EXCLUSIVE
STATE NAACP ELECTIONS
ARE SCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER;
OR ARE THEY?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
When national NAACP President/CEO Derrick Johnson attended the NC NAACP Convention in Winston-Salem in 2019, he effectively cancelled the state conference elections because he had suspended the Rev. Curtis Gatewood, a state conference presidential candidate accused of the sexual harassment of a female member, thus allowing then incumbent President Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman to remain in office another two years beyond his original term.
But Johnson did something else consequential.
He assigned two national NAACP Board members - Hazel Dukes and Gloria Sweetlove - to serve as “administrators” over the North Carolina conference. That meant that as long as Sweetlove and Dukes were in place, the NC NAACP executive leadership had to follow their directives.
It soon became apparent that Administrator Sweetlove - who was also the longtime president of the Tennessee NAACP state conference, and also served as administrator for the Virginia state NAACP - would be the one making the final decisions for the NC NAACP whether then Pres. Spearman and the Executive Committee liked it or not.
One of her original assignments was to track down the source of alleged fiscal mismanagement.
That was 2019. It is now 2023, four years later, and Gloria Sweetlove is still the administrator in charge of oversight for the North Carolina state conference, to the continuing chagrin of many members.
So much so that on March 17th, a day after a contentious over four-hour Executive Committee meeting, 12 Executive Committee members, led by three of the four NC NAACP vice presidents, forwarded a joint letter of resignation to Administrators Sweetlove and Hazel Dukes, Conference President Deborah Maxwell and national Pres./CEO Derrick Johnson.
The very first line of the resignation letter stated that the March 16th executive committee meeting “…confirmed our most profound concerns about circumventing the constitutional authority of the North Carolina State Conference Executive Committee.
The spending of monies without discussion, approval, or ratification by the executive committee has only perpetuated the unrest in the state conference. The suspension of officers' membership charged with the duly elected responsibility to maintain and secure financial transparency has continued the ongoing unrest in the State Conference.
We are resigning from the N.C. State Executive Committee due to a lack of trust and confidence in the ethical leadership of the State Conference, the stunning letter continued.
A major NC general market newspaper, The News and Observer, which picked up on “the NC NAACP tumult”story from the Black Press, reported that Executive Committee members had voted to fire state conference Executive Director Da’Quan Love, but technically couldn’t, because Administrator Sweetlove informed them that she had hired him.
It was yet another way Administrator Sweetlove has demonstrated that as long as she is in charge, things in the NC NAACP will be done her way.
During the middle of her four-year period, Sweetlove allegedly helped to engineer the election of former New Hanover County NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell to oust incumbent Pres. Spearman in a controversial October 2021 election.
In his June 2022 lawsuit against Ms. Sweetlove, Pres./CEO Johnson, and certain members of the NC NAACP Executive Committee, Spearman alleged that the October 2021 election was deliberately designed to have him voted out of office.
“Not only did National usurp the NC NAACP’s right to carry out its own election, Defendants withheld material information about the election including, but not limited to, when the election would take place, the duration of the election, and the method by which the election would be held,” Rev. Spearman, now deceased, alleged in his civil suit.
He went on to further allege, “ At the behest of Defendants (Derrick) Johnson and (NAACP Board Chairman Leon) Russell, Defendant Sweetlove conducted the [October 2021] election in violation of the NAACP Constitution.”
According to a September 16, 2021 email letter from Administrator Sweetlove to “North Carolina NAACP State Conference #5480 members” regarding the “State Conference Elections for the North Carolina State Conference #5480,” she informed North Carolina branches that she was working with the national NAACP training director to “supervise your State Conference Election.”
The Sweetlove Sept. 16, 2021 email letter is also important because that’s when she informs state conference members that the electronic “Election Buddy system” would be implemented for the upcoming state conference elections, which were then scheduled for October 9th.
It is the first official notice of the upcoming 2021 North Carolina state conference elections then, scheduled to occur literally the following month.
The national training director was to “…work with sales force regarding the process of vetting the eligibility of candidates and delegate voters,” Sweetlove wrote. She then went on to delineate “candidate eligibility to run for office and submission of required forms,” later stating that all consent forms and nominations must be submitted by September 30, 2021,” for state conference elections scheduled just nine days later.
And if you were a branch member “in good standing,” according to Administrator Sweetlove’s email letter, the eligibility of candidates and delegate voters must be as of September 9, 2021 - seven days before Sweetlove’s email letter to state conference membership was even sent, let alone written.
Administrator Sweetlove effectively changed the rules of the state conference election, “…in violation of the NAACP Constitution…,” Rev. Spearman alleged in his June 2022 lawsuit.
“Defendants engaged in tactics designed to disenfranchise Plaintiff’s (Spearman’s) supporters. Such tactics included failing to make delegate information accessible to all candidates, unconstitutionally throwing out results of the first election in favor of a second election that Defendants carried out after a large number of delegates - most of whom were Plaintiff’s supporters - had already left the convention.”
Spearman also alleged in his lawsuit that “Defendants employed a computerized voting program (Election Buddy) to conduct the election without ensuring the program’s compliance with [NAACP] Constitutional rules which stated that elections were to be done by secret ballot.”
Rev. Spearman maintained that Deborah Maxwell “…had been given every advantage by Defendants Johnson, Russell and Sweetlove, including delegate information which had been denied to other candidates including Plaintiff.”
As it turned out, the controversial state conference elections then were actually held October 23rd, 2021, not Oct. 9th as originally scheduled, and Rev. Spearman filed an official complaint with the national NAACP office by Oct. 27th as per NAACP Bylaws, only to have it dismissed later.
Why is this backstory important now?
Because there are multiple sources in, or formerly in the NC NAACP who allege Administrator Sweetlove is manipulating the state conference election process again, with the goal of keeping Pres. Maxwell in office unchallenged for another two-year term.
Their evidence?
Part of the national NAACP procedure to qualify members as possible candidates for state conference offices like president; first, second , third or fourth vice president; secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, assistant treasurer; at-large Executive Committee members and directors for districts is to have the state conference secretary send out letters to qualifying conference branches to notify eligible members who wish to run for state office as to what forms and actions are required, and when to submit them.
That letter, according to the “Manual on State/State Area Conference Election Procedure,” is mandated to be mailed by or before a certain date by certified mail, this year being February 1st, in order to be returned by interested candidates by June 15th by certified mail, so that possible 2023 candidates can be determined for this year’s state conference elections, scheduled for Saturday, October 7th, during the state NAACP Convention in Wilmington.
Effectively and constitutionally for the 2023 state conference elections, possible candidates are supposed to be given over four months to comply with the requirements to qualify.
But multiple sources have confirmed, now more than a month after the constitutionally mandated deadline, that that qualifying letter was never sent out on or before February 1st as required.
To back up that claim, sources provided this newspaper with several emails, detailing how now former NC NAACP Secretary Sylvia Barnes (she was suspended by the national NAACP Board on February 17th, 2023 during its meeting in New York) sent an email of concern on Feb. 2, 2023 to NC NAACP Executive Director Da’Quan Marcell Love.
It reads in part:
The manual did say the branches should receive the letter by certified mail as in the old manual February 1st. I still have the letters that I prepared to be mailed on January 25th. I feel my directions should come from the Elections procedure committee or President Maxwell. This unresponsive direction is not acceptable since individuals wishing to petition to run for an office may be effected. Those forms must be mailed back to the committee by certified mail on or before June 15th. For persons wishing to seek office.
Executive Director Love then replied:
As a reminder we all have been directed by Mrs. Sweet-Love not to disseminate any additional information until she advises otherwise. The state conference remains under administration. Do not disseminate anything per her directive.
“I had those letters ready to go to the mailbox,” former Secretary Barnes said on a personal video message to NAACP friends and colleagues last week.
“This is the year for the state conference elections,” Barnes maintains.”If the branches and the people who choose to run for office cannot get that information, and send it back by June 15th, there will be no election of the state conference.”
Barnes added, “ I think Ms. Sweetlove knows she has the authority to do the same thing that Mr.Derrick Johnson did [over elections in 2019), and I think that it was planned that those letters would not go out, which would give Ms. Deborah Dicks Maxwell another two-year term to try to correct the damage, the hurt and the harm that she has caused in this North Carolina State conference.”
This email correspondence confirms that Administrator Sweetlove allegedly has once again circumvented an established, NAACP constitutional election protocol, as was done in 2019 by national NAACP Pres. Derrick Johnson when he cancelled the elections that year, and Sweetlove herself allegedly manipulated in 2021, effectively calling the 2023 state conference elections of the NC NAACP into question now.
If all of the above is true, then what possible opportunity do rank-and-file NC NAACP members have to change their state leadership if the written national NAACP mandated election process for state conference elections is allegedly being manipulated without their knowledge or input?
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CAN BLACKS TRUST THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
A recent Politico article made the point bluntly.
“Hindsight is always 20/20 and there’s no doubt that Cheri Beasley and Val Demings (Florida) were in tough races, but given the right investment they both could have won,” says California Rep. Barbara Lee, who has announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate, referring to the races of two popular Black women U.S. senatorial candidates this past midterm elections. The same with Wisconsin U.S. senatorial candidate Mandela Barnes, who came within a whisker of unseating Republican archconservative incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson.
In all three cases, veteran observers say, if the requisite funding had come from the national Democratic Party, victory could have been a forgone conclusion. Save for the lack of “institutional support.”
In Beasley’s case, for example, her campaign raised an impressive $39 million to Republican opponent Ted Budd’s $15 million. But according to Politico, outside Republican and conservative groups spent $62 million on the Budd campaign’s behalf, more than out matching Democratic outside support for Beasley’s campaign.
That additional GOP financial windfall meant additional messaging during the closing days of the campaign, when the Black Democratic candidate could not essentially afford to fight back.
The result - Cheri Beasley lost by 3 points.
“…[U]ltimately, to be in a position to get through that and win in a Trump state, we were going to need outside investment to be a lot closer to parity,” Beasley campaign manager Travis Brimm told Politico.
And it’s not just additional money that was lacking, Democratic political observers say, but additional structural support for Black candidates in terms of get-out-the-vote efforts, especially Black female candidates. The irony is Black women are the backbone of the party, so that support should have been forthcoming.
Part of the problem may lie in a new report by the Manhattan Institute think tank that “…argues that the Democratic Party is becoming a tension-generating mix of college-educated whites and non-college-educated nonwhites.”
‘“[T]he Democratic Party will likely become a majority-minority party relatively soon, but one that is still largely and disproportionately steered by liberal college-educated whites,” states the report. The party is seen as dividing into two tracts - white, highly educated liberals pushing for abortion rights and climate change; nonwhite Democrats advocating economic issues, and criminal justice.
The analysis sounds like what is happening in North Carolina, where the cultural divide of rural versus urban has cost the party several possible victories over the past few elections.
In February, the North Carolina Democratic Party swept out it’s old party leadership, and installed new, younger leadership which promised to reach out to the rural electorate, as well as to Black Democrats, to assure both groups that the Democratic Party has their best interests at heart.
The new party leadership, led by Chairwoman Anderson Clayton, a white, 25 year-old former Person County chair not five years graduated from college, has vowed to make the NCDP more competitive with the NCGOP by 2030. North Carolina Republicans have been winning the big statewide elections since 2010, with no change in sight, so her work is cut out for her.
But what does Clayton’s promise of Democratic Party change mean to North Carolina African-American Democrats, whose support was lackluster at best, during the 2022 midterms, and could be worse by the critical 2024 and 2030 elections?
NCDP Chairwoman Clayton offers the same prescription for winning with Black voters as she does with rural voters who are presently voting Republican.
“To me, it is about showing…people in my party right now… people need to see that Democrats care about people again, rather than just winning elections.”
Clayton says that means being in communities 24/7, and not just during election time, and tapping into key leadership within Black and rural communities to represent what the party stands for.
Can Anderson Clayton’s vision to pull the NCDP together work?
She has until 2024 to find out .
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