Roy's haul and gerrymandering for fairness (07-30-2025--Hour3)

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This report by Elena Schneider at Politico says the fundraise singh Whole shared first with Politico includes more than two point six million raised directly to Cooper's campaign account two point six million to his campaign account. Ninety five percent of those donations were one hundred dollars or less, they said. According to his team, the former governor raised another nine hundred thousand dollars which went into a joint fundraising committee. Was a couple of them joint fundraising committees or jfc's, and that's controlled by the party, which allows for bigger contributions. Now, what they don't tell us in this political piece is from where did the donations come? Were they predominantly out of state or in state? North Carolina represents Democrats' best offensive opportunity for the Senate, a battleground state that the former governor is won twice with Trump on the ticket. After yeah, after growing a national fundraising network during his stint as Democratic Governor's Association Chair, Michael Watley, who was the RNC, took over last year. He built his own national donor relationships, raising expectations that this race will be one of the most expensive ones in twenty twenty six, and his first day total cracks a Senate Democratic candidate record which was set by Amy McGrath, a fundraising juggernaut who lost in the general election to Mitch McConnell. She raised two and a half million dollars in her first twenty four hours as a candidate. Cooper raised three point four So maybe he'll have the same results as she did. I don't know. It's not really a fair comparison there, obviously, because you've got Mitch McConnell, you know, the incumbent known for decades in Kentucky. You know power base that's there, and uh, Michael Wattley is not Mitch McConnell, Thank goodness, but he's not. He's not Mitch McConnell. Soh So that was the first Yeah, that was the first to day of fundraising. Wattley has not yet announced his candidacy, but it is expected that he will. There's also this development, this fight in Texas. I have to admit, I do not know why a state is allowed to redistrict mid year or mid decade, I should say, but Texas is redistricting, and they just released their maps, which of course has prompted all of the screams of gerrymanderin right, because the new map that they unveiled today is a thirty to eight Republican to Democrat map. Okay, so they have thirty eight seats in Texas, and thirty of the thirty eight are considered to be lean Republican or safe Republican seats. Right now, the map is twenty five Republican thirteen Democrat, so this would be a five seat swing for Republicans if this map gets approved. Donald Trump has publicly said, yes, redistrict this. Florida just did a redistricting. I don't know if there were lawsuits or something that prompted this or not. I'm not sure, because I thought you had to do the redistricting after the census, and it's a once every ten year cycle. I mean, that's the way it's been in North Carolina except when Democrats have repeatedly sued and then Democrat lawyers with the wardrobe change on a bench said you have to redraw different districts and maps and stuff. So that's why North Carolina would keep redrawing its maps was it was always due to litigation. I'm not aware of any any example in North Carolina where they just started a redistricting process halfway through the decade, right because you got to we got to wait till twenty thirty for the next census, and then you would do another redistricting based on that because the districts are drawn so they are all equal in population. So obviously this has prompted you know, great concern among Democrats that the gerrymandering in Texas is, you know, a threat to the democracy and that this is going to lead to the complete downfall of the society and all. And what's always interesting in these debates is that they never talk about the states they control. In fact, they're saying, well, if Texas does this and they draw five extra seats for Republicans for the midterms, then we're going to jerry mander. Two. You guys are jerry mannering with them, We're going to jerry manner. It's like, yeah, but you guys already jerrymander. Have you seen Maryland, California, Nevada, Illinois. I mean, like the states that you guys control, you have jerry mandered the bejeebis out of them. So, like, I don't know how you're going to be able to jerry mander harder. You've already gone pretty hard on that, So I'm not sure how you can make the maps. I mean, I guess you could just eliminate all Republicans from the legislature from Congress. I guess. Jd Vance tweeted out earlier today, the jerry mander in California is outrageous. Of their fifty two congressional district nine of them are Republican, nine out of fifty two in California. And I know we like to poke fun at California. That's you know, they're all crazy lefties out there, But there are actual Republicans in California. I know, I was as surprised as you so seven but seventeen percent of the congressional seats are Republican held, which means eighty three percent are Democrat held. Do you know what the breakdown is of voter registrations in that state? Or better or as Jade Vance points out, the what they what Republican candidates usually pull is about forty percent. So this is the argument. This is why I don't believe Democrats on any of this gerrymandering redistricting argument. Didn't believe their court cases, didn't believe the legal challenges, don't believe their rulings. I don't believe any of them on any of this anymore. Because even in California, which they claim is like, oh, this is the way it should be done, it's an independent redistricting commission. And I've covered this over the years, big expose. I think it was done by pro publica years ago that they rigged it, and they had all the receipts, they did all. It's like a massive expose on how they created these fake organizations, these fake speakers in order to create areas of interest, which then moved areas into certain precincts and precincts into districts. And that's how they ended up with their massive over representation of Democrats because forty percent of the vote goes to Republicans, but they only can hold seventeen percent of the seats. This is also the case in Nevada where they actually won the popular vote. Republicans won the popular vote in Nevada and they hold one out of the four congressional seats. Right, So when they tell me they want fair maps, I look at the maps they've drawn and I assume that's what they're talking about. And that's why I always say when a Democrat says they want fair maps, it means maps that they win. That's what they mean by it. And so Republicans are fighting back. And I warned you you're not going to like a Democrats when the Republicans do to you what you've been doing to them. This is what that looks like this is the this is the reaping phase, 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. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot com 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 dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent 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 talking about redistricting, and it's actually super important. I think a lot more people are now aware of this process and how important it is. And it is also tied to Yes the census. Steve and Charlotte wonders are the census takers going to purposely goof up the census again? So this is very important context to what we're seeing happen in Texas. Guy Benson, writing at town hall dot com, he says Democrats are growing angry and anxious about potential plans in the red states of Texas and Ohio to engage in mid decade redistricting in order to pad Republicans numbers in Congress. Some experts say that adjustments in those two states alone could add six to eight House seats into the GOP column. There are risks in taking such action, of course, including the mistake they call it dummymandering, where you mistakenly dilute the advantages in too many districts and you essentially create flip districts flippable seats. Right, people who are running for reelection would prefer to run in a district that is a plus ten for their party, Right, like if I'm a Republican, I'm running in District one. I would want that to be a R plus one or plus ten. I want as big of a margin as possible, so it's a safe seat for myself. When you start getting down into like plus two plus three territory, those are flippable seats, especially if you get like a blue wave election. So there's the downside. Democratic leaders have indicated a willingness to go tit for tat with Republicans. Most of the largest blue states do not have a partisan redistricting process like the one in Texas, though apparently the governor can simply call in the legislature to redraw the maps. According to Benson, so the governor always has that ability, which is pretty amazing. So that's the reason why Texas is doing it now. Benson goes on to say, there is a redistricting controversy that is rather busy, rarely talked about. I understand why Democrats would prefer not to discuss it, but I don't know why Republicans have not raised the issue more often and more loudly. This comes from NPR. Of all places in the twenty twenty census, all states were not counted equally well for population numbers used to allocate the members of Congress and federal funding over the next decade. This is according to a US Census Bureau report. A follow up survey that the Bureau conducted to measure the national tallies accuracy found significant net undercount rates in six states Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. So Florida just did their redistricting and now Texas is doing it, so they got undercounted. There were states that got overcounted. Eight states that were overcounted Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah. These revelations come after the population totals from a census beset by the coronavirus pandemic and years of interference from former President Donald Trump's administration have already been used to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives as well as votes in the Electoral College for the next decade. So ten of the twelve over and under counts the sloppy counts. Ten of the twelve states benefited Democrats, five of the six undercounted states are red and five of the six overcounted states are blue. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. The twenty twenty census led to significant changes in congressional seats apportioned to the states. Texas gained two seats. People were surprised, they thought they would have gotten more. We got one, Florida got one, Montana, Colorado, and Oregon they all got one. Losers were New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and California. With the possible exception of Illinois not losing a seat. The likely effects of an accurate count would have overwhelmingly aided red states. The error resulted in six hundred thousand over counted residents. And remember these are just residents. These are not citizens, These are residents. The error resulted in over six hundred thousand overcounted residents in New York and a similar amount undercounted in Texas. And by the way, six hundred thousand is an important number because the congressional districts are about eight hundred thousand at this point. That's how you divide. You take the total population count and you divide it by four hundred and thirty five, and every state gets at least one House seat. But then you have to have every district be the same amount of people, And right now we're at about one hundred. It's like a between eight hundred and eight hundred and fifty thousand residents Democratic voting states would have lost nine seats net, nine seats out of the House. That's pretty big considering how close the House is right now. Also, think of the impact on the electoral college. I mean, it didn't matter because Trump ran the table on all of the swing states, right, But what if he had not, if the inaccurate population data effectively robbed Republicans of five to ten seats in the House in twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, and twenty twenty four. Part of the GOP argument for aggressive mid decade jerrymanders could be they're rectifying the outrageous and costly failure of a federal agency, which seems dare I say it fair, you guys, did these lines or did the counts rather in such a sloppy way that you penalmized our party from having a nine seat What would be I guess a eleven seat majority at this point, because I think they have a two seat majority. I forget. So we are correcting that mistake, and after the next census, maybe it'll be better conducted, and then we'll do better maps. 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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I did receive a message apparently I messed up on some of the math earlier. It was my understanding that there would be no math. I'm saying, yeah, all right, so let me correct the math on that redistricting calculation. John says, those nine seats that the census screwed up would actually be an eighteen seat swing, right, because I didn't subtract it away from the Democrats. Because the Republicans would pick up nine seats, the Democrats would lose nine seats, and so that's an eighteen seat majority now or added to the majority. Right, that's a large swing. Yes, thank you, John, I appreciate that. No, the last hour was a discussion about man keeping, not manscaping. Bob Michael Wattley is expected to formally announce tomorrow afternoon in Gaston Well he has filed the paperwork to run for US Senate. Nick Craig, who hosts the Carolina Journal Hour here on WBT at five am, he's got the screenshot the receipts, as the kids call it up on Twitter, the page has or yeah, the filing has been submitted. He has officially filed paperwork to run for US Senate. So that's that. Eric said, it's critical to remember that when Democrats draw squiggily snake districts the width of an interstate, that's democracy. When Republicans replace the squiggly districts with compact districts, that's jerry manderin exactly right, that's jerry mandering, which is always hilarious to me when Democrats accuse Republicans of jerry mandering and then you just show them the maps, like here's the last map you guys drew, and it's like squiggly lines everywhere, Like people don't believe this, But the district that was drawn for mel Watt, it was the it was the twelfth I think it was. I think it was the twelfth district, but I don't know because the numbers changed a bit, But yeah, I believe it was the twelfth. That district ran from Charlotte to Greensboro, and at some points was I eighty five. In order to connect it up there, to get it all the way there, to capture the precise, correct demographical breakdown of the voters that they wanted in there, they jerrymandered it all the way up the inner state. This and it was the subject of litigation. And by the way, the map that first started doing this was approved out of the Senate by none other than Roy Cooper. It was he was the Senate majority leader at the time. These were his maps. He was named on like all of the litigation challenging the constitutionality of that district. So and then they got smacked down they had to redraw it again. In all of this in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's like all of the things that they say, you Republicans are, you know, somehow uniquely evil in the way you've drawn the maps in North Carolina. But you guys had rulings against you on the exact same grounds. And then of course when Republicans are drawing them and they're following the rules which you have to keep the districts compact, they have like what they call clusters or groupings of these areas for the state legislative maps and stuff, and so they're actually complying with the law. And they're like, you can't use race. They were told by the courts you cannot use race, Okay, so we don't use race. We use party labels. And then they get sued over that, and then the Supreme Court reverses itself and says, oh, that's obviously racism. They're but we did not use race, we used party identification. They're like, well, when ninety percent of African American voters vote Democrat, it's basically a proxy. Like, well, but that's assuming that that's a static thing, that all Democrats or that ninety percent are going to continue to vote Democrat. And what we see now is that lo and behold, they are not doing so so much anymore, particularly the dudes, the men. The Washington Post out with the story today, Republicans won young men last year. While fifty five percent supported Democrats in twenty twenty, support dropped to forty six percent in twenty twenty four. So that's a nine point drop. Young Men of color in particular swung toward Trump, which is weird because I've been told he's a racist, a racist Orange man. Republicans also saw noticeable gains among Latino and Black men ages eighteen to twenty five. So what happened? Young men in swing states say that the Democrat Party abandoned them, leaving them feeling helpless in providing for their families as prices rose and jobs evaporated. They felt no sympathy from the left, who they say brushed away their legitimate economic woes by citing their male privilege. These men. This is part of a focus group that was done for Democrats that the Washington Post obviously got. They acknowledge these people that participated, these dudes that participated in the focus groups. They acknowledged historical patriarchy, but they asserted that that doesn't make them invincible in a job market where graduate unemployment is concentrated among men, What does that mean graduate unemployment? It means men with degrees are unemployed. In fact, I saw another headline yesterday that men who have college degrees have the same unemployment level as men without college degrees, which means, what, There's no point in getting a college degree anymore, is there? If if you're going to be suffering from the same unemployment levels. The idea was, the promise was the pitch, I should say, the sales pitch was get the degree and then you'll be able to get into lines of work where you'll, you know, be able to provide for your family, make good money, pay back the student loans which we've just jacked up, and you'll be safer from unemployment. These are the latest findings and focused groups conducted by the centrist pro democratic group called Third Way, along with hit Strategies Hit Strategies. They did these focus groups with men ages eighteen to twenty nine, and they did it in the swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and US North Carolina. The men were lower propensity voters, which means what means that they will vote in the presidential elections, but they tend not to turn out in the midterm elections. And these were voters that voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty but switched to Trump last year. That's who they focus grouped or focused group focused grouped. That's who they asked. That's who they spoke with to try to figure out what did the Democrat Party do wrong with this cohort, and they just told them you abandoned us. You left us feeling helpless in providing for our families. And when we said this stuff, we got eye rolls from you. The Democrat Party ignored our complaints. 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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. Men told the focus groups, these are men that voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty men of all races. They voted for Biden and then they switched for Trump. These are men in swing states, North Carolina included, and they said that they felt left behind and that the Democrat Party abandoned them and that the party felt no sympathy or that the men felt that there was no sympathy from the party when they said, hey, I want to be able to provide for my family, they were like patriarchy, privilege, eye roll. And that's precisely the problem. I've talked about this in the past, when you have political parties that are made up of coalitions of different people right different groups. They they especially the Democrat Party is like a very good example of this because they you know, this intersectionality way of thinking where you're all you know, oppressor or oppressed, and so if you can find out like, okay, well, law group is the oppressed because you're never the oppressor, and then you have this intersection with these other oppressed groups, and so we can all band together and fight the patriarch, sorry, the oppressors. Right. Well, if any gains that are made by that political party are not realized or felt among the different coalitions, the ones that are that are you know, less benefited by the coalition by being in that coalition, they will start to look elsewhere. Right. If you think of it as like a pyramid almost and you or you know, a ladder, you got people down at the bottom in that coalition, and you know, they keep voting for this stuff, but they're not getting any of their wishes fulfilled. And in fact, it seems like the party is working against them on things, blaming them for things, or just not talking to them or about them or about what they want. They will seek to get their wishes fulfilled by the other party, and the other party can look at them and say, oh, they're not addressing this. I'm gonna go take it. It's one of the biggest blind spots Democrats have had on Donald Trump, which is that Donald Trump is basically a Democrat. It's the most amazing thing to have witnessed. He was a lifelong Democrat. I'm not saying that as an insult, although I do say Democrat as an insult a lot, so it may be confusing, But no, I'm not saying that I'd like to insult Trump. But Donald Trump was a New York City a Democrat, not about liberal, but he was a Democrat. And so the thing that he is talking about now are things that Democrats talked about back thirty years ago. Not a surprise they could have. The Democratic Party has gone so far to the left they don't even recognize themselves as they were what they used to stand for, like ten years ago. On immigration, for example, Lucas Holtz, a political analyst with Third Way, which conducted the surveys, said, there is complete misconception from Democrats and especially from progressives about young men moving away from the party and takes it from it was all because of inflation. To the guys that supported Trump are in cells and sexist. In cells are it's an abbreviation for involuntarily celibate. In other words, they can't get girls. So that's what the Democrat Party messaging has been towards these guys. So they're like, uh, it's just a really terrible stereotype that has a backlash effect on Democrats. Former President Barack Obama sounded the alarm when he was on his wife's podcast earlier this month, saying that support for young men is often mistaken for neglect of women's rights, but he said it's not a zero sum game. He said, quote, we don't think about boys and just assume that they're going to be okay, because they've been running the world. Okay, the boys have not been running the world. Okay, the boys are just boys. They've only been on the planet for like, you know, eighteen years. They're they're not controlling all of the world. Besides, I thought, wasn't that wasn't that Israel that did all of that? I thought that was the Uh. I thought that's the deal. Yeah, sorry, Oh I did play a SoundBite. Never mind, that's a joke. It's just the joke. So he says, all of which has historically been true in all kinds of ways. We've made that mistake sometimes in terms of our rhetoric, where it's like we're constantly talking about what's wrong with the boys instead of what's right with them. This is a breakthrough moment I think for Democrats. If true that if you talk to people and you blame them, and you criticize them for all sorts of stuff all the time, they're less likely to want to help you. And if you point out the stuff that they're doing that's good, they are more likely to help you. If this is true, man, he may have just changed the political calculation here. Ironically enough, Obama was the only Democrat that the focus group participants could name as a masculine role model from that party. He's the only masculine role model. Barack Obama, the guy who was struggling to lift the two pound weights in the undercover video from that hotel. That guy, that Barack Obama. Okay, the only masculine role model, which is ironic because he was deemed not masculine enough. There were all sorts of people who don't remember the Obama presidency. There were all sorts of reporting and punditry about how he has not perceived is tough enough and masculine enough to go into these international negotiations and such anyway, So that's the state of the Democrat Party. One participant in the focus group said, I think being a masculine leader is like outlawed in the Democratic Party right now. Trump broke through with economic promises that appealed to many young men's desires to be financially self suffici and to support their families once again, almost as if there is some sort of an instinctive need among men to be some kind of provider or something. The focus group participants were not heavy news consumers. Largely they were informed through social media and podcasts, but they were still able to list off Trump's economic policy promises. They could rattle them off no tax on tips, right, which speaks to Trump's ability to create powerful messaging. Meanwhile, focus group participants said Democrat messaging, especially to young black and Latino men, felt like they were being pandered to based on their race. Oh look, there's a perfectly rational explanation for that, because you were That is exactly what they were doing. Yes, people aren't stupid. They saw what was happening, They knew what you were doing. They didn't much appreciate it. So it's recommended by the focus group people that the Democrats come up with something that can be condensed into a three words slogan. That's it, aspirational economic message, three words go all right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.