The N&O: the Media Wing of NC’s Liberal Left

Articles in the News & Observer this week proved two things to be certain: Number 1, the mainstream media is truly the media arm of the “Eviscerate” Blueprint NC gang and, Number 2, Rob Christensen from the N&O is a joke who, with his last article basically co-written by Bob Hall of Democracy NC, has lost all credibility he had.

Yesterday, Christensen wrote an entire article about a “survey” conducted during the Primary Election that asked certain voters in 34 counties questions about, as Christensen described it, “kind of a dry run on North Carolina’s politically charged voter ID law.” Notice the words “kind of.” Christensen couldn’t just call it a dry run  because it wasn‘t a dry run. This year the boards of elections are conducting educational efforts, preparing voters for 2016 when voter ID will be required. In this year’s elections all voters are being asked if they have an acceptable form of ID and if they don’t, they are being asked to complete a form.

Moreover the “survey” was conducted by a liberal policy advocacy group, Democracy NC. You may remember Democracy NC from a series of articles Civitas published in 2012. Its president is Bob Hall, the lobbyist that worked hand in glove with the old State Board of Elections to develop the most liberal set of election laws in the country. It is important to note that Democracy NC is a Blueprint NC member and Blueprint NC is the organization that delivered the strategy memo to their member organizations with instructions to:

• “Eviscerate the leadership and weaken their ability to govern.”
• “The most effective way to mitigate the worst legislation is to weaken our opponents’ ability to govern by crippling their leaders (McCrory, Tillis, Berger, etc)”
• “Private investigators and investigative reporting, especially in the executive branch…”

These are just some of the marching orders contained in the strategy. Also, we can’t forget that this Blueprint strategy memo included directions for “Relentless Earned Media Efforts: Operatives with relationships to statewide media.” Guess who they’re talking about here? Can anyone say “Bob Hall and Rob Christensen”?

In a continuation of the N&O’s effort to disparage election reform just days before the preliminary injunction hearing in federal court, today’s article (on the N&O’s front page no less) about voting is written by Anne Blythe. In her article Blythe says that the NC DMV was confused now that the law has changed and no longer allows 16- and 17-year-olds to register. This section of the law was reversed by VIVA, the election reform law passed in 2013. Now the law is exactly as it was prior to 2009 and for decades prior to that date, all with no confusion. The current law allows 17-year-olds to register to vote if they will be 18 by the General Election Day in November. These voters, even though 17, are allowed to vote in the primary. So how come the confusion today — with no mention of confusion before 2009? Blythe didn’t try to answer that question, perhaps because her “go to” person was also lobbyist Bob Hall.

Both Blythe and Christensen fail to mention in their articles that Hall opposed and lobbied against every one of the election reform changes. Instead, the N&O writers only call his organization an “election reform organization.” No doubt, their attempts to fool their audience with half truths is a large part of the reason their audience is steadily shrinking.