Candidate profile: Cathy Brewer Hinson

The contest for North Carolina's 6th Congressional District seat, in which Republican incumbent Howard Coble is fending off a handful of challengers, has gotten ugly.

The field of challengers narrowed from five to four today with Jon Mangin’s decision to withdraw and endorse Dr. James Taylor. I visited with candidate Cathy Brewer Hinson in her office on the first floor of the Union Square furniture showroom, where she is the building manager. Hinson told me she wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor had paid Mangin to get out of the race. (Mangin told me in an e-mail earlier today that no money was offered or accepted.)

“This is what I mean about the ‘good old boy network,’” Hinson said. “They make their deals, and you don’t talk about it. Not to me. That’s what we’ve got in Washington. They are so afraid of calling their constituents out. Yes, Jim Taylor offered me money if I would drop out and back him. That’s the way I am: I have to be honest.”

Hinson and Taylor are the two candidates who are most closely aligned with the Tea Party movement, although Coble and Billy Yow have both garnered significant support from voters who identify with the movement, and Jeff Phillips has expressed appreciation for it.

Between Hinson and Taylor there is no pretense of friendship.

“I don’t like Jim Taylor,” Hinson said. “It’s out there. He’s tried to buy me off.”

Hinson said that after declaring her candidacy in November, Taylor came to her office in January and asked her to step aside. She and her husband went down to Moore County, where Taylor lives, later that month for a Tea Party event. Afterwards, Hinson said, she and her husband went out to dinner with Taylor and his wife. She now believes that he was mining her for ideas all along.

“The man wouldn’t know an original idea if it hit him in the face,” she said.

For example, Hinson said that she painted her trailer with the words “we the people” in October, and Taylor states in his primary campaign video: “We the people must take our government back.”

Hinson also said that she was the first to call herself a “constitutional conservative.” In Taylor’s defense, it’s hard to find a Republican candidate or supporter of the Tea Party movement who doesn’t consider himself a constitutional conservative.

Hinson said that Taylor made what she considered a veiled threat on Monday to start a whisper campaign about some of her health issues. She told me that she once had surgery to treat Sinonasal Undifferentiated Carcinoma, which involved doctors pushing her brain aside so they could work on her sinus passages. If that’s the plan, Hinson said, she doesn’t consider the fact that she’s a cancer survivor to be a liability.

“If he wants to attack me,” she said, “he can bring it on.”

In some ways, Hinson is running against the Republican Party.

“I know the Republican Party doesn’t like me,” she said, “because I’m for term limits and the Tea Party.”

On a campaign flier that Hinson passes out she says, “If you want to get a job done right, you get a woman to do it!” and “The good old boy network has a reason but no platform!”

Knowing that the legislative agenda of President Obama and the congressional Democrats is the object of ire for Hinson and her fellow candidates in the 6th District race, I steered the conversation to a statement that Hinson made during a candidate forum in Greensboro on Monday evening.

“The First, the Second, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, the Ninth and the Tenth amendments right now are under attack,” Hinson said. “We have got to fight to keep those rights. I have read the Constitution. I have read certain bills where they try to attack these. They’ve got these little things in these bills that they write that they try to maneuver money away from us.”

I asked Hinson to explain why she believes some of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are under threat by pending legislation in the current Congress, and she ticked them off one by one.

The First Amendment: “If you get real vocal against the government, they can come down on you. My husband is scared half to death that we’re going to be audited because I speak my mind.” She also brought up the news media, noting that one can find a difference in biases between Fox News on one hand, and local newspapers, television news organizations and even the local Fox affiliate on the other hand.

The Second Amendment: “The UN is trying so hard to get guns taken away from all countries. Obama signed an executive order agreeing with the UN.”

The Fourth Amendment: “Our rights of privacy. The healthcare bill because information that you have with your doctor and your employer, it’s going to be opened up.”

The Fifth Amendment: “Forced annexation without due process of law. What you think is just compensation and what the government thinks is just compensation are two different things.”

The Sixth Amendment: “It says that you have the right to a speedy trial. They never give you a speedy trial.”

The Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

“The people that we have elected call us Nazis and make fun of us in the Tea Party movement,” Hinson said. “These are senators and congressmen that are elected by us. Nancy Pelosi comes to my mind. She’s just like the wicked witch of the west.”

Hinson seemed to be fixated on the word “disparage.” I didn’t bother to raise the point that, if in fact, Pelosi had said those terrible things, her speech would likely be protected by the First Amendment, just as Hinson is within her rights to call the speaker of the House “the wicked witch of the west.”

The FindLaw website, which I consider to be as close to non-ideological as possible, provides this background on the Ninth Amendment: “Aside from contending that a bill of rights was unnecessary, the Federalists responded to those opposing ratification of the Constitution because of a lack of declaration of fundamental rights by arguing that inasmuch as it would be impossible to list all rights it would be dangerous to list some because there would be those who would seize on the absence of the omitted rights to assert that government was unrestrained as to those. Madison adverted to this argument in presenting his proposed amendments to the House of Representatives. ‘It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of the bill of rights into this system; but I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.’”

Hinson also cited the Tenth Amendment to me, although we didn’t discuss it. Several state attorneys general are suing to overturn the healthcare reform bill signed by President Obama on the grounds that it violates states’ rights by requiring states to increase payments for Medicaid without their consent and by mandating that citizens purchase healthcare insurance.

I couldn’t help but point out that one of Hinson’s proposals appears to violate the Tenth Amendment.

“I’d like to give North Carolina the option for a recall every two years because sometimes we get stuck with people that do not stick to their platforms,” she had told me.

I pressed her to specify exactly which elected officials would be subject to federal legislation providing for the option of a recall. It came down to US senators because, as Hinson noted, House members are “already on a two-year recall.”

Wouldn’t federal legislation providing for the recall of state officials constitute an overreach of the federal government, I asked?

“Point taken,” Hinson responded.

After her enumeration of constitutional violations, Hinson assailed the incumbents in Congress.

“They make agreements for illegal or secret purposes all the time,” she said.

She gestured to a copy of the Constitution laying on her desk.

“I want to go to Washington and take the floor and read this to them,” she said, becoming visibly emotional.

“This is a sacred document,” Hinson said. “These people get up there and everything they do, they make fun of it. They make sacrilege of this document. I don’t know that they don’t need to go to prison.”

Hinson’s policy positions are novel, detailed and not entirely coherent.

• She favors what is known as the FairTax, with the eventual outcome that the Internal Revenue Service would be dismantled. Under this plan, only consumed goods would be taxed, at 23 percent, and component parts and resources transferred business to business would go untaxed. Lower income people would receive a “prebate” based on income and family size to help pay for necessities and offset the burden of an increased sales tax.

• In the short term, the candidate favors granting businesses an incentive of $20,000 for each new worker they hire for up to three years, as long as they keep the new hires on the job for at least six months. When I asked how the federal government would find the revenue to cover such an expenditure, Hinson expressed confidence that businesses would hire additional employees beyond those subsidized by incentives, thereby expanding the tax base.

• She likes some of the provisions of the recently passed healthcare reform legislation prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, and allowing college students to stay on their parents’ plans, but faults the bill for being written in a way that is difficult to comprehend, creating “death panels,” and imposing a burden on doctors.

• On the topic of immigration, she said the citizenship process needs to be expedited for people who are in the country illegally but are working and paying income tax without a prayer of ever receiving a refund. She favors making English the official language. She opposes foreign aid to Mexico to help the United States’ southern neighbor shore up its economy and legal system, and believes that US troops should be massed on the border to close it.

This point had come up earlier in our interview when Hinson had made a point about out-of-control spending.

“We’ve got to pull our military forces back and put them on the border,” she said. “We’ve got to stop being the policeman of the world.”

I asked her if she is in favor of speeding up the US military’s exit from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not exactly.

“I would let the generals talk to us as a House,” she said. “I would not like to make any one family feel like they sacrificed for nothing. I know we could win it and finish it.”

UPDATE: The Taylor campaign essays a general response to Hinson's allegations by e-mail: "It is very unfortunate she has resorted to saying things that are wildly untrue. The people of our community are more interested in solutions that address jobs, the economy, and a dysfunctional government. I would hope that she would stop the politics of mudslinging and join the people as we try to take our country back from those who don't have our best interests at heart."

Triad Elections ’10

Highlights from last night's High Point GOP event

The High Point Republican Women and the Guilford County Republican Teens hosted a meet-and-greet event for Republican candidates last night at the Deep River Plantation Club House in the north High Point.

There is a lot of passion in the Guilford County Republican Party this year behind the idea of repealing the national healthcare reform legislation signed by President Obama, behind a sense that government has outgrown and needs to return to its constitutional bounds, and behind the perennial GOP drive to cut taxes and spending. Although most of the candidates were running for state office, grievances against the Democratic administration of Gov. Beverly Perdue were much less pronounced than expressions of anger towards the President and the Democratic Congress.

Loyalties to particular candidates, as always, depends in large part on geography and personal history. It’s difficult for me to get a read on which candidates are gaining traction.

First, a roll call of candidates and proxies in attendance, noting the absence of their opponents:

US House District 6: Challenger Cathy Brewer Hinson was present with a giant trailer parked outside bearing her likeness. Incumbent Howard Coble and challengers Jeff Phillips and Dr. James Taylor were represented by campaign staffers and supporters. Challengers Jon Mangin and Billy Yow were absent.

NC Senate District 28: Trudy Wade was present but left before the formal part of the program. Jeffrey Brommer was present. Robert Brafford Jr. was not.

NC House District 57: Jon Hardister, present (opponent Wendell Sawyer not).

NC House District 61: John Faircloth, Georgia Nixon-Roney and Paul Norcross present (Gerald T. Grubb not).

NC House District 62: Incumbent John Blust was present (challenger Michael Garrett not).

Sheriff: Incumbent BJ Barnes present (challenger Scott A. Jones not).

Guilford County Commission District 2: Myrene Stanley present (opponent Bill Bencini not).



John Blust, a conservative who has served in the NC House since 2001, has assumed the role of dean or ideological exemplar of the Guilford County Republican candidates in Guilford County. Sheriff BJ Barnes is also a revered figure in the party, but the uniqueness of his job description makes him less of a role model for candidates who are largely vying for legislative seats.

As he did at the Guilford County Republican Party Convention a week ago, Blust referenced movies in his stump speech. And as he did at the convention, the candidate characterized himself as a lonely fighter, equally committed to the struggle in difficult and favorable times. Two House candidates, Jon Hardister and Paul Norcross, mentioned Blust by name during their speeches and pledged to join forces with him.

First, some movie references:

I guess I take a certain approach to being in office. If you’ve ever seen the movie The American President — anyone seen that? — with Martin Sheen is chief of staff. Michael Douglas is the president. The poll-driven president, whose foundering and towards the end of the movie as he’s foundering watching the polls, his chief of staff, Martin Sheen, tells him: ‘Here’s an issue we ought to take on. We ought to ride on it. And it needs to be taken on.’ And the President says, ‘You don’t win elections by telling 69 percent of the people they’re wrong. You fight the fights that you can win.’

And I take the approach that Martin Sheen, the chief of staff, immediately says after that. He says, ‘You fight the fights that need fighting.’ And that’s what we have to do. That’s what we have to elect to office is people willing to take on a fight for what’s right, not just when the wind’s blowing our way, but when it isn’t popular.

And to use the movie analysis, I’ve been sent to the cooler a lot like Steve McQueen was in The Great Escape. And I’m willing to go to the cooler. I had my secretary fired, I was given an office a little bigger than a broom closet, I was removed from every committee because I got up and said something and wrote articles about what was going on in the House when I got there. It’s a simple as this approach to governing as Republicans ought to be: Do what needs doing.

Blust made the case that the first step towards achieving goals conservatives hold dear is reforming the legislative process itself.

And the first thing that needs doing — if you watched the healthcare debate — we have to fix our very institutions that are being taken from us by powerful politicians, and it’s the same way in Raleigh like Speaker Pelosi. The House didn’t want to pass that bill. The will of the elected representatives was reflected in their people and would have voted down that bill, except Nancy Pelosi has too much power and can get them in the backroom, make promises, cajole, threat and get your representative government to do what you don’t want it to do.

And we have to fix that first of all. We have to disperse that power in Raleigh. That’s where the corruption has come in — right there. And we’re not going to get the Taxpayer Protection Act, which I authored; we’re not going to get zero-based budgeting; we’re not going to get annexation reform; we’re not going to get a whole lot of these things until we break the power that’s in charge. And it’s amazing to me: They tell us we’re obstructionists. I file bills, other members of the House Republicans file bills — good ideas that would pass even a Democratic House if they could come up for a vote. The speaker blocks it. One man sticks it in a committee, tells the committee chairman not to hear it, and then turns around and calls us obstructionists.

And I’ll tell you: We have got to break that power. I have literature here. Read bills before you pass them? 1997. An editorial. What? Read the budget before you pass it? ‘Blust’s ideas for reform in vogue.’ Some of my legislation has been adopted with other legislators’ names on it. Just this morning, an article in the News & Record — Medicaid fraud detection software. The governor’s finally implementing it. I filed a bill in 2003 over a billion wasted dollars, and over seven years ago, and they finally got around to it. And if you keep me in office, we’re going to get around to a whole lot of things that need to be done to clean up this state and save you money.

Tonight was my first opportunity to hear House District 61 candidate Georgia Nixon-Roney. Her speech focused heavily on biography, qualifications and geographical ties.

My parents moved here in 1959 from Greece, and I was born in High Point, North Carolina. I’ve lived in Jamestown ever since they moved there when I was two. Being Greek, my parents owned a restaurant. I’m sure that’s no surprise to anybody. And another no surprise is that they had four kids just so we could run the restaurant for them. I began at age eight, and that’s the truth. I started washing vegetables and prepping work, and I haven’t stopped working since.

Currently, I’m mayor pro tem in Jamestown. It’s my second term on the Jamestown Town Council. I’ve always been interested in politics; as an attorney, I think that comes with the ground. But my children were at Millis Road [Elementary], which is where I went to school, and when it came time for them to approach middle school, I found that I could not put them in that particular school or any school that we were in the district for. So my kids now attend Wesleyan Christian Academy, which is a great school. But I don’t think it’s fair that my kids get to attend a great school, and many others may not be able to afford to do that.

I did run for the Jamestown Town Council, and won my first time. And as I said, I’m mayor pro tem. I graduated from law school in 1990, and I went to the district attorney’s office, where I worked there for three years, and then I started my law practice in High Point. A property owner. I’m a business owner, a mother, and I generally want to improve the quality of life for people in District 61, the area that’s so dear to me. My business is in High Point. I live in Jamestown. I have property in Sedgefield. My sister lives in Adams Farm. This is the area that I’m concentrating on.

And I’m keenly aware of all the issues that we face. And we all have the same values here. We all want the same improvements. But as an attorney, I understand the legal jargon. I understand how to close loopholes, how to introduce laws and bills that affect us. And we can do it more succinctly. I think that that gives me a little advantage. I think I can get up there and jump in with both feet, whereas it might takes someone else a little bit of time to get used to. I think I can do it efficiently.

It was also my first opportunity to hear Cathy Brewer Hinson, who is challenging Howard Coble for the US House District 6 seat:

There are three main points of my platform.

One is to stop the money flow to the executive branch.

The second point is the FairTax. I am strongly in favor of getting rid of every tax that the federal government gives us, which will bring businesses back to the United States. And the foreign companies will come once the businesses start coming back in because they’ll have no income taxes, no consumption, no compliance costs.

The other thing is that I would like to limit terms. I don’t think anyone should have a longer term than the president serves.

I would like to see bills written that so that you can understand them. They should post it online so that [inaudible] no junkets, no earmarks. I do not believe that the president should be able to have the right to have his executive orders stated without the approval of Congress. He’s written more of his executive orders than any other president, to date.

I would like to see that the people who are elected are not under orders of either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but they are answerable to we the people.

I would like to see everyone who is elected subject to recall votes every two years, so if you’re not doing a good job, the people can recall you and have you replaced. North Carolina right now does not have a recall vote. Some of our Democratic elected officials do not do the job they have promised. And we’re kind of stuck with them until they are reelected or their time is up.

I think that the people are stepping forward now, and wanting more of a voice. We’ve had our constitutional rights — First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment — are being compromised. We need to have less big government and more state government.

Sheriff BJ Barnes is probably looking past the primary to the general election. His Republican opponent, Scott Jones, faces pending misdemeanor charges related to an altercation with a deputy, but has mounted enough of a campaign to have signs dotted around Greensboro. Among the four Democrats on the ballot, retired US Marshal Harlon Costner might be the most viable thanks to his federal law enforcement experience and the fact that he has been campaigning since last fall. But in a year in which Republican turnout is expected to be high, it will be tough to beat Barnes, who already enjoys the advantage of name recognition and general popularity among the electorate.

As your sheriff — I’ve been your sheriff for about 16 years — I have responsibility for about 652 square miles, about 465,000 citizens. And we operate two jails and one prison farm. We have about 900 prisoners in jail we’re responsible for on a daily basis.

And we are the premier sheriff’s office in this state. Not only do I say that, but the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission said that twice. The National Association for County Organizations has said it numerous times. We have a sheriff’s office that you can be proud of. The men and women do a fantastic job. We have about 135,000 papers each year…. We’re responsible for making sure that you and your families are safe, and the people who need to go to jail have a place to go.

With that in mind, we try to make sure that we keep them there once they get there. We’ve had no escapes, which was unlike it was when I first came into office….

We’ve got a new jail that we’re building. What started out a $115 million jail, we’ve got it down to a $100 million jail at this particular time. And it is going to be a state-of-the-art situation. It’s the biggest project that Guilford County’s ever done. I want to make sure that it’s done right. Already, as I say, we’ve saved about $15 million off the cost of that jail. We’re going to hopefully save even more. But we’re going to have a great jail there that’s going to keep these folks off the streets who would normally be in your house because they are criminals and that’s what they do. I want to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

Now, what can I do as your sheriff? Basically, I can set the standards. And we have very, very high standards as a sheriff’s office. Those standards that we’ve set there, those men and women that are working for you have had not even a hint of impropriety. While other departments around may have issues or problems that come up we don’t do that; we haven’t done that. And it’s only because we know who we work for. And who we work for is you.

I’m going to quote the other candidates more sparingly or not at all in the interest of time and space, and avoiding redundancy from previous reporting.

Jeffrey Brommer, NC Senate District 28 candidate:

I needed some help a few years back from the state government and the federal government, and there was no one there to step up and help me. I want to be your guy in government if you need anything…. So that’s something you can count on.

“Secondly, I’m a big proponent of the Tea Party movement that’s happening. It hearkens back to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the times back when personal liberties were top priority, lower taxes were the issue of the day, low spending and a balanced budget. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten away from those ideals. I’m in favor of getting back to those ideals. I think that’s something we should do.

Lastly, our state’s in bad condition. That’s probably the top reason why I’m running. Taxes, as you know, are way up. Our unemployment is up. We pay some of the worst taxes in the Southeast, which effects small business. Eighty percent of all jobs are created by small business. That needs to change. The Democrats have had their way in government in Raleigh, and by God it’s time to change something about that.

Jon Hardister, NC House District 57 candidate:

I decided to run for public office because we’re clearly on the wrong track. We have too much government. Taxes are too high. We’re spending too much money. Property rights are not being protected. And I’m against forced annexation as well. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

But I’ll tell you specifically about what I would like to see done in Raleigh. We need to lower taxes and lower spending. And we particularly need a Taxpayer Protection Act that will peg spending with changes in population and inflation. We need to put something like that into effect. And John Blust over here has actually introduced that before. That’s something we need to make happen.

Paul Norcross, NC House District 61 candidate:

Somebody has to bring jobs back into this area. Government does not create jobs; private sector people create jobs. And how you support the businesses that are already here and bring new businesses in is by decreasing the burden on taxpayers…. We’ve got businesses that are going into the tank because of a number of situations, but a lot of it has to do with our tax base. We have tax refunds that our citizens can’t receive because we’re broke. That’s the government using our money, and they can’t give it back to us because they spent it. We’ve got a billion-dollar deficit right now, and John [Blust]’s up there fighting the fight right now. We need more people to help him.

John Faircloth, NC House District 61 candidate:

In 1972, I left the Greensboro Police Department and went to the state of North Carolina and worked for the Department of Justice, and put together the first employment and training standards North Carolina had ever had for criminal justice personnel — that’s law enforcement officers or correctional officers. As the sheriff said, he’s got one of the finest if not the finest sheriff’s departments in many states. I saw them back in 1972. Sheriff, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I saw back then. We’ve come a long way.

I had a chance, in doing that, to take a statute that was adopted in 1971 and put together all of the amendments to that statute and all of the regulations flowing from that statute and worked it through the General Assembly and worked it through the administrative process in Raleigh. I have experience in that building down there, and I have experience in the process.

Triad Elections ’10