NC's "Baby Jesus" using his office to increase his profile (02-25-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 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 thepeekkalendershow.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.

[00:00:28] I want to welcome back to the program Andrew Dunn. He is the publisher of Longleaf Politics. Longleafpol.com is the website. He's also a newly minted contributing columnist to the Charlotte Observer and the News and Observer. I have no idea how he landed that. Andrew Dunn, welcome to the program, sir. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's fantastic to be back here with you.

[00:00:52] Yeah, so congrats on the contributing columnist position with McClatchy. Is that the first? Are you the first conservative columnist or the only as a contributor over there? I'm not sure. I'm definitely not the first, but I might be the first to kind of have a long-term steady gig over there. They've gone kind of back and forth. I know Matthew Ridenour, former county commissioner, used to write some stuff for him.

[00:01:22] But, no, I'm loving it. It's great to be able to add some sanity to those pages. So, and it's, how have you been received, as far as you can tell over there, like by the readership? I think it's gone really well. And everything they're telling me is that it's well read. I think there's a hunger in this community. There's a lot more conservatives around here than people think. And so there's a hunger for that type of writing.

[00:01:48] Yeah, well, and look, I've said for years, unchallenged ideas are easy to hold. And it's, I feel like a lot of publications that lean left and they don't allow this kind of examination of ideas, they get intellectually flabby. And then they are actually doing themselves and their readers a disservice because they don't know the arguments anymore. They don't have to make the arguments and they're not even aware of what any kind of counter argument might be. So, Godspeed to you, sir.

[00:02:18] Thank you. Yeah, I agree 100% with that. It's so easy to get into your bubble where you're only reading one particular viewpoint. So, it's good to wake people up sometimes. Yeah. So, you had an interesting piece the other day. I want to start with Jeff Jackson, a.k.a. Baby Jesus, which I'm glad you made reference to that in your piece as well. It's still the most hilarious nickname that I've heard for a politician.

[00:02:47] But you talk about Jeff Jackson treating the attorney general's office in the state like a networking event. So, what do you mean by that? Yeah, what I mean by that is I think going into the race, everyone assumes that Attorney General Jeff Jackson, that that wouldn't be his final stop, that he is going to run for governor one day or Senate, because he certainly made it clear that those are his aspirations.

[00:03:16] But there's kind of an unspoken agreement that when somebody gets elected to a new office, that they need to at least pretend to take the new job seriously. And what I'm seeing from Attorney General Jackson is he seems to be spending a lot more of his time, or at least a lot more of what he's putting out into the public, on some of these hot-button national issues, especially, you know,

[00:03:43] the consortiums of Democrat attorneys general around the country who are suing to block the Trump administration. I mean, I think in the first month and a half, two months of office, you've seen one press release from the AG's office on, you know, keeping a bad guy in jail and 7, 8, 9, 10 about Doge. Right. And the North Carolina GOP actually sent out a tweet along a similar line

[00:04:11] talking about how Jackson has made only one announcement relating to violent crime, and that was that a plea deal was reached in an Asheville murder from 2022. Yeah. Yeah. So that's exactly, I think that you've probably had it in front of you. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, that's what you want an attorney general's office to be focused on. There's plenty of actual important needs right here at home in North Carolina.

[00:04:40] It's really not useful to have an attorney general who's focused on these national issues. You said in one part of this piece that North Carolina voters didn't elect an attorney general to be a national Democratic surrogate. But did they? Maybe that is why, like, particularly Democrat voters may have, you know, gone in with eyes wide open.

[00:05:06] This is what they want their, you know, TikTok star to do. Perhaps. And I think there is some segment of the population that wants that. But, you know, a lot of these statewide races are won on the margins. They're won by unaffiliated voters. And I don't want to take anything away from Jeff Jackson. I mean, he's a very talented politician.

[00:05:31] He's by far, in my estimation, the best communicator in North Carolina politics. He does a great job of laying out the issues and what he's working on. But I think the segment of voters who put him over the top were folks that were hoping that he would apply that to the actual attorney general's job.

[00:05:55] You also offer some advice on how Republicans can combat him, basically, and hold him accountable. What's your advice, your strategy advice there? Yeah. I mean, my main point is Republicans in North Carolina, in my view, kind of have the bad habit of if they lose a race or if they see something they don't like, then to immediately start trying to pass a bill to take back that power.

[00:06:23] And I think it's short-sighted. I think it relies on the assumption that Republicans will never win these offices ever again. And I think that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. What I would recommend is assume in four years that you're going to have a Republican in that office and give the office the resources and the powers that it needs to have.

[00:06:45] You know, in the meantime, while we have a Democrat in the office, I think that Republicans should focus on just consistently making the case, you know, as you are seeing them do, that he has the wrong priorities. Let me shift to a piece. I guess this was published today, right? North Carolina's fiscal cliff. You say it's a scare tactic.

[00:07:08] And anybody who's paid attention to North Carolina General Assembly budget politics for, you know, any time within the last, I don't know what, 15 years. It's the same old refrain, you know, predictions of doom and gloom and catastrophe if the Republicans, you know, do whatever, you know, they want to do or have planned to do. And then it never materializes. And so yet again, here we have, you know, Governor Josh Stein warning of a looming fiscal cliff in 2026.

[00:07:37] And I thought this was interesting. You say this isn't a budget crisis. It's a spending debate. So what did you mean by that? Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, fiscal cliff is kind of a misnomer. That's the talking point that's been going around in Democratic circles. And I don't think it comes anywhere close to describing what's actually going on.

[00:07:58] You know, just to step back briefly, you know, ahead of every budget cycle, the, you know, the governor's administration and the General Assembly's experts, they come together and they put together a prediction of what they think state tax revenues are going to look like over the next couple years. And what they're saying this year is that, you know, this year we're running a $500 million surplus.

[00:08:19] Plus, next year revenue will still go up again, but then the following year, so this is two years from now, they're predicting that overall revenue will go down a little bit. Now, this isn't a shortfall or anything like that because that year hasn't even come close to being budgeted yet. But, you know, it does make things a little bit more challenging if you are dealing with an actual revenue decline.

[00:08:45] I mean, do you have to make some cuts or change some of your assumptions related to your baseline budget? I'm skeptical that that's actually going to come to pass. I looked at the two-year-out predictions for the last decade, and they have never come anywhere close to what the reality was two years later when that year actually came around. And in one case, it was almost a 20 percent difference that North Carolina brought in 20 percent more tax revenue than was initially predicted.

[00:09:15] And while that doesn't sound like a lot when you're talking about a $35 billion budget, 20 percent of that, I can't do math live on the radio, but it's a lot of money. It's billions and billions of dollars. So, one, it's very premature for Governor Stein and other Democrats to go out and say, hey, we need to, you know, this is an emergency. We need to do something about it.

[00:09:37] You know, what they're really doing is a political game to try to get Republicans to go back on the tax rate decreases that are scheduled to go into effect. And I think it's short-sighted. I think the General Assembly has done a really good job of planning for these tax rate decreases. They've always been predicated on hitting certain targets in tax revenue with, you know, the understanding that government does have a role and it does need some money.

[00:10:05] And so they've crafted these tax decreases to make sure that we're still able to do what we need to do for that. All right. And so while Andrew does not do math live on the radio, he does it in the piece at the Charlotte Observer. You can read it. It's called North Carolina's Fiscal Cliff is Just a Scare Tactic from Democrats. And we'll talk with you next week. Andrew, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. And we'll talk next week. Thank you. All right. See you. That's Andrew Dunn.

[00:10:32] He is also the publisher of Longleaf Politics, formerly of the Dan Forrest, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest campaign and administration. So we'll have him back on next Tuesday in a regular segment. 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. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion.

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[00:11:51] Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let me go back to this North Carolina Republican Party tweet that they sent out. This was, I think, yesterday they sent this out. And Andrew wrote the piece about Jeff Jackson, our attorney general, using his office as a networking event.

[00:12:15] So the GOP says that Attorney General Jackson was sworn into office nearly two months ago. He has made just one announcement relating to violent crime, which was a plea deal in a 2022 Asheville murder. By contrast, he has made five separate announcements criticizing President Trump and Doge.

[00:12:39] It's clear Jeff Jackson cares more about preening for the liberal media and bolstering his out-of-state liberal donor network than doing his job and keeping North Carolina families safe. He should just be honest about it. This is something also that Andrew Dunn in his column touches on as well.

[00:13:03] He says the attorney general's role, in theory, is to run the state's Department of Justice, prosecuting criminals, managing the state crime lab, training law enforcement. But in practice, attorneys general can take different approaches. They can focus on protecting state interests or they can go looking for fights. And Jackson has chosen the latter.

[00:13:28] And this actually prompted a North Carolina state representative named Mike Schietzelt, who said he said he agrees with everything in this column that Andrew wrote. But he says he quibbles over one point, which is that Jackson doesn't go looking for fights. He signs on to other people's work to raise his national profile, which I think is I think that's accurate.

[00:13:58] Right. Because he didn't like he's not taking the lead on this with all of these other Democrats, states, attorney general or states. Attorneys general. Right. He just is piggybacking onto their work. Like they're already doing something and he'll be like, yeah, sign me up for that. And then he can put out TikTok videos about it and stand next to people at press conferences.

[00:14:23] And by the way, that is also a tactic that was used quite effectively by Barack Obama when he was a U.S. senator. I covered this at the time when he was running in 2008, which was he had a bit of a reputation as like the new guy who shows up. And the one story was that he literally joined some some U.S. senators on their way to a news conference. And he just kind of tagged along with them and stood next to them.

[00:14:52] And then, you know, was claiming all sorts of credit for for some bill. And and that's it. And he got this reputation in the state. I believe it was in the state legislature where he was like a one term or there. And there were some other longtime, you know, veteran Democrat lawmakers who said they didn't appreciate the fact that he would come in.

[00:15:15] And after, you know, the team had had driven the ball 99 yards to the other side of the the field, they would, you know, hand it off to Obama and he would, you know, get the one yard and spike the ball and get all the credit. They weren't very happy with him doing that either. And I wonder if that's kind of the model that Jackson is using. Now, Jackson, as Andrew Dunn says, is not the first to use this office in this way. Josh Stein did it.

[00:15:43] And before Josh Stein, Roy Cooper did it. Right. Cooper spent 20 years as attorney general. Stein lasted two terms. So for four year terms. So two of those eight years. Jackson might not even make it through two years before running for U.S. Senate and maybe even president. But this is how Democrats in North Carolina have maintained control over this office and the governor's office. All right.

[00:16:11] 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 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 can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete.

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[00:17:09] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Andrew Dunn in his piece over at the Charlotte Observer in his op ed the other day. He says North Carolina Democrats have maintained control of the attorney general office and the governor's office.

[00:17:30] In the manner in the way employing a strategy that Jeff Jackson is now obviously using, even as Republicans have built legislative super majorities. Candidates with star power do not just emerge. They methodically build name recognition, fundraising networks and relationships within the party. Right. And that's that goes for both parties.

[00:17:54] We covered last week, I believe it was data that was compiled by the Carolina Journal that found somewhere in the neighborhood of like 70 or 80 percent of all of the donations that went to Josh Stein in his run for governor came from out of state. And that's how Democrats have been winning. They've been raising boatloads of money from predominantly out of state donors. And this is why. Same thing with the attorney general. Right.

[00:18:24] You raise all of this money from out of state. And this is why we are seeing Jeff Jackson's focus on these national lawsuits against Donald Trump. Right. I mean, I think these dots are pretty close together and pretty easily connected with a with a straight line. Right. As two dots usually are. I mean, if you're trying to, you know, be the most direct. Right. So it's clear to me like this is the payoff.

[00:18:52] This is the reason why they gave him all the money. And this is him making good on that promise, whether he made it explicitly or not does not matter one wit to me. The point of having a Democrat attorney general is to get another state to sign on to your lawsuits against Donald Trump. If Republicans want to hold him accountable, they need a better strategy than simply trying to strip power away from the office.

[00:19:21] And Andrew went over the details on how he thinks they should do that. Just, you know, keep calling attention to what Jackson is doing. And, you know, I certainly do. And, you know, every time Jackson signs on to one of these lawsuits, I make a I make a point of noting it. I wasn't even aware that he did a press release that actually had to deal with crime. You know, it's it's all just orange man bad.

[00:19:49] But again, that's what the donors gave him the money to win for. So he is fulfilling the wishes of his donors. Dunn also had the the second piece here that that we covered a little bit called the North Carolina fiscal cliff is a scare tactic. That Josh Stein is using. And I do have some of the math here.

[00:20:12] So he's Andrew talked about how, you know, they do these budget projections, these revenue projections, I should say. And, you know, the the the legislature does its budgeting on two year cycles. They call them a biennium. And so the first year, which is the long session, the second year is a short session for the legislature. And we're in the long session right now. So they're going to be doing their budget. And once they lock in that budget, then that's the two year budget.

[00:20:40] And then they'll come back next year on the short session and just make any adjustments that may need to be made. So this projection of revenue in another two years. Right. So getting through this budget cycle and then projecting out what the revenue is going to look like in 2027. That's a difficult thing to do.

[00:21:02] And as Andrew noted, and as he did in his in his math here, he says every time the forecasts of disaster or every time the forecast of disaster have failed to materialize. And he says, I sorted through the last decade's worth of forecasts that came from the Office of State Budget and Management and paired them with the actual result.

[00:21:28] It showed that nearly every early revenue forecast. Yeah. Every early revenue forecast in the past decade has come in short. It underestimated the actual collections. Sometimes by as much as 18 percent. But all along, every year, every time, the Democrat narrative, which is always amplified by the media, is always the same.

[00:21:58] The same doomsday warnings. Right. The same predictions of catastrophe. And they never materialize. Yet they keep making the argument. I guess maybe at some point the stopped clock will be correct. And maybe at that point they'll say, see, we told you. You know, I don't know. They haven't been correct yet, but they still get treated as if their predictions have value. It is the most infuriating thing for me. Every single budget cycle, you will see it again.

[00:22:27] And this cycle, too, I have no doubt they will quote some, quote, expert from the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, I think is what they're called. I don't know. I think they changed their name at some point over the last decade. And every year, this leftist think tank funded by the usual suspects in our North Carolina left wing funding apparatus, right, the blueprint NC crowd.

[00:22:55] Every year they make the same prediction that we're going to go into this catastrophe. We're going to go bankrupt. We're not going to have any money for anything. And he points out, and correctly so, you know, Roy Cooper, my good friend Ray, the entire eight years he was governor, he was always trying to raid the reserve funds, right?

[00:23:19] The Republicans have been funding money, putting it aside in the rainy day fund for emergencies. And you put it in there and you don't touch it, particularly you don't touch it for ongoing expenses. That is a recipe for bankruptcy. The point of the reserves is to put it aside so it doesn't get touched unless something catastrophic happens and then you've got the money to shore up something or to respond to a disaster, for example.

[00:23:47] And Roy Cooper has constantly tried to raid that fund. And then, of course, after Hurricane Helene, what does he say? We need to take the money from the fund and use it for Helene recovery because that's what it's for. Well, yes, that's what it's for. But you have been trying to raid it. And if you had your way, there'd be no money in it whatsoever.

[00:24:08] However, a decade later, after Republicans got into power and they began implementing their tax reform, which was supposed to lead to catastrophe, we have seen the most successful economic stretch in the state's history. Andrew Dunn continues, the real disagreement here is about political philosophy. Democrats don't seem to get this.

[00:24:35] But budget surpluses are not actually good. They're not good. I mean, it's preferable than a deficit. Don't get me wrong. But it means you took too much money than what you had budgeted for. You took too much money from your citizens. That's why Republicans, when they end up with the surpluses, they try to give them back. Like, especially at the beginning, they were cutting checks.

[00:25:04] And then they put it into the rainy day fund. So Andrew says, instead of debating whether the state collects enough, the focus should be on whether the money is used strategically. He talks about teacher pay, talks about state infrastructure, roads and bridges and such, as well as court system backlogs. I think that is a key. I think Republicans are missing a real opportunity here to put more money into the court system that will help to make communities safer.

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[00:26:35] And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creativevideo.com. So, one other piece though. It's over at Longleaf Politics. Again, the website. Longleaf P-O-L. Longleaf P-O-L dot com. And that's Andrew Dunn's website. And he talks a little bit about some of the people behind the scenes. And some of these names you may know or have heard.

[00:27:04] But these are important names to keep in mind when you're talking or thinking about North Carolina politics. Obviously, over on the left, you've got Morgan Jackson, Nexus Strategies. That's his firm. And he has been, as Dunn calls him, the undisputed king of Democrat consultants in North Carolina. He has advised former Governor Roy Cooper, Josh Stein, Attorney General Jeff Jackson, numerous others.

[00:27:32] So, if you are serious about winning high office in North Carolina, you go to Morgan Jackson. You go to Nexus Strategies. On the Republican side, he says, it gets a little murkier. But if you've got to pick a leader, right now it's Paul Shoemaker of Capital Communications. And over his political career, he was an advisor for Governor Jim Martin.

[00:27:58] Did campaigns for Richard Burr, Pat McCrory, Sherry Berry, Tim Moore, and Tom Tillis. One of the other guys on Tillis' campaign, Jordan Shaw. That's another Tillis advisor that's listed here. But Tillis is up for re-election right now. And it's probably going to be a tough campaign for him. That's what everybody expects it to be.

[00:28:29] And if Tillis loses, then, you know, the questions start going around about, well, you know, do you hire on Shoemaker or Shaw? Do you bring those guys on if Tillis loses? And Dunn says if he does lose, then the torch will pass outside of the Tillis orbit.

[00:28:55] And then he offers up a couple of people who, he says, you know, could be the sort of heir apparent for the Republican Party. First up, he lists Jonathan Feltz, who served briefly in the McCrory administration, then went and set up his own shop. It's called the Indy Group. And it took a while for him to land a major candidate. But when he did, he landed a big one.

[00:29:25] That was Ted Budd. And there's also a fellow named David Capen, Capen Consulting. He actually has more clients than anybody else in North Carolina politics, according to Andrew Dunn at Longleaf Politics. Most of them are on the smaller side, but that's kind of how that business model works.

[00:29:47] If becoming the king of consulting is like winning the lottery, Capen has the most tickets, right? Because he's got the most candidates. The one most likely to pay off quickly is Labor Commissioner Luke Farley. Who, Dunn says, is an impressive politico and quickly becoming a leader on the Council of State. And then there is the number three is Jim Blaine.

[00:30:16] Jim Blaine, former chief of staff for the North Carolina Senate leader, President Pro Tem, Phil Berger. And he set up, I think, Ray Martin, I think, was his partner. They call themselves the differentiators, differentiator data.

[00:30:40] It's a huge asset, and the company's fleece vest is a status symbol in Raleigh, which I was not aware. They apparently they got fleece vests, and that's like that's the uniform. Six months ago, Blaine would have been higher on the list, but Dan Bishop's loss. That was Jim Blaine was repping or working on the Dan Bishop campaign, and he lost that attorney general race. And that was a major setback. And that's the nature of the beast when it comes to this kind of line of work.

[00:31:09] His other clients on the Council of State did win, however. He had Dave Bollick, the state auditor, and he had Brad Briner for state treasurer. Blaine can maintain a successful and lucrative business serving as the powerhouse behind the Republican majority in the General Assembly, which I would probably do if I were him rather than trying to become the new consulting king. The white whale for North Carolina consultants is obviously the governorship.

[00:31:38] The state's top executive position has been largely out of reach, but it provides an incredible platform for building a movement as well as a consulting business. Whoever gets there first is bound to win the crown. So one of the things to keep in mind, people may be asking, well, how did McCrory get there without any of these kingmakers?

[00:32:06] And I believe the guy that he used was Jack Hawk, if memory serves, and he passed away. And Shoemaker's been around for, you know, I think he worked for, yeah, he worked for Jesse Helms, I think, too. Or no, hang on a second. Brad Hayes, Tom Ellis, and Carter Wren. That was who I was thinking of, Carter Wren, who does Talking About Politics website. He worked for Helms.

[00:32:34] But Shoemaker came along and sort of took their place. So it's how this stuff goes. But those are the names, the background. Like I said, if you want this kind of background peek behind the curtain on North Carolina politics, Andrew Dunn is a must follow on Twitter and a must follow on his website, longleafpol.com. 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.

[00:33:03] 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 thepetekalendershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.