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MAGA Is Weakening in North Carolina, Brendan Jones Is the Face of It
A perspective from Alexander H. Jones
With the countenance of an enraged bullfrog, Rep. Brendan Jones berated the chief of Chapel Hill’s public schools. His purpose was to create a spectacle: the fearless champion of rural North Carolina castigating a woke miscreant. The performance was quite cynical, though Jones seemed to enjoy it. He embodies a political style that has dominated North Carolina politics for fifteen years.
Representative Jones is a character drawn from classist caricatures of the rural South. He has a porky physique and a lackluster vocabulary. His tobacco-scented drawl is so thick that even I have trouble understanding him. If the most conceited northeasterner were to imagine who lives in North Carolina, his or her imagination might produce a character not unlike our state’s real-world House majority leader. I sort of enjoy describing Jones’s persona. But the truth is that, on a more than symbolic level, Brendan Jones is the face of the punitive, corrupt politics that North Carolina Republicans have practiced unimpeded for a decade-and-a-half. He summons scapegoats to bully and humiliate. And while constantly stoking cultural animosity, he has embarked on a quiet effort to direct hundreds of millions of dollars to a property developer that’s given over $500,000 to his party. The latter outrage has been reported by the News & Observer’s Dan Kane, an investigative reporter who has taken down more than one corrupt North Carolinian.
Democrats need a foil. One of the mistakes they have made in legislative campaigns since 2012 is a failure to give their voters a villain to vote against. They have not offered a personification of the legislature’s destructive agenda, opting to campaign against more abstract policies like cutting education and tax cuts for the rich. This has limited the effectiveness of their campaigns. The exception, which materialized and then receded over a decade ago, was when Kay Hagan portrayed then-State-House speaker Thom Tillis as the face of an anti-education legislature. Lacking that personal zest, their subsequent campaigns often wanted for emotional power.
Democrats, meet Brendan Jones. A boorish and angry reactionary from a privileged background without good manners, this man could crystalize the ugliness of the North Carolina General Assembly. Democrats would have an inviting target to go after, showing suburban swing voters that the true face of their Republican representatives was not the well-scrubbed professionals on the local ballot but instead a rogue army of reactionaries led by the distinguished gentleman from Columbus County. Running against him would focus the Democratic base’s attention and activate a light bulb in the minds of swing voters who have yet to internalize the true nature of the Republican Party.
It’s happened before. Though it’s astonishing in retrospect, Wake County used to be relatively receptive to suburban Republicans. Richard Burr won the county 49%-48% in 2010. Early in the same decade, Republicans controlled the Wake County Board of Commissioners. A suite of Republicans held legislative seats in the Wake County suburbs after the 2012 election.
No longer.
With the insight of high-information voters, Wake County quickly became a killing field for any type of Republican. Moderate suburban white voters decided that, whatever their annoyance at high taxes, they did not like the rough, populist pyromaniacs making an embarrassing spectacle of their state. The fall of the Wake County Republican came swiftly and dramatically. The capitol county turned blue. Today in the Brendan Jones era, Democrats may have an opportunity to expand their model of success in Wake County to the entire state. I sense that North Carolina is getting tired of ugly, mean-spirited right-populism. Donald Trump’s approval rating is underwater by double-digits here. That deficit contrasts with about ten years in which the president’s approval rating tended to linger at around -2 or -3. Further, the state’s most successful statewide MAGA Republican, Ted Budd, has quietly begun to distance himself from the God-Emperor of Red America. MAGA populism had a strong run in North Carolina. This era may be ending.
And if the orange pirate ship sinks into the sea, Representative Brendan Jones may be the deluded captain saluting from the bow as the vessel falls into obsolescence. His politics are pure MAGA, pure NCGA. If Democrats perform well in the next few election cycles, they may be able to roll back the populism that has gutted our schools and embarrassed our state. Jones is ambitious, perhaps eager to be Speaker. But he could be the man who symbolizes a passing from populist dominance to a more moderate and less-destructive era in state politics.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
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