EXCLUSIVE
FORMER BLADEN BLACK SHERIFF
ALLEGES RACE, FRAUD LED TO DEFEAT
By Cash Michaels
The former Bladen County sheriff, an African-American Democrat, alleges not only that he lost his re-election bid in 2014 because of some of the same election fraud allegations being probed now in the Rev. Mark Harris (R)– Dan McCready (D) Ninth District congressional contest, but he also believes that race was a factor as well.
“Race was an issue when I first ran…,” said former Bladen Sheriff Prentis Benston, “… and it’s going to remain an issue. I don’t know when it will be over with.”
In an exclusive interview Saturday, immediately after the NC NAACP Convention in Raleigh concluded, Benston, who served from 2010-2014 as sheriff, completing a 27-year career with the department, charged that Leslie McCrae Dowless, the two-time convicted felon and political operative hired by the Mark Harris campaign to “get out the vote,” also worked for Republican Jim McVicker, the current Bladen County sheriff who unseated Benston in 2014.
“Yes, as of the 2014 election, the absentee balloting process [was] not being done above board,” Benston replied when asked if he was a victim of election “fraud” then. That fraud allegedly involved unsealed ballots from black elderly and/or afflicted voters that could be manipulated before being turned in.
“Certainly we have found out that [Dowless’] way of doing absentee ballots through going out and picking them up from voters (which is illegal), [along with] the improper witnessing of absentee ballots (also illegal),” Benston maintained.
Now the 2018 McVicker re-election campaign has admitted that Dowless was on their payroll again, this time to help defeat African-American Democratic challenger Hakeem Brown, a former Bladen County deputy under Benston.
Brown has not made any public allegations yet, but the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement [SBEEE] has subpoenaed records from the McVicker re-election campaign, especially after the campaign admitted to paying Dowless $8,800 between September 2017 and September 2018, according to campaign finance records.
Sources say whatever alleged election fraud impacted the Harris-McCready race, could have easily affected the McVicker – Brown contest too, especially if Dowless was involved.
Sheriff McVicker defeated Brown 52-48 percent.
A Dec. 21stSBEEE hearing is scheduled that could determine whether Brown files a formal complaint in his race.
Amazingly the state BOE actually cited Dowless in 2016 with doing exactly the same thing in the Benston-McVickers race that he’s accused of doing in the Harris-McCready race now. Attorney Irv Joyner said that the state BOE referred that evidence to the US Attorney for the Eastern District at the time, who did nothing.
“The office of sheriff is an office that requires a person to be of high standards,” Benston said, noting that Bladen Sheriff’s Dept policy prohibits its officers from associating with known felons unofficially, let alone hiring them. “Certainly, I support the investigation to remove any corruption, or corrupt individual from that position.”
In addition, African-American officials of the Bladen Improvement Association (BIA) – the nonpartisan black political action committee that endorses candidates - are bracing themselves for what they say will, once again, be unfounded accusations of election fraud from Republicans who are desperate to deflect attention on their Ninth District controversy from the national media.
In 2016, then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory falsely accused the BIA of mishandling absentee ballots when he was narrowly defeated by Democrat Roy Cooper. After an investigation by the state BOE, the BIA was cleared. That didn’t stop Republicans and conservative media from maintaining that because BIA accepts money from the NC Democratic Party and its members that it had to be “corrupt.”
Prentis Benston, who is also chair of the BIA, insists that the group has endorsed Republicans too and has operated transparently since the 1960s. And if the GOP insists on trying to smear them again per the 2018 midterms, they’re in for a surprise.
The BIA deliberately did not engage in any absentee balloting work during the 2018 midterms, atty. Joyner revealed.
But that fact, he says, probably won’t stop the NC Republican Party from accusing the BIA of something again.
-30-
DR. SPEARMAN WELCOMES GOV. COOPER TO THE NCNAACP CONVENTION IN RALEIGH
MRS. ROSA NELL EATON, SEEN HERE WITH NC NAACP PRES. DR. T. ANTHONY SPEARMAN, DIED LAST WEEKEND. MS. EATON WAS A PLAINTIFF IN THE SUCCESSFUL LAWSUIT AGAINST THE 2013 VOTER ID LAW
“COME TOGETHER AND BUILD
POWER,” SAYS NCNAACP PREZ
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The only way to fight harder, and stronger for equal justice, is to “…come together and build power,” Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, fifth president of the NC NAACP said Saturday, during the State of the State of Civil Rights address at the 75thAnnual Convention in Raleigh of the NC conference of branches.
Echoing the words of the NAACP’s national board Chairman Leon Russell, Spearman told membership gathered from across the state, “…it’s time to organize and not agonize. Try as you may to find it, there is no half-way ground between right and wrong. Either the one or the other must prevail. And I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna push right with all my might.”
Dr. Spearman emphasized the need for the NCNAACP and its branches statewide to intensify their political action and community action activities “…to build a strategic year-round GOTV (get out the vote) curriculum going forward.”
“Certainly we must preach the gospel of morality and the NC NAACP has, but when your civil and political rights are being encroached upon every hour we must also preach the gospel of organization,” The NC NAACP president maintained. “People who will not organize and put themselves under the wisest and best of their leaders cannot expect other people to look after their interests.”
Spearman also declared that the civil rights group must recommit itself to fighting voter suppression.
“We must find ways of fostering an inclusive, informed and more resolute electorate,” he said. “This will take an approach that considers comprehensive voter outreach, education, civic engagement and community organizing and power-building. In short, we must broaden the framing of the problem of voter suppression and craft tools for fighting it. The new wave of voting restrictions demands it.”
The NC NAACP president blasted the recent “lame duck” session of the Republican-led NC General Assembly, which convened to pass new voter photo ID legislation based on their ratified voter ID amendment that Spearman considers yet another extension of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.
“The NC NAACP contends that this General Assembly did not have the authority to place any amendments on the ballot by virtue that it is an unconstitutionally constituted body. It falls into the category of “usurper” government.”
Spearman continued, “There really is nothing new under the sun here in the state of North Carolina, lest we forget the year was 1898 when Alfred Moore Waddell, the ex-congressman from black belt Wilmington, told an election evening crowd to “go to the polls tomorrow and if you find the Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks.”
On Friday, Gov. Roy Cooper visited the convention. The gubernatorial visit was notable because last year, then NC NAACP Pres. Rev. Dr. William Barber refused to invite the Democratic governor because he would not look into the Dontae Sharpe case, a black man supporters say was falsely convicted of a crime he did not commit.
The convention also had to be abbreviate to just a day-and-a-half because of an impending snowstorm that threatened to trap many convention attendees in Raleigh if they didn’t adjourn by 12 noon Saturday.
The convention weekend ended on a sad note.
NCNAACP members received word Sunday of the passing of 97-year-old Rosa Nell Eaton, a plaintiff in the NC NAACP’s successful lawsuit against the Republican-led NC General Assembly and its 2013 voter photo I.D. law, which was eventually overturned by a federal court. “ While we mourn, at the same time, we celebrate. We celebrate her steadfastness and her strength. We celebrate her commitment and her conviction. We celebrate her righteousness and her resolve. What an inspiration it was to watch her lead the way for us to fight and win the monstrous voter suppression bill of all,” Dr. Spearman said in a press release Sunday. “Mother Eaton kept her eye on the prize.”
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 12-13-18
THREE DEATHS REPORTED DURING STATEWIDE SNOWSTORM
[RALEIGH] At press time Tuesday, at least three deaths were attributed to the monster snowstorm that crippled the state Sunday and Monday. A truck driver succumbed to a heart attack while digging his rig out of the snow along Interstate 77 in Yadkin County Sunday. A woman in hospice care in Haywood County dies when her oxygen supply was cut off due to a power outage. And a driver in Charlotte was killed when a tree fell on his vehicle Sunday afternoon. Thousands of homes and businesses across the state experienced power outages, as residents had to dig out amidst upwards of 12 inches of snow.
UNC HEALTH CARE TO RAISE MINIMUM TO $15.00 PER HOUR
[CHAPEL HILL] All employees of the UNC Health Care System will, as of July 19th, earn a minimum of $15.00 per hour. The move is to “…attract and retain a talented workforce” said the system through a press release issued Tuesday. The increase is more than double the national and state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, and will affect 9,000 employees, costing the system $15 million annually.
RALEIGH WOMAN HELD IN WHITE SUPREMACIST ATTACK ON BLACK DISC JOCKEY
[SEATTLE, WASH] The FBI is investigating an alleged attack by suspected white supremacists over the weekend on a black disc jockey at a local tavern, and one of the suspects is a white woman from Raleigh. Leah Northcraft, 25, is identified as being one of eight suspects who, according to authorities, who entered the Rec Room Bar and Grill, beat and stomped the black disc jockey as they tried to take over his equipment, calling him racial slurs in the process. They also attacked an Asian man who came to assist the DJ. Police apprehended the suspects as they attempted to get away. Court papers identify the suspects as being members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment