Reuel Sample
Welcome to the Three Guys podcast. I'm Reuel Sample from the Wilmington Standard, joined as always by Nick Craig from The Nick Craig Show and Ben Schachtman from WHQR. You know, gentlemen, we're like those eccentric uncles that you never really know when they're going to show up, but when they show up, we always have a good time.

Nick Craig
Yes, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Oh my God, yeah. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

Last time we were on the air was January. We were so young then. Ben, when did you go to sleep last Tuesday night, or was it early Wednesday morning?

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, I think it was early Wednesday morning. I slept for like a few hours and then woke up and got up.

Nick Craig
It's something that always, election day is great being in politics and in media, except for when the day rolls around and you're like, I just want to go to sleep, and you're like, oh no, here's another 30 minute victory or secession speech.

Ben Schachtman
It reminds me a little bit of my time in kitchens on Valentine's Day, and to a lesser extent New Year's Eve. Valentine's Day is the worst, and because on the other side of the equation are people having just a wonderful time, and the candidates are all having a wonderful time. This is the culmination of all their hard work, and they deserve to celebrate, but political guys are just suffering, crunching numbers, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and then there's always one county who just like can't get their shoelaces tied, so then that pushes back everything an hour.

Reuel Sample
But you've got to have, if I remember correctly, because I was up until 1130, because I'm not the professionals that you guys are.

Nick Craig
Wow, 1130 must have been nice.

Reuel Sample
Is that it seemed pretty cut and dry here in New Hanover County by 1130.

Nick Craig
Well, after I think the disaster that was the 2024 election here locally, they had no choice. I mean, when did those results come in? It was like 1130 in 2024, they were stupidly late.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, and not just, it seemed like everything went fairly efficiently, and the margins were pretty comfortable.

Reuel Sample
Yeah.

Ben Schachtman
You know, I didn't, there wasn't any, you know, there was one major asterisk, which I think we'll probably get to, but there wasn't any like, ooh, that's really close. I don't know.

Reuel Sample
Yeah. Yeah, there was one hold up statewide, that county, which county was it?

Nick Craig
I think Ms. Burke or somebody, they had an issue opening the polls, so they delayed everything by an hour, but to the New Hanover County and a bunch of the other state boards, or county boards credit, as soon as 830 hit, which was when that location closed, yeah, early voting results were available in like 15, 10, 15 minutes later.

Reuel Sample
And what most people don't know is that the Board of Elections was operating with a brand new executive director, and quite a few of their important staff had resigned a week or two before the elections, so.

Nick Craig
And a lot has changed up in all the local county boards too.

Reuel Sample
Yeah, so.

Nick Craig
I mean, some of them had some tests in the municipals, but those are so much smaller, half the precincts. So yeah, it's a good dry run for what will hopefully be big turnout in November.

Reuel Sample
Yep, and we're going to get more talk about politics real quickly, but just on the other side is that fighting between the U.S. and Israel intensified today, got a whole bunch of things going on. You mean Iran? Yeah, sorry.

Nick Craig
That would be news. That would be news. You heard it here first.

The APEC would be very upset. I've got to go cash a check. I'll be back.

Reuel Sample
So that's right. So U.S. and Israel, there's the, Iran intensified its fighting between that coalition today. I don't know, I really don't understand Iran's whole strategy here is that instead of just fighting back at Israel, they just launch their missiles everywhere they want to go.

Ben Schachtman
They've got no, I mean, Israel demolished their air force.

Nick Craig
There's like a guy that gets access to something and they're like, press the green button, no.

Ben Schachtman
Their ballistic missile program has been really their only deterrent. I mean, that's what they built the underground caves for. Far more so than for nuclear enrichment was for that ballistic missile program.

That's been, that and proxy terrorism has been the two prongs they have to rely on. Yeah.

Reuel Sample
And all that is now decentralized. So these folks that in all these other, they have no real central communication. So these guys are just acting on their own.

Nick Craig
It has been cool as a, as an amateur radio nerd over the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of chatter on VHF, which is cool to see, to like hear the U.S. communicating. People are probably familiar with the number stations, these old, you know, back in the Soviet era of these radio broadcasts that would lay out these codes. The U.S. is actively doing that, which is kind of cool to listen to.

Reuel Sample
You know, during our last show, we talked about how the board of education seems to always be involved in everything. Can we actually account for all the board of education during those first hours of the invasion?

Nick Craig
It's a great point.

Reuel Sample
It's a great question.

Ben Schachtman
We really can't. Have you ever seen the Ayatollah and David Perry at the same place at the same time?

Nick Craig
Yeah. Drinking beers, smoking cigarettes at Waterman's Brew a couple of weeks ago.

Reuel Sample
And you know what, folks, you don't know this, but right before this podcast, we said, we're not going to talk about David Perry, but that, you know, you brought that in.

Ben Schachtman
That was a side quest. It's over now. It's over.

Reuel Sample
It's done.

Ben Schachtman
We should just say briefly, it has been really interesting watching the really, you know, the giant American filtering system. Trump good or Trump bad. Yeah.

Try to process the war in Iran.

Reuel Sample
Yeah.

Ben Schachtman
I mean, there are, I think, lots of fair criticisms. But clearly, like this is a bad regime. Far worse than I think any other, especially what you really care about is human rights, specifically if you're caring about the rights of the queer community and women.

It's like hard to find a worse defender than Iran. And so watching watching people trying to, like, you know, thread their ideological needles or give up and say, like, admit, I have mixed feelings about this. That's been tough for people to do.

Yes.

Reuel Sample
I am actually going to be having on the standard podcast next week. The Ito. The new I.

The new I.

Nick Craig
Who apparently was wounded. I saw a thing before I left. He was wounded.

It said he was wounded at the start of the war. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know what this means.

Was he like hurt originally in the original blast? I don't know if he's in a coma or something. I have no idea.

Reuel Sample
What's interesting is the second son. Was the first son killed already? I don't know.

I don't know. There's a lot of sons. There's a lot of moolahs.

And he's supposed to be worse than his dad.

Nick Craig
I will say this. It is. I've talked.

I think I've talked about this on my show plenty of times. YouTube TV, not a sponsor, has a great feature with their news multiview. And it's Fox News, CNN.

Yes. MSNBC and BBC America. BBC World Service.

I've been watching a lot of BBC over the last couple of weeks. It's amazing to see what that coverage looks like from a depth and information standpoint versus the U.S. Because, I mean, you have like Trey Yingst on Fox. And then CNN has a guy that's there.

And that's it. BBC's got these guys all throughout the Middle East who are there all the time anyway. Because that's what the BBC covers generally.

So it's interesting to check out the international coverage of international events. Because the American media just—and honestly, I don't think people really know to care. Is anybody dying?

Can I see something get blown up? They don't care about the in-the-weed stuff.

Reuel Sample
What gets me is that people are saying, well, we're engaged in another forever war. It's 13 days old. I mean, Ben Shapiro said it takes cottage cheese 13 days just to go bad in your refrigerator.

Ben Schachtman
We're not there yet. I understand the concern about another forever war. But I think a couple of things can be true.

On the one hand, from people who I've talked to who are less partisan about this. I wouldn't say anyone's not partisan. But who can dial that back a little bit?

They would say, regime change, we have a really bad track record. We're like 0 in 12. But if there was ever a country where regime change could work, where the people actually want it, and would support someone who was a—I'm not saying you could put a Harvard gender studies professor in there, but a more secular, a more moderate person.

Even someone who's running Saudi. Someone who is trying to de-escalate, probably still kills occasional journalists, but is willing to open up the doors and let Iran be part of the family of nations. There's a way better case to be made for Iran than there was for Afghanistan.

Or Iraq, where we were just like, we'll just wander blind and drunk into a civil war and be like, we'll just give the keys to the other guys.

Reuel Sample
That'll work. Isn't there a prince-in-waiting someplace? An exiled prince of Iran?

Ben Schachtman
It's so confusing. More importantly, there's an entire intelligent cosmopolitan middle class that wants middle class European-ish life back. Because they remember it.

Nick Craig
Yeah, and some odd 40,000 of them were just slaughtered over the last eight weeks, which is very under-reported. You hear it kind of like, it's amazing. It's kind of just dropped into the report like, oh, there was civil unrest a couple of weeks ago, and 40,000 people died.

And then you're like, 40,000 people?

Ben Schachtman
It's a boatload of people. We pick on NPR. I think NPR actually did a good job of tracking those numbers.

When other headlines were preemptively criticizing Trump for whatever he was going to do in Iran without knowing what he was going to do, which Trump didn't even know. But at least NPR was like, the state is killing thousands, if not tens of thousands.

Nick Craig
Well, I remember when Trump did an Air Force One gaggle or something. He's like, they're killing thousands of people a day. And these reporters are like, that's not true.

And then two weeks later, you're like, oh yeah, they killed like 40,000 people.

Ben Schachtman
Every once in a while, the crazy stuff that comes out of his mouth.

Nick Craig
And they were, in fact, killing thousands a day.

Ben Schachtman
I'll say that. On the one hand, I'm personally not in favor of regime change. I've lost too many friends, too many family members.

It's just been too bad. But if that's what you wanted to do, this would be, I think, the best possible place for it. On the other hand, we've never seen it happen with Air Force alone, with Air Superior alone.

There's still a ruthless, however many heads of the snake you cut off, it's a hydra. Like I said, there's 100 more mullahs waiting to take their place. They're all insane theocrats.

The Venezuelan thing was like, let's kill this maniac. And hopefully the next guy is like, let's do business. It's a very New York real estate kind of thing.

We cut this guy out. Next guy, you don't want to see what happened to that guy happened to you. Every next guy up in the ranking in Iran is equally insane and theocratic.

Reuel Sample
Because I think one of the stated goals of the United States and Iran was to clear the way so that the Iranian people can take over the government.

Nick Craig
Trump's speech that he gave at 2.30 in the morning Eastern time a couple of Saturdays ago was exactly that. He said, I think, almost quote, I'm speaking now to the Iranian people. Get out and fight for it.

And so the message was very clear from a purely political standpoint. Trump, he's pretty vulnerable with this. I mean, if it turns into a, not a forever war, but if this lingers on through the remainder of his administration, rightfully so.

You'll have a lot of people on the right that have been critical of the McCain's and the Lindsey Graham's and the war hawks of the GOP. He is going to lose a lot of credibility.

Reuel Sample
He's got to get this war over soon.

Nick Craig
Yeah. And I think he's got, I think he still has plenty of time to do that. I mean, I think if you're, I mean, as you mentioned, it's been 13 days.

This is said and done for the most part within a couple of months. I think, I think, I mean, I think it's done.

Ben Schachtman
I think, I think you're right. I think there's an opportunity for him to back away. I think Trump is Teflon.

He can pivot to the next thing and people will forget that this looked like to a lot of anti-Trump people that Bibi Netanyahu bullied him into it. He took advantage of it because he thought it might distract from the Epstein files. Worst case scenario.

But that would be to me, I mean, and again, this is the kind of thing that Americans don't get super passionate about. But like, what a tragedy for the Iranian people to be like that close for Trump to say, help is on the way. Like they will remember that for generations.

I think American voters will remember that.

Nick Craig
They're already, I mean, some of them have already forgotten about it. I mean, it happened a couple of weeks ago.

Ben Schachtman
What would be concerning, I think, to the no forever war people was if we start hearing Trump or the Trump administration saying things like, you know, we're going to like our intelligence agencies are going to provide limited support because that's how we got into another very sticky war. We'll just send a few CIA advisors. To help out.

And then we're just going to send a couple of platoons. And then we're, you know, and then we're in a 12 year conflict with thousands dead.

Reuel Sample
Or it could even be worse.

Nick Craig
They could send in the U.N. But I will say, I mean, kind of wrap the one, the one good thing about Trump, good or bad, whether you like him, he knows and he has made it clear that he is not a forever war guy. And so I would find it astonishing, even if the situation that Ben just rolled out comes to fruition, where is limited resources, boots on the ground. I don't see a situation where at a certain point he doesn't go.

Obviously, this is not like we're not doing this. Everybody back like he he he. I think he understands the political stakes with it.

He's not going to fall for some political suicide, some bullshit trap of, oh, now we're stuck in this war forever. If it's not working, he will walk away. But it's not the first time we've seen it be like, yeah, this is this isn't working.

So it sucks for the Iranian people. But so he's not going to he's not going to sink the Republican Party because it's not the nation building.

Reuel Sample
No, I don't think so. Well, in case you folks didn't notice, we had a primary election here in New Hanover County last week. That one came up quickly.

I'll tell you what. Has it ever been that early?

Nick Craig
It always is outside of four years ago when it was.

Reuel Sample
Yeah.

Nick Craig
And the state was about 20 years ago. I think the state moved it from a May primary to a March primary to get it over.

Ben Schachtman
And the last time we saw some of these candidates was that strange May one where we all kind of got a break.

Nick Craig
After one day of candidate filing. Candidate filing opened. Everybody rushed to the thing.

And the next day the state was like, and we're closing it because there's a lawsuit.

Reuel Sample
They can keep it that early if they want to. But two and a half weeks, two and a half weeks.

Nick Craig
Early voting. Well, depending on what happens, it seems like it's done now. But Phil Berger was out at the polls every day, according to his social media.

And so maybe nothing else comes from what will likely be his election loss. Maybe he will spearhead the effort of shrinking the early voting period. Because I would imagine he was miserable standing out there for 20 some odd days.

Reuel Sample
And has that race been declared?

Nick Craig
No, it hasn't been declared. And there will be legal challenges. But in all likelihood, he's toast.

He wasn't the only incumbent. When that result comes official, which is set to happen on Friday, but presumably they will sue and it'll go on. That'll be the ninth Democrat or Republican incumbent to lose in the General Assembly.

Reuel Sample
So let's turn to New Hanover County. I've got the results.

Nick Craig
First, you've got the results right here.

Reuel Sample
I've got the results right here. They have been kept in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar. Gross.

That's an old Johnny. Anyway, 16 percent.

Nick Craig
16 percent turnout. Pretty atypical. Actually a little bit higher, actually.

It's normally like 12 to 14.

Reuel Sample
Well, you know, what that leads me to say is that if you're unhappy with these results and you didn't vote, well, you've got nothing to say.

Ben Schachtman
You had every opportunity. I mean, I know there are still people who feel like there should be more locations and more time. But if you could not get to an early voting location.

Nick Craig
You don't deserve to vote.

Ben Schachtman
I feel like you didn't have any sweat equity in this game.

Reuel Sample
And to expand on those percentages nationwide is that we are actually seeing more Democrat turnout for primaries than Republican turnout for primaries.

Nick Craig
Makes total sense. It's a midterm election.

Ben Schachtman
This time I also think, I mean, just here in our county of New Hanover, I felt like there were two important elections to the Democrats. Yes. Where they wanted to make sure that the right slate, from their point of view, went through for both board of commissioners and the school board.

Where Republicans had, unless you were really invested in David Buzzard for Congress, then it was just the school board race. Not that that wasn't important to people, but the Democrats had like two big polls.

Reuel Sample
I got to hand it to messaging on both sides because I was monitoring polls. And when people would show up, they knew who they were voting for.

Nick Craig
On election day, they did during early voting. They had not a freaking clue. If I had a dollar for every time somebody told me, I'm voting straight party Republican ticket.

I'd be doing a flyover in my jet right now. People have no idea. I'm like, well, there's eight Republicans running for Senate.

So enjoy.

Reuel Sample
So for the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, there was no Republican primary.

Nick Craig
The two candidates will be Leigh Ann Pierce and Richard Collier.

Reuel Sample
So they advanced to November. But there were four candidates from the Democrat side and one from the libertarian side, Bob Drach. Is that how you pronounce his last name?

Bob Drach. And we won't see him until the general. We're not going to see him until the general.

So you had Rob Zapple, LaShonda Wallace, Salette Andrews, Judy Justice. Judy Justice and Salette Andrews both are sitting as elected officials right now. And those two did not make it through.

They did not. Rob Zapple came through with an astonishing 30%, almost 30%. I'm not astonished by that.

Nick Craig
I was out with Rob most of the day at a Masonboro Elementary. And there is just something special about Rob Zapple. He's got it.

What it is, I can't describe. But he's a master political navigator.

Ben Schachtman
And LeShonda Wallace. That to me was a surprise. And that is no disrespect to her.

She had a really steep policy hill to climb. And I think she climbed it. Not every candidate does.

The county, it's the intersection of so many different complicated things. And I think she wrapped her head around it nicely. She did have a pretty slick advertising campaign.

I saw billboards up early and often. I think that helped. But just without the name recognition.

I mean, the other three candidates are also sitting elected officials. That's just a lot of headwind. So I'm impressed.

Well, she's one of two.

Reuel Sample
We'll get to the other one here in the education. She is actually a PhD type. She is Dr. LeShonda Wallace.

Nick Craig
I didn't see a Democrat ballot. Did she have doctor in her name on the ballot? I didn't see it.

You have generally an uninformed electorate seeing a doctor on a ballot, which I don't remember if that's allowed or not. There's some weird rules about that. That very well can get you thousands of votes.

Ben Schachtman
Did Amy Dunning put doctor on hers?

Nick Craig
It did not say doctor.

Reuel Sample
No, but in all of her advertising. She worked hard for it. So that's going to be interesting.

Because on the Republican side, you've got Leanne Pierce, who is also a master of politics.

Ben Schachtman
She's pretty good with people. I think she's a little more understated than Rob. I've seen her at the polls.

She's good with people.

Nick Craig
And she's got the stronghold over the beach communities down south, which is a very unaffiliated, purple, kind of middle-of-the-road group. And she's serving as, what, eight years as something like that?

Ben Schachtman
They come out strong for her. She keeps the partisan rhetoric. I mean, she is a Republican.

She's a conservative. Those are her values. Yeah, and I think that resonates with the beach communities.

They just want someone to get stuff done.

Reuel Sample
And then you've got Richard Collier, who is no intellectual slack himself. So it's going to be interesting. That's going to be a tough race.

Nick Craig
I'm surprised that Salette didn't win, personally. She is a master political machine.

Ben Schachtman
That margin is surprising. If it was closer, I would have said, okay, it was a dogfight and the top two won. But that's her relentless all-media approach.

Nick Craig
And she's good. As a conservative, Salette Andrews, I find dangerous. She's a very savvy political operator.

Ben Schachtman
She'll be very happy to hear that, I'm sure.

Nick Craig
It's the truth. And she has done a really good job at getting all of the crazy leftists out at city council meetings during the last couple of months. Those people were in those rooms.

Salette was driving them through her social media. She's a substacker of some sort of blog that she's gotten some traction with. I was shocked that she didn't end up in the top six.

Reuel Sample
She was more than 2,000 votes behind LeShonda.

Nick Craig
That's a political bloodbath. That's not close.

Reuel Sample
And Judy Justice was over 4,000 votes behind Lashonda.

Ben Schachtman
I feel a little vindicated here, because I had wondered, maybe too publicly, whether people thought, Judy, she's a hand grenade, and the school board is the appropriate place for a hand grenade. But this is the county commission, and it is more serious, and we need someone who's more disciplined as a politician, and that what feels good, especially for a minority party on the school board, for someone who's going to scrap and fight, didn't feel good for people for the county commission. And this at least tells me that that's how Democrats and Unas felt.

Nick Craig
And I don't know that her campaign did not seem very organized. She's never been a big dollar raiser. She raised almost nothing in her school board campaign.

She was definitely sloppy with her digital advertising, because they were on my Facebook feeds every day.

Ben Schachtman
She didn't win your vote?

Nick Craig
No. Unfortunately, as a registered Republican, I wasn't eligible. But she was obviously not probably spending money to target.

I mean, I should not be in a Facebook ad buy for a Democrat. I'm never going to vote in a Democrat primary. As a registered Republican, I literally can't.

So I don't know if she worked with anybody, but I would suspect that was probably part of it, too. But it didn't seem very organized.

Ben Schachtman
I mean, her grassroots supporters have carried her, and then dropped her, and then carried her. And it has been hard to sort of track that. But again, I think the through line was when people wanted someone who was going to get in there and throw haymakers on the school board, she was their gal.

And I don't think that's what people want for the county.

Nick Craig
And it's also a much smaller body. It's a five-member versus a seven-member board. I mean, not that your vote is more important there, but it kind of is when there's literally...

Ben Schachtman
Percentage-wise, it is.

Nick Craig
Presumably, at any given point, it's either a Republican or a Democrat. I mean, you could have it stacked one way or the other. But typically, it's either Republican by one vote or Democrat by one vote.

That's it. That's how the commission's been over the last period of time.

Reuel Sample
End of the political road for Salette and Judy?

Nick Craig
Not for Salette. I don't think Judy's a very good speaker. I don't think she resonates.

She resonates with her grassroots people that Ben just mentioned. I don't think she's palatable, generally, to the voter across New Hanover County.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, I mean, she's got two more years on the school board, so you imagine we're in 28 on the school board. There's going to be a ton of anti-Trump sentiment. It depends what the school board looks like at that point.

I could see her having one more chance at the school board, but as far as higher office, I think this is kind of demonstrative.

Reuel Sample
So, the real interesting race happened over the New Hanover County Board of Education.

Nick Craig
Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? You need to go to Regal and spend $17 on popcorn to watch their meeting.

Have an insane primary.

Reuel Sample
Really. We'll start with the easy one. Republican primary.

Pat Bradford was the top vote-getter. Again. Again.

She actually even brought in a higher percentage, percentage-wise, than the top Democrat.

Nick Craig
Yeah.

Reuel Sample
She's a master of fundraising. Josie Barnhart came in. Dr. Amy Dunning, a newcomer to this whole thing.

Nick Craig
Brand new. Newcomer, newcomer.

Reuel Sample
Brand new. She ran sort of a subtle race. It was interesting that she was out there.

No funding whatsoever.

Nick Craig
That's not necessarily true. She raised a couple thousand dollars.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, we're just going through the Q1s now. She raised some. But it wasn't like she bought her way in with 50K.

Nick Craig
Yeah, there was one large donor and then some other donations that came in.

Reuel Sample
And then Chris Sutton, who was out there all the time, ran a really good, old-fashioned, timey campaign.

Nick Craig
Yeah, I'm surprised he came in fourth place, to be blunt. That, to me, was the most surprising result of the night. And a pretty significant fourth place.

Him and Amy were pretty close vote-wise, but he didn't really come close to touching Pat or Josie at the top of the ticket, which I thought was interesting.

Reuel Sample
So another incumbent that got knocked out in the primary, Melissa Mason. Why didn't Republicans vote for her?

Nick Craig
Well, I mean, you look at the Republican turnout in the primary, and to Ben's point earlier, this was the only local race, and I say this to people all the time, and it's not meant with any disrespect, nobody really cares about the school board. They might claim that they do, but they really don't. And these numbers, I think, back it up.

I mean, if the school board was this shining city on the hill that everybody wanted to be at, you'd have greater turnout on both sides of the aisle for it. It's flash, panty, yes, there's some culture war issues that tend to drive a little bit, but when the rubber meets the road, I don't think most people truly care who's on the school board. Again, based on the numbers, we have, what, 144,000 registered voters in the county, and you do the math on these candidates, and you already talked about it, well, it's 16% turnout.

So it's very low. I think because of that, she did not have a very strong ground game during early voting, and on election day, that's where those races are won when the turnout is far less than it even was in 2022 for these same candidates. I mean, when you compare Pat Josie and Melissa Ran together in 2022, they all had significantly higher numbers in that election.

This was a ground game issue for Melissa. She had no representation out at the polls at all.

Ben Schachtman
There was, to your point, because the turnout is less, there's just less room to play with. I mean, you had 6,000 votes separating 1st and 6th that are Democrats, and what, I'm cribbing your nose, but 2,000? 2,000 between the last and first.

So there's just not a lot of wiggle room. I know some conservatives who just, again, didn't know much about this, and so any negative thing that they hear about you that they don't care about, they're just filling in bubbles, and it's like, oh yeah, I do remember hearing something about, whether it was the dust up over AI or the appointing Democrats onto a committee, these aren't policy wonk people, but they're like, if that's the one nugget of information you have, sometimes that's all it takes.

Nick Craig
Yeah, getting elected chairwoman last year with a coalition of Democrats.

Ben Schachtman
I mean, just to that point, we saw that with Nelson Beaulieu on the Democrats Okay, yeah.

Nick Craig
I find it interesting that She's, by the way, the current sitting vice chair of the school board, so this is kind of a lame duck It's going to be an interesting term. With everything that has happened over the last week, yes, it's going to be very interesting. Surprise, surprise, boys, it's going to be an interesting year on the school board, can you believe it?

Reuel Sample
Maybe she'll join David Perry over there in the Libertarian, so that's two.

Nick Craig
Yeah, actually, I think you're right. I think that was the order of the ballot.

Reuel Sample
That would be an interesting study. People are just filling out the first thing.

Nick Craig
It's something anywhere between half and three percent, which is a huge spread. Ballot placement, I mean, I think you look at the Republican race for court of appeals, you had two Matts, Matt something and Matt Smith, the top Matt won, and that was probably in large part due to the fact that his name was number one.

Ben Schachtman
You know, A A A Martinez. Exactly.

Reuel Sample
Over on the Democrat side, some interesting stuff that you directly contributed to. No, not really, but top getter, Brittnei LaRue.

Nick Craig
A large margin victory.

Ben Schachtman
A huge margin victory.

Nick Craig
She busted her ass.

Ben Schachtman
I will say I saw her everywhere in random events. Friends of mine saw her everywhere, but also not just where you would expect lefty, liberal chamber events and business gatherings. I mean, I think she tried to cast a wide net.

And she came across normal, well thought out. There was nothing extremist about her rhetoric. She wasn't hair on fire.

I don't think the word Trump came out of her mouth.

Reuel Sample
Which is interesting, because in a primary, you generally go left.

Ben Schachtman
That's why I say that, is that if someone is the most blue-haired version of their best self in the primary, then they dial it back. For the general, that's not surprising. But she chose normie life.

And I think it paid off, because everyone who met her was like, hey, this is a reasonable person, comes from finance background, knows how stuff works, seems like they'd be a good pick.

Nick Craig
This is a good example of putting in sweat equity into a campaign. She did, to Ben's point. I followed her on social media pretty closely, and she was at everything, and the results show that that's an effective strategy.

Reuel Sample
It should be interesting to see, going into the general, is that I think in this day and age of social media and digital marketing, I still believe a ground game is important. It's getting out and talking to people directly.

Nick Craig
Especially when you get to the general, and your mailbox every single day is going to be full with 25 pieces of mail that you're going to immediately throw away, and your text messages are going to be dinging and buzzing all day with, hi, I'm Roy Cooper, vote for me. Hi, Michael Watley, vote for me. It's really hard to break through that noise.

You can do that with the ground game.

Ben Schachtman
And once again, I mean, we're the purplest of the purple with plurality of unaffiliated voters who are, by and large, living their own lives. They will have strong thoughts about the presidential race, but down ballot, if I'm an unaffiliated, even if I lean a little right, and I meet Brittany at an event, that's going to weigh in huge.

Reuel Sample
It'll be interesting to see how many, you probably have this, both of you probably, how many independent ballots were pulled for Democrats, and how many independent ballots.

Nick Craig
We don't have that yet for the, we'll get that in the next couple of months, once the county canvass happens. We know for early voting, it was about 65% during early voting were UNAs pulling Democrat ballots, which again, is no surprise with there being two local contests. And turnout, I mean, based on the numbers, the turnout was much higher.

Reuel Sample
Wendy Dale, coming in second. She was five percentage points behind Brittany LaRue, 3,000 points back.

Ben Schachtman
And I think that just speaks to effort. I mean, no disrespect, Brittany put in a hell of a game, and I did not see Wendy at as many things. I'll also say, steep learning curve for the county's school board's issues.

And if you went to the Democratic Forum or our forum at WHQR, she was okay, but I mean, Brittany had, her answers were ready, and Wendy fumbled sometimes.

Nick Craig
That's the one thing I was surprised about that, is Wendy Dale came off relatively milquetoast to me. Like, just not, I've never met her, I'm not saying, she's not saying she's a bad person, just nothing really inspiring, just kind of a average run of your mill like person running for school board. So to see her come in second place is interesting, but maybe to Ben's point, maybe that's what people want, because the school board is a constant dumpster fire.

Ben Schachtman
They want Normie, as you say.

Nick Craig
Possibly, I don't know.

Ben Schachtman
I mean, that's how she came across, she came across almost a little bashful and shy, to be honest.

Nick Craig
I mean, she spoke at the school board meeting last night, and she, it was, her comments were atrocious. I mean, she was stumbling all over the place, it was not a good show at all.

Ben Schachtman
Was she citing, like, the dissent from a, which is not how that works.

Nick Craig
Yeah, and she like got halfway through a dissent from like a 60-year-old Supreme Court case, and they're like, that's her time. She's like, thanks. I mean, you knew you had two minutes, like, let's try not to like repeat a 700-word dissenting Supreme Court.

Reuel Sample
Right.

Nick Craig
In the beginning.

Reuel Sample
Yeah, that's literally what it was. Jerry Jones Jr. came in at, behind Wendy Dale, 17% of the vote.

Ben Schachtman
I say good for Jerry, because he came so close two years ago. He said at one of the meetings, he's like, you know, that 300 vote's been haunting me.

Reuel Sample
Okay.

Ben Schachtman
You know, so it takes a lot, as any candidate from any party, to pick yourself up and go right back into it. I would say the same thing about Richard Collier, to come off of a tough loss and get right back into it. Right back into it.

In the game. That takes a certain level of resilience. I also think, and the party chair, Jill Chapman, disagrees with me, she said, he's always been the same old Jerry, but I felt like he did have more of that charisma this time around.

Just as someone watching the forums and sometimes asking the questions, I felt like he was punchier, he was more engaged. I feel like, but without going like overboard into like this person might be a lunatic territory. I think people, I think people like some charisma, you know, they don't want you to be crazy, but they like someone who's like energetic and seems, I don't know.

Nick Craig
Politicians are supposed to be a little bit different.

Ben Schachtman
A little bit larger than mine.

Nick Craig
It should be like, you should not be feeling like you're talking to your neighbor, like, hey, good morning, how's it going, when you're talking to an elected official.

Reuel Sample
But at the same time, you want, they need to be approachable at the same time.

Nick Craig
Exactly. And you can manage that. And like, I mean, you look at, you know, I think the greatest example of this locally was somebody like Luke Waddell, who just was incredibly approachable, but when needed to have that level of knowledge in that, you know, superiority as an elected official when explaining something important or very complicated, had that, and so there is a way to manage that.

And to Ben's point, I think, I think Jerry kind of hit that pretty well.

Reuel Sample
So the elephant in the room, Rick Southerland, oh boy, came in fourth place. He did with just over 15% of the vote. But according to your reporting, he had some issues.

Ben Schachtman
He did have some issues. I don't know how far down this rabbit hole you want to go.

Nick Craig
Before we go down to Rick Southerland, can we just do the final two and then come back to Rick?

Ben Schachtman
Okay. So an enormous asterisk for Rick Southerland, who I thought ran sort of uninformed and low key.

Nick Craig
Yes.

Ben Schachtman
He came across as a very sweet man who didn't, he repeatedly answered, like, I'd have to learn more about that.

Nick Craig
Yeah, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Ben Schachtman
Which is an honest answer, but like, why are you doing it?

Reuel Sample
After a while, you get tired of it. Yeah.

Ben Schachtman
As a journalist, like, I've had people from both parties say that. At a certain point, I'm like, I don't know. How did he do in your interview?

So we didn't do one-on-one interviews for the primaries. Oh, okay. We just did forums and we're saving the one-on-ones for the general.

Okay. And maybe they could have changed things.

Nick Craig
His questionnaire even kind of was not very well-fledged out or it was just kind of boilerplate.

Reuel Sample
Marjorie Gerwitzman came in fifth place. Gerwitzman?

Nick Craig
She ran a pretty strong, what I thought, grassroots campaign. I'm surprised she didn't make it into the top four.

Ben Schachtman
I saw her at a lot of places. She was, she had one kind of erratic moment during our forum. And I don't know if that hurt her or not.

She dropped an F-bomb. Which, be it's that.

Nick Craig
She's like, it's not really.

Ben Schachtman
Oh, I brought in the Gen Zs.

Nick Craig
Which I'm not clutching my pearls with.

Ben Schachtman
Don't worry about it. But like, it was a very, it's less that she said, fuck. And it's more that she like, she was answering a question about school segregation and whether or not she would support school segregation and, or desegregation rather, which would mean busing and redistricting and lots of politically dangerous and painful topics.

And her response was incredibly emotional. And she suggested that people would be doing that just to virtue signals instead of actually caring about the kids, which I think was a valid point. I don't think she was as articulate about it as she could have been.

But she also did this weird thing where she was saying, she was calling up the memory of Williston, the all-black high school, which was shuttered during Supreme Court-ordered integration, a huge tragedy in the black community in Wilmington. And that is not like an apples to apples comparison about any of the schools that are going on now. Yeah.

And it just felt like weird and out of touch and confusing. And because she dropped the F-bomb in the middle of that, people remembered it. And I think some people were like, that was odd.

Yeah. That was an odd moment. And again, there's, the margins are pretty tight for the final three here.

Reuel Sample
And then you have at the bottom, Nelson Beaulieu .

Nick Craig
Take it away. Nelson Beaulieu , his party still hates him. I had an experience, Ben, at the voting location that you and I may or may not vote at, where I actively heard a volunteer for the Democrat party telling a voter, you can vote for any of these five, do not vote for Nelson.

And that was not the only report that I received on election day of Democrats, which they can do. I mean, I'm not the, believe me, I'm not the, I'm not the Charlotte of the Democrat party. I don't really give a shit what they do, but the Democrats were actively, they do not like Nelson and it is, they're not shy about it.

They are actively, and we're actively telling voters, this guy sucks and we don't like him.

Ben Schachtman
You had Judy Justice, you know, going after him in the comment section. You had the folks from New Hanover County, I think Educational Justice, is the Facebook page, relatively small page, but it's influential in, you know, left of center education circles. There weren't a lot of people banging the drum for Nelson Beaulieu.

And I think the big issues were what I think under a different light, under a different time, you could see is like a statesmanship or desire to be bipartisan about stuff. That is not what they were on issues that people did not want bipartisanship on, whether that was electing the chair or his decision on reopening after COVID. I think the one that I heard about the most, and this is super in the weeds, but there was a Title IX survey that was going to go around and it's going to ask students about some very intimate experiences.

And there was, you know, lots of, you know, granular arguments about should it be opt in or opt out. And I'm paraphrasing here because I don't want to get them wrong, but it was something to the effect of there could be some legal liability issues or some other, you know, liability issues here where if we're asking this stuff and at that moment, you know, it just felt like anything short of a full throated defense of maximum transparency around child abuse, you might as well be on the Epstein files, you know, like, and that's, it's been years and people are still bringing that up. Wow. You know, that's, it's the kind of thing, like who voted which way on a survey from six years?

Like, that sounds crazy, but like, that's what I was seeing. Long memories, long memories. About that kind of stuff.

Nick Craig
Yeah. And I also don't think he's helped himself. If you're lucky enough to be friends with him on Facebook, he typically kind of rants.

And I mean, I don't personally know Nelson. I don't like him as a politician. He rants like an insane person on social media consistently.

And I think, you know, when you, when we just talked about Brittany LaRue and Wendy Dale, and we'll get to Rick Sutherland shortly, I mean, they were, yes, they're left of center. You could argue some of them have, including Brittany, probably some pretty progressive ideas. But they don't appear to be an insane, unhinged person.

If you are on social media and come across Nelson's Facebook page, he, us on the right would say he is a textbook case of Trump derangement syndrome. I mean, we're talking 1,500, 2,000 word Facebook posts about how Donald, I mean, it's just, it's unhinged insanity. It's not a good look.

Ben Schachtman
I, the last thing, I don't really disagree with that. I think there's a kind of candidate who either they have TDS or they're just very, very unfond of Trump. But I feel like you do have to make some case.

You know, I feel like the magic power of Trump as a, you know, as a projected enemy has faded a little bit. And now you've got to draw the lines. I mean, there are, there's cases to be made.

You know, Trump made this policy change that runs counter to our, you know, liberal views on whatever issue, you know. And now we've got kids struggling or now we have this financial issue. But it was during one of the forums, he, he was just going after Trump for the Obama's as apes meme.

Yeah. Which I found really offensive and racist, but didn't really have anything to do with the school work. If you're going to be that kind of person, you know, again, there's, you're not going to win over Republicans, but you don't need to, you need to win over unaffiliated voters who somehow see the policy and like cultural connection between what you're mad about in DC and here.

Nick Craig
Yeah. So I would suspect he is spending way too much time watching and or reading and or listening national news. And it's, it's hurt him politically.

Reuel Sample
So if you, it sounds like if you're going to do a rant, at least write it out, then put it in the AI. So it shortens up. So can we shrink this?

Oh God. So Rick Sutherland, Rick Sutherland came in fourth place. Now we need to be very clear that some of these accusations are not against Rick Sutherland.

Yes. And in reality, the other person involved in this, those issues were taken care of years ago, but Rick Sutherland should have, should, well, you tell the story.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah. I'll give you the short version and then we can unpack it as much as you want. So the short version is Rick Sutherland lives with a man named James Osborne.

Multiple people refer to them as partners, romantic partners. There's been a lot of semantic wordplay around that. You've seen friend, you've seen roommate.

His own, James referred to them as being an item. But all of that, there's some kind of relationship that is more than friendly. They share.

Reuel Sample
They're in each other's inner circles.

Ben Schachtman
They share a home. They've been campaigning together. They work together.

James has come to every, not every, but like many, many events that Sutherland went to. He went to the Governor's mansion. He was at schools.

And Osborne is a registered sex offender. And there is a long and complicated and some would say convoluted backstory to that, which we can unpack if we want. But Sutherland believed that Osborne's conviction was unjust and that it shouldn't have happened.

But he also did not tell the Democratic Party or the public that the person he was in a relationship with was a registered sex offender and will be for like another decade. And from the Democratic Party's point of view, their argument has been, you know, our bottom line is dishonesty. The problem for the press was it's really hard to explain the dishonesty without explaining what he was being dishonest about, which meant a level of scrutiny on a private citizen that we really just wouldn't ordinarily commit to.

I mean, there are, I don't like it, but there are hundreds of registered sex offenders in the Cape Verde region and we do not just randomly pick them and do stories about their sordid or tragic backgrounds or whatever happened. We just don't. We have like this hierarchy of public trust that includes, you know, teachers and cops.

And because this was a public official, he kind of got dragged into that. Yeah. So that's kind of what happened.

And so we didn't find out about this until the afternoon of primary election day.

Nick Craig
Yeah. This is to me where as a tinfoil hat conservative, as I'm known to be, I just, something just doesn't pass the smell test. I mean, I've been involved enough in political circles.

Obviously, people knew about this. Who knew about it remains unseen.

Reuel Sample
Do you think the DNC knew about it?

Nick Craig
I think there is not a single piece of my mind that believes that the leadership in the Democrat party locally were not aware of the allegations, whether they did a full-throated investigation or not. I refuse to believe in this, the political, hyper-politicized time that we're living in, that the rumor was not swirling prior to, according to Ben's own discussion on either Facebook post or article, midday on Tuesday when somebody dropped you a tip. I don't care what anybody says.

I refuse to believe that that's the case.

Ben Schachtman
Let me say two things. Yeah. One, when I called party chair Jill Hoffman on Tuesday, she sounded like someone who just kicked her in the ribs.

Reuel Sample
Interesting.

Ben Schachtman
You know, and I've been doing this for a long time. I have what I consider to be a pretty good bullshit detector, but I've been wrong. I've been wrong about people before.

It is my honest belief that Hoffman didn't know. And to back that up a little bit is that there are allegations, and there's like a quick webpage you can go to. You can go to the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry and immediately look this up.

Yes. And see the address, see this guy's photo, see it's the same address as Rick Sutherland. And it's not investigative journalism.

It's just you type a few things to keyboard and there it is. So rumors are like, oh, I heard under a different name he did something creepy, or like I've heard some, you know, hear this stuff about people all the time. That's going to require some, you know, some anonymous sourcing, some you're going to have to triangulate stuff.

This was not that. So if they knew, they would have known immediately and it would have been, you would have been able to bet this out very, very quickly. I felt like Hoffman didn't know.

I could be wrong. But as Ben Franklin once said, three people can keep a secret if two are dead, right? I agree with you that it beggars the imagination that only James Osborne and Rick Sutherland knew about this.

I just...

Nick Craig
Well, and presumably one other person, unless your source was one of those two. I mean, like the fact that only...

Ben Schachtman
They are not.

Nick Craig
So then only three people knew about it. I just, we know how nasty local party politics can get. And they are ruthless, especially for the school board.

Whether Jill Hoffman or the local Democrat party knew or not is, will be up for debate forever. The interesting question is, why drop this on election day? Not to you, but I mean, somebody...

But to me, but also to me. I mean, somebody calls you early voting. There's already been 21 days of early voting.

Thousands of votes are already cast. You're like, hey, this guy's living with a sex offender. You're like 30, 40 days too late.

Ben Schachtman
Best I can tell, my source, who does lean conservative, called me immediately after they found out about it. What happened to that information chain before that, I'm not going to pretend to know. It is my sense that it probably bubbled up from law enforcement somehow, but I don't know.

I don't, I don't know. And ordinarily, you know, anonymous tip like this, I would never run with. Probably ever, unless something else happened.

Certainly not right in the middle of the canvas period. But because it was so immediately easy to verify, it was almost like someone just like pointing at the sky and being like, oh, have you noticed the sky is blue? And I'm like, oh, yeah.

Nick Craig
So breaking news at six.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah. Because of the nature, because of the nature of the tip, so many of these like election, you know, surprises, these October surprises, and I guess now March surprises are like, Mike Lee was involved in a crooked land deal or like Bill Saffo was in this photo with a compromised person. Maybe they were, maybe they won't.

But this is like a week's long investigation, and you're dropping it the Friday before, you know, Election Day. And it's deliberate. Political operatives do this on both parties.

They do it deliberately, knowing the story is too good to walk away from, but there's not enough time to do a proper job. You know, and that is the trap. And sometimes editors will take the loss and say like, I'm going to take the reputational heat of appearing to have sat on this story because I know I'm being manipulated by a political operative.

And I think if you're judicious with that, and that's your policy for Dems and Republicans, left and right, then you're in good stead. This honestly felt like a nonpartisan person who found out and was like, holy crap, you should know about this.

Reuel Sample
Yeah.

Ben Schachtman
That was my sense of the tip.

Reuel Sample
Your angst in your Facebook posts and everything else was very apparent because you were trying to balance the privacy of an individual with the needs for the electorate to vote, to know. You know, the issue, at least to me...

Nick Craig
Well, can I say one thing? You said the electorate to vote. By the time Ben found out about this, polls were closing in like four hours.

Reuel Sample
It was, yeah.

Nick Craig
Like, it's not even... That's the part that, again, like just something is off about. Like, they're trying to sync this guy.

Reuel Sample
Four hours before the polls closed.

Nick Craig
Yeah, like Ben can't type up the article quick enough to get this out. And if he does, it's out at 6.15. And guess what? Polls close at 7.30. It literally does not matter. Like, the ship has literally sailed.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, it was... I cannot rule out that this was some kind of political hit. However, it looked, coming to me, like whatever dominoes fell before that, I admit I could be in the dark about that.

The only... The theory I heard... And interestingly, I heard this from Democrats and Republicans.

The theory was that the Democratic Party knew that this was a bum candidate after filing, but before early voting started. And thought this is going to be a disaster. So the best thing we could do is wait and then nuke him after voting ends, right?

Yeah. And then we will be able to... Our executive committee of the New Hanover County Democratic Party will be able to elect a better candidate since this guy was so tainted.

And then we basically get, you know... And if he loses, we don't have to do anything. Yeah.

And if he wins, then that's what we do. I will say that it's plausible. It is funny when my Republican and conservative friends suggest this theory, having also mocked the Democrats of being completely incapable of pulling off any kind of political...

Nick Craig
Touché, touché.

Ben Schachtman
They can't be morons and playing 5D chess. But that is the one theory. But that's the kind of like...

I don't wanna say mental gymnastics, but that's the kind of like complexity you'd have to imagine if it was that. I don't personally think it was that, but I understand once someone lies about something like this, then I think you've invited skepticism in the room and it's not gonna leave. Well, I can see why Elijah.

Reuel Sample
Because you're right. The circumstances behind his roommate's designation are foggy.

Nick Craig
Well, to all know, because the whole argument from Rick Sullivan was this was an unjust conviction. To be fair, his roommate pled guilty to the charge.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, and I heard... Well, to the credit, I know a couple of people who are in the criminology world and they're lefties. And they were like, that was the worst thing he could have said was, what did he actually say?

It was wrongful conviction. Was the worst possible term because that completely skews the conversation. There's other debates to be had, but that phrase is so unhelpful.

Nick Craig
When you plead guilty to something of anything, I was speeding. I ran through a red light. You are asked by a judge, are you admitting your guilt to this?

Are you being coerced? Is somebody pressuring you? It is asked in every single courtroom.

Ben Schachtman
And it wasn't like we see in state court sometimes an Alford plea where you say, I'm not guilty, but I understand the deck is stacked pretty badly against me here. And that exists for situations where you feel like, I am not guilty. But I understand in order to get a plea deal and spend less time in prison...

You plead guilty. And actually, I mean, the Alford plea has its origins in North Carolina. So, I mean, that's not what was happening here.

And, you know, it just felt like Sullivan and Osborne seemed to feel like this was a conversation worth having. And or they're retroactively ginning that up as an excuse for all of this. But because Osborne has like gone on television and to press elsewhere and is not withdrawing, is considering to prosecute this case, I take him at his word that he thinks this is a valuable conversation to have.

Starting with lying about it, as I put it, poisons the well for most people.

Reuel Sample
Oh, and he's guilty. He's guilty of that. He's also guilty of really bad judgment.

Because if I think if people had known that a member of a school board that deals explicitly or implicitly with children, that his roommate can't even go to a board meeting with him because he's probably barred from being... I think if that had been known, he wouldn't have made the top four. I don't think he would have.

Nick Craig
I don't think he would have been pushed out of the primary.

Reuel Sample
So here's the question. Is this Nelson's golden opportunity? No, there's a zero percentage.

Nick Craig
So I have a better likelihood of being nominated for that spot as a registered Republican than Nelson Bolyer. I take that to the bank right now.

Ben Schachtman
I don't even know if that's hyperbole. I think that might be... So because what they are going to do, as I understand it, there was some bureaucratic back and forth about this.

And I think the county had to retract a statement about it. The County Board of Elections had to retract a statement about this. But it looks like now the Democratic Party will have a convention for their executive committee, which is like 100 plus people.

Sometimes people think it's like eight people, like a cabal in the background. It's a lot. It's a lot of people.

And I think they're just going to do like a from the floor vote where anyone, as long as it meets certain eligibility criteria and presumably a background check, can throw their hat in the ring, which includes Margie Gewertzman and also includes another woman, Chris...

Nick Craig
This is the lady that wasn't registered a Democrat early enough in time.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, there was another candidate that the Dems liked, but she hadn't changed from unaffiliated to Dems in time. And it will probably... It could also include Nelson Bolyer.

The likelihood of Nelson making it through that little mini-primary seems low. But, you know, we live in strange times.

Reuel Sample
So this tees up a... This is going to be...

Nick Craig
One more point I want to make. And Ben had all the quotes in his article. Rick Sutherland, who self-described was a political newcomer, he made some very concerning statements by the fact of like, well, I'm new to this.

And I just, I think to myself, like, okay, there's... One of two things are true here. Either you are so out of your depth that you should not be eligible to run for a school board if you're so new and evergreen.

Or secondly, you are just so full of shit that you're willing to say anything. One of those two things has to be true. There is no human being on the face of the earth that believes that living with a registered sex offender and running for a school board member could not create a conflict.

You'd have to be, especially in New Hanover County, you have to be out of your fucking mind to think that like, oh, people are going to bat an eye at this? With 30 years of the most atrocious assault of children that you can imagine by a public education system. Either Rick Sutherland is a babbling moron or he's the most disingenuous, dishonest person in local politics.

Reuel Sample
One of the two things has to be true. I don't think even the local Republican party is unhappy to see him go. I mean, we just, we...

The Republicans...

Nick Craig
With everything that has gone on in the schools over the last couple... And we joke about this, but the school board is a dumpster fire. That's the last thing they need is somebody like Rick Sutherland with his baggage on there.

It's like, it's just, there's nothing that's going to be held.

Ben Schachtman
The most charitable thing I could say would be that he showed extraordinarily bad judgment. And if you are running as kind of a political ingenue, right? You're like, oh, I don't know the policies, but I'm a good person, right?

And I have good morals and I have a good head on my shoulders and I will figure it out. And Lord knows we've seen plenty of candidates do that and occasionally be successful. Then you have to show good judgment.

And again, just not knowing the history of his town and not immediately sensing that you were going to have a tough time with this conversation. There are many people in... There are writers, there are academics who have tried to make a case for compassion and rehabilitation for sex offenders.

If you thought that local school board politics was the place to have a conversation, that seems like you've misread the room pretty dramatically. And also that you weren't particularly concerned about what it would do to your party. And this is the part of politics that I don't particularly love, but it is a team sport and also a solo event, right?

But I think any party would be well within its rights to say to hell with you because you brought this down on us. And for all the unaffiliated voters who are now, do I trust the Democratic Party to vet people? And if this happened with the Republican Party, it would be in the same situation.

If a Republican candidate lied to you about what was in their bona fides or their criminal history. And this is a particularly tricky one because a background check of Rick Southerland would not have brought this up.

Reuel Sample
No, it wouldn't have. But a background check of everybody living at his residence would have.

Ben Schachtman
Yes.

Reuel Sample
Now, the Democrat Party of New Hanover County... By the way, before I get to that, this did happen in the Republican Party. The congressman from New York was drummed out.

Ben Schachtman
If only the New York Times covered its own backyard.

Nick Craig
There's one other interesting angle of this that I haven't said I'm currently digging into and trying to figure out is that not only Rick Southerland, but his partner worked at Thalian Hall.

Ben Schachtman
Yes.

Nick Craig
Which is a city-owned property, correct? It's managed by a third party, but it's owned by the city, I believe is how that works. I believe it's city property.

Well, it was. It used to be town.

Reuel Sample
All I do know is that it's the recipient of a lot of school programs.

Nick Craig
Yeah, and it receives a boatload of city dollars. This guy was also working at Thalian Hall with the potential of access to children there as well. I'm wondering where there was a lapse there for some sort of background check.

Whether it's Thalian Hall conducting it as a private employer or the city... I'm not saying he wasn't a city employee, but the city of Wilmington who funds Thalian.

Ben Schachtman
I need to double check that. It was my understanding that this city was leasing that space from Thalian Hall for Chambers.

Nick Craig
That might be the case.

Ben Schachtman
And then they got rid of that when they moved to the shiny penthouse.

Nick Craig
That very well could be the case. There is something there, but you've also got a county commissioner who is very integral in Thalian Hall, city council members who have a lot to do with Thalian. The fact that somebody like this was allowed, potentially allowed access to minors at Thalian Hall is also a major problem.

For example, if you are a substitute teacher, I'm pretty sure, at least for substitutes, anybody higher in the school system, you have to go through a full background check. Oh, sure. As you would expect.

You literally have access to children. I would hope it would be the same thing for Thalian Hall.

Ben Schachtman
The only theory I can say, and I don't even know if this would be exculpatory, but I did ask Osborne about this directly. I was like, because your bio says that you specialize in teaching pre-K or like kindergarten. And I asked him point blank.

And I was like, how is that not a problem? And he said, oh, that was prior to my conviction and prison time. And I don't do that anymore.

And he actually brought it back up again because I was like, hmm. And I had asked the studio they work for that's like under Thalian or like uses Thalian as the location. And they never responded to my email.

They just deleted Osborne and later Sutherland off of the website. We never got a proper answer. And I asked them point blank.

See, that's how was, you know, was I said, I'm very sorry to be sending you this email. It's uncomfortable. I need to ask you point blank.

Was he around minors? And they didn't respond. I think they told Port City Daily, it's a personnel issue and we can't talk about it.

Nick Craig
Which in itself, the personnel issue is typically only relevant for a public or a government private business does not.

Ben Schachtman
They can tell you to pound sand. It doesn't look there's no law.

Nick Craig
No, not at all.

Ben Schachtman
So the one and I, you know, I don't mean this to be disrespectful, but it is the one, you know, potentially a sculptor theory was that this was kind of a bogus gig that Sutherland got for Osborne to kind of help him out and that he was consulting, which meant really doing nothing and not being anywhere, not actually doing any work, thus not actually being at the end. That's not a rosy. That's not like an incredibly rosy picture either.

Nick Craig
No, I think that begs the question. Something me as a conservative, I was yelling about is why so much local government money going to fund things like, I have no disrespect towards Thalian. I've been to plenty of things there, but if the argument Ben is laying out is true, which very well could be possible.

Why is a single city or county dollar funding an entity that is potentially giving people bogus, you know, Sopranos, no show union jobs where you sit around and eat hoagies all day. That's a problem in itself.

Reuel Sample
Well, the New Hanover County DNC, Republican party Democrats have pledged increased vetting procedures and everything else. Good. But I can also bet that they are thankful that this came out now and not three or four months down the line.

Nick Craig
They would have had until probably early September.

Ben Schachtman
When did the balance get printed? That's the deadline, right?

Nick Craig
I think it's something because military ballots go out. We think early voting starts early. Military ballots go out like five weeks.

Reuel Sample
And in case you don't know is that you can change the ballots up until the time military ballots go out. So you can withdraw and get off the ballot as long as the military ballots.

Nick Craig
It would be sometime in September, would be my guess, right around Labor Day. So they would have had some time, but anytime after this, he would have been on the ballot. There would have been, I mean, even if he had, we've seen this before, people have died after the ballots are printed.

You're still on there. There's nothing to do.

Reuel Sample
Well, we saw that in the last in the Wilmington, the city council races that we actually had a person who was disqualified. Yeah, still on the ballot. Well, we had a person, the Republicans had a person on the primary.

Was she taken off the ballot? That was disqualified by the Republicans because she actually didn't live here.

Nick Craig
Yeah, there's been problems like that in the past. But once the ballots are printed, it's kind of a done deal.

Reuel Sample
So once again, in November, it's going to be Pat Bradford, Josie Barnhart, Dr. Amy Dunning and Chris Sutton on the Republican side versus Brittany LaRue, Wendy Dale, Jerry Jones and TBA, whoever, Nelson, we're rooting for you. So, and then other ones, the other statewide candidates in upcoming shows, we're going to talk about some of the issues that these folks are going to face. But the U.S. Senate, no surprises here. Least shocking thing has ever happened to me in my entire life. Roy Cooper, 94%. And Michael Watley, 74%.

I got to tell you, I was actually sort of angry that we had the Republican primaries.

Ben Schachtman
I think this is going to be a useful map for folks who are trying to understand what's going on in different counties on the right, because you can see these also ran numbers as the burn it down contingent. Yes. So, you know, you expect to see more burn it down folks in Pender than Brunswick.

So you can kind of see it as a heat map of where, what do you call them? Grinos? Grassroots.

Nick Craig
Which I love. That's great. Coined by John Hennon.

Reuel Sample
That's pretty good. I'm credit where credit's due. That is pretty good.

That's right. So it's going to be Roy Cooper versus Michael Watley. And you're more plugged into the Carolina Journal and the Locke Foundation.

Are they still showing that Roy is up by about still six points?

Nick Craig
We haven't pulled this race in a couple of months now. We just did a Republican primary poll. I think there's a poll that'll be out later this month.

I would still suspect, because I mean, even through the primary, Michael Watley didn't spend a whole lot, I don't think. We haven't seen the FEC report yet, but there was no big TV ads. I got one piece of mail, which, you know, mail's not cheap, but one mail versus a piece of mail every day for six months.

So he still hasn't built his name. I would suspect that Cooper's still plus 10 in that race. And it probably will remain that way until we get to sometime in late summer.

Reuel Sample
For U.S. House, David Rouzer handily beat local David Buzzard. I don't think Mr. Buzzard's political career is quite over. I think he swung for the fence.

Ben Schachtman
Usually, this is a Democratic move. This is where we can one day and run for Congress. We've seen it a couple of times.

And I'm like, wow, you don't do, you know, K2 on your first climb, like you're built up to it. El Capitan. I've never done this before, but who?

Yeah, give it a, give the old. I think you're going to see him come, because he's very charismatic. He's out there throwing haymakers in the comment section last weekend.

Nick Craig
Yes, yes, absolutely. That's the case.

Reuel Sample
And Kimberly Hardy on the Democrat side. So, but she ran unopposed. Is that correct?

Nick Craig
Yes. I think she's from Cumberland County. I think so too.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah. I mean, I've had a chance, obviously, I've met Rouzer and I know his track record and I got a chance to meet Hardy and I, you know, I just don't see anyone unseating Rouzer. Not in this call.

I mean, the things he would have to do to.

Nick Craig
But like, you mean like stock trade at like plus 700% or something?

Ben Schachtman
No, no. I mean, like, you know, just like change parties to a Democrat.

Reuel Sample
Once you get outside of Wilmington, District 7 is like R-100 or something like that.

Ben Schachtman
I tell you, whenever we get green reporters and they're like, they've come from, you know, Austin or New York or some other hip liberal town. They're like, yeah, it's pretty, you know, pretty liberal. I was like, drive five minutes.

Any direction but into the ocean.

Reuel Sample
Even the dolphins are conservative. I just put an R behind a glass of water. It's going to get elected in District 7.

So statewide judicial races, not really questions there. It's going to be Christine Marie Walshick against Craig Collins for Judge Seat 3 and Court of Appeals. Tight race actually between Michael Byrne and Matt Smith.

But Judge Byrne pulled that one out. And he is, is he unopposed?

Nick Craig
No, there will be a Democrat.

Reuel Sample
Oh, that would be against John Arrowood. Yep. So, but good stuff.

Good, interesting stuff here. New Hanover County never fails to deliver in terms of...

Ben Schachtman
General is going to be interesting.

Reuel Sample
The general is going to be interesting. And we're going to bring you all that kind of commentary as we get closer.

Nick Craig
Yeah, I'll say for our audience members that are not super politically involved, there will be a kind of a lull period. Obviously the Rick Sutherland thing is probably going to linger on for a little bit, depending on when the Democrats have their meeting. Things will lull.

Politics is, I'm sure, Ben, you talked about these new reporters. Politics is real weird on the coast, especially in Bloomington. Talk about people not caring at all until like literally Labor Day.

It's like, oh yeah, there's elections in like six weeks.

Reuel Sample
Yeah, you got to get through beach weather.

Nick Craig
Yeah, it's really hard for candidates, volunteers, for anybody to get activation or interest when it's 85 degrees sunny and beautiful Carolina skies out there. It's hard.

Reuel Sample
Yep. So before we wrap up, just want to point everybody's attention to these fantastic Tumblers. You can buy those on our website.

So make sure you check those out. Ben, what are you working on over at WHQR?

Ben Schachtman
Oh God, a couple of things. A couple of criminal justice stories we've been working on. We're gearing up.

I know it sounds early, but we're gearing up for the True Colors trial in May, trying to get all the groundwork laid for that. And a little bit of campaign finance, but there wasn't much to be honest. And then, you know, whatever happens next Tuesday when it's supposed to be a quiet day.

Reuel Sample
And what's going on over at the Nick Craig show?

Nick Craig
Just recovering from the election. Still a little bit of a hangover. Keeping a close eye on the race between Phil Berger and Sam Page up in Rockingham County.

What that's going to mean. Does Phil Berger, regardless of whether he wins or loses, will serve for the remainder of his term? What does that mean for stalled budget negotiations?

Does he go scorched earth on stuff? Will he just not call the Senate, which he has the right to do, into session at all? So it's going to be interesting to see what goes on in Raleigh over the next...

It's a much shorter session, probably three months, two, three months. I think they're expected back next week. So, or excuse me, next month.

Reuel Sample
Hey, you were on the air. Both of you were on the air the morning after elections. Oh yeah, I was on at five o'clock, yeah.

Yeah, I'm surrounded by men.

Ben Schachtman
Sleep is for the dead.

Nick Craig
You're surrounded by Red Bull and coffee.

Ben Schachtman
Yeah, a lot of coffee. Like if you're making a second pot of coffee as you're drinking the first cup, you're into politics.

Reuel Sample
And life goes on over at the Wilmington Standard. We always appreciate any support that you send any of us in our individual broadcast careers or our particular broadcast careers. So gentlemen, as always, I'm honored to be with all of you.

Nick Craig
Nice to put it together while it's a great conversation.

Reuel Sample
So for Nick Craig from The Nick Craig Show at nickcraig.com and WHQR, WHQR.org. Are you an org? We're an org.

You're an org, WHQR.org. Ben Schachtman, I'm Reuel Sample from thewilmingtonstandard.com. Thanks for listening.