Reuel Sample: Well, it's that time again for the Niki and Reuel podcast experience. I'm Reuel Sample joined, as always by Nikki Bascome. Good evening Nikki, how are you doing?

Nikki Bascome: The lovely and wonderful and beautiful have not been on a cruise like you have Reuel Sample.

Reuel Sample: Oh, yes. Ladies and gentlemen, last week everything that you saw had been pre-published. As I have just got back from a wonderful cruise of Cozumel, Mexico, and the Grand Caymans and Jamaica, and it was just a great time to get unplugged. My wife literally took my phone and put it into a Faraday cage so I couldn't be connected, contacted or anything else. So it was it was wonderful. Although they do, what they do now is that they, uh, you actually have to keep your phones with you because that's how they, they contact you about things throughout the day. So even though you can do.

Nikki Bascome: Activities that are going on and.

Reuel Sample: Yeah, yeah, like, uh, like dancing up on the Lido deck or, uh, wine tasting. Wine tasting down on the veranda deck or, um, you know, all that kind of stuff. So you're not connected to the outside.

Nikki Bascome: Hey on you, on the balcony. You put your clothes back on. There's no naked dancing here. Is that it?

Reuel Sample: It's a family friendly show there, Nikki Bascom. But, uh. So, hey, by the way, I wanted to show you something. I got a couple of things I wanted to show. Show off to you tonight. First, I am drinking from the TWC coffee mug, and I'm going to stand up here real quick. And I am wearing from our store the TWC, the Wilmington Conservative sweatshirt. You can actually get all these things on our store and, uh, you can order them and they are sent to you directly. If you are interested in helping support the Wilmington Conservative and get some great swag, Uh, check us out at the Wilmington conservative.com and click on the store link. And we would really, really help. Uh, we'd appreciate your support. Nikki, we've got a great, great, great, great guest tonight. Who is it?

Nikki Bascome: I don't know. I am totally kidding. Actually, this is someone that I have not stalked, but it's someone that I have a lot of respect for. Um, and I actually, I don't talk about. I talk about my kids a lot, but I don't talk about my husband a lot. And this is someone that's been friends with my husband for years and years and years, and I actually met him not through the political world, but through my husband. And I would love to introduce the former executive director of New Hanover County GOP, Harry Knight. Harry, welcome. Thank you for joining us. There he is. Hey, guys.

Harry Knight: Thank you. And thank you for having me.

Reuel Sample: It's great having you on board, Harry. It's, uh, for those who don't know, uh, Harry was the, uh, the, as Nikki said, the former executive director. And every time he would call me, I would answer the phone and say, hello, mister executive director. And it would drive him nuts. And so it's good to it's good to have you, Harry. By the way, I had been going back and forth about what to name this podcast tonight, and I have come up with the perfect name. Ready? Here we go. It's the night court with Harry Knight.

Harry Knight: Yeah. We'll have to see how that goes before the evening's over.

Reuel Sample: So welcome to the night court with Harry. With Harry Knight. As we talk about a whole variety of things. So, uh, Harry, you're involved in a whole bunch of areas here in New Hanover County. Your real estate developer. A real estate guy. You're, uh. You're involved in politics. You're, uh, one of the shakers and movers of of New Hanover. And you've been you've been you've you've done it all. Are you a New Hanover County native? No. You're from West Virginia originally, aren't you?

Harry Knight: Yeah. I grew up in small town West Virginia on a small family farm. Got a degree in engineering. Went to work for the General Electric Company under contract to the DoD. And worked for a facility in upstate New York that supported the United States nuclear Navy. Coming out of that, after about 15 years, I came here to Wilmington to be the environmental health and safety manager for nuclear manufacturing. Spent about a decade or so doing that. And then I spent, you know, five or so years being one of their international project directors for um, in reactor upgrades, mostly for, um, our foreign customers. But I also help perform a instrumentation grade upgrade for one of our domestic reactors. That's the largest at the time in US history.

Reuel Sample: So, so so that glow around him is not his natural aura. Ladies and gentlemen, that's just from the nuclear reactors that he's been around for all this time.

Harry Knight: Well, some people claim that. We'll see.

Reuel Sample: Well, we're not we're not going to play around, Harry. We want to get into a couple big things. Uh, because you were involved heavily in the Republican Party here in New Hanover County, and we had a huge election, uh, in terms of, of of getting people elected throughout the state and throughout the New Hanover County. This is a tough county, and people have been a little bit critical of how the Republican Party went about doing things here in New Hanover County. Can you take some time to explain the numbers of why, for instance, New Hanover County didn't go for Trump like a lot of the other counties across the country did?

Harry Knight: Well, that's kind of a loaded question. Um, going into this election and this would be, you know, two months prior to November the 4th. So early fall, New Hanover County is what people would typically think that we would be. Over the last decade or so. And that's called a purple county. The numbers at that point would have said we're basically one third independent or unaffiliated, one third Republican and one third Democrat. It's not exactly that, but it's pretty close. So we went into this with the strategy of, you know, get all of the Republicans and then get the Republican leaning independents to the polls and get them all to vote. Yeah. Um, and that's the strategy we employed through a number of various means. Um, both you as well as Nikki were involved in some of that. At the end of the day, we were fairly successful with that. Um, you opened the conversation with the Trump race, just to put that in perspective, and I'm sure there would be a number of people that that wouldn't agree with what I'm about to say. But the reality of the numbers were both the Trump campaign and the North Carolina GOP predicted that New Hanover County would lose the Trump race by three percentage points. We were asked to maintain a less than a 2% percentage point loss, which is what we needed in order for Trump to win New Hampshire or to win North Carolina, which he did, obviously. And in New Hanover County specifically, we lost that Trump race by less than a half percent. So based on what we were asked to do versus what predictions were, New Hanover County turned out big for Trump. Now, obviously, at the end of the day, the absolute vote count went for Kamala Harris. But based on what the predictions were, we overperformed. And as a result, Trump won the state. So I think the New Hanover County GOP did exactly what they were asked to do and did it well.

Reuel Sample: And more so because, as you said, we were we were asked to keep it under 2 to 3 points because they knew they were we were going to lose, but we came in well below the well, well above their expectations.

Harry Knight: That's right. Yeah, we we were asked to keep it to less than a 2% loss. And we were able to hold that at about a half percent.

Reuel Sample: And now locally we also, uh, we basically kept the status quo. Uh, we, uh, we we lost a Republican on the board, uh, on the, on the board of education. And we put a, a Republican back on the Board of Education. Uh, we.

Harry Knight: Well, that's that's one way to put that I would say that we lost a Republican that had an R behind their name, but in the four years serving on that board, never voted, never voted in a Republican fashion. And we put a person on that board that will vote in a Republican fashion. Now, that particular person is an interesting individual, but at the end of the day, when they when they go to vote, they're going to vote Republican. He will be an absolute reliable Republican vote. And at the end of the day, that's what counts. Because like you said, I'm involved in politics on a number of different levels here locally as well as on the state. I happen to sit on several appointed boards, including a statewide appointed board. And at the end of the day, the performance of those boards is how does that board vote? You mean, how do you implement policies? And the particular person that we put on that board will be controversial in some things, but they will be a reliable Republican vote at the end of the day. That's what counts.

Reuel Sample: Nikki Bascom is over there seriously thinking about having another another drink of vodka as we continue.

Harry Knight: Because Nikki was one of our better candidates for that board and for a whole number of reasons. None of them Nicki's fault, quite frankly, it has to do with the dynamics of New Hanover County. She was unsuccessful in her bid to make it to to the Board of Education. That is that is very unfortunate for that board. She would have been a valuable member.

Reuel Sample: I agree.

Nikki Bascome: I just I was just talking to someone about that today when, um, so apparently one of the Democrat, um, appointed to the board that were voted on the board has been all over social media, just really, um, trash talking Republicans, and they can't. And this Democrat came to me and said, you know, we're going to have these culture wars with between the Republicans and the Democrats. And I was like, but what kills me is how did we manage as a community? How did we manage to get such extremes from both sides? We have extreme Republicans and extreme Democrats on this board. From a community that says we don't want politics in our schools, then what the hell are you doing? Sorry, I can't help it. I'm like, yeah.

Harry Knight: I mean, the the data, the data is still to come in from the state level, but what you just said is accurate. And that New Hanover County Board of Education race was one of the strangest races I have ever seen. In the ten years that I've been involved behind the scenes, it was just weird.

Nikki Bascome: Well, so I'm a data girl. I follow the data a lot. And and when you're looking at the vote counts, um, the The percentage points that happen in the Board of Education followed the percentage points that happened in the the county, the um, the commissioner race, which followed very closely to what happened to all of the higher races, all the state races, which tells me it was people that were coming out for a purpose of voting down ballot. And that's what they did. They didn't care. They didn't care what anyone's policies were. They didn't care what anyone if one person was good or one person was bad, they went down ballot race, period. End of story. That's all they did. Um, and and there's on both sides of the, of the spectrum, you know, you've got some really good Democrats and you've got some really good Republicans that are going to come together and make some really good policies and some really good changes for our community, especially at the local level. People weren't looking at that. They didn't care. They did not care whatsoever. So the percentage points just followed right along the state and the federal level. That's my $0.02.

Reuel Sample: Now, Harry, it'll be.

Harry Knight: And you had some pretty polarizing figures at the top end of the tickets, right? So you had Trump, which, like him or hate him, he is a polarizing figure.

Nikki Bascome: He is.

Harry Knight: He is. And and he will do good things for the state. He'll do good things for the city. We had a very polarizing, um, lieutenant governor race. And between those two races, you just had a lot of strong opinions that bled down the ballot, whether you like it or not. That's what happened.

Nikki Bascome: Did you mean the governor race or the lieutenant? Lieutenant governor was okay. I think it was the governor's race with Mark Robinson.

Harry Knight: Yeah, The governor's race is what I'm talking about. That's right.

Nikki Bascome: That was a very polarizing, I think, here locally. That was extremely polarizing. If you were a Republican and you did not support Mark Robinson, then you had issues with some of your friends.

Harry Knight: It is still polarizing behind the scenes and probably will be for a period of time.

Reuel Sample: And again, there were big issues with with Mark Robinson, but I hold fast to the idea that the primary is about the individual. The the general is about the party. And if you didn't like Mark Robinson and, and you were a Republican and you didn't vote for him, well, guess what? You are part of the problem of what we have now. If you voted for the individual and not for the party, and because of that, the party is not in control of of North Carolina anymore.

Harry Knight: Well, we we are in control of North Carolina, but. And it's a big but. Governor Stein has veto capability because we're missing one representative and one of our House chambers in the legislature. Now, in all likelihood, because of a lot of the stuff that is going on, you'll get a Democrat that will cross lines. And the North Carolina, you know, clearly, Republican legislature will be able to continue to lead the state, just like we did with Governor Roy Cooper. But you're completely right. So. Whether you like Mark Robinson or hate Mark Robinson, if Mark Robinson was the governor, the nice thing about that would have been he would have done what the legislature would have asked him to do, which is in the real world, what typically should control a state. Now, obviously a governor has some powers and one of those is veto power. You know, to keep things balanced. But but Mark would have been a decent governor. Our current governor is yet to be seen, so we'll see how he performs. But based on some history of him, I have a prediction that I won't share here, but I think will become obvious in about six months.

Reuel Sample: Well, we've got a terrible AG. Our attorney general has already already joined lawsuits against the 14th amendment thing that, uh, that, uh, that Trump has, has laid down, uh, even though the vast majority of the state would probably agree with President Trump about, uh, about the 14th amendment and anchor babies and everything else, but the state of North Carolina is, is is actively joining that lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Harry Knight: That's right. And at the end of the day. And this is just my personal opinion. It's hard to say what Trump's strategy is, but it's clearly obvious that part of his strategy is to make that issue front and foremost on a nationwide basis. I don't expect I don't think he expects that his executive order or any of that will have an immediate effect. He is purposely trying to get that in front of the United States Supreme Court, and he will likely be successful knowing him and his personality. And we'll we'll just have to see how that breaks down. Because if you actually go back and I haven't done specific research on it, but the 14th amendment was written in order to free the slaves, give the slaves, you know, citizenship and give them the full rights of a full citizen, including their children. I don't think at the time that that was written that there was any thoughts whatsoever that that would have applied to somebody that was in our country illegally, that somehow their children would now become citizens. Unfortunately, in the legal world, that's not exactly how the words in that amendment are written. And there actually has been a couple of Supreme Court cases that have fallen on the side of if you were born here, you're a citizen here. So there's actual Supreme Court precedent cases that say that it's probably going to be an interesting legal battle. And at the end of the day, it may require an actual change to the 14th amendment. Now, whether or not you can do that, who knows? Well, you also you also might come up to the case of where the Supreme Court justices decide that the intent wasn't there. And regardless of the words, that's not That's not what they meant and fall on Trump's side. So we're going to see how that falls.

Reuel Sample: Because there's some there's some folks who are taking the other side is that it says that, uh, those parents, the, the they have the parents have to be subject to the laws of the of, of the country. And I guess they're even they're even referring to the writings of some of the folks who wrote that amendment. And that is what they meant is that they specifically just meant the slaves, uh, not not anyone else. But just like the Federalist Papers are not law in this country, neither of those the thoughts of the people who wrote that that amendment are relevant either. So that'll be interesting.

Harry Knight: Yeah, I mean, it's Trump's doing it, right. He is teeing it up for a public battle in front of the United States Supreme Court. And whether that results in the Supreme Court deciding that the intent Was clear enough that you need to read it. The way they read the intent, or whether or not they come down and say, well, you actually need to change the words. I have no way of knowing how they're going to fall on that, but it's going to come down to that eventually.

Reuel Sample: Well, let's yeah. It's good. It's going to be an interesting it's going to be an interesting and it's I'm going to say it's going to be an interesting two years because they really actually have just 18 months to get this stuff done, because then we get back into elections again.

Harry Knight: And the reason Trump may win that one is think about it on a. A scale of perspectives view. The 14th amendment clearly does not allow for children of diplomats. So these are people that are in our country Legally.

Nikki Bascome: Okay.

Harry Knight: And they their children are not citizens of the United States.

Reuel Sample: Exactly.

Harry Knight: So why would somebody think that the converse of that would also be true? You are a person that is clearly in the country, not a citizen. Why that person's child would now become a citizen. So you have there's some very good bases out there in the 14th amendment itself that says that's not what was intended.

Reuel Sample: The sheer numbers of this, the sheer numbers of the problem, uh, is, uh, there are more babies being born to illegal immigrants that there are to legal immigrants. And the numbers are fast approaching, uh, the, uh, the numbers of births to naturalized or American citizens to begin with. It's a It's a huge problem. Go ahead. Nikki.

Nikki Bascome: Or just someone that's visiting. Um, happens to visit and goes into labor and has a baby. It doesn't. I just I didn't have anything major to say. Just.

Reuel Sample: Well, there's there's.

Nikki Bascome: That's mine.

Harry Knight: Yeah. That's right. And I don't know if it's still active or not, but, you know, a decade, 15, 20 years ago, we used to deny entry to pregnant people for that very reason. If you were if you were six months pregnant, you were not allowed entry into the country for that reason. Now they I don't know, it's still the policy or not, but that used to be a policy of the United States.

Reuel Sample: It used to be called. Yeah. It used to be called birth tourism. Is that there? And it was, it was, it was actually. Yeah. It was actually big. Uh, big from the, the, the, the eastern from the Asian countries. Is that, uh. Uh, it was, it was it was a thing. So, um. All right.

Nikki Bascome: Never heard of it.

Reuel Sample: Oh, it was it was huge. Okay, so let's let's move on from the 14th to, uh, DOGE. Uh, Musk's whole thing about government efficiency and, uh, you know, Harry, uh, we're all we're all business people here. We all run businesses, we all run our families and stuff like that. And, uh, well, Nikki, you you have to run your local, your local, uh.

Harry Knight: Talking about Nikki. You run surfer's healing. That's a business, whether you like it or not.

Reuel Sample: That's right.

Nikki Bascome: We surf, children with autism. We have fun.

Harry Knight: That's right. But you still have to. You don't. But if. But if you don't operate that organization such that it has the resources it needs to continue to exist, you can't provide that service that you provide. Right. So.

Nikki Bascome: With integrity. With integrity.

Harry Knight: I didn't say anything about not doing it without integrity.

Nikki Bascome: But if. But but I think that's what the DOGE is going to start making sure of is that if you're running things, you you need to have integrity and, and accountability.

Reuel Sample: And that's the big thing that has happened this week. Two things have come down here. First off, he's basically shuttered USAID. And number two, he's he's basically called out members of the Treasury who are making payments to terrorists and other enemies of the state, without question. Are we going to see more from Elon Musk on this stuff?

Harry Knight: I suspect so. And the USAID one is just a great example. So I am sure and I don't know that much about USAID, but I am sure there is a lot of good that USAID provides. The flip side to that is, is U.S. aid has become an unaccountable bureaucracy that doesn't think it needs to answer to anybody. In fact, they've even publicly stated that they're independent. They do what they want. Well, that's not how this works, folks, because it's all taxpayer funded money. And if the taxpayers don't want it going there, then guess what? You end up where you are today when somebody finally notices and goes, wait a minute, what the heck is all of this? And Elon Musk is one of the perfect guys that will just go, what the heck is this? Because he doesn't care. You're not going to affect his lifestyle. The guy's a billionaire, self-made multi-millionaire. You know, many times over. Do you think you do you think you can threaten that guy? Come on. He's going to do what he what he wants to do.

Nikki Bascome: What? Okay, so the craziest part that I the irony of it all is everyone is talking about how, um, Elon Musk is put in this position, but we're looking into the US aid and as an executive order and starting to dismantle it, but it was actually put in place by an executive order. So so you're looking at it going, um, what was it, a Congress type thing? What was this, a foundation that that really had a whole lot of umph behind it. But it was just an executive order that started it.

Harry Knight: Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. It probably started something similar to that. I do believe that there is some legislative backing behind it at some point, but the current US aid as it exists today. Has run well afoul of whatever that legislative mandate was.

Reuel Sample: I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I saw I saw them this morning. Is the things the things that they're spending on, uh, the $35,000 for an LGBTQ drama in Peru? $10,000 for a transvestite celebration in in Colombia. Uh, it was it was exporting the the culture of the far left at taxpayer expense. It was just horrid what they were doing. And and again, it was overshadowing the good stuff that USAID was, was designed to do. But, Harry, one of the things that this might end up actually forcing our legislatures legislators to to finally start doing is oversight. They've kind of they've kind of they they give their power away to bureaucracies. They give their power away to the courts. And they're finally having to say, no, we're the keepers of the purse strings.

Harry Knight: Yeah. That's right. And that's where I'm 100% sure that it is a target rich environment and probably has feelers every freaking where there is any number of government programs that just run on auto, including programs that exist today that is actually no longer funded by the legislature, but they just continue to operate. And I will bet you dollars to donuts that Trump will figure out where that stuff is and land it right on the front page USA just happens to be the first one. Give him a month. There will be another one, I guarantee you.

Nikki Bascome: Oh five there's going to be five. There's going to be a whole lot. I'm sorry. He he's and everything is going to land on the front page. They're not going to they're not going to let anything, anything that they feel like they can put against him is going to be front page, all of it.

Reuel Sample: Now, one of the great things that's happening is, uh, this whole idea of government accountability in terms of finances is actually taking root here in New Hanover County, as Dane Scalise takes on the DEI programs here in New Hanover County. And he's he's tackling them, not from a culture perspective, but he's tackling them from a financial accountability perspective, which Harry, I think is a great idea.

Harry Knight: Yeah, at the end of the day. And Dane's a great man, I don't know what know what Dane's doing specifically and what his plan is, but he's got a couple of things that's working in his favor right this minute. You've got the four year property tax revaluation coming, which means the county commissioners for approval of the 2526 budget is going to have to adjust the tax rate associated with that property revaluation. Now, I would have thought, you know, just based on my experience, that in the four years we'd be looking at a 35, 40% increase in property values. I'm being told from behind the scenes, from some, from some very credible sources, that that number is looking more like 55 to 60% as an average across the board. So if you take the stance of revenue neutral, which will be the stance that I take. And it's the stance you saw me take four years ago when we tried to do this in order to do revenue neutral. What you're going to have to do is cut waste, fraud and abuse. That equals the amount of whatever inflation was last year. That's just kind of how the math works. So that is your perfect opportunity to declare we're going to go revenue neutral. And then you take out 1,015% I don't know what the exact number is, but if you're going to talk about a 5,560% increase, it's probably going to be a 10 or 15% number for last year, where you're going to have to identify waste, fraud and abuse and other programs that just aren't that valuable and start scaling those budgets back. And anything associated with Dei is a is a perfect target for that, because that's just funding that you can get rid of so that you can go to a revenue neutral budget.

Reuel Sample: And you're right, it is target rich. According to an article published by Jonathan Bridges on the Wilmington Conservative, today, is some of these numbers coming out of the DEI. The diversity office is amazing. The the director of diversity is paid $168,000 a year. And there's other there are there are five other employees on there in there. And only and only $60,000 goes actually into diversity programs. It is an amazing chunk of money that's going into supporting folks who have really their their only job in life is to make other people think less of themselves.

Harry Knight: Yeah, I would I would have to go.

Nikki Bascome: I need a job.

Harry Knight: Yeah, I would have to go and look and see what Jonathan wrote. I haven't seen that, but Jonathan's usually a pretty credible source. I know the numbers as of last week that were publicized, it was like 600,000 and change associated with the program in total, and 450 to 500,000 of that was nothing but salaries.

Reuel Sample: It's it is absolutely. It is absolutely astounding. Uh, the the people are basically getting rich off of this whole DEI thing. And, uh, in the end, nothing is they're not doing anything. It's, it's it's astounding. And, and I think all of this is happening, uh, whether it's USAID, whether it is, uh, the Treasury Department or whether it's here in New Hanover County, it's happening because of this, this absolute disgust of government unaccountability that Elon Musk is, is targeting.

Harry Knight: Yeah, now's the time to do it because you have the attention. So if you're going to do it, now's it. And like I said earlier, because you got to do this budget reconciliation anyway, it's the perfect time to target waste, fraud and abuse. And a lot of those programs would fall into that aspect of it. So you just defund them?

Reuel Sample: Just. Yep. Um, yeah. But at the same time, while the county is considering all of this, with these new evaluations coming out, the city of Wilmington last year voted to raise property taxes by 7%. Uh, and, and yet at the same time, cut their services. Harry, what's going to go on with that? We've got municipals coming on. Is that going to be are we going to be able to, uh, address that in this upcoming election?

Harry Knight: Well, the municipals. The municipals are lining up to.

Nikki Bascome: Be a good answer. Harry. Good answer.

Harry Knight: The municipals are lining up to be interesting. So let's give the 10,000 foot view of what that looks like. And I'm going to talk about Wilmington because I'm not as deep into what the beach towns may look like. But but the Wilmington voting district is primarily Democrat. It's probably 65 / 35. And I'm just guessing. I haven't looked up the numbers. Um, as far as I know, Luke Waddell will rerun. Charlie Rivenbark is not he does have a preferred candidate that I've actually met and know that will be a great candidate, and we should work to get him elected. And I don't know if there is a third Republican out there to take on the current Democrat filling a seat that's up for reelection.

Reuel Sample: Maybe, maybe some maybe somebody in the real estate, uh, that has white hair.

Harry Knight: Nope. Um, and then. And then you have the mayor's race. There is a lot of rumor out there that Bill is not going to run. I personally think that's a load of bull. I think Bill will run. I don't think there's much question about that. And I'll find out for certain next week because he happens to sit on another board with me. But there is a lot of rumors out.

Nikki Bascome: There to us.

Harry Knight: But there's a lot of rumor out there that Barfield will run for mayor and may in fact, even challenge Bill.

Reuel Sample: Really? Two Democrats, two Democrats. So? So there might have to be a Democrat Prime. Well, no, there is no such thing as a primary in the municipals. So it'll be a it'll be a split ticket on the Democrat side.

Harry Knight: That's right. It's a free for all. And if you'll remember, four years ago, you had a left leaning Democrat challenge bill and got within two percentage points.

Reuel Sample: That's right.

Harry Knight: You'll you'll also remember that the current GOP or not the current the previous GOP leadership, it got so close that they got nervous that you were going to have a true left wing liberal, potentially in the mayor's office, because it's a technically nonpartisan race that the the New Hanover County GOP endorsed Bill Saffo as a Democrat in order to make sure that he got through that race and won because we didn't have another Republican challenger. And that created quite a stir in your activist groups with the New Hanover County Republicans. But you got to ask these people the question. So would you rather have Bill Saffo, or would you rather have the guy that's now currently sitting in jail, which is what he's doing, he's in jail that ran against Bill Saffo.

Reuel Sample: Or even the even better question is, is that, uh, the the mayor of Wilmington has a lot less powers than, uh, mayors and other cities across the country. He's he's he's a vote on city council. He's an administrative.

Harry Knight: Vote. He's a he's the head of the city council. And he's one vote out of seven.

Reuel Sample: Right? So if we can't get the mayor's spot, we really, uh, we really also need to focus on those those city council spots as well. And you say that it's. We all say that it's a nonpartisan race, but let's face it, it really is Partisan. There is that there's no R's or D's next to people's names on the ballots, but they are R's and D's. They are Republicans and the Democrats, and people have to be aware of that.

Harry Knight: That's very true. But it's but it's not publicized or ran that way. But yes, in the real world, it's absolutely still political.

Reuel Sample: Okay. Real quickly, I went back to the Wilmington Conservative, uh, Wilmington's newest publication for conservative ideas. And, uh, this is, uh, right to from Jonathan's article, quote, a costly distraction, which is the DEI of $600,000 a year, most of which funds five county employees, including a chief diversity officer, who is the 13th highest paid employee with a salary of $168,000 dollars. He gets paid more than the chief deputy. He gets paid more than the chief deputy, the emergency management director and the fire chief.

Harry Knight: I have no reason to doubt that isn't true, because I'm sure John looked it up on public records.

Reuel Sample: But that's right. After salaries, only about $70,000 goes towards programs and operating expenses.

Harry Knight: That matches what I read a week ago. It's 600 plus budget and 450 500 of that is nothing but salary. So yeah, that all matches with what I think I know.

Reuel Sample: You know, the interesting thing is that go ahead Nikki.

Nikki Bascome: It just makes me beg to ask when when these new programs are coming about in, in the city, county or even at the state and federal level, you have to start looking at if it's a new program. Um, I do a lot of grant writing, and one of the things that you have to have is a measurable outcome, a measurable outcome, and a time bound outcome. And what was their measurable outcome for this, for this program? What we're giving all this money to it. But what what exactly was the measurable outcome. How do you measure the the Dei process. How do you measure that. And and what was their time bound? I just I can't get my head around that. And I don't care if anyone says that's a culture war or not. I just want to know what is the measurable outcome from that. Any anybody.

Harry Knight: That's a good question. I would imagine, and I'm guessing. But but it's an educated guess that one of their. Objectives. Being an employee associated with that is to do exactly what you just said. Was Grant writing to get their hands on the endowment money? Mhm. So you'd have to go look and see how many endowment grants or gifts were given to that organization or written by that organization to find out where all the money is going. Because clearly the money, all of the money clearly isn't coming from the county itself. So I would suspect if you did a deep dive into there, you would find their fingerprints on a lot of endowment.

Nikki Bascome: And speaking of the endowment is so many people are upset over the sale of the hospital, and the endowment fund should go to our school system. So I'd, I would like to, you know, let's put this out there. If anyone is a grant writer or is familiar with grant writing, please help our schools get some of this endowment money. I know that we were able to get the literacy program started and and we were able to get a little bit of money. But why is our whole community not getting behind our schools on this? You know, we've we've got some wonderful talent. Apparently someone in the dye program is great at grant writing and able to get this endowment money. Let's start bringing it back to our schools. That's where we need it. It. Let's stop fooling ourselves.

Harry Knight: Yeah. And that's a good point, Nikki, because that is that that is one of the stated objectives of that endowment is to do things for education. That's one of the authorized purposes of that endowment fund.

Reuel Sample: So, Harry.

Nikki Bascome: I hate to always bring everything back to our schools, but.

Reuel Sample: I know maybe you should run for school board at some point in time.

Nikki Bascome: Nikki mentioned that before. I think I might.

Reuel Sample: Hey, Harry. The other things that's been going on this this week is, uh, foreign policy, including immigration reform. Uh, the numbers are in. Uh, border crossings are down almost 60% in just the 2 or 3 weeks that Trump has been in office. Uh, El Salvador has opened up its prisons. They have said, send us all your all your illegal immigrants who are held in prison. Just pay us like a per person fee and we'll take them in. Uh, Venezuela is taking people back. Uh, this is an amazing an amazing turnaround of things, Harry.

Harry Knight: Well, what I mean, this is going to sound bad, but. But what do you expect when you have somebody that says the border is closed and they mean it.

Nikki Bascome: And they mean it?

Harry Knight: Yeah. And and what the difference is going to be. I mean, it was literally like flipping a switch. Trump comes into office, says the border is closed, fires up a bunch of airplanes and Ice officers, and starts kicking a bunch of convicted criminals out. Everybody else gets the message and they stop coming. And it's not. It's not complicated. It's. The border is closed. And they believe him.

Reuel Sample: Yeah. And it's not just the southern border. You've got the northern border now getting closed. And and Trump and Trump's. It's. That's amazing. And the Trump's tariffs against Canada and Mexico have now been suspended because Canada and Mexico have gotten on to the the idea that they need to secure the border from their side or else face economic consequences. Harry, this is this is amazing stuff.

Harry Knight: Well, the difference is, is you've got a guy in office now that runs it like a business. And whether people like that or not, that's just the way that he's going to run it, because that's what he does. Now, you can agree or disagree with, you know, his philosophy of whether the government ought to be run as a business. But that's what the people voted for overwhelmingly. We haven't had a president get elected on the Republican side that kept the House, kept the Senate well, took the House, kept the Senate or took the Senate, kept the House, won the electoral vote and won the popular vote and won the popular vote. It's been 45 years. Since that's happened.

Reuel Sample: So the question is, is that will Republicans be able to to do it properly, even even today? The Republicans in the in the House, in my opinion, have really screwed things up because they, they, they put they put off a budget bill that should have gone through. The big question is, is that if Republicans govern like Republicans. I maintain that midterms should not be as difficult as as people think they are as they can be. But Republicans got to be smart in these next 18 months.

Harry Knight: Yeah, midterms are always going to be tough, and midterms are always going to be tough when it comes to, you know, the two year cycle after a presidential election. Because, I mean, whether you like it or not, all of this stuff, while the three of us would say is being disruptive in the good direction, you will have a whole bunch of people that will say it's being disruptive in the bad direction. So you'll see blue counties elect more blue people, red counties elect more red people, and then all of those in the middle will decide where the house sits. It's just the nature of politics and it's and it's simply because you've got to get everybody's got to get reelected every two years. I would, I would guess that.

Nikki Bascome: That is a lot, right? Holy cow. And for.

Harry Knight: Our county.

Nikki Bascome: For.

Harry Knight: Our.

Nikki Bascome: State all the time.

Harry Knight: Yeah. And for our county and for and for our state. You've got the additional complication of. We've got a US Senate seat up for reelection in 2026.

Nikki Bascome: And so to run in 2026, you're looking at filing the end of this year. So. That's right. So we're jumping in as soon as municipals are done. You're jumping right into the 2026 filing to run and getting all those gears and.

Harry Knight: Oh that's well, well all of the the federal elections, the Senate seat specifically. Any of those serious candidates are already starting. So now you've got Tillis. Tillis is definitely running. He's already raising money. I'm willing to bet anybody on this, on this podcast or anybody listening a beer that Trump will endorse him before March. Which will cause some consternation behind the scenes to a whole bunch of people. And then you've. And then you've got all the state people, because both our House and our Senate in the state have to rerun every two years. So you're going to have Ted, Charlie and Mike all up for reelection again.

Nikki Bascome: Yep. So I've heard a lot of chatter about people wanting to primary Tillis. So there is someone that's going to run against Tillis.

Harry Knight: There is one. There is one declared candidate already that I know of.

Nikki Bascome: And regardless of what happens between that in that primary, I have heard, and this might be rumor, that Cooper is going for that seat to whomever is going to win that primary with Tillis and this other gentleman that they might be going up against Cooper, would it? Have you heard anything about that?

Harry Knight: That's no rumor. Roy Cooper will run. And unless and unless you like two names. Senator Roy Cooper and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And you're planning on running for North Carolina Senate seat. You better be able to beat Roy Cooper. If you can't beat Roy Cooper, stay the hell out of it.

Reuel Sample: And Roy Cooper has won two statewide elections here in North Carolina.

Harry Knight: Roy Cooper, like him or hate him, will be an absolute monster of a candidate to beat. And the reason? And people are going to hate what I'm about to say. But Roy Cooper will be able to take credit for eight years as a successful Democrat governor in a red state. He basically had jack squat to do with it, because it was our North Carolina legislature that did it all. But at the end of the day, he was the governor. And he will and can take credit. He will be a monster to beat in that Senate race.

Reuel Sample: Which means Republicans have to be smart. We've got to we've got to take this next 3 or 4 months and find a good a good challenger to him. And then who, no matter who wins the primary, Republicans have got to get behind him. There's a lot of lot of folks who don't like Tillis. There's a lot of folks who don't like Tillis. You've got to vote for him. It's, uh. And you just have to vote for him. So it's going to be interesting.

Harry Knight: Those races are underwater. 3d chess. No matter how much a bunch of our activist group think you're playing checkers, you ain't playing checkers.

Reuel Sample: No, actually.

Nikki Bascome: This group's. Come on.

Reuel Sample: They're so.

Nikki Bascome: Sweet.

Reuel Sample: And actually, I was I was thinking of naming this podcast, uh, Harry Knight playing chess in a checkers world. But I decided to go with Knight Court because my wife picked that one out.

Harry Knight: But. But I mean, it's true. I mean, at the end of the day, when you get into a general election, it's what do you want? And we'll talk about the Senate seat specifically. What do you want the United States Senate to look like, because North Carolina is a bellwether county and or North Carolina is a bellwether state. So you might as well go into that thinking that. However, North Carolina falls is how the Senate's going to fall. So you need a Republican senator in 2026 if you don't want Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. It's as simple as that.

Nikki Bascome: Yep. So, um, now let's switch to what's happening locally. We have a Republican convention coming up in March, and we have, um, you were the executive director of our local GOP, and you're not running, and we have two slates. Well, two name slates as of right now. Do you have any advice for anyone going into convention or anyone going into some of these leadership roles. Do you have advice for them going into what sounds like some seriously contentious, um, elections coming up? What what do you have to say to them, Harry?

Harry Knight: 2025 and 2026 are going to be critical elections for this state, as well as the national level because of that Senate seat. And New Hanover County is a complicated county. I will tell you, one of the errors that I think we made in 2024, and I didn't get into this kind of detail in the previous discussion with it. But if you look at what voter registrations look like today in New Hanover County, you will find that the unaffiliated is now closer to 50%, not a third.

Nikki Bascome: It's huge.

Harry Knight: Right? You'll find that the Democrats are slightly ahead of the Republicans. So let's call it 26% Democrats, 25% Republicans and 4,748% unaffiliated. And then you've got 1 or 2% of the mixed bag of other stuff. And I think we don't have the data from the state yet at this level. But I think that unaffiliated vote broke 6535 on the Democrat side, where the data that we were operating on in October, we would have said it was 5050. We were wrong. So I think one of the errors that we made going into November is we chased get out the vote efforts too close to close to the middle. We should have stayed more on the right side, because I think we inadvertently drove Unaffiliateds to the polls that potentially voted Democrat when we should have ignored them. So one of the things that no matter who wins in this, you know, county leadership decision in early March, they need to get into those numbers and understand what those voter demographics are. And they need to recognize that those voter demographics are real, whether they like it or not doesn't matter, because those are the people that are going to come out to vote in 2025 and 2026. And if you're operating off of something different than what that data tells you, you're going to lose.

Reuel Sample: And it really is a data war, isn't it? You have to know the data so that you can you know, how to target your folks because Republicans will vote Republicans. Democrats will vote Democrats. Those folks in the in the middle or the in the the unaffiliated or independents, they are more issue oriented than ever. And if we're not if we're not hitting on the right issues or if we're sending a mixed bag, or as what happened in 2022 where Republicans were just all over the place, we shoot ourselves in the foot all the time. We're going to lose again. And 20, 20, 26 is a huge year for us. And if our leadership doesn't have that.

Harry Knight: One of the very key things that the county party can do is to get out the vote effort. Reuel you were involved a lot of that. Nikki, you are obviously involved in a lot of that from your own campaign level perspective.

Nikki Bascome: But I tried to be.

Harry Knight: You from a strategy standpoint, and this is just strategy. You need as high as possible turnout of Republican voters. So from a turnout perspective, we actually turned out 85, 86% of the Republican voters. You know what we thought were Republican voters, you know, based on the data, which is a very high level. So we did a very good job of that. And that's the reason we were able to hold, you know, both of our North Carolina legislature seats hold our North Carolina Senate seat.

Reuel Sample: Um, and we flipped the DA.

Harry Knight: Yeah. Able to keep Trump at less than 1% loss rate here. But but I think from a local level. Some of the races we could have done a little bit better at. But we were we were making decisions based on. Nikki, yours is a special case. We need a Jack Daniels to talk about it.

Reuel Sample: Nikki is special.

Harry Knight: Harry Daniels to go over your race. But but from a from a, you know, bigger picture perspective.

Nikki Bascome: We probably the Crown Royal at this point.

Harry Knight: Yeah, we probably drove Democrat voters to the polls that we shouldn't have driven based on our belief that we that we were at a 5050 split and not the 6535 that we were at. If I had to do it over again, there's some of those groups that we would that we tried to get out to the polls that I would ignore if I was going to do something different. That's what I would do different.

Reuel Sample: That actually falls in the historic lines of independents. We've they've always broken 60 over 40 Democrats. They've always voted 60. And and we thought that they would not this year or last year that they, they would go 50 / 50. Uh, and we were wrong.

Nikki Bascome: We were wrong. We. We.

Harry Knight: And and and the decisions were made based on data. I mean, we had the data to back it up. It just, you know, people are people, and they're funny animals. We were just wrong. It's wrong. Way more Democrat than we thought it would.

Reuel Sample: That's right. Harry.

Nikki Bascome: So, speaking of convention, it's coming up on March the 3rd. So if you're a Republican, if you are a registered Republican by January, uh, 30th or 31st.

Reuel Sample: January 31st of this year.

Nikki Bascome: 31st, if you're a registered Republican of January 31st, please make plans to be at the Republican County convention on March the 3rd. Registration opens. I want to say February 27th.

Reuel Sample: Is that February? February. February 17th. Registration opens and it That's right. It opens February 17th and it closes, I think, February 27th or whatever. That Thursday is before the before the convention.

Nikki Bascome: Please make plans to be at the convention on March the 3rd. Make sure you register. And I'm going to make sure that Reuel is posting it on our social media so that you know how to register, how much it cost, when to be there. Doors will close at 630 on that day on March the 3rd, so make sure you're in line before 630 so that you can make it into the convention. Um, Harry, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It was a pleasure hearing all of your wisdom.

Harry Knight: I don't know about wisdom, but how about experience? And you get some.

Speaker6: You are special.

Nikki Bascome: So we're going with whatever you want.

Harry Knight: No. It was it was great being on. Um, happy to come back anytime you guys want to.

Reuel Sample: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. Mr. former executive director. Always good to see you. And, uh, I'm going to put you back in the green room, and we'll we'll catch up soon. Thanks again, my friend.

Harry Knight: Thank you guys.

Reuel Sample: Well, Nikki, yet another great, great show. I love having him on. You know, he's just a he's just a wealth of information. I have enjoyed working with him over the last two years. He's just an amazing guy.

Nikki Bascome: You know what? Let's let's get serious here for a minute. I'm a woman. I can be emotional and and during. During my campaign. Um, And so I am just a genuine. My husband tells me all the time, you don't have to be honest with everyone because not everyone, first off appreciates your honesty. And second off, people are going to use your honesty against you. And and so I started listening to my husband a little bit more. And one of the things that he told me was trust Harry. He was like, um, Harry's going to be one of those people. That is 100% honest with you. You're not going to like what he says. And my husband told me that he was like, you may not like what he says, but I guarantee you 100% he's going to be honest with you, and you never question where you stand with him. Yes. Um, and and if that's not someone that you need in your corner, then I don't know what it is that you need. Um. And I expect that of people around me. I'm not going to like what you say. And I might not talk to you for a few days, but. But I want you to be honest. I want you to tell me. Hey, your your fly is down, your your shoes are untied and you are a complete and total menace. But, I mean, isn't that what we expect of people we might not want? Like what they say? But wouldn't you want honesty? I would rather you be honest and to my face than behind my back.

Reuel Sample: Like there are times. There are times we were there in the in the comms team. And the comms team takes a lot of a lot of heat from a variety of ways, is that people don't like us.

Reuel Sample: Because we're trying to get a message out, we're trying to do all this stuff, and we're they're trying we're we're getting hit from different sides, and we're trying to figure out what to do. And, and, uh, and Harry would walk in the room and just remind us all that we're supposed to be the adults in the room and and just go forward and good luck. But, uh, it was always. That's not water. Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker6: Oh. I'm sorry. I grabbed the wrong one.

Nikki Bascome: I did say we were switching to Crown Royal. Right? So.

Reuel Sample: Uh, and, uh, but I'm also honored to, uh, to have Harry as a friend. And, uh, there's been times where, uh, we've texted back and forth for quite a while on, on everything. So it's it's great to have him on board. So, uh, Nikki, let's move to our before we move to our trivia, is that just want to remind everybody that, uh, please, like and subscribe, uh, so that, uh, you can see us on all of your major. Uh, podcast platforms. We are on Facebook, we're on YouTube, we're on Rumble. We're on Truth Social. Uh, we're out there, so everywhere. We are everywhere. Except we're not on blue sky. And. And the reason why we're not on blue sky is wee wee. Yeah. Well, you know, we realized that if we go on blue Sky, the, uh, the, the liberals will have nowhere else to run and they'll be out there in the cold. So we let them have blue sky, uh, you know, as their safe space. So, uh. Yeah, we'll do that so, Nikki, being nice. We're being nice. Nice.

Reuel Sample: So. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh. So, Nikki, uh, last time we talked about, uh, our trivia, uh, the trivia question was.

Nikki Bascome: When did New Hanover County become its own county? Um, which is a trick question. Did we have any responses? I don't think we did.

Speaker6: I didn't see any responses.

Nikki Bascome: These people. Okay. So I, I hope that everyone starts responding to these because I'm going to start having some prizes. But anyway, it's a trick question, because New Hanover County became its own county in 1729, but it wasn't called a county. It was called a precinct. Um, so 1729 and it became a precinct of bath, and it was called the House of Hanover in 1729.

Reuel Sample: Wow.

Nikki Bascome: Little known facts.

Reuel Sample: Little known facts.

Nikki Bascome: So I know. And so, um, in 17 it was 1734. Bladen and Onslow County became their own precinct from New Hanover. So that's when they separated from New Hanover. So our question is going to be in what year did they actually become counties and not precincts anymore?

Reuel Sample: Now, if you go on our on our website. Down at the bottom of each page, there's a little comment section, and you can leave your answers there or your your reaction to our podcast there. You can leave your reaction on Facebook or, or YouTube or Rumble. We would really, really love to hear from you. Uh, and also, don't forget to pick up your swag at the Wilmington Conservative.

Reuel Sample: We've got t shirts and mugs and everything else. So please consider getting all that. Now Nikki is not going to be here next week. So we will have a guest. We will have a guest host with us next week who will keep that because we're we're working on it. But it's going to be special. It's it's going to be in this day and age of Trump, we can say it's going to be huge. Uh, and uh, it's going to be huge. It's going to be the greatest big.

Nikki Bascome: You have to be able to switch from vodka to Crown Royal, depending on how the podcast is going. Um, and you got to and you have to remember your trivia question, or you can text message rule in the middle of your podcast and ask, did we have a trivia question? And and maybe he'll tell you.

Reuel Sample: But we do have we do have a really great guest next week. It's she is the executive director of the good Shepherd House here in in Wilmington. Yeah. It's going to be a great it's going to be a great show. So, uh, Nikki, good talking with you. Uh, folks, uh, for this has been the Nikki and Rule podcast experience. I'm Reuel Sample.

Nikki Bascome: And I think I'm Nikki Bascom. We'll figure it out later.

Reuel Sample: It depends on how many of those drinks that she's had before and during our podcast. Thanks for thanks for joining us.

Reuel Sample: Have a great night, everyone.

Download Podcast:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/2437709/episodes/16569075-knight-court-conversation-with-harry-knight.mp3?download=true

Harry Knight grew up in West Virginia on a small family farm graduating from High School in 1981 and continuing on to graduate from West Virginia University’s College of Engineering in 1985.

Harry began his corporate career in Upstate NY at the country’s premier Naval Nuclear Power Research and Training Facility serving in roles both as training personnel and operating Naval Nuclear Power Plants. In addition to these roles Harry managing the Dept. of Energy’s largest highly enriched spent nuclear fuel research facility.

In the spring of 2000, he transferred to his current home in Wilmington NC, serving in senior management roles of Environmental, Health & Safety including Nuclear Facility Security, International transportation/logistics of hazardous materials and engineering upgrades of Reactor Plant Internal Components for GE Commercial Nuclear Power division. 

Harry retired early from the corporate world in 2013 starting his own small real estate investment and renovation company.  Harry and his family, wife Kathy, also an Intracoastal Realty Agent, and daughter Kady, are active members of the American Saddlebred Horse Industry including qualifying for and competing in the World’s Championship Horse Show. 

Bringing a wealth of real world experience, contacts and resources to the Real Estate Industry, Harry is proud to be associated with Intracoastal Realty Co. He has not forgotten his small town roots and constantly demonstrates the values of honesty, fair play, caring for one another and hard work. All these coupled with his area knowledge and real estate experience make Harry an outstanding choice as your real estate agent and trusted advisor.