Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
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smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for
your support. News Talk eleven ten ninety nine three WBT
and on Tuesdays at noon, we start the show off
with chatting with Andrew Dunn, who is the publisher of
long Leaf Politics and a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer. Andrew,
how are you, sir?
Speaker 2: I'm fantastic. Happy mechtach Day to you as well.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I did not get you anything, but
nor do I expect anything from you either, So we're
even on that score. Are you going down to any
of the any of the festivities or celebrations.
Speaker 2: In and on it?
Speaker 1: Okay, we expect a full report then next week. They
always do it at like noon, and I like, I
can never go because I'm on air, you know.
Speaker 2: So uh, Tusky work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so all right, Well, uh, I'm sorry about
your defeat at the City council last night. Did not
get the city council post that you had applied for?
Did you? Did you like your chances going into the
council meeting?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't like my chances at all. You know,
I knew going in it was a super long shot,
but no hard feelings. And you know, I'm happy that
I took part in the process.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you learn anything about the process.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I saw. I'm actually just getting to
watch the meeting from last night now, you know, like you,
I have a job as well that keeps me from
from going to early afternoon meetings. And I guess they
voted in secret and then just revealed the results at
the meeting. I don't it's it's a convoluted process. I
think the City of Charlotte could use a little bit
more transparency.
Speaker 1: Oh well, yes, on many fronts, absolutely, I agree. Yeah,
I don't like this. Uh. And this has been sort
of referred to over the years as the Charlotte Way
where there was an old county commissioner, very controversial Bill James,
and he used to call uh he said Charlotte suffered
from dysfunctional civility where they would do a lot of
this stuff behind closed doors and then come out with
a united front kind of a vote or an announcement,
so you would never hear the arguments or know which
way the votes, you know, split in the closed sessions,
and they would come out and just make an announcement
to make it seem like they're all on the same page,
you know, and that's not the case.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's how how our government is supposed
to work.
Speaker 1: No, it's supposed to be messy. That's what a democracy
is all about, I thought.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently the mayor had to split the tie because
tark Bakari vacate the seat took the job up in
the Trump administration. So it was a five to five split.
And that's interesting because it kind of crystallizes the voting
blocks generally, not on all issues, but on the city
council where you've got dimple edgemere to Juanna Brown, Renee Johnson,
Victoria Watlington. That's sort of one camp. I feel like
Ed Driggs Republican, the only Republican on the council until
last night that he he probably had to go along
with all of the endorsements that Chrystal Bocari had racked up, right,
like the local GOP, she had state lawmakers, So there
may have been some pressure not overt but you know,
you could definitely see where the wind is blowing within
the GOP on who they wanted, and it wasn't Edwin Peacock.
Speaker 2: Right, And you know, to be honest, I've known the
Bocaris and Edwin Peacock for a long time. I think
they both would have done a great job. So yeah,
at this point, you know, I'm in supportive of that one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well yeah and so and he's a perfectly
capable council member. He was a council member, ran for
mayor a couple of times, and so and he says
he's not going to run for the seat again, just
like you said you wouldn't. And I think a lot
of council members preferred that they didn't want somebody who
was going to be in there to then run for reelection,
because that's kind of what they've done in the past.
They always they always say, we don't want somebody that's
looking to run in the election itself. Just a placeholder
until the voters can have their say. So I get it,
but again, sorry for your loss, Andrew Dunn.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right. Well it's interesting though, because you had
this other piece, a very lengthy piece at long Leave
Politics that that spoke to me in a way because
I have gotten involved in my neighborhood HOA and and
you actually say some stuff in here that I try
to tell my fellow neighbors in the ho which is
this is political, like we are engaged in politics. You
may not have viewed it like that when you first
signed up, but this is a level of politics. There.
There's like fourteen thousand hoas across America, so or no, no,
fourteen thousand across the state of North Carolina. So it
is by far the largest sort of elected body if
you just look at all of the membership combined. So
this is governance. And you point out in this in
this piece politics is the same at every level. So
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, you know, people like to think of politics
as something that you know, happens in Raleigh or happens
you know, at the government center. But you know, really
all that politics is is how groups of people make
decisions together. And you know, I've been involved in campaigns
and elections and covering government at all sorts of different
levels for years, and there's really not all that much
difference in the pettiness and the you know, divisiveness, the factions,
you know, whether you're running for governor or running for
HOA president. And you know, I was, you know, marginally
involved in a swim club board election here in my
neighborhood over the past couple of weeks and just got
me thinking, you know, there were just so many parallels
to what we see at the state and national level.
Speaker 1: Well, you do mention the the hot topic in virtually
all hoas with court the pickleball players versus the tennis players,
although in my neighborhood we've got some we've got some
pickle versus pickle action going on too there. You know,
there's a disagreement about some of the rules and reserving
court space and stuff, and so like you end but
it's true, like you end up in these political situations
where you're trying to you know, work out compromises and solutions.
You also mentioned I've said this for years too. You
mentioned something along the lines I felt like you were
speaking my language when you said that so much of
politics is personal relationships. And I've told people this for years.
You don't understand if you're not like following politics or
in politics. So many things come down to just petty grievances, slights.
They forgot my name, they didn't invite me to something,
and then like this whole rift develops between these two
candidates or offices or something, and it's it really is
sometimes that silly.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. You know. The biggest parallel that I saw
was having to do with arguing over the rules of
the election. So you know, our swim club board is
governed by a charter or what have you. It's got
their bylaws, and so there were proxy ballots, you know,
you could consider them absentee ballots, and there was all
sorts of bickering over what ballots would count, what ballots
wouldn't count. And you know, I've been covering extensively the
Jefferson Griffin election challenge, and I just couldn't help but
see them as one and the same.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, what's the postmark or there hanging chads on
the proxy votes to swim club. You said also that
people don't crave power as much as they want recognition,
gratitude and deference. And it's so much of this stuff,
whether it's at the HOA level or all the way up.
I mean, you see it with Joe Biden too, right,
the crafting of a narrative around legacy. They want to
have made a difference. People want. It's why you know,
they take charge of certain projects to you know, build
buildings or amenities or you know, set the economy right
or whatever. They want to be known, you know, for
posterity for something that they did. And you say, power
also does not flow through formal channels. It flows through familiarity,
and a lot of people just don't get engaged and
that's probably at all levels. And then you know they
complain about the way things are, but they don't they
don't engage except to complain like on a Facebook group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. And you know, the way
I think about it is, you know, there's always conversations,
especially around people who've been in office for years and
years and years, like why did you know, why is
it so important to them? Why don't they just retire?
Why don't they just make way for somebody else? But
you know, you have to think through it at the
personal level. You know a lot of these folks, you know,
they are well meaning in general, and they are trying
to craft that legacy, like you were saying, and it's
hard not to take it personally. You know, if somebody
is challenging you and saying you're doing a bad job,
you know, it just becomes intensely personal. And that's why
you fight so hard to stay in office.
Speaker 1: So did you win the swim club election? Were you
running for the swim club?
Speaker 2: I was not running, Thank goodness. I don't know if
I have the stomach for that.
Speaker 1: You'll serve on city council, but you won't serve on
the swim club board. Your that's your line. Okay, that's
fair enough, And I also thought it was good advice.
At the very end, you said the whole system runs
on the people who show up, and that is absolutely true.
And I've told people in the neighborhood also that if
you if good competent people do not step up and
volunteer as you did for city council, we will be
governed by bad incompetent people. So like there needs to
be some recognition of that. Yes, it's a it's a
devotion of your time. Yes, it's a sacrifice, but good
competent people need to do it because otherwise the results
are are not optimal. So absolutely long Leaf Politics. Longleafpol
dot com is the website. Andrew Dunn is the publisher
of long Leaf Politics. You can also read his work
at The Charlotte Observer in the op ed section. And Drew,
good to talk with you. Happy Mecdec Day. And we'll
see you next week or no, next week is Memorial Day? Right,
next week's Memorial Day?
Speaker 2: I think, Oh, Monday is Memorial Monday. I can still
come on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, Tuesday. Sorry, I forgot what day it is. Okay, yeah, Tuesday.
We'll talk to you Tuesday. All right, thanks Andrew Dunn,
appreciate it. That's Andrew from long Leave Politics. It is Tuesday. Yeah,
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So thanks again to Andrew Dunn for making time for us,
as he always does on Tuesdays at noon. Tuesdays at noon,
so WSOCTV reported last night that Charlotte Mayer vy Lyles
broke the tie in a vote to replace Tarkbookari. Tarkbookar
one of only two Republicans on the eleven members Charlotte
City Council. Bokhari took a job up in DC for
the Trump administration, and a bunch of people had submitted applications,
including Andrew Dunn, to serve on the city council, just
for the remainder of the unexpired term, which is only
about five or six months, because the elections in November
and then the new council members get sworn in in December,
so it wasn't there's not a lot of time left,
and so a lot of people had pitched themselves as
just a placeholder, not somebody who was going to be
running for the seat, which my guess is, and I
don't know if she has announced or not, but my
guess is that one of the applicants tark Bookari's wife, Christa,
who we spoke with about a week ago, I suspect
she wants to run for that seat. So that's part
of it. I think the other part of it is
that she is, you know, Tarc Bookari's wife, and Tarc
Bacary you know, I don't know if there are people
on the Charlotte City Council that don't like him and
took it out on her. Yeah. So, and also Tarc
Bacary was at the center of this h you know,
this fight over the vests, the bulletproof vests for law
enforcement officers last year that then prompted the text message
exchanges with the chief of police and Tark Bacari. And
then the Charlotte City Council just paid out the police
chief three hundred thousand dollars really for no reason. And
so now they're trying to deflect away from that scandal.
So having Christo Bacari on the council with you when
you're trying to deflect away from that scandal, that's probably
not ideal, let's say. And so when you look at
the way the vote broke down, it was the Mayor
pro tem Dante Anderson, Malcolm Graham, Lawana Slack Mayfield, James Mitchell,
and Marjorie Molina. That was the block of five that
voted for Edwin Peacock, who perfectly qualified for the post.
He was a Charlotte City councilman. He was the last
at large city councilman of a Republican persuasion ever elected
back in what two thousand and seven, So he yeah,
that's the last time a Republican has won an at
large seat on Charlotte City Council. He was it. He
then ran for mayor twice, he lost, and so they
named him. So it's been a while since he's been
in city Hall, but you know, he does have familiarity
with the post, as did one of the other applicants,
Andy Doolan, also a former city council member, So there
was talk that he might be the pick. But I
look at the way the votes broke down, and when
you have a five to five split, obviously they were
whipping votes right because any like had any one of
the other five dimple Ajmera Tijuana Brown, At Driggs, Rene Johnson,
Victoria Watlington had that block splintered and voted. If one
of them had voted for like Andy Doolin or anybody
else Andrew Dunn, if they had voted for any other applicant,
then you would have had the majority of the vote
going to Edwin Peacock initially, So obviously there was some
coordination going on among the council members. Like the extent
of the coordination, who is involved, I don't know. But
when I see a five to five split like this
for just two candidates and you know one of them
has four Democrats and one Republican, like that's that is
indicative of this power struggle that is occurring inside Charlotte's
City Council. And because nine of the eleven members of Democrats,
they keep all of that stuff sort of behind the
curtains because they don't want to damage the Democrat brand.
So they have these fights over text messages or phone
calls or you know, face to face, but out of
the public view. They don't really get into this stuff
in public. That's one of the problems with having a
body that is dominated by one political party like this.
So congratulations to Edwin Peacock on his appointment. We'll see
how it goes, 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.
Speaker 2: Why.
Speaker 1: 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 could check it out at
check dot ground, dot 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.
So today is Mechdeck Day. Mecklenburg Declaration Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence.
May twentieth, That's why it's on our flag in North
Carolina marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence or the mech Deck for short
reading this piece over at the Charlotte Ledger by Tony
Mescia and Christina Balling. The references to Charlotte. When you
see seventeen seventy five, if you see the name Captain Jack,
that's another one. Uh, James Jack, Captain James Jack. There's
a pilsner at Old Neck Brewery called the Captain Jack Pilsner.
That's what that's. That's all in reference to the Mecklenberg
Declaration of Independence, which depending on So you know, this
is where I get into trouble because to acknowledge a
controversy means I'm taking a side, even though I have
said that we should lean into this. This uh, this legend.
It is the thing of legend because there's no physical
proof because the document doesn't exist. It burned in a fire.
And people who believe it, they say the all, there's
enough circumstantial evidence to lead you to believe that it
did exist, it did happen. There are people who disagree.
They say this was a faulty memory of old people
decades after the fact, and uh, they're you know, they're
trying to besmirch the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, so simply
going over And I feel the need to point this
out because every time I do this, every single year,
I get people yelling at me about you need to
just accept the historical thing where they say I'm an
idiot and you're just lying or whatever. I'm giving you
that I'm laying out the controversy for you to decide.
My position has been for years, for years, and it
changed when I first came to Charlotte in nineteen ninety
nine and heard about the mech Deck got the book
chain of Errors, was reading through it and all that,
and at the time it was not fully embraced as
the event that it is now. I mean there's now
a we have a like party going on in Charlotte
today that never used to happen. I mean I shouldn't
say never used to happen. There. There would be like
some small gatherings and stuff, but it's because a bigger thing,
and it should because, as I have said four years,
when the truth, when the when the legend becomes truth,
you print the legend right and Charlotte neat should lean
into this and make it their thing. It ties us
to history. It unites us in a common vision. There's
so there's a lot of good to be had from it.
So it's been a hotly debated topic though for roughly
two hundred years. Okay, so this is this is not
me I've been accused of, like, oh, just trying to
stir the pod to make myself relevant. I think somebody
said once it's like, yeah, talking about two hundred fifty
year old document doesn't make one relevant. But the debate
has existed. The debate over Mecklenburg's role in America's founding
is so old that even Jefferson and Adams weighed in
on it. Now, keep in mind at the time when
they weighed in on this, Jefferson and Adams they used
to be friends. Then they became bitter enemies for a
very very long time. And then I think, if memory
serves correctly, John's wife, Abigail, like said, you need to
reach out and you guys need to you need to
mend defenses here in your old age. And so they
started writing letters and such, and that's when you know,
Adams wrote this letter to Jefferson like, hey, I found
this newspaper article here talking about the Meckelberg Declaration of
Independence a full year before you wrote yours. What's up
with that?
Speaker 2: Tom?
Speaker 1: Did you steal it? Like? That's that was the nature
of the letter, you know, And of course Jefferson's like,
that's spurious, that's probably like in an old English accent
or something, but very angry at it. And and so
there isn't any physical copy of the declaration of independence.
But you have these people who were alive at the time,
who years later then gave an account of what they
said happened two hundred and fifty years ago today, which
was that they drafted a declaration of independence. They gave
it to Captain James Jack and he rode his horse
all the way up to Philadelphia to the side of
the convention and he was like, hey, Mecklenburg County, you
know we're declaring independence. Check us out, and here's our
declaration of independence. Now. I don't know if there was
a copy that got lost up there. Maybe there was
a fire up there too, I don't know. They I
believe they said at the time that it was premature,
so they would not look at it. Now last year,
I think it was last year, or maybe it was. Yeah, No,
I think it was last year. I had gone up
to New York to visit the folks over the summer,
and we stopped halfway, and we picked different places to
stop when we drive it, and we picked Chambersburg. I
did not pick Chambersburg, I forget. Who is my brother
and his family or my wife? I forget. But it
was like halfway, so we stopped there and we're walking
around the little downtown area and I look up and
there's a sign and it says the John Jack Tavern.
On this site stood the John Jack Tavern, operated by
the family of James Jack, courier of the Mecklenburg Declaration
of Independence. The tavern was used from seventeen eighty four
until seventeen ninety four as a courthouse and jail for
Franklin County. Side note, I think that we should start
having court in taverns again. I think this is what No,
I'm just kidding, although it would it would for some
interesting reality TV. So they have a plaque to James
Jack citing the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Did I say Virginia earlier? Is Pennsylvania.
When the legend becomes truth, you print the legend. And
this is a good legend for Charlotte. All right, So
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Memories since nineteen ninety seven. Located in mint Hill, just
off four eighty five mail orders are accepted to get
all the details that create a video dot com according
to mechdeck dot org. And do believe the K goes
in there. I know some people write it without the K,
but the K belongs mech deck, but no K on
the end of it. It's I don't make the language
rules here people. Anyway, between seventeen seventy five and eighteen nineteen,
the Mecklumberg Declaration of Independence was remembered and celebrated in
Mecklinberg County and to some extent in North Carolina, but
no one outside of the state new or care much
about it. Only the declaration was remembered, and of the
United States Declaration, only that was remembered, And there was
no mention of the twenty one Resolves during this period,
because there was another document called the Mecklenburg Resolves, which
was written up like I think ten days later or
something like that, or it came out shortly after. And
so the argument has been that you would draft the
declaration first and then you would do the resolves after.
Now that's what supporters say. Detractors skeptics. They say that
the people who forty years after the fact are asked
to recount whether or not this thing did occur. The
document was drafted, is it legit, did it actually happen?
And the eyewitness accounts that were given again forty years
after the fact, that they confused or conflated the resolves
with the Mecklamberg Declaration, so they called it a declaration,
but they were actually thinking about the results. So that
was the disagreement. The people had been busy building a
new country and had paid little attention to their history. However,
by eighteen nineteen thirty six years after the end of
the war, people were beginning to be interested in the
history of the revolution. A debate arose as to whether
the revolution was started in Virginia or in New England.
The North Carolina Assembly entered the discussion by asking doctor
Joseph McNitt Alexander to go through the papers of his father,
the late John McNitt Alexander, who was the secretary of
the May twentieth meeting, and write up the story of
the mech Deeck. He did so, and his report was
printed in the Raleigh Register on April thirtieth, eighteen nineteen.
That would have been the end of it, except that
former President John Adams saw a copy of that report
and then sent it over to Thomas Jefferson, implying that
Jefferson had copied words and phrases from the Mech Deck
for his own July fourth, seventeen seventy six declaration of independence.
Jefferson responded at length, saying that he thought the mech
Deck spurious and that he was an unbeliever in the document.
This exchange was a private correspondence known only to those
two men. Again, the Mech Deck would have remained an
interesting footnote in history, except that Jefferson's letter was then
published after his death and thereby publicized. Jefferson's condemnation had
to be answered, and so the North Carolina General Assembly
appointed a committee to gather all of the documentary evidence
available and publish an official North Carolina state pamphlet on
the subject in eighteen thirty one. Since then, there have
been twelve books published on the subject, maybe more by
now lists, magazine and newspaper articles, and chapters in more
general history books. Again, according to the Mecklenburg County this
is James Williams at the Mecklenburg Historical Association. He said
today there is a difference of opinion as to the
authenticity of the text of the Mech Deck. Many prominent
historians assert that the Mech Deck is spurious and they
remain unbelievers, but others judge that a preponderance of evidence
confirms the stated facts, and I say, lean into it, Charlotte.
This is a uniquely Charlotte kind of a story. So
keep the legend, keep the facts, make the case, do
the panel discussions, you know, debate the controversies, all of that, absolutely,
but own the mech Deck. So I'm glad to see
that the celebrations are getting bigger, and there's one today
actually going on right now. 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.