Out-of-state donations fuel NC Democrat Party (02-13-2025--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 thepeetkalinarshow.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.

[00:00:30] So, I guess if you've had a record of corruption and failure for as many years as the North Carolina Democrat Party has, then I guess it makes sense that you would have to rely on a whole bunch of funding for your campaign victories from out-of-state donors.

[00:00:55] But I don't think this is a healthy sign for the North Carolina Democrats or the democracy. I don't think it's generally a good idea to have a state party propped up by out-of-state interests because you're short-circuiting the market signals, if you will.

[00:01:21] Right? The local market is telling you that you stink. They don't like you. They don't want what you're selling, what you're offering. They have no interest in electing you or your people and that sort of thing. So, they don't want to give you any money. They don't trust you to run campaigns. They don't trust you to win.

[00:01:38] Right? And so, you, in your efforts to win, despite the market signals telling you that your messaging is awful, your policies are awful, people don't want you to enact them, you then go outside the state to collect a whole bunch of money for a couple of candidates and then those candidates funnel a whole bunch of that money into the state party,

[00:02:06] which apparently is then unable to actually, you know, turn that cash into votes. Oh, if only vote buying were that easy. Okay. Um, the North Carolina Democrat party, this is a piece over at the federalist.com, but it relies on research done by, uh, the John Locke foundation who went through and analyzed the campaign contributions from the 2024 election cycle.

[00:02:35] And the Democrat party, like if you had to guess what percentage of the individual contributions. Okay. So this, these are contributions coming from people, individuals versus like super PAC money and that kind of stuff, outside interest groups, all of that.

[00:02:55] This is just people who live outside of the state. What percentage of their whole of individual contributions. Would you think the Democrat party in North Carolina raked in from out of state?

[00:03:13] Would you think 10% would you think half, like half of every dollar raised came from an out of state individual? Or do you think it's higher than half? If you think it's higher than half, how much higher? Do you think it's like 60, 75%? It's actually 80%. It's 79. It's almost 80%. So it's, it's 78.5. So 79%.

[00:03:46] That is a massive proportion. 78.5% of the Democrats individual donor funding came from out of state. But but Pete, what about the Republicans? Ah, yes, I hear your whataboutism. So the John Locke foundation took a look at that also. And the Republican number is 71.8%. Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:04:22] Yeah, that's in state. Oh, right. So the Republicans obtained like 72% of their individual donations from people inside the state. Right? So if you're talking about democracy, and who is representing people in the democracy, then it would seem to me to be that the individual contributions paint a pretty vivid picture.

[00:04:51] Of who is funding which party. Now that's this is not about individual campaigns, and special interest groups, and you know, that sort of stuff. That's a separate category. But this is just the individual donor list. There is a quote from Jim Sterling. We've had him on the program before. He's a research fellow at the John Locke Foundation Civitas Center for Public Integrity. And he is quoted in this piece at the Federalist.

[00:05:20] This is not as much of a shocker as you would expect it to be, he says. Democrats have been moving more towards an out of state model. Did you know that? Did you know Democrats were moving towards an out of state model to fund their elections in this state? But this is the lowest amount of money that they have raised in the last six years for in-state contributions.

[00:05:46] The Federalist writer Breckentheise, he goes on to say, Democrats' reliance on out-of-state funding is likely to have implications for the 2026 midterm elections because Republicans will have the in-state advantage on being able to stay connected with donors who have an actual stake in the elections in North Carolina.

[00:06:11] It also keeps Republicans, quote, insulated from national political dynamics. That, according to Sterling, who is quoted in the Carolina Journal. So this is a pretty important part of the problem that the Democrats are facing, the nationalization of politics, where Nancy Pelosi becomes the face of the state Democrat Party.

[00:06:40] And in a state like North Carolina, where, you know, Democrat votes are not really all that, like, far-left moonbat brigade cast, you know? You've got a lot of sort of your country club Republicans. They voted for Stein. These are like your business people that really don't have any kind of political hardcore ideology, you know?

[00:07:09] They are more interested in being acceptable to their friends on the cocktail circuit, locally speaking, right? To be invited to the potlucks and stuff or in their churches and whatever. It's like I've referenced this saying. It's been around for a long time in Charlotte, at least. It was always that there are three political parties in Charlotte, and it's the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Chamber of Commerce.

[00:07:36] And the Chamber of Commerce is the strongest of the three, right? That's the one you don't cross. I don't know if that's necessarily true any longer because I feel like the Chamber kept feeding the radical left Democrat Party as it grew ascendant. They kept feeding it in the hopes that it would get eaten last. And, I mean, to an extent, it worked, right? The Republicans got eaten. Voters moved out. Those Republican voters moved out.

[00:08:01] It's why the Mecklenburg County is bluer and the surrounding counties are now red. And that used to be the opposite. I started tracking this 20 years ago and did a bunch of stories when I was a reporter here at WBT. Would track it and do stories on it that you had this migration going on of Republicans out of Charlotte Mecklenburg and into the surrounding counties. And you had people in the surrounding counties moving into Charlotte with the higher taxes,

[00:08:31] but all of the services and such that they so love and all of the shiny things, as a former host here at WBT used to call them. All of the, you know, the arenas and the parks and all of the, you know, the pretty shiny things that the Chamber would get built. And they would rely on Democrat votes at the polls for the referenda and stuff like that. Right. If you're putting up bonds for certain projects, you're relying on people to turn out the vote.

[00:09:02] And that's why they played they played nice with Democrats for a very long time. And then Republicans eventually, you know, they lose the demographics shift in such a way. There are not enough Republicans to get them a majority any longer. Democrats then proceed to get further and further to the left. And there's no, as I went over yesterday, there's no limiting principles here for the left. They just keep going. There, there, there's never, they can never go too far.

[00:09:31] That's the thing about leftism. It never goes too far. 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.

[00:09:58] You can check it out at check.ground.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.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:10:24] Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% 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 the Federalist doing a big story. This was yesterday over at the Federalist dot com doing a big story on how North Carolina

[00:10:50] Democrats sourced nearly 80% of their individual contributions from outside of the state. Democrats need for outside donors could come down to a trust issue from high level donors who see state party leadership like the Democrat Party chair, Anderson Clayton, as not up to the job.

[00:11:15] The party has trended away from in-state contributions since 2022. Despite Democrat wins in the state this past election, it is unclear to Democrats in North Carolina whether the party really helped or if the scandal ridden Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson was the deciding factor. Finding money from higher profile donors outside the individual donor party funding,

[00:11:43] the organization that was successful with Roy Cooper and others is known as the Council of State Committee. All right. The Council of State Committee. And then there's another one called the Leadership Fund. Which was able to obtain $42 million in contributions, giving Democrats a financial advantage over Republicans, despite the lack of in-state support.

[00:12:12] Because the Council of State and the Leadership Fund, they passed on about $18 million of the $42 million that those two entities raised. They passed it along to the state party. $18 million to the state party. The Council of State Committee is run by high level staffers who ran Governor Roy Cooper's campaign. Right?

[00:12:40] That's where the fundraising power is. And we know this has been the case since HB2. Right? Since the bathroom bill. And the whole fight over that. We, you know, had the NBA All-Star game canceled. And, you know, Roy was dialing up the Salesforce CEO and getting all of his corporate cronies to start boycotting the state of North Carolina.

[00:13:09] And then Roy threatened all of the Democrat lawmakers in the legislature saying, don't you dare work on some kind of a, quote, fix for HB2 before the election. If you do, there will be no role for you in my administration when I win. Right? He threatened all of his fellow Democrats to not fix the problem because he needed it as a campaign issue against Pat McCrory. And then, of course, he wins. And with all of that money, he wins.

[00:13:39] And then, of course, does a, quote, fix, which he had blocked from happening before the election. Wall Street Journal reported that at the time. Right? So he literally tried to harm his own constituency by his own words. Right? He said HB2 was terrible for North Carolinians, but he worked to keep it in place for longer because it helped him personally. And he was able then to make all the connections with the outside donors. And that infrastructure remains.

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[00:15:35] or sorry, the John Locke Foundation, Jim Sterling, and finds that like 80% of all of the individual contributions to the North Carolina Democrat Party last cycle were from out of state. Okay, so one in five dollars came from in-state North Carolinians to the state party. The fundraising juggernauts in the Democrat Party this last cycle

[00:16:03] were connected to the individuals of Roy Cooper and Josh Stein, who raised tons of money from out-of-state donors. And so there is, you know, that's part of the story. The other part of the story is the internal politics inside the Democrat Party. You know, why would Cooper and Stein not trust the state party to raise all of this money on its own?

[00:16:32] Now, part of it could be that they've got a 25-year-old running the party, Anderson Clayton, right, who unseated Bobby Richardson in the last election for the Democrat Party chair. Bobby Richardson was a longtime lawmaker. I want to say she was, you know, in her 60s or 70s, and a black female,

[00:16:58] and had the endorsements of all of these elected officials like Cooper and whatnot. And Clayton, with her band of activists inside the party, overthrew Richardson. So there may be some lack of trust there. Also, although the media treats it like it's some sort of badge of honor or qualification, the fact that Anderson Clayton has minimal experience and is very young.

[00:17:26] Oh, yes, yes, she was a field organizer for Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign. So lots of success over there. They did not trust her to be able to raise the amount of money because she just doesn't know what she's doing at this point. And that's understandable, right? She's only 20 at the time. She was like 23 or something. And again, while all of the media, and by the way, media had no problem with somebody that young taking the reins of a state party in a crucial swing state for Democrats,

[00:17:56] they celebrated this as, how cool is this? And she says, y'all, and she cusses some. And that's how we're going to win some rural voters. That was, that's her whole pitch. That was the whole thing. Oh, and she also screams into microphones, which is a, that's a key requirement for all Democrat leaders, as I understand it nowadays. And so the coverage she got, compare that to the coverage that the Doge dudes get, right? These are like tech whiz kids, super smart,

[00:18:26] but they're, you know, the same age she was when she ran, except they're trying to find waste, fraud, and abuse. And so they're only 22 years old. They don't know anything, but she can run a party. I mean, not well, but she can run a party. Oh my gosh, the children shall lead us. And don't even get me started on the comparison with Greta Thunberg, who I think has now morphed from,

[00:18:53] yeah, she's, she is morphed from, what, the climate stuff to now she's like pro-Palestine. She's just kind of, she's kind of morphed into like team baby beheading rapist advocate, I guess, or something like that. I don't know. How dare you? Okay. Well, so yeah, she was like, she was like, I don't know, four or five months old. And they were like, oh, she shall lead us, you know.

[00:19:22] But actually, let me do this now because it ties in. Anderson Clayton, the Democrat Party chair, which I think this is a pretty good indication of the problems that the party is having, how tone deaf they are, how out of touch they are with their messaging. She just tweeted out, let me see the timestamp on this. Yeah, 120. Sorry. Okay. This is from yesterday. I just saw it. 124 yesterday. Quote. It's ironic folks who are begging. Sorry, I was going to read it in her.

[00:19:52] That's fine. It's ironic. Folks who are begging for USAID to be defunded will also be the people in church pews on Sunday giving offering funds so someone can go on a mission trip overseas. I thought Christians would never be the group to say helping people everywhere isn't a godly priority. Look, kid, this is not the way to reach rural voters.

[00:20:20] Now, I know you're from rural North Carolina, so you know these things and you know how to talk to them, which is why it all went red. But no, I understand that's what you think, but this is part of your problem. Okay? There is a big difference between me going into a church, voluntarily donating money to help somebody go on a mission to help others while spreading the word of Jesus Christ, spreading the gospel. Like, there's a difference between that and you

[00:20:51] confiscating money out of my paycheck at risk of, you know, loss of liberty for me if I don't want to pay it through taxes, right? You confiscating the money from me, handing it off to some other entity to go chop off people's genitals in Guatemala, right? Me objecting to that doesn't make me less Christian because I'm funding a mission to Guatemala to spread the gospel and help people.

[00:21:18] Like, I'm sure she thought this was a super owning of the cons. Man. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season, but tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says, Hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are on Dad who says,

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[00:22:17] imagine gathering the family to watch them together. Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Create A Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill, right off I-485, and online at createavideo.com. So of the 20% of donations that the Democrat Party got from individuals, who made up that base?

[00:22:46] That's a good question to look at as well. And luckily, the John Locke Foundation did that as well. And so if you look at just the in-state individual donations, remember like 80% of the donations came from out-of-state, individual out-of-state. Okay? But for the individuals in-state, who were the big donors here? Josh Stein's parents.

[00:23:18] Josh Stein's parents gave the Democrat Party $570,000. Josh Stein comes from money, apparently. And they gave more than half a million dollars to the state Democrat Party. Also, the billionaire Saul family, S-A-L-L, Sal, Saul, Sale, whatever. They gave $4.5 million.

[00:23:48] That made up, just those two, made up about half of all of the in-state donations that Democrats got from individuals. According to the Carolina Journal, Stein himself transferred $13 million in funding to the state party from the leadership fund. I guess that's the one connected to him. That allowed the Democrats to outpace Republicans because Republicans had raised

[00:24:17] $29 million. Virtually all of it from individual in-state donations. And then there's one other footnote here in the story over at thefederalist.com. And it is about the race for the state Supreme Court seat, which is still not certified. Still not, it's still in the courts. Okay? Working through different appeals

[00:24:45] and state and federal levels and everything else. Jefferson Griffin, Republican, who's on the Court of Appeals, ran against Allison Riggs, who has gotten into her seats because Roy Cooper kept appointing her. She was a radical activist, leftist lawyer, and so she was rewarded with a judgeship. And so this was her attempt to defend her Supreme Court seat. The court right now

[00:25:13] is 5-2, Republican majority. And Riggs is one of those two seats. So even if Riggs ends up winning this seat, it's no change, okay, in the 5-2 breakup. It could go 6-1 if Griffin ends up winning these appeals, basically on counting the votes from voters that maybe kind of sort of shouldn't have been voting. There are a whole bunch of them.

[00:25:43] He's down by like 734 votes and he was up by 10,000 on election night. But then when they finish all the counting and they counted a whole bunch of votes, hundreds of them, from people who live overseas and have never lived in North Carolina yet are registered to vote here. And that's odd. I feel like that's odd. That's a little odd. And maybe there's a reasonable explanation for it. I don't know. But that's odd.

[00:26:12] You also have a bunch of people, thousands of them, who don't have like identifiable like Social Security numbers attached to their voter profiles and stuff or they didn't send in a photo with their ballot, you know, photo ID now being a requirement. Anyway, Democrats poured into her race more than $5 million, which Jim Sterling at the Carolina, or at the John Locke Foundation

[00:26:40] quoted in the Carolina Journal said that this is nearly unheard of, this amount of money for a judicial race. Griffin raised $2 million. So she raised and spent more than two times as much as he did in order to get a 734-vote lead. Speaking of that race, Jefferson Griffin filed notices of appeal in all three lawsuits connected to his challenges

[00:27:08] of more than 65,000 ballots cast in his election against Allison Riggs. Those appeals to the North Carolina Court of Appeals arrived three days after a Wake County Superior Court judge named William Pittman rejected three different categories of ballot challenges Griffin is pursuing. Pittman issued his rulings on Friday afternoon, just hours after holding a hearing. One-page orders in each case upheld the State Board of Elections

[00:27:37] decision they made back in December that rejected three different groups of ballot protests. And I know the Democrats are all about, you know, constitutional crisis and the, you know, democracy, whatever. They're making all these arguments that this is so beyond the pale. But as I said, with the lawsuits over Trump's executive orders and, you know, going through the courts, like this is where it's supposed to be done, right? Jefferson Griffin

[00:28:06] is following the law. He is going by the rule book that he is supposed to go by when he has objections and has identified deficiencies in his mind. And it will be up to courts to decide whether those have merit. And if they do, what remedy do they enact? This is the normal process. But Democrats want Griffin to just stop fighting. And he doesn't,

[00:28:36] it doesn't seem like he intends to do so. 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 thepetecalendershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.