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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. And it's Tuesday. It's twelve noon, and that
means we chat with Andrew Dunn. He is a contributor
over at the Charlotte Observer and he also is the
publisher of long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com. Andrew, how
are you today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing good, trying to stay cool out of the sun.
Speaker 1: Have you got one of the Duke's smart meters on
your house? Are they? Are they throttling your AC?
Speaker 2: They try it. They keep trying to make me sign
up for that, but I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said new They're like, oh, but you could
you pay a little bit less every month? Like yeah,
and then when I really need it, I'm not going
to have the AC. So smart man, so okay, let's
talk a little bit at a couple of pieces you've got.
This is first over at Long Leave Politics, and I
did go read this story at WRAL that you kind
of us to sort of pivot into a discussion about
stewardship by elected officials. But the WRAL story was about
apparently the sad state of the Hawkins Hartness House, which
is where the Lieutenant governor works out of. And I
remember I used to have Dan Forrest when he was
Lieutenant governor on the show. I'd have him on like
every other week, and I remember him talking about this
effort that he and his wife Alice did to like
solicit a bunch of private donations and fix up this
house because it was just it was just grimy and
dirty and in disrepair. And so he did all of
that work. And so now I guess the WRL story
is it like it's all kind of reverted back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, I mean, so I used to work for
Dan Forest back when he was running for governor. So
I had the privilege of going to this house, the
Hawkins Hartness House, a number of times. It's right there
in downtown Raleigh, old Victorian era mansion, not really a mansion,
but a bigger house. And basically when Dan took office
in twenty twelve, he described it as a dump that
you know, it just hadn't been kept up. So yeah,
he and Alice raised a bunch of money from private donations,
fixed it up, really turned it into this kind of
crown jewel for the state, and he had this vision
that it would be, you know, this asset that would
be passed down to future lieutenant governors. But yeah, but
the WRL story found is that when Rachel Hunt took over,
it was mostly empty. You know, a lot of the
furnishings that Dan and Alice had collected were kind of
in the basement, broken or deteriorating, and uh, it was
not handed off in the way that that former Lieutenant
Governor Forrest had envisioned. You know, it's not a scandal
or anything, but it kind of made me think about
how different people view public service, you know, whether it's
a stepping stone or it's or it's a charge that
that they're that they have responsibility for.
Speaker 1: Right that you're you are a temporary placeholder. You're just
supposed to be a steward for the office and for
you know, the people and literally like the furniture, and
so I'm assuming that this stuff was handed off to
Mark Robinson in fair condition or you know, the place
was furnished, I assume. But then and then when I
was reading through the w r L piece, I couldn't
really figure out like what exactly, like how did all
of this stuff happen? They kind of just chalked it
up to, oh, you know, people just kind of lost
track of this stuff. But the question I kept asking
was if they got all of these donations from the
private sector, like did they get did those donations go back?
And then would why would the state take those furnishings
and move them to some other facilities, Like shouldn't those
things have remained? But also if I made a loan
of furniture to the Hawkins Heart and his house, then
should I be able to get it back when that
Lieutenant governor leaves? I just I was left with a
lot of questions From the WRIL.
Speaker 2: Story, Yeah, it was written really convoluted, and the author
of the piece actually went on X and said that
he didn't want to get hit with a libel suit
and that's why he left it real vague and didn't
play the blame game, but I think it's safe to
say that Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson when he left office,
he did not have the same perspective of wanting to
hand down something nice to his successor as Dan did.
Speaker 1: And I think the RWRIL story pointed out that Rachel
Hunt had made some pretty nasty comments about Mark Robinson,
so maybe that had something to do with it. I
don't know, but in sort of a related you write
a lot about Dan Forest over these three pieces. I
noticed he shows up in all three of your recent
pieces to a long Leave Politics and the News or yeah,
one of the Charlotte Observer News and Observer, but the
next one is at long Leave Politics, and you talk
about this epiphany you have. I guess while listening to
Hometown Holler, which is a lefty podcast, I guess I
have not heard of it, but they apparently. One of
the co hosts says, we go from a kind of
milk toast bland country club dad like Dan Forrest as
our lieutenant governor, to I'm a black Nazi Mark Robinson,
like whoh, somebody looking at our state in twenty ten
would look at our state government twenty twenty five and
if they hadn't lived in the interim, would be like
what am I smoking? And this rubs you the wrong
way as it did me, but probably more so you
because you worked for Dan and you remember what the
media did to Dan and what the left did to
Dan Forest when he was lieutenant governor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And it's funny, Yeah, it just kind of
worked out that way. A bunch of my pieces mentioned
Lieutenant Governor Forrest. I haven't written about him in years.
You know, obviously look back fondly on those days working
in that job. But yeah, I mean the way that
WRL and any progressive, liberal leaning publication treated Forrest was
was really out of box, you know. It was they
were using the scary music, the you know, the dark
photo editing and said that North Carolina had never had
a candidate this extreme. Really just treated him like this
completely you know, unconventional, scary, dangerous person. And you know,
it's just funny to hear the strange New respect is
a phrase that I like to call that people that
Democrats have for Republicans after they're no longer.
Speaker 1: Running for office, Right, well, those are the best Republicans
among Democrats. But but you also talk about how you
And I mentioned this too the other day when I
saw Thomas Mills's piece, this very piece that you read
as well. Only one party promotes violence and it's not
the Democrats, was his argument. And it's just it's so
it so illustrates the blind spot that people have for
their own team, because they will forgive all transgressions if
it's you know, if it's a fighter on their side,
because you know, in the culture war, you can't you
can't suffer any losses of casualties or anything. You need
everybody in the fight. And so it's like there's this
blind spot that they cannot see the violence that is
being fetishized on the left, and it does. It absolutely
is also on the right. I mentioned that as well,
and then you tied it to the Age of acrimony,
which I was not aware of. What is the age
of acrimony?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Age of Acrimony is a term used
for post reconstruction politics. We're talking eighteen seventy to about
nineteen hundred, and there was a historian who wrote a
great book called The Age of Acrimony where basically talked
about how politics in those days really super high turnout.
It was kind of a focal point of public life.
Everybody had to pick a team, and the debates were
extremely raucous and very violent too. To be honest, I
read that book and was just shocked by how crazy
things would get. You know, this was before the secret ballot,
So how actually voting was done was everybody would gather
in the you know, the center of town and you know,
bring their own sheet of paper and it was all
who you know who who you could round up from
the saloons to go cast their ballots. So, you know,
people forget Obviously, nobody alive today was around to remember that.
But we always talk about how we're in unprecedented times
and it's worth bringing a little bit of historical perspective
that actually, you know, things are pretty pretty tame compared
to some periods in our history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will leave it there. There's another piece that
we did not get to, which is on jet zero,
but we can bring that up next week. Let me
chat with you. Thanks, Andrew, I appreciate the time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right. That's Andrew Dunn. You can read his work
at long leaf pol dot com Longleaf Politics. He's also
a contributing columnist over at the Charlotte Observer. Here's a
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So Andrew Dunn's piece over Longleave Politics, where he's talking
about the Age of Acrimony, he writes, in the decades
after the Civil War, American politics entered what historian John
Grinspan called the Age of acrimony. Voter turnout was sky high,
reaching eighty two percent in eighteen seventy six, but as
interest swored, so did violence. Campaigns blurred into mass spectacle.
Riots and assassinations were common. By the way, there's also
uh North Carolina has a rich history on this score.
I believe they were called the red Shirts. They went
around committing all sorts of violence on behalf of the
Democrat party machine against Republicans and black people. You had
the you know, the Wilmington Coup that Democrats along with
the news and observers publisher you know, fomented against the
Republican fusion government that was elected in Wilmington overthrow that government.
You know, then began, you know, taking over all of
the offices and implemented Jim Crow laws across the state.
So we have our we we have examples of this
in North Carolina history as well. Riots and assassinations were common.
People did not just argue, they brawled literally. Eventually that
fever broke. But the medicine wasn't always pleasant. Americans did
not find common ground. It ended when political leaders chose
order over participation. Nationally, I think about that order over participation, right,
This is one of the things also where you hear,
you know, on the left is a oh, we need
to you know, get were voters to the polls. You know,
that's what democracy is all about. But you end up
with a lot of people that don't actually have a
very good, let's say, a sense of things that are
now being you know, not just engaged in the political process,
but they are consumed by it and they may not
have the mental balance, the grounding to participate in policy
discussions and such.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Nationally, political reform had some positives, privatizing voting which means
like secret ballots, reducing the power of political machines, and
intellectualizing campaigning, but it also involved voting restrictions and cutting
the public out of the process. In North Carolina, lowering
the temperature meant overthrowing multi racial governments and replacing them
with one party Democrat rule. Civility returned, but it came
at a price. He says. We are watching the age
of acrimony return. Now. The noise is back, and so
is the distrust. Sadly, so is the violence. A good
example of this was the attacks on Tesla. Right, you
had leftists who until about you know, forty seconds prior,
we're loving them some electric vehicles and we're touting, you know,
all of the the miracles of Gaya Earth and how
she's so fragile she needs to be protected from you know,
gas guzzling SUVs and the like. That we all have
to mind the rare earth minerals creating even more pollution
in order to you know, create these electric batteries, make
the make the vehicles. And then of course the one
who you know, mass produced these things and built this
American car company, Elon Musk. He had some double plus
on good thoughts about poly and governance and who might
be a better leader for the country, Donald Trump or
Joe Biden, and that that is an unforgivable sin to
the leftist, to the point where they now had to
sacrifice the ever so fragile Gaya Earth on the altar
of their left wing politics, because again, the issue is
never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. So
the issue isn't climate change, never was, It's the revolution.
It's to tear down Western civilization and the institutions where
those stores of value reside. So they had to tear
it down. So if we have to, you know, send
a bunch of toxic plumes of smoke into your local area,
well so be it. It's all in service of defeating
you know, literally the next Hitler Donald the Orange. Well,
Elon Musk was collateral damage in all of that, and
the left they can hold aground, no doubt about it.
And last night at the Charlotte City Council meeting that
grudge was on full display, where the city decided we're
not going to give Elon Musk any business. We're going
to cut him from our list of approved vendors. And
their cover story was safety or something safety of the vehicles. Yeah,
they never actually articulated any actual reasons. They just they
just wanted Tesla cut from the list. 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
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You could check it out at check dot dot news
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I started using ground News a few months ago and
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but it also supports ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent. Meanwhile, the Charlotte City Council is
punishing tech sector political foes. Oh I'm sorry, No, this
is all about safety concerns. Safety concerns right the Charlotte
City Council last night. They do their meetings up in
this room. I think it's room two sixty seven. I
spend many an hour there. I probably spend thousands of
hours in that room covering city council, County Commission, transit meetings,
all sorts of stuff when I was a reporter for
WBT News. And this is usually where they you know,
they go over like a couple of items in depth,
and they pull some stuff for discussion, stuff that doesn't
ever really make it into the full blown meeting that
occurs at seven o'clock. This is their dinner meeting. So
they all sit around, they get some presentations, they eat
their dinner, and then they go downstairs to the big chamber.
So that's where this meeting occurred, was in this room
upstairs at City Hall. And they have a thing called
the consent agenda, where it's usually like, you know, thirty
or forty items that are quote non controversial, they're not expensive,
and so they just throw them all into the consent agenda. Now,
if a council member wants to pull an item off
of the consent agenda and discuss it, they can do so.
But every anything else in that consent agenda just gets
approved all at once with one motion, So you don't
have to vote on thirty or forty different items. Right.
It's just a way to speed up the meetings. Anyway,
One of the items that was in the consent agenda
was a list. It was approval of a list of
vendors that the city could use to purchase electric vehicles. Okay,
and on that list was Tesla and so before so,
while they're in this meeting, council Member Lawana Mayfield, Democrat,
pulls this item out of the consent agenda and says
she wants to remove Tesla from the list. Just Tesla.
Ed Driggs, Republican. He expressed concern about this.
Speaker 3: I think I understand why that's being suggested. I have
a concern though, that the reasons for removing Tesla do
not have to do with the quality of the product,
and this is part of a cooperative contract. I think
we just set a dangerous precedent if we have reasons
that aren't related to the cost and the performance of
purchased items for excluding them. We already have Tesla's in
the fleet, and I don't know what the impact is
of not allowing for the possibility of adding a Tesla.
I do think also it'd be helpful, mister manager, if
you would explain a little bit what this is. We're
not buying both these things, so our approval of this
creates the possibility of transactions with each of these partners,
but there aren't amounts assignable to each of them. Is
that right correct? I mean, I doubt that Tesla is
a big piece of this, but I just again have
a concern about the precedent that we set if we
start letting considerations like the owner in this case and.
Speaker 1: His activity.
Speaker 3: Take precedence over our responsibility to the public for simply
getting the best equipment we can at the best price
that we can and integrating that with the fleet that
we have. So I will not be supporting the motion,
and I really encourage you that we not go down
that road.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what they're talking about, what Mayfield is talking about,
is boycotting basically Tesla. They're refusing the City of Charlotte
is refusing to do business with Tesla. That's what the
practical impact of this motion was. Last night here was
Mayfield's I don't even want to call it explanation.
Speaker 4: So one, it has been proven that this particular product
has had multiple challenges with the quality of the design
as well as the health and safety, and there are
multiple lawsuits that are around the nation regarding the quality
of this vehicle. Not to mention at the Poor City
Council has the ability to one of three things a
pool denied defer. So what I am asking, in light
of all of the multiple between B and C, other
businesses and opportunities that we have through our cooperative agreement,
that I don't think that it would necessarily be advantageous
for us to use tax dollars to purchase into a
particular product when we have seen multiple accounts of that
product being an unsafe product. We do have some of
those products within our fleet, which is fine, but also
many years ago there was a very narrow feel of
selection when it comes to electric vehicles. Today that is
not the case. We have multiple other products and providers
out there that also have much have different pricing that
will probably be more comparable to what we're looking for.
As our city continues to grow. So it is not
about just the particular owner of this product. It is
the fact that this product has been in multiple lawsuits
because of safety issues, and there are multiple concerns.
Speaker 1: Are you aware of all of the safety concerns around
Tesla's I did a quick search. They actually are very
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dot com. So Charlotte City Council votes last night to
remove Tesla from a list of companies from which the
city would purchase electric vehicles. This is a boycott. That's
what this is. That's what they did. Here is the
response after Lawana Mayfield. Councilmember Mayfield said, Oh, it's because
of poor quality and that they're unsafe, and there are
lawsuits against Tesla, Okay, and there are. It's a car manufacturer,
they have lawsuits against them all the time. Here's Ed Drakes.
Speaker 3: This body did not choose any of the names on
this list. We did not go down there. We did
not review all of their safety records. We didn't look
at the data. This was proposed by professionals who look
at these things and identify suitable parties for a contract.
Tesla's had some lawsuits. If you look at the history
and the automotive industry of recalls and other lawsuits, you'd
have to rule out GM Ford Toyota, just about every
major manufacturer. So let's be objective here. The reason this
has been isolated out of this long list is political.
It has to do with the owner, the majority owner
of the Tesla company. And I am responding to your no, no,
I'm talking, it's my turning. I'm speaking. I am rebutting
the specific suggestion that there are safety reasons why this
body should decide not to include Tesla on the list.
I think that's a fair response to what you said.
And once again, we then put ourselves in a position
where we would need to be able to say, for
Amic Equipment, Capital, Chevrolet, Deacon Jones, that they are safe
and reputable, that they are the best people. We are
not identifying the names on this list. You are singling
out one name on this list for political reasons, and
you don't have enough data about Tesla compared to other
car companies to suggest that they shouldn't be here. And
I just object again to trying to disguise this is
anything other than a politically motivated desire not to have
that name on this list.
Speaker 1: He is correct, Mayor.
Speaker 4: I am going to respond to that, because, first of all,
he is not a mind reader nor does he know
the research that I have done on the other companies,
which I tend to do quite a bit of my
research before I bring something forward.
Speaker 1: But she did not bring any of that research forward.
She did not make any kind of a case, did
not present any kind of data, no comparative analysis, just
some vague concerns about quality and safety and oh there
are lawsuits. That's it. This was not a rational, logical,
well researched proposal from her, which indicates that ed Drag's
is exactly correct.
Speaker 4: Yet, even if it was political, of which I have
never had a challenge to say what is is? So
if it was mainly or predominantly political, for me, I
would have clearly said that because unlike some people, I
don't have a problem calling that out.
Speaker 1: So only if it was mainly or predominantly political. So
she's not actually denying that there is a smidge a
teens ween see little bit of politics in this move? Huh.
Or here's another thought. Maybe she's afraid of getting sued
by Elon Musk. Guy's got a lot of money, right,
You're gonna sue him. You're for discrimination because like you.
That's what he would argue, is that he got cut
from this list because of his politics, or maybe, as
I saw on this message, maybe it's because he's an
African American. He might have a discrimination suit because he's
from South Africa and he's an American citizen. Now I
don't think he would sue over this, but let's all
be clear. This is a boycott of Elon Musk by
the city of Charlotte. That's what happened. All right. That'll
do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
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