lot of instability in Charlotte and Lyles brought back stability. Now what I'm interested in is who the city council is going to put in that place in the seat of mayor is it going to be a temporary thing, because all of them are going to probably say, we only want this to be temporary in case I want. To run for it. That's why they do that. So who do they put in there? A radical or ooh, is Greg Phipps available? You know? Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slideshows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot Com. All right, Alex here to try out some material for us on the announcement that the mayor is resigning in June. Hello Alex, Yes, yeah, thanks? Yeah? Are they wait now? Now? Is this new material, alex Or? Is this stuff that you've already run past us before? Well, I've mentioned a few things, but I don't know if you'll remember it. But give me a try, Okay, I mean, I don't know. I feel like, if you're going on tour, you can do it in different cities. But you know, we're different and shows, you know. But it's like, if you've already used this material to. Say, what's that I have a slightly different thing to say Anyway. I just wanted to say that. A couple months back, I was speak with my cousin down in Georgia and we were discussing the crime problem and other issues in cities like Atlanta and Charlotte. I said, if the devil ever became mayor of Charlotte, he wouldn't have to change much. I said, this city has gotten so evil it doesn't need a mayor. It needs an exorcist. The left wingers running this town won't be satisfied until they turned Charlotte into a southern version of San Francisco. San Francisco with grits. That could be Charlotte's new slogan. All right, thank you, Alex. I do feel like I heard one of those before. But it's Look, it's always important that you refine and hone the material on the tour. Right, you're always trying to tweak to, you know, tweak the thing to make it get a bigger laugh. So all right, speaking of politicals. Oh, hang on a second before I move on to the next topic, let me get to the text line. Anthony says, I don't see enough intelligence for Lyles to do that budget role. Is that a joke? No, now, she was, she was a budget analyst. What about dimples? What's her face? It's dimple? Ashmera the city council. This is my prediction, and you know me, I don't even make predictions. I don't make predictions on election outcomes and in jury trials, and I tried to kind of refrain from making any predictions whatsoever. However, in this case, I feel pretty confident based on past experience in many, many different examples in local government, when there is an open seat, the people who appoint somebody to the empty seat do not want somebody in there that is going to essentially have the power of incumbency if they were to decide to run again, right, and so, with the mayorship on the line, and this is sort of the this is the golden prize here for many of the city council members, even though the mayor's office is largely ceremonial, but it does let you hobnob with a lot of you know, the elites around Charlotte and the state. It helps you build your political network, and you can then use it as a springboard to run for some other office. Right, that's the thinking. So you've got city council members that would like to run for mayor. I know of at least two off the top of my head, and if I start counting prior council members, I can think of a few more. So the Council is going to be the body that appoints the replacement. They're not going to be interested in putting somebody into that mayor's spot that then they are going to have to run against, right, So they're going to demand a commitment that whomever they put in the spot will not run for reelection, they will simply be a caretaker, right, and then that starts limiting the pool of people that you can tap. Generally, you want to find somebody who has some level of experience. That's why I mentioned Greg Phipps. He was always their go to. I think yeah, they'd be like, oh, we got an opening, and all right, put Greg Phipps in there. And you want somebody that kind of They're gonna have to know how to run a meeting, right, to know what the role and responsibility of the mayor is. So they're gonna have to find somebody like that. Now, who that would be, I don't know, but there's a certain former activist that would very much like to be mayor that maybe he could do it. Do I hear and he calls out their show of hands for mister Braxton Winston. Anybody huh hm, oh no. I did get a question on the text line about doesn't the mayor pro tem take over for the mayor? Yes, if like the mayor were to die or cannot attend a ribbon cutting right because they misplaced their ridiculously oversized pair of scissors, right, So like in that case, yes, the mayor ProTem would step in. However, the mayor of Charlotte has announced she will resign June thirtieth, so the city council has got two months now to pick a replacement. So there will be a transition. There will, unless the mayor ProTem were to get the nod. But that would be I would think that's highly irregular, but we shall see. Sorry to say it, but we're gonna have to wait and find out. That's, you know, part of life. We've got to add some patience here, people. Although I did see another text from Anthony about sounds like about the right time for Braxton Winston to pop back up. Yeah, I'll be your placeholder, you know, I'll just be in there for a year, year and a half. I can get some stuff done that I want to get done, and all of this, and then we have to listen. To him kind of stutter his way through. Oh, gosh, that's gonna be bad, all right. Anyway, Speaking of shocking political developments, Katie Porter, running for governor in California, said the quiet part out loud as the kids like to say. Yeah. This was during a debate hosted by CNN, and she committed a gaff, which is Michael Kinsley's old joke that a gaff is when a politician accidentally says the truth. Right, So she committed this gaff during the debate before I play it for you and we all, well, it's not like a gaff like ha ha, look at her kind of a thing. It's a gaff like I knew it kind of a gaff, you know. So let me start with Jeffrey Blair, writing at National Review, and he's based in Chicago, and he says people often ask him like, why do you spend so much time like watching California politics, And he says the reason that he's invested in California is the comedy potential for all of its vast wealth, beauty, population, and cultural cachet. California feels like every bit as much of a failed state as Illinois or Minnesota, and all while lacking the ineffable international glamour and sparkling weather of Minneapolis or Chicago. California's political pistons still power the national democratic engine. Most of the worst ideas and the worst candidates you are likely to encounter nationally still pump forth first from the bilgepie heap of the left coast, and it spreads from there because that's where so many elite progressives still live. So former Orange County representative she was a congresswoman, Katie Porter. Katie Porter. Just as a recap, you'll recall Katie Porter. Let's say number one. She was the one that was dressed as batgirl for some reason walking the halls in Congress one day, and then she was also the one that threw scalding mashed potatoes on her husband's head and then they got a divorce. She also scolded her staffer during a zoom call with Jennifer Granholm. She's in the middle of answering a question and you can see the staffer walking behind her back in the kitchen or whatever, and she just stops midsentence, screaming, get out of my shot. You know, I think I actually used to have the U. I thought I had the looking I'm looking right now on my list of the Uh now, I must have deleted it. I used to have it as a drop little audio bike, get out of my shot. Except she didn't say get out of my shot. She started she was cursing, and all this stuff just abusive towards her staffer. And the reason the staffer was in the shot was to tell Katie Porter that something she was saying about electric vehicles was not true. She had mixed up some of the data points, and so the staffer was trying to tell her it's not this, it's that. And when the staffer said that, then Katie Porter responded with something along the lines of, well you were still in my shot before. Okay, she's like a horrible person to work for. The staffers on Capitol Hill say, and they would know. And then what was the last one that she did. Oh yeah, she was doing the big fundraiser bleep Trump, you know, f Trump, And she would keep dropping these lines in interviews and rallies and stuff. She sold merch with it to fundraise. And then remember she did the interview with like the ABC Los Angeles affiliate and they were sitting in a in a control room, like the TV control room in there and the reporter asks her some question, and Katie Porter is like, like, I didn't think this was going to be that kind of an interview. I thought this was going to be a nice interview or something like that. This is and this is what I mean by Democrats have become intellectually flabby. They don't get the kinds of interviews that Republicans get. They don't get adversarial interviews. And so she was taken aback by the question, which wasn't even like a really like pitbull type of a question. Okay, so that's this Katie Porter, who I believe is on ozempic. Just not for nothing. She's looking a lot better, she does. She looks a lot She was looking a lot better on the stage last night. I saw and I was like, whoa, she's on the shots, And well, I mean she is California. I think it is a requirement for aidency there that everyone has to be on the shots in California. I think that's right. Anyway, she set the pace for public humiliation early on in the campaign by being the first to declare her candidacy and the first to dynamite her own political career with multiple on air gaffs, including what must still rank as one of the worst major media candidate interviews ever. But that was only the beginning, as the crabs in the California bucket reached up to pull one another down. I love Jeffrey Blair's writing, he really, because that is you know what the bucket of crabs analogy is. If you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, they could get out if they worked together, like if they just walked up on top of each other and each one took turns like ants do they. But crabs don't do that. As soon as one crab starts to get up the wall, the other crabs grab it and drag it back down, and then they all end up in the pot, you know. And so that's what that's the analogy here for the Democrat primary. Yeah, swalwell, anybody remember the recently revealed but really kind of known for a long time sex pest that guy? Yeah, all right, I'll play for you the clip from Porter in a moment. Alrighty, So Katie Porter running, she's one of the Democrats running. I think they were, like, I mean, I think there's now forty two thousand candidates, but they only had like six or seven of them up on the stage. There are two Republicans that are up there, and then the rest are Democrats. So you've got. Former California Attorney General and biden Era Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Bessera, who has apparently partially consolidated enough Democrats support to move forward to the November race because they have a jungle primary. This is the primary, so the top two votainers move on to the general. And there was this moment where we thought you could have Steve Hilton and I'm drawn a blank on the Sheriff's name the other Republican, and that they could end up being the top two voteiners and California could end up with only two Republicans to vote for in the general and wouldn't that help save that state? But no, Trump waited in and he endorsed Hilton, and so now the sheriff is losing support, and so now it's probably going to be the Republican against one of the Democrats, and the Democrat will probably win. But Bisarah fell flat on his face after getting attacks from all sides because he's in the lead among the Democrats and so they got a you know, as crabs in a bucket, they got drag him down. Tom Steyer ranted like the billionaire lunatic that he is. Even the reaction from the CNN panel after the debate was Jeff Blair says, was more entertaining than the debate itself. As Democrats talking about Democrats for a democratic audience and their frank disappointment that these are the options on offer, the feeling was palpable. But it was Katie Porter who once again had the moment of the night and hopefully placed the exclamation point on her failed career. Porter, always a bludgeoning know it all whose origin in academia manifests itself in condescending attempts at let me tell you how it really works, kid rhetoric, did it once again last night, and it's impossible not to notice that CNN's panel chose not to highlight this very moment, for Porter gave away far too much about the sorts of private calculations that Democrats make in the state. They were all questioned about whether she would permit Ice to operate within the state as governor, and Porter began by self righteously speaking down her nose to the audience, Go. Ahead's the job of the California governor to protect every single Californian. The sanctuary state policy is designed to make sure that our state resource the taxpayer dollars, the public servants that we have are focusing on doing their jobs, which is not cooperating with the federal immigration authorities. These are Californians, they contribute to our economy, they pay taxes, and they're one of the only ways that our state has been growing in recent years. Interesting did you catch that bit at the end there? They are one of the only ways our state has been growing in recent years. And that is true. And you're not supposed to say that Democrats. As Democrats, you should know better. You're not supposed to say that because I believe the Californian net migration of or sorry, the migration of Californians out of the state was about a quarter of a million and the in migration of illegal aliens was over like one hundred fifty. So, like, California keeps losing population and the only reason they're not losing it at a faster rate is because of illegal immigration. And the reason why illegal aliens want to live in California is I mean, yes, it's proximity to the border, but also they're a sanctuary state. Sanctuary cities they refuse to cooperate with ICE, right, so they can get there and then not have to worry that if they, you know, beat up their wife, commit some sort of violent offense, They're not going to get deported if they get arrested for something. So that's where they go. As more and more states crack down on sanctuary cities, then you get states that roll out the welcome at and those are blue states, blue cities. Virginia just did it. Virginia just did a statewide law that they're not going to cooperate with ICE, which may mean a lot of people that are illegal aliens in North Carolina may end up going up there. Have fun with that, Virginia, thank you. I guess yes, But did you catch the other part she said there? She said that the sanctuary state policy is designed to make sure that our state resources, the taxpayer dollars, the public servants that we have, are focusing on doing their jobs. Your job is first and foremost security. That is the number one thing gov CO is supposed to be doing. Security policing. Number one. Otherwise why would I be paying you for all of these other things. See, democrats have lost sight of like the first order of needs was. That maslobs law. Right. Your first order needs, right food, shelter, right security, Because if you don't have security, then somebody can come along and take all your food and your shelter, can deprive you of your life or your property. So you have to have some sort of social contract with the authorities, with the government that says I'm going to give up some of my liberty in extra and treasure some money to help fund a security force, a fire department. I mean, yes, I could sit around all day waiting for a fire to break out so I can throw a bunch of buckets of water on it or something. But how about this, we all throw in some money and then we have a dedicated fire department and they will dispatch and put out the fire's force, and then I don't have to worry. I can engage in more productive activity for the society. But no, not to the Democrats. They don't see this, Like, your first responsibility is security. So when you say that the sanctuary state policy is to make sure state resources are focused on public servants, doing their jobs, and their job is not to cooperate with ICE. Just not true. Their job is because ICE's function is the same as your first order priority, which is security. Jeff Blair goes on to conclude, leave it to Professor Katie to tell you what policymakers and pundits have known for years now, which is California is bleeding actual legal residents and becoming more dependent on illegal aliens to maintain their population in the census. Yes, and that allows them to maintain political pressure on other states and to swing a bigger regulatory stick than their failing state would otherwise deserve. Right, they have influence and power that they don't deserve because their population figures are padded with illegal aliens who cannot vote for them or against them. I've been talking about this issue. This is at the heart of the redistricting fight, which I'm. Gonna get to. They they have too many representatives because of illegal immigration. 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.