The Citizens Committee for Greensboro's Oct. 27 pre-referendum report is now posted at the Guilford County Board of Elections website. Also see recent 48-Hour Notices.
The committee was formed to campaign for the four municipal bonds on the ballot tomorrow in Greensboro. At $134.1 million, the transportation bond is more than twice as large as any of the other four bonds on the ballot. Next in line is the $50.5 million War Memorial Auditorium bond, followed by the $20.0 million parks and recreation bond and the relatively miniscule $1.0 million housing bond.
Here are some highlights:
Total receipts: $121,565
Total expenditures: $93,739
Cash on hand at end of period: $45,364
Contributions, in order of magnitude:
$64,500: Action Greensboro
$37,900: Greensboro Chamber Foundation
$5,000: Bank of America
$4,000: First Point credit bureau
$2,000: Carolina Bank
$1,000: Brown Investment Properties, Koury Corp., Replacements Limited, Richardson Properties, Samet Corp.
$500: Brady Trane Service, Cunningham & Co., Greensboro Builders Association, NAI Piedmont Triad (headed by Greensboro councilman Robbie Perkins)
Disbursements, in order of magnitude:
$37,900: Cooper & Secrest Associates, Alexandria, Va. (assessment poll)
$10,000: RLF Communications, Greensboro (contract services for street improvement bond information campaign)
$8,555: Gatten Enterprises (printing fliers and postcards and contract services for auditorium bond, owned by former Greensboro councilwoman Florence Gatten)
$7,799: WFMY TV (TV ads, Oct. 27-Nov. 3)
$5,155: Advanced Direct (print brochures)
$3,683: Arrowhead Graphics (yard signs)
$3,930: News & Record (advertising)
$3,344: Fairway Outdoor Advertising (four billboards)
$2,561: Boulton Advertising
$2,275: Compulis (voter lists)
$2,180: Rhinoceros Times (advertising)
$2,062: US Postal Service
$1,819: Carolina Peacemaker (advertising)
$1,174: Fast Signs (yard signs)
$1,120: Greensboro Times (advertising, owned by NC Rep. Earl Jones)
NC GOP takes aim at Obama
Voters across North Carolina received a direct-mail piece from the state Republican Party on Saturday, accusing Sen. Barack Obama of using taxpayer money to “pay his friends and family with political favors.” The mailer is clearly designed to raise questions with voters about whether they really know the Democratic nominee for president, and whether they can trust him.
The front side of the mailer shows a picture of Obama with his right hand raised, as if warding off an unwelcome question or camera shot, and quoting the candidate as saying, “I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists.” Underneath, in bold, red letters, the mailer asks, “Really?”
The backside shows another image of Obama grimacing in a way that suggests he's sweating getting caught at something.
“Obama used the hard-earned money of America’s taxpayers to pay his friends and family with political favors,” reads a headline. Below that, the mailer asks, “Is this the change that can fix Washington?” Then, the ad concludes, “Barack Obama. Not who you think he is.”
The mailer underscores Obama’s relative youth and inexperience to instill doubt about whether the candidate that mesmerizes voters in public speaking appearances might harbor some unseemly hidden agenda. I think it’s also fair to ask whether the mailer — intentionally or not — exploits racism in a state where less than 100 years ago a coordinated white supremacist campaign illegally toppled a black elected government in Wilmington, and where Jesse Helms was first elected to the US Senate in 1972 by defeating Democratic candidate Nick Galifianakis, a Greek-American, with the campaign slogan, “He’s one of us.”
The charge that an African-American candidate used taxpayer money to “pay his friends and family with political favors” also invokes white stereotypes of blacks as being prone to corruption that were successfully exploited in the white supremacist campaign of 1898, and more recently in Greensboro with an effort to undermine confidence in the city’s black-led police department.
So, what about the examples used to back up the central claim of the mailer?
• “For nearly 20 years, Barack Obama has had a cozy relationship with convicted Chicago fundraiser Tony Rezco. This relationship included Obama helping secure a $14 million land deal for Mr. Rezco.”
The mailer cites a 2007 Chicago Sun-Times article by Tim Novak. The article indeed reports that as an Illinois state senator Obama wrote letters “to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezco’s successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments for senior citizens.” The article goes on to say that Rezco was indicted in the fall of 2006 for demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state contracts under Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.” The Republican mailer does not make it clear that Rezco’s indictment was completely unrelated to any of his dealings with Obama.
• “Barack Obama personally directed one million dollars to the University of Chicago Hospital after the hospital gave Obama’s wife a nearly $200,000 pay raise.”
As reported in the Chicago Tribune, Michelle Obama did receive a $195,052 raise from University of Chicago Hospitals shortly after her husband took office in the US Senate. While it is unclear whether $1 million was appropriated to the hospital system, Sen. Barack Obama did request that amount, as disclosed by his campaign in March.
• “Barack Obama also directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds to a radical Chicago religious leader, Father Michael Pfleger, who supports his candidacy.”
Pfleger is the Catholic priest who was quoted as saying that Sen. Hillary Clinton regarded Obama as “a black man stealing my show” during a guest sermon in May at Obama’s home church. The claim is supported by a 2007 Chicago Tribune story that reports that Pfleger’s parish received $225,000 after the priest gave the Obama campaign $1,500.
• “Barack Obama has personally requested over $930 million in taxpayer funds for special interest projects.”
The mailer cites a 2007 news release from Obama’s Senate website and the aforementioned disclosure from the presidential candidate’s campaign in March. Both sources list federal earmark requests for projects in Obama’s home state of Illinois, including the $3 million request for an overhead projector at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago that was referenced by Sen. John McCain during the Oct. 7 debate in Nashville. The list of funding requests from the Senate office release totals $316.8 million and the campaign disclosure totals $539.5 million. Together, the two lists total $856.2 million, but it appears that some of the requests are duplicated.
While declining to disclose how many North Carolina households received the mailer, NC GOP spokesman Brent Woodcox told me yesterday that the party used “micro-targeting” to locate recipients “considered possible swing votes,” including Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated registrants. The party uses information about magazine subscriptions and previously completed surveys, Woodcox said, to find voters “who might be receptive to our message.”
Billboard truck an innovative way to violate election law
Yesterday at around 11:15 a.m. I was at the Friendly Center early voting site in Greensboro. One of those “no campaigning or distribution of literature beyond this point” signs sets just beyond the lane that runs along the storefront where voters were lined up about 175 strong. Just as I pulled into a parking space, a billboard truck advertising the street improvement bond cruised slowly past the line of voters inside 50-foot no-campaigning zone.
You’ve seen the advertisement in YES! Weekly and elsewhere. It says, “Because flying cars are not an option.”
I watched the truck make a loop and then return, although this time the driver steered into the second lane, which lies outside of the no-campaigning zone. Then he left the area.
The Citizens Committee for Greensboro, which is campaigning for all the municipal bonds on the ballot, rented the mobile billboard display from Transit Graphic Advertising.
I described what I witnessed to Guilford County Deputy Elections Director Charlie Collicutt, specifically mentioning that the truck was moving while within the no-campaigning zone.
“That would be a violation,” Collicutt told me. “It’s the equivalent of someone walking through there with a sign over his head.”
He said he would instruct the precinct judge at Friendly Center to be on the lookout for the truck, in case it returned.
Today I spoke to Monty Hagler, who identified himself as a spokesman for the street improvement committee.
“In no way did the street improvement committee want to or intend to violate election law,” he told me.
Hagler acknowledged that the truck went down the first lane within the no-campaigning zone, and said the driver was instructed to not stop or block traffic. I pointed out that driving through the zone was a violation in and of itself whether the truck was stopped or moving. He didn't sound convinced, but promised to check with the board of elections tomorrow, and to adhere to whatever guidelines they set out when the truck makes the rounds again on Tuesday.
“I’m going to clarify that tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “If that’s the case, we won’t be driving within fifty feet of a polling place, even if [the truck] doesn’t stop.”
In case there’s any doubt, here’s the statute:
§ 163_166.4. Limitation on activity in the voting place and in a buffer zone around it.
(a) Buffer Zone and Adjacent Area for Election-Related Activity. — No person or group of persons shall hinder access, harass others, distribute campaign literature, place political advertising, solicit votes, or otherwise engage in election-related activity in the voting place or in a buffer zone which shall be prescribed by the county board of elections around the voting place. In determining the dimensions of that buffer zone for each voting place, the county board of elections shall, where practical, set the limit at 50 feet from the door of entrance to the voting place, measured when that door is closed, but in no event shall it set the limit at more than 50 feet or at less than 25 feet. Except as provided in subsection (b), the county board of elections shall also provide an area adjacent to the buffer zone for each voting place in which persons or groups of persons may distribute campaign literature, place political advertising, solicit votes, or otherwise engage in election-related activity.
UPDATE, Nov. 3, 3:01 p.m.: The Guilford County Board of Elections posts 48-Hour Notices for the Citizens Committee for Greensboro today. The committee reported a $2,500 contribution from Branch Banking & Trust Co. and a $2,000 contribution from Duke Energy, both on Oct. 28; a $1,500 contribution from Greensboro real-estate development company Capsule Group LLC on Oct. 24; and a $1,000 contribution from Bessemer Improvement, a Greensboro commercial and industrial real-estate company, on Oct. 29.
You’ve seen the advertisement in YES! Weekly and elsewhere. It says, “Because flying cars are not an option.”
I watched the truck make a loop and then return, although this time the driver steered into the second lane, which lies outside of the no-campaigning zone. Then he left the area.
The Citizens Committee for Greensboro, which is campaigning for all the municipal bonds on the ballot, rented the mobile billboard display from Transit Graphic Advertising.
I described what I witnessed to Guilford County Deputy Elections Director Charlie Collicutt, specifically mentioning that the truck was moving while within the no-campaigning zone.
“That would be a violation,” Collicutt told me. “It’s the equivalent of someone walking through there with a sign over his head.”
He said he would instruct the precinct judge at Friendly Center to be on the lookout for the truck, in case it returned.
Today I spoke to Monty Hagler, who identified himself as a spokesman for the street improvement committee.
“In no way did the street improvement committee want to or intend to violate election law,” he told me.
Hagler acknowledged that the truck went down the first lane within the no-campaigning zone, and said the driver was instructed to not stop or block traffic. I pointed out that driving through the zone was a violation in and of itself whether the truck was stopped or moving. He didn't sound convinced, but promised to check with the board of elections tomorrow, and to adhere to whatever guidelines they set out when the truck makes the rounds again on Tuesday.
“I’m going to clarify that tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “If that’s the case, we won’t be driving within fifty feet of a polling place, even if [the truck] doesn’t stop.”
In case there’s any doubt, here’s the statute:
§ 163_166.4. Limitation on activity in the voting place and in a buffer zone around it.
(a) Buffer Zone and Adjacent Area for Election-Related Activity. — No person or group of persons shall hinder access, harass others, distribute campaign literature, place political advertising, solicit votes, or otherwise engage in election-related activity in the voting place or in a buffer zone which shall be prescribed by the county board of elections around the voting place. In determining the dimensions of that buffer zone for each voting place, the county board of elections shall, where practical, set the limit at 50 feet from the door of entrance to the voting place, measured when that door is closed, but in no event shall it set the limit at more than 50 feet or at less than 25 feet. Except as provided in subsection (b), the county board of elections shall also provide an area adjacent to the buffer zone for each voting place in which persons or groups of persons may distribute campaign literature, place political advertising, solicit votes, or otherwise engage in election-related activity.
UPDATE, Nov. 3, 3:01 p.m.: The Guilford County Board of Elections posts 48-Hour Notices for the Citizens Committee for Greensboro today. The committee reported a $2,500 contribution from Branch Banking & Trust Co. and a $2,000 contribution from Duke Energy, both on Oct. 28; a $1,500 contribution from Greensboro real-estate development company Capsule Group LLC on Oct. 24; and a $1,000 contribution from Bessemer Improvement, a Greensboro commercial and industrial real-estate company, on Oct. 29.
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