Outer Banks Tea Party fight with NCGOP establishment heating up | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The epicenter of the fight between the conservative grassroots and the Raleigh establishment is in The Outer Banks' House District 6. A July 17 GOP runoff features the top finisher, a Tea Party favorite, vs. the #2 finisher -- a former Democrat legislator backed by GOP power brokers in Raleigh. Local GOP officials are lining up behind frontrunner Mattie Lawson, while it appears Raleigh politicos like Richard Morgan allies Thom Tillis and Harold Brubaker are lining up behind former Democrat Arthur Williams:

    Stan Deatherage, owner/publisher/editor of BeaufortCountyNow.com is endorsing Mattie Lawson in the run-off with Arthur Williams on July 17. Deatherage's endorsement appears in Saturday's (5-19-12)BeaufortCountyNow.com. Click here to read the full article.

    Lawson is running as the winner of the Primary, after having defeated both Williams and Jeremy Adams, a Dare County fellow Republican. Adams just recently endorsed Williams after the Dare County Republican Executive Committee voted to endorse Lawson, over strong objections from Adams and some of his followers. The Dare County Executive Committee unanimously endorsed Lawson in the run-off. Within days of the Dare Republican leaders' action Adams announced his endorsement in a visit he and Williams made to the Democrat oriented Washington Daily News.
Most local Republican activists with whom we talked after Adams endorsement felt it would not make any difference in the Lawson/Williams run-off. The Observer did not even report Adam's "endorsement." Lawson told us: "I'm not concerned about Jeremy's endorsement. I just don't think many people vote a particular way because some politician tries to tell them how to vote. I was much more pleased with the endorsement of the Republican Executive Committee from my home county because those are the people who have known me for years. They know me. They have seen my record over the years. That they would support me means a great deal to me, and I hope it is an indication for voters who may not have known me over the years."

    The Observer has monitored the activity in Dare County since the initial action by the GOP Executive Committee. It appears to us that Adams was hurt personally when he lost. Adams ran on essentially the same platform as did Lawson...that of a conservative, heavily libertarian bent. Williams on the otherhand has a long record as a liberal Democrat. He in fact was given a grade of "F" for all three terms he served in the Legislature by the Civitas Action rating of conservative effectiveness.

    So we were perplexed about why Adams would endorse a person who has voted the opposite of what he campaigned on. There is growing evidence that he is simply bitter that Lawson beat him.

    For example, one of his reasons was that Lawson was "handpicked" to run against him. Yet the public record shows that it is Williams who is the "handpicked" candidate of the Raleigh power structure (House Caucus leaders and staff). Williams, in his original announcement that he was filing, said that he had been encouraged to run by Thom Tillis, the current Speaker of the House. And former House Speaker Harold Brubaker from Randolph County recently attended a fund-raiser for Williams. At that fundraiser Williams touted more than two-dozen big Democrat donors. His ad for the fundraiser said you could be his "friend" for $250. Williams is also being supported by a number of big name lobbyists. We'll have more on that in other articles.

    Williams' voting record during his three terms in the House has been to support every tax increase passed during those three terms, as well as a number of "Big Government"/anti-consumer bills and issues opposed by most conservatives and libertarians such as requiring Voter ID. As one long-time observer of the Legislature said: "Arthur's been a puppet of the Democrat leadership ever since he got up here. He marched to the orders of Jim Black and Marc Basnight. Black and Basnight gave him a few crumbs but for the most part they viewed him as a joke. In three terms, the most significant thing I can think he did, other than vote the way he was told to vote, was to get a bill passed that allowed for wider boats on the highways."