New CMS Board Chair is apparently a convicted felon | 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, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the peak calendar show.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. Alrighty, so it is a day that ends in Y, so we have yet another installment of CMS. I'm still working on the branding on that, but, uh, yeah, the, uh, Charlotte Mecklenburg School District, uh, is a, yeah, a little bit of an awkward development, an embarrassing development. I saw this yesterday afternoon when, uh, Breaking Brett Jensen from WBT posted up onto the Twitter machine a copy of the filing that the now chairman of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, Raymond D. Rankin, he goes by D, but his name is Raymond Rankin, anyway, that he had apparently been convicted of a felony and he filed paperwork in 2025, disclosing this and assuring the Board of Elections, I guess, that he does have his voting rights restored. Now, he ran for the school board first in 2022, and in the general election, he beat a fellow by the name of Stephen Rushing, beat him by roughly 19,000 votes. He had 27,000 and change to rushings 8,000 and change. But Rankin ran then unopposed in 2025. He won 18,713 votes in that general election. No opponent. 18,000 votes. That's who put this guy into office. 18,713 voters in District 3, I believe. And he is now the chair of the entire board. Now, I'm old enough to remember when the chairs of the bodies, be it county commission or school board, they were always at-large members, right? So at-large are the folks who are elected countywide rather than the districts. And so county commission and school board both have this same sort of makeup where you have the whole county divided into six districts, and then you have three countywide's. much like Charlotte City Council, right? They've got four citywide at-large seats and seven districts, right? The idea being that you've got people that are representing the various smaller areas, but then you have people that are elected to represent the city as a whole, right? Or in this case, the county as a whole. And in the past, it used to be that the chairs were always at-large members because they were the top, uh-huh, votainer right they secured more votes from the uh the the voters of the entire county than say someone in one district and in this case you got this guy d rankin we have this guy d rankin who is now in the chairmanship despite having only received under 19 000 votes that is not representative of a county that's what now over a million people or so 18,713 voters. They get their pick, and now this guy's chair. And, oh, by the by, he's a convicted felon. That's awesome. Again, I mean, we are really, really putting our best foot forward here for business recruitment and retention. This is what the chamber and the business crowd, this is what you love to see. Am I right? Yeah, I'm right. You guys love to see this stuff. you got a convicted felon now as the board chair. Like we are rapidly, I mean, I think, I think we've achieved world-class city status at this point. I think now we're shooting for galaxy class, right? Because we've already gone beyond the world. So this from WSOC TV's Jonathan Lowe, the new chairman of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education pleaded guilty in 2008. Now he says here 39 counts, but that's not the case. It was apparently like there were a bunch of conspirators and co-defendants and such. That's the total count. He pleaded guilty to a single count. This was tied to a $ 20 million federal mortgage fraud scheme. Once again, another one of these fraud crimes. We had the formerly incarcerated, formerly elected Charlotte City Council member, Tia Juana Browne, who's now about to be futurely incarcerated again for another kind of fraud against the government. Getting taxpayer funds for personal gain that they should not have been getting. You had Tijuana Brown. Now you got Dee Rankin over here as well. And what is at the heart of this entire scandal, this corruption scandal with CMS? Same deal, right? personal enrichment at the taxpayer trough. That's the heart of the allegations. As a realtor, according to WSOC, Rankin and others bribed small businesses to help with fake mortgage applications and funneled kickback money to the home builder. I mean, when you say it like that, it sounds like a racket. but I don't know if he was charged under the RICO Act, the racketeering. I don't know if there was anything else going on there that would elevate it to the RICO statute level, but it does kind of sound like a racket. Rankin was sentenced to probation, including at least one year of home confinement. Channel 9's Jonathan Lowe asked Rankin on Tuesday how families and taxpayers feel can trust him to lead the board amid investigations by the state auditor and the SBI. Yeah. Why should people trust you? You pleaded guilty to a felony here, a federal mortgage fraud scheme, right? I believe you're a convicted felon. That's what that means, right? Although I know media doesn't like to use these terms anymore because, you know, second chances and all of that. Second chances for fraud, I guess. I don't know. But, yeah. How are we supposed to trust you? You're in charge of a $ 2 billion budget. $ 2 billion. We saw what you did in a $ 20 million federal mortgage scheme or fraud scheme. So that was only $ 20 million. This is $ 2 billion. Do you want to know what he said? This should put us all at ease. He said, quote, this is something that occurred before I was on the board. Oh, my goodness. Yes. So I love the passive voice that some things happened. I mean, he's channeling his Ilhan Omar here, right? Some people did some things on 9-11. That's what happened there, right? Some people did some things. This is something that occurred before I was on the board. See, so this shouldn't cause any concern for us now because... He was convicted after he pleaded guilty to the federal mortgage fraud before he ever got elected. You know, now it'd be different if like after he got elected, he was engaging in some shady practices. I mean, I guess then. No, actually, no. Hang on. No, we've been told that this is all just a distraction and it's all you know, we need to get back to the for the children. We need to get back to the the business of educating children. So this is all a distraction. Everybody just shut up and move on. We're going to hire a new superintendent and all of that. So I'm not really sure. When are we supposed to be allowed to care about this stuff? When are we justified in not being confident in the leadership of the school board? When are we allowed? Because I'm a bit unclear. I'm getting some mixed signals. It almost sounds like we are never allowed to be concerned about the leadership of the Board of Education. Is that the case? I would just like some clarity on this standard. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. 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So I will try to circle back, Jen Pisacki style, circle back, if you will, after I can restore the internet during the next break, if possible. In the meantime, let me get back to this statement that the newly installed chairman of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education gave to WSOC-TV when they asked him, hey, what's the deal with this conviction for federal mortgage fraud from 2008? And he says, quote, this is something that occurred before I was on the board, before I served on the Equity Committee. That's the CMS committee. before I served on the Education Committee, which I believe is from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus, before I was elected. See, so all the things I've done since, judge me by that. He sounds a lot like Gary McFadden here, right? When people ask McFadden, like, hey, how come you got giglioed? You know, how come you're not, you were not allowed to testify in court any longer? Like, how did that happen? What did you do to prompt that kind of response from the courts and such? And, um, It's a Giglio ruling. Anyway, he says, you got to judge me by my whole career. You can't just look at that one thing. And it's a way to avoid actually addressing the very issue being raised. Right. You don't want to talk about the issue being raised because it's embarrassing. It's disqualifying. Right. So you just say, well, I did a lot of good stuff, too. Yeah, it's like Lindsay Clancy. Right. She was a great mom. up until she murdered her three children. But until then, she was like, no one had a bad thing to say about her. Like Jeffrey Dahmer, right? Very polite, very nice guy to everybody, aside from the whole murdering, butchering, cannibalism thing. Aside from all of that, you can't just judge him based on his worst day, okay? Rankin goes on to say, quote, This happened almost two decades ago, and I want to make sure that the families and parents know that my work has spoken for itself. I mean, not the work as a realtor when he got busted for the mortgage. Not that work. Not that fraud. It's the work as a public servant, you see. He says, I've been the same man of integrity, the same man of faith, and the same servant leader for the last few years. And I think that you can believe that everything that I do is rooted in integrity. So I've learned from past mistakes just like everyone else. Like, okay, dude, let me go back to this thing here. All right. It says that Rankin and others bribed small businesses to help with fake mortgage applications and funneled kickback money to the homebuilder. I would say, contrary to what you've just said in your statement, everything that I do is rooted in integrity. I would submit that was not rooted in integrity. Now, maybe after your probation, because he got probation, one year of home confinement. So he had to just hang out at home. He had to work from home, basically, for a year. Okay. And maybe that, he really learned his lesson after that. I'm surprised he actually did not make this a focal point of his campaigns, you know, like Tijuana Brown did. That was like her only qualification to run for office. Meanwhile, it's a day that ends in Y. So we have another top Charlotte Mecklenburg School executive announcing she is stepping down. This time it is Chassity Dolan, the district's chief of staff. She said her resignation is effective November 9th. She will then retire from the North Carolina public school system on December the 1st. So she wants nothing to do with any of the new leadership, any of the new superintendency. She doesn't want anything to do with that. Dolan did not give a reason for stepping down, but said the decision came, quote, after much reflection and with a heart full of gratitude. Probably totally unrelated to this. Her resignation comes amid ongoing turmoil within the district, which has seen multiple top executives step down in recent weeks and the school board vote to terminate the superintendent, Crystal Hill, for convenience. I'm sure it's got nothing to do with any of that. I'm sure it's got nothing to do with the State Bureau of Investigation's probe into the district and its finances and its contracts. I'm sure it's got nothing to do with the state auditor taking a look at CMS's contracts and finances. I'm sure this is just, you know what? I've served long enough. I've done my service, and so now I'm going to retire and let someone else clean up CMS. Speaking of the cleanup, the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board is proceeding with its superintendent search, right? Because they fired the last one on Tuesday, so Now they've got to figure out how to go about hiring a new one. And boy, do they have a great idea. The convicted felon is going to lead the search. I like it. Like, just lean into this, guys. Seriously. Like, you've now sufficiently, adequately gotten yourself the label as a corrupt district. So just lean into it, you know? Wait till you hear how they are comprising the ad hoc committee to lead the search. Like if you if you were thinking that somebody might be trying to put some thumbs on the scale here, you would be you'd be correct. All right, real quick, every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real, it's in your name, and 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. And I have my internet restored for the time being, at least. We'll see how far I can get through the texts. This is first. We'll start with Jack. Jack, the whataboutist. President Trump is a convicted felon, too. Wait, so, yeah, so just if memory serves correctly, that would be the accounting thing where he paid the hush money and the accounting folks in his organization ran it through their accounting and then the statute of limitations expired. So the state of New York came back in and made it change the law so they could go back even further in order to prosecute him. But is that, that's the, that's the felony conviction. Okay. So fine. You want to say that's the same as committing bribery and kickbacks, um, in order to defraud, uh, mortgage companies. You want to say that's the same thing for our local school board chairman who was convicted, got five years probation. You want to say that's the same thing. OK, so we shouldn't care. So it's OK. See, this is why whenever the left plays this whataboutist game, this whataboutism, it's not that they care. They don't care that somebody got convicted of something and then wants to hold elected office. They don't care. They put Tijuana Brown in office. That was her campaign. Vote for me. I'm formerly incarcerated, right? They don't care about D Rankin. They care about the power. They don't care about the record, right? They think you care. It's the same way they weaponize Christianity and your faith, right? They will appeal to your faith. Not that they share it. Not that they're going to hold themselves or their people to that standard. Their standard is what gets me power, right? But they think you have the standard, and so we're going to appeal to your standard. So this way, you don't go vote. You'll vote for somebody else. You'll make it easier for me to get power. They don't care about this. This is not a standard that they actually hold. Let me go back here. I'm sorry. It's hard to see here with the sun. I'm trying to read the text. Do, do, do, do, do. Jeff says, I guess Mr. Rankin went through a thorough vetting by the Black Political Caucus. Yeah, he's a BPC guy. And that's what this is about. Again, all these roads lead back to the Black Political Caucus and Charlotte Mecklenburg. I've been talking about this for a while. The BPC is this sort of king-making organization because Mecklenburg County is Democrat-controlled, and the BPC has power inside the Democrat Party, and so all of the candidates have to kiss that ring, you know? And so that's why you have a lot of these people, like the now former school board chair, Stephanie Sneed. She came from the Black Political Caucus, as did Dee Rankin. They're both BPC people. You had the BPC targeting other school board members. You had the contractor that's at the, or the consultant guy that's at the heart of all of this, Racky McGregor, right? He's also knee deep in all of this stuff. So they need a new superintendent. Right now we've got a temporary one. We have Melissa Balknight. She was the former deputy superintendent. She's serving as the acting super following Crystal Hill's firing. If I recall correctly, Balknight had already said she was going to be retiring, I believe, at the end of the year. So they're on a clock, so they have to create this search committee. And so the board voted six to two yesterday to create a committee to oversee the search for her replacement. And the discussion, according to the Charlotte Observer, exposed lingering concerns about trust among board members. I wonder why. The pace of the search is also was a concern, as well as whether the board needs to address its own dysfunction before bringing in another leader. Why? Why? You're not going to fix this dysfunction. You've got criminal charges on the line here, right? You can't fix that. The only thing that's going to fix that are prosecutions, right? Resignations off the board entirely. So... They went ahead and they did a charter for an ad hoc committee to create this ad hoc committee to oversee the superintendent's selection and hiring process. They created an advisory panel to the full board. Now, how are they going to populate this ad hoc advisory panel? Who's going to be on it? Ah, glad you asked. Four school board members. Okay. Four members. And also the chair. So five school board members. Does this sound familiar? Five school board members of the nine will be on the search committee. The chairman will be one of those people, the convicted felon, Dee Rankin. He will be on this ad hoc committee. I'm not sure if he can employ any of the skill set that he learned with the mortgage fraud and the bribery and the kickbacks. Not sure if that's going to factor into any of this, but you got four other members. Who are the other four members going to be? Well, they will be appointed. Do you want to guess who makes those appointments? Yes, Dee Rankin, the convicted felon chairman. He will appoint the other four members. Now, remember, we have a majority voting block on the school board of five members and a minority voting block of four members. This is the way these votes have been breaking down on a lot of this stuff with the firing and whatever. Right. So you got five, the fivers, as I'm calling them. And then you got the four, the quad. As we we determined yesterday, this is their name. You got the fivers and the quad. The fivers are in the majority. And just coincidentally, the search committee will be made up of five school board members appointed by D Rankin, a member of the fivers. I wonder how that's going to go. I think we can all have confidence in the process. Meanwhile, WFAE reports, in a piece by Steve Harrison, former Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Superintendent Crystal Hill has said in a leaked memo that former board chair Stephanie Sneed secured a $ 30, 000 per month consulting subcontract for a political ally named Racky McGregor without the knowledge of Superintendent Hill or much of the board. The push to secure a contract for McGregor came after former Mecklenburg County manager Dina DiIorio. Remember her? She retired. But last year, she severed ties with Racky McGregor's wife's consulting business. In an interview with WFAE, DiIorio said Racky McGregor was angry at the loss of funding and threatened to sue the county manager for if she publicly alleged that he had any conflict of interest in this. She said dealing with the McGregors was, quote, icky and shocking. Well, that sounds like a great name for their consulting firm. Icky and shocking. Reached by text message, McGregor declined to comment. He said his wife also would not comment. So all of this occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. when Mecklenburg County increased funding to a local educational nonprofit called Sid Kimmel. And you should know that name by now. That's Racky McGregor's wife's nonprofit, Sid Kimmel, run by Kim McGregor. Racky is a political power player and member of the Black Political Caucus with a particular focus on CMS. Let me bounce over here now to the text line. Hank says, Pete, the school board chairman, he is a felony-involved individual. Yeah, because he never actually, he never was incarcerated. He got five years probation. So he's a formerly probationed person. Let's see here. 704 number says, just when the CMS circus can't get any more scandalous, they rebook another tour. Add in a new ringmaster who has a criminal record, and it's the greatest show in Democrat Mecklenburg. And why is the media not referring to Chair Rankin as a convicted felon? Well, this shifted after the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful racial reckoning that occurred in 2020 after St. George Floyd's death, was that the media, which follows the AP style book, The Associated Press, they put out a book, and there are, I think, two others, whatever. And it's sort of like, here's the guideline. You use this phrase, you use this format, and that kind of stuff. And the same reason why you don't see the words illegal alien anymore, and they started referring to people as undocumented immigrants, and then they went to undocumented migrants. Now it's just migrants, right? So they're constantly watering down the line. to obscure the nature of the debate, right? By mixing all of these terms around, it's like now you're trying to punch smoke in the debates. And it's the same thing here. You do the term convicted felon because they did their time and they're more than just their conviction and second chances and all of that. But prior to 2020... The term convicted felon was used all the time to describe somebody, especially if they were running for political office. Or your name is Donald Trump. It seems to me, this is Beth's favorite Russ. It seems to me that running basic background checks, maybe security clearance and what the heck, drug testing would fix a lot of problems with elected officials and appointees. Maybe. I mean, why not run the run the Board of Education candidates through the same sort of screening that we run teachers, you know? Scotty says, isn't it funny how the people saying not to judge a person charged with criminality by that one bad day are the same people to automatically jump on and crucify anyone with anything in their past that doesn't adhere to the current orthodoxy or worldview? Yeah, funny how that works. Tracy says, taxpayers of this county need to wise up. My tax bill indicates that 45.5% of the money owed goes to CMS. It's nuts that these folks continue to misappropriate public funds. Clean house now. Stanley says it must be great to be Democrats as they get to judge others based on the results of their worst day, but you're supposed to judge them based on what they tell you their intentions are, irrespective of the results. Yes. This is what I call Democrat privilege. You get to just promise all these things, say you're for the children, you know, paint the picture of utopia, and that's what you should judge them by. Not any of the results, right? They may be espousing Marxism, but we are not to review Marxism's bloody record. 100 plus million corpses, right? No, no, no, no, no. That wasn't real. Marxism. It's never been tried and all of that. Judge us by what we promise you, not by what we deliver. Stacey in South Carolina says, I just think all the things going on in Mecklenburg County will make a great advertisement for Cut Em Loose Cooper. There's an old expression used in business, the fish stinks from the head. 828 number. I think you're being hard on the guy. I mean, did he really even commit a crime if he didn't go to jail? The Black Political Caucus sounds more like a cartel than a caucus. Yeah, I do wonder if there's going to be, if the investigation into CMS then starts reaching into the Black Political Caucus. And is there anything going on there like racketeering, you know? Danny says, yes, they may love the children, but they love your money more. These people are not capable of finding a new superintendent. They are the fox in the hen house. And Coach says, one can only hope the voters of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County will start to wake up and realize when you vote blue and all the committees are blue, corruption will always be around. But we all know that'll never happen. And we get the entertainment that we now have with the CMS school board. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of torn here. On the one hand, really terrible for Charlotte, really terrible for governance, right, for trust in institutions. But on the plus side, easy show prep for me. 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 ThePeteKallinerShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.