Replacing the Charlotte mayor and an incumbent US Senator in Texas | Hour 3

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is HERD 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 vpetcleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. Also from the Charlotte City Council meeting last night, not just a big public hearing on a data center moratorium, but also a discussion about how they intend to replace their retiring mayor. Okay, Mayor Viyliles has says she. Will be leaving office June thirtieth, so they have about a month and she just won reelection. She made the announcement like six months into her two year terms, so she has eighteen more months to go. So the city Council was debating various processes to pick an interim mayor to replace Yliles. The only requirement, despite what the local chapter of the NAACP would have us believe is that she'd be is that the mayor's replacement be a Democrat because them's the rules, right, because there's a Democrat in the seat right now, and so there has to be a Democrat appointed as if like they even need that requirement because the body is made up of ten Democrats one Republican, so it's not like the Republicans going to be appointed. So one of the big sticking issues though last night was them trying to figure out some way to force to compel to require whoever they appoint to not run for the seat, because they want to run for the seat themselves. That's that was the That was the issue. And look, you can't you can't make anybody not run for the seat. So whoever you put into the interim mayor post, you're you know, you're asking them to make a basically a campaign promise not to seek election after the end of the interim term. And they they apparently don't trust their fellow Democrats. That's the only thing that I can determine here is that they don't trust anybody, which look, I mean there is some bit of a history here where people have promised not to run for the seat, uh and then turned around and ran. For a seat. So as for like somebody mentioned that there were like multiple examples, like four or five examples of this occurring, and I don't recall any of that. Like there there may be, like I seem to recall maybe there was somebody who got appointed to a district post and then ran an at large race. Maybe something like that. Was that Edwin Peacock. I don't remember, but like that may be the case. But when it comes to mayor, I only remember there being one that was Dan Claudefelter, sort of the last of a dying breed of blue dog Democrats from Mecklenburg County. He was a state senator, and when Patrick Cannon got arrested on federal bribery and corruption charges and he stepped down, like within months of being sworn into office, they had to do this process. I think somebody said that they they ran through like five mayors in eight years or something like that, craziness. And that was when I was not here. Okay, So I'm not saying like my presence in Charlotte is a stabilizing force in city government, but it does kind of seem like that. I mean, like it could be coincidental, but probably yeah, it probably is, because now that I'm back now. We just had another resignation of a mayor. So anyway, the Claude Felter example is the only example that I'm aware of at the mayor level where he said he would not run for mayor and then turned around and ran for mayor, and then he got waxed in the primary by. Jennifer Roberts. He lost, I shouldn't say, I don't know how badly he lost, but he lost to Jennifer Roberts. She then takes over, and she had all the support among the radical base, and they were like, you know, she made all these promises for the LGBT. Well back then it was just LGBT community. Now they've added a bunch of other letters to them. But that's when we ended up with the Jihad against the bathrooms and such right, which then prompted HB two, and that prompted Jennifer Roberts being defeated in the next primary by vy Lyles. Okay, and that launched vy Lyles's tenure. I think she's been in office. I think she's got five terms. She won five terms or something like that, six turs something like that. Anyway, so they came up with the process anybody. From the public. If you're a Democrat inside city limits, right, you can apply and you have to be twenty one year older. You can apply to be Charlotte's next mayor between June second and June ninth. Okay, so you're going to have seven days to apply June second through June ninth. A new leader will be decided before Lyles leaves office, and then, which would be June thirtieth. Her replacement again has to be Charlotte resident, registered Democrat twenty one years old. Interviews of the candidates will be open to public viewing and conducted in person, but the exact interview dates have not yet been finalized. City Council will vote to appoint a mayor on June twenty second, and that person will take office on July the first, so the day after Vy Lyles is out. One moment kind of comical. I don't have the audio of it, but council Member Renee Johnson, who always seems very confused about a great many things, she asked whether or not they would just open this up for all applications for city coun or, for a city mayor and city council. All right, so why would you do that, why would you open a process up to replace a city council member. Well, the mayor pro tem city councilman, James Smudgie Mitchell. He has thrown his name in the hat and then thrown his hat the ring, as one does, and so he wants to be mayor. He promises he won't run again. He had some health issues last year, and so he's like, as I exit public service, this would be the last. Thing I do whatever whatever. He would be mayor for, you know, fourteen months, fifteen months, whatever it is, and then he would exit off the political stage. So the only reason why you would open up this process for both mayor and a potential city council vacancy would be if you wanted James Mitchell to get the position, which the other council members, some of whom wished to run for mayor, they all saw this for what it was, which I think, I mean, it's pretty obvious that Brede Johnson was probably trying to like grease the skids for Smudgie, right, That's what it seemed like. They shot that down, and then she got all flustered about it, you know, and she's like. Well, this is why we should have talked about it. We had twenty days and we haven't talked about it. And all this. Oh, I'm sure people have been talking, council Member Johnson, they just probably haven't been talking to you, right. I think that's probably what happened there, is that they they have their own ideas, and I suspect they are building whatever coalition they're going to build for whatever vote they are going to make, and you may not be part of that coalition. The application will ask whether candidates intend to run for the office next year. Okay, So they decided in this debate last night, they decided to put it on the application, a question with a checkbox or whatever. Yes, no, do you intend to run for mayor? So if you say, yes, I intend to run for mayor, they're not going to appoint you. Okay, So just lie on your application, okay, because there's no penalty except in like you know, in public opinion, Like if you say you're not going to run and then you do run, then somebody could use that against you, that you're a liar in the campaign. But that's it. But they were trying to get like assurances because they like, if we appoint this person I don't want to I don't want to have to run against that person. But they are also torn because you don't want to put somebody in there that is totally unprepared to be the leader of like what we are the are we like the twelfth largest city in America. Now, you don't want some idiot in there. Although it would be easy to beat an idiot in a primary in a Democrat primary, right, if they do pick Mitchell, then they would have to open up another process to fill his seat. Already we know of a couple people besides Mitchell. You got former mayor Jennifer Roberts who just won't go away. And then another guy, Brendan McGinnis. He got twelve percent of the vote when he ran for mayor in the primary last cycle, but he lives in Denmark slide problem. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. 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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. So let's look at what happened in the primary election yesterday in Texas. Ken Paxton runaway winner in the runoff against incumbent Republican John Cornyn. John Sexton at hot air dot com said anybody looking to run with the whole Trump has Lost Republicans story is going to have a hard time explaining this. Indeed they will, and they should. Paxton won with like sixty four percent of the vote, Cornyn thirty six percent, of the vote a two to one victory. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican nomination for US Senate yesterday, easily defeating four term Senator John Cornyn in the latest contest where President Donald Trump sought to oust an incumbent he saw as insufficiently loyal. Trump endorsed Paxton last week. Okay, so this wasn't like Trump targeting Cornyn like he did Massy. Okay. Oh and by the way, just because I know this is what so many people are going to wonder, was it the Jews actually a pack Boogiti boogaitee, the American Israeli Political Action Committee, which is made up of American donors, A pack supported John Cornyn. So apparently what they they lost all of their mojo for some reason. They were unable to to buy the seat, which is weird because John Cordon definitely definitely looked like he was trying to buy the seat. Again. The dude spent like one hundred million dollars on his primary campaign. It was like a nine to one ratio that he spent that he outspent Paxton. Okay, and he had the backing of Apack. So money does not buy elections like that for all the people that were butt hurt over Massey's loss and they wanted to blame the Jews, blame a pack or whatever. Yet no that this is further proven. Also another piece of evidence against that Bill Cassidy, the incumbent went down in Louisiana, who lost in his primary as well. Right, the guy voted to impeach Donald Trump. I said this after the Massi loss. Also, the GOP is still Trump's party, and a lot of people still have not reckoned with that, Like they have not accepted this. I accepted this a decade ago, when you know Trump won. So Trump endorsed Paxton last week, calling him a true MAGA warrior. Paxton's victory in Tuesday's runoff makes Cornyan, who was first elected to the Senate back in two thousand and two, the first Republican Senator from Texas to lose the party's nomination for re election. So my assessment of this is that more than John Cornyan's comments about Donald Trump, you know back in what twenty twenty three, where he said that. Well, I think I have it here someplace with that. Yeah, here he is. In twenty twenty three that Trump's time has passed him by, right, that's what he said, Like, so Trump should just get out, his time is over, it's passed him by whatever. So to me, I don't view everything through the prism of Donald Trump. Did his endorsement of Ken Paxton's help, I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. Did it give him a who would have won victory over Cornyn? No, Cornan's voting record, Cornan's position in a Senate leadership, Right, that's what people ousted him over, his position on the red flag laws, right, the gun control stuff, border enforcement. Right, Like, you don't get to keep doing the things that Cornyn did as a member of the leadership without angering your Republican base. Another example would be Tom Tillis. Right, ask yourself this, how did Tom Tillis get on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He's not a lawyer, has no experience in the judiciary. Why would he be a fit for the Judiciary committee? Because he's a vote with Cornin. He was a vote with the Senate leadership. Senate leadership that is blocking hundreds of Trump judicial nominees. Why why is that happening? This is your classic GOP quote unquote establishment versus the quote unquote grassroots, and what the voters in the Republican primary in Texas said was, we voted for Trump, and you have been blocking Trump's agenda. As leadership, You're not delivering results. You just keep telling us why we can't pass this, We can't pass that. Cornan's loss followed primaries this month where Trump successfully backed challengers to Republican lawmakers who had displeased him in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Indiana, a sign of his enduring influence among primary voters, Cornan had the backing of Senate GOP leaders, who said he would be the stronger general election candidate against James Talerico, the Democrat who has gone to seminary school and so wants to tell all of the Christians in Texas that God is non binary and if you've got a problem with that, take it up with the Apostle Paul. He said, that's what he said. He said that the Immaculate Conception is proof that God is totally cool with abortion. He said that there are six genders. His church has a whole bunch of the books for the kiddies that have been pulled from shelves in schools because they're basically cartoon porn. Okay, Like that's the Democrat that people believe is going to be able to win in Texas, which Trump carried by like forty points. They have this same delusion, We're gonna flip Texas blue, and James Tallarico is gonna do it because look, he's a Christian. Here's the thing. And I know people on the left, if you're not Christian, you're not gonna understand this. However, false prophets, false teachers, they're even worse. They're even worse than somebody who just doesn't believe right or somebody who doesn't profess to be a Christian. When you start getting into heresy like that is a really big no no for Christians. And that's what Tallarico has been doing. He's he has quite obviously positioned himself as, oh, look at me, I'm a choir boy Christian seminary and you can totally trust me. I'm just like you. And then he starts saying these things and Christians recognize this is heretical. They will not take kindly to that, or, as they may say in Texas, they won't cotton to it. But I'm not really sure what that means. Yes, Jennifer says, uh, Talafrico is a heretic. Yeah, James tall Rico, James Talafrico, they were Yep, that's the name is already sticking. So Tallo Rico is going to be squaring off against Ken Paxton, and there are a lot of people that are giddy about this. They think Ken Paxton can't possibly win because well, I'm not really sure. No, I know what they say. They're they're saying that he can't win because of all of his baggage, right that he had, like he had an affair, his wife left him or they got a divorce, and I think she cited something like biblical reasons. He was impeached by the Republican led legislature, but he was not convicted. He was acquitted. So yes, he was impeached, but I think at this point impeachment is sort of that's like a credential in Republican circles, I believe. I kid, I kid. So yeah, you're you're definitely gonna have stuff to go after Ken Paxton on, no doubt about it. But you're also going to have stuff to go after tall Rico on. And again it's a state that Trump carried by fourteen points. So like there is you remember betto remember him, Francis O'Rourke, but he went by Beto in order to attract all of the Hispanic voters, Francis Robert O'Rourke. And supposedly the lure was that his uncle called him Beto because it's Roberto, and so he called him that. Do or something. I don't know. So like they that's the model they're running, right, They keep trying to find these rural looking, you know, white dudes that just just exude just oohs masculinity, like Beto and like Tallarico. And the problem is. Not to be you know, overgeneralizing here, but it seems like the left has a problem identifying what is actually masculine. I mean, if you want an example, look at Graham Platner, a guy up in Maine, right they look at him. Oh and by the way, stuff is coming out now about him and about and I mentioned this guy I think his last name was Morris, the guy that like scoop this dude up out of obscurity as like this NEPO baby oyster farmer guy and you know poop poster on Reddit and just scooped him up and just elevated him in the Democrat Party in Maine. And like you look at the Jim Garretty did this. I'll go into this and maybe tomorrow. Jim Garretty was running through like all of the cover spreads that Platner had done on him by like Variety magazine before before he was actually the nominee, like before he had even launched a campaign, all of a sudden, he's getting these you know, front cover, you know, long bio pieces written about him in Variety. There was like a food. Magazine that did an article on him, Like how does this happen? Right there is obviously an effort to elevate certain candidates into the public consciousness, and Platner is one of them. Taller Rico is another. And they think, like they don't like none of the Christian stuff works on them right there. They're leftists. They think it's gonna work on you, and so they've they got this guy to say these things to sound Oh, you know, I'm Christian, I went to seminary school, I've read the Bible so many times, I preach at my church and all of this, and they're like, ooh, this guy, this guy, he's really going to make some inroads with the Christians because they don't understand like when the guy gets up and says, you know, God is non binary, and he gets up and he says things like, you know, the Immaculate Conception is proof that God's cool with abortion. Christians hear that, and they take away something entirely different than what the lefties take away. The lefties here, Oh great, he's making like a Christian argument for our political positions. And Christians here, Oh that's a heretic. That's that is straight from Satan right there. So look, it could work. It's a bold strategy. We'll see if we'll see if it works for them, Paxton said in his victory speech, without a shadow of a doubt. I will be the democrats number one target in November, and Tallarico's campaign hit back Tuesday night on the social platform x, highlighting what they and some Republicans see as Paxton's weakness, including an FBI investigation and impeachment for corruption in which he was later acquitted. This is a story from the Associated Press. The two term Attorney general was acquitted on corruption charges back in twenty twenty three, where allegations of extramarital affairs surfaced. Paxton's wife filed for divorce last year, citing quote biblical grounds. It gave cornin fodder for an ad campaign that, along with allied groups, spent roughly one hundred and nine million dollars between the primary and run off elections. Immediately after the primary, Trump promised to endorse, to endorse, but did not act until after early voting began last week. So here's the thing. Donald Trump likes to endorse the winners, and right now he's like got a perfect record. Everybody he endorses wins. Donald Trump does not make those endorsements unless he knows and his team knows what the polling shows. And the fact that he waited until early voting began, right to me, that indicates that they were waiting for the polls to come out and to be like a sure thing that Paxton was going to win, which turns out the polling was correct. There Paxton just mopped the floor with Corn And so there's virtually no risk for Trump to make that endorsement. So this idea that you know, Trump's endorsement pushed him over the line, or Trump's endorsement did this thing or what like, I'm not buying that. Did it help yet? Yes, But I think when you lose sixty four percent to thirty six percent, when you lose by that much, like, that's beyond a landslide. I think that is technically, as the political science and polling experts call it. I think they call that a butt whoopen. That's a you problem. That's a John Cornyn problem right in Texas. The candidates matter. Cornyn said that on Tuesday that the President's ire against him is misplaced. He said, quote, grifters are claiming that I am opposed to the president's agenda, and I think that's caused some confusion with the president himself. But I've been supportive, so okay. So the grifters are the ones who convinced all of these Republican voters that you, who have been in office for twenty plus years, that they are now confused about your record. The grifters did this, okay. Some GOP strategists have argued that a Paxton nomination would cost millions of dollars more to promote in the fall, when money could be spent defending Republican seats in more competitive states. Democrats need to gain a net of four seats in the Senate. To take the majority, Cornyn had the support of Senate GOP leaders. See again. To me, this is indicative of the rift that has existed for a long time between the Senate leadership that at the very least appears not to be very interested in advancing conservative policies, in getting stuff done that the Republican base wants done. That's what it looks like to me. What do I know. I'm just a little old radio host message from DA who says Beta boy, I guess that's betto Tallarico and his demonic fairy ideology has a snowball in hell's chance of getting elected in Texas. And I've lived there. It's about as hot as hell, and Texans are not going to send this kind of weirdo to DC. Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I don't make predictions on elections, as you know, but let me just say I would be surprised if tall Rico wins. But you know, that's why they run the race. We'll see a couple of other results out of Texas. Newly elected Representative Christian Menafee defeated veteran Representative Al Green, Thank goodness. That habitual interrupter during the State of the Union addresses, Thank goodness he is out. Also, Colin Allred beat Representative Julie Johnson. Johnson was elected in twenty twenty four. That was the year that Allred lost his US Senate challenge to Ted Cruz. Allred was running for s and It again this cycle, but then dropped his bid and instead saw the return to the House. And then there was the rabbit anti Semite. Remember this woman Maureen Galindo, who was like, she wants to put all the h Zionists in concentration camps. That's what she said. She wanted to lock up all the ice agents and stuff. Yeah, like complete moonback. She finished first in the Democrat primary, so they went but she did not clear the threshold, so they went to a runoff and she got beaten in the runoff by sheriff's deputy Johnny Garcia. So but she flew too close to the sun, you know. That's it. So that's good news. Maybe the Democrat Party is healing. Just kidding, No, it's not. Then there was this and I kind of felt like this was coming. The South Carolina Senate effectively killed an effort to redraw the state's congressional lines to eliminate longtime Democrat Representative Jim Clyburn from his seat in Congress. That thwarted an effort by President Donald Trump's White House to redraw the state's seven seats to benefit Republicans. So there were a dozen Republicans, including several staunch conservative members of the conference, who joined twelve of their Democrat colleagues on a procedural motion to kill the bill for this year. They cited concerns with invalidating tens of thousands of votes cast on the first day of early voting in may Or on May May twenty six, so yesterday, and this was always going to be the obstacle for this effort. They had the chance to do something and they didn't. And then as soon as they adjourned from their session, the governor, Henry McMaster was like, one minute after they adjourned, he's like calling you back into special session to do these maps. The problem is that you already had people voting, and you then would have to throw out all those votes. You would have to schedule new primaries at a cost of an estimated six million dollars. Right, you got overseas military ballots, you got newly drawn lines. Now people's districts are moving. It's just they just ran out of time. They could have done something earlier, but they did it, and that's on the legislature, legislative leaders, Republicans, that's on them, right. So they're trying to claim now that like, oh, you know, we we totally are on board with this effort. We just ran out of time and all. Yeah, but that was your doing. You guys did that. You could have moved faster as we saw in other states, but they did not. As of four point thirty PM, the South Carolina Election Commission estimated nearly forty five thousand people had voted in the primary, already shattering the previous record of twenty three thousand votes cast in a single primary day that was set two years ago. Senator Richard Cash, an Anderson Republican who's considered one of the most conservative members of the Senate, said before the vote, quote, neither my conscience nor the common sense yet nor the common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway. I understand the anger and frustration that we could not pass our redistricting bill any faster, but the rule of law is the bedrock principle of our constitutional republic, and I will emphasize it is also a bedrock principle of conservatism. So the vote twenty six to eighteen to simply continue the bill into the next session effectively kills redistricting for this year. That allows law allowing lawmakers to defeat the effort without actually voting on the bill itself. Okay, So also keep that in mind if you are a South carol A voter and you start hearing Republicans say things like, you know, oh, I didn't vote to kill it. I didn't vote to kill redistricting. Yeah, but if you voted for the procedural movement, the procedural measure that allowed you to not vote against the redistricted maps, so you, in essence did vote to kill it. You just didn't take a vote on killing it. You took another vote that did the same thing. Lawmakers were afraid. And look, I feel like this is a defensible position because if you throw out forty five thousand votes, you then open your state up to litigation, costing the state probably millions of dollars. Also creates a lot of confusion. One leading Republican who supported the remap faulted the governor for not supporting the GOP's redistricting push earlier in the session. Senator Larry Groomes said, we charged the Hill. Republicans and the White House worked quickly to pass a redistricting plan before the start of in person voting, but the call from the governor came too late. When the legislature adjourned for the year earlier this month, its members did so with the full expectation of returning almost immediately to take up the redistricting question under immense pressure from the White House. This, by the way, is reading from a story that appeared by Nick Reynolds at the Charleston Post and Courier. Just one minute after lawmakers ended the session on May fourteenth, McMaster called legislators back to Raleigh for a special session dedicated to redrawing the state's maps, with House Republicans setting up an artificial deadline of May twenty sixth to the start of early voting to. Get it done. Okay, So those republic Bigans in the House who set up that deadline, they were the ones who basically ensured that there would be no time to do the redistricted maps before the start of early voting, so by yesterday it was too late, too many people had voted. And then Republican defections grew to include even hardline conservative members like Cash and Harvey Peeler right, who were concerned that not only about the timing, but that the plans are based on the population estimates under census data that was from you know, six years ago, and the state has led the nation in population growth. So the numbers that you're using for this map they're not even they're not even current numbers. And there were mistakes on the maps. There were unknown costs associated with a new summer election if they have to hold a new election, and then there's like the timeframe trying to run a new election with only a couple of months like that jams up the board of elections. They have a real problem, you know, setting up all the systems, getting all the volunteers and doing all of that work that needs to be done. And so they just you want people to blame on that, Look at your leadership in the House and Senate. Seriously, well he need even the governor, I guess, but he called it pretty quickly. But it was that House leadership that put in the deadline of May twenty six They could have done a different deadline, but they did the twenty sixth. 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 vpetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.