Early Voting Starts April 19th For NC Primary

Tomorrow is the first day of early voting for the May Primary in North Carolina. The number of locations in a county will vary by both date and county. For example, in Buncombe County (Asheville area), there will be only one site available for early voting until Saturday, April 28th, when it expands to six locations. You can go to the NC State Board of Elections to find the locations for one-stop early voting in your county.

In anticipation of the opening of the early voting period, Grass Roots North Carolina has released their Remember in November candidate evaluations. They have both a sort by district and a sort by name file. Personally, I find the sort by district to be more helpful. The candidate evaluations are only for the state legislature and for Congress.

As GRNC notes, these are evaluations and not endorsements.

GRNC’s “Remember in November” project estimates candidates’ views on “assault weapons,” concealed handguns, gun storage laws, gun rationing, other gun control and the Second Amendment. THE EVALUATIONS HEREIN ARE NOT ENDORSEMENTS. We issued surveys first to a control group of gun owners and then to candidates. Next, we measured how closely each candidate’s views and voting record (if available) agree with the control group. Pay more attention to voting records than survey results unless, of course, you believe politicians never lie.

Also as a reminder, just because a candidate has “R” after his or her name, it doesn’t mean he or she supports gun rights. I have seen a snippet of a debate between Michelle C. Lexo and Tom McInnis regarding firearm issues. They are running for the Republican nomination in the NC Senate 25th District (Anson, Moore, Richmond, and Scotland Counties). Ms. Lexo says we need to look at “high capacity magazines” because she isn’t sure “they are needed”. “Other than that”, she says she supports the Second Amendment. Her opponent, Sen. Tom McInnis, replied “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”.  I’ll let you decide who you’d rather have defending your firearm rights.

Grass Roots North Carolina Candidate Evaluations

Grass Roots North Carolina has released their candidate evaluations for their “Remember in November” project. The full list can be found here and includes national, statewide, congressional, and NC House and Senate races.

The GRNC Political Victory Fund endorsements will be released on October 15th.

The GRNC candidate evaluations for statewide offices and congressional races can be seen below. To make them more readable, I have taken the liberty of reformatting the GRNC report.

Candidate Party Survey Vote Other Evaluation
Statewide
Races
Governor
Howe L 98 ****
McCrory R 86 ***
Dalton D NR 53 90 *
Lt Gov Forest R 96 ****
Coleman D NR 67 65 *
US House
1st Holloman L 98 ****
Butterfield D NR 50 0
Dilauro R NR 0
2nd Irving L 98 ****
Ellmers R 87 100 100 ****
Wilkins D NR 0
3rd Jones R 100 97 98 ****
Anderson D NR 0
4th D’Annunzio R 100 ****
Price D NR 0 28 0
5th Foxx R 100 100 98 ****
Motsinger D NR 0
6th Coble R 90 100 98 ****
Foriest D NR 80 ***
7th Rouzer R NR 100 100 ****
McIntyre D NR 74 90 **
8th Hudson R 100 ****
Kissell D NR 33 100 0
9th Pittenger R 91 100 95 ****
Campbell L NR 0
Roberts D NR 0
10th McHenry R 100 100 98 ****
Keever D NR 0 0
11th Meadows R 100 ****
Rogers D NR 0
12th Brosch R NR 0
Watt D NR 19 46 0
13th Holding R 95 ****
Malone D NR 0

From GRNC’s explanation of how to read their evaluations:

GRNC’s “Remember in November” project estimates candidates’ views on “assault weapons,” concealed handguns, gun storage laws, gun rationing, and the Second Amendment. THE EVALUATIONS HEREIN ARE NOT ENDORSEMENTS. We issued surveys first to a control group of gun owners and then to candidates. Next, we measured how closely each candidate’s views and voting record (if available) agree with the control group.  Pay more attention to voting records than survey results unless, of course, you believe politicians never lie.


“SURVEY”: The percentages listed depict agreement between a given candidate and our control group (e.g. an “80” under the “Survey” section means 80% of the candidate’s answers agreed with the Conservative Gun Owners). “NR” means the candidate failed to return the survey.


“VOTE”: Votes are more accurate than surveys and should be given more attention in determining candidate stance. Where available, this column indicates how often candidates’ votes agree with the control group of gun owners (e.g. a “90” under “Voting Record” indicates candidate’s voting record agrees 90% of the time with what was desired by control group).


“OTHER”: Derived from evaluations by other gun groups, bill sponsorship, etc.


“EVAL”: The evaluation is not a rating. It estimates percentage of time candidate is expected to agree with the Conservative Gun Owners. The maximum **** candidate tends to agree with conservative gun owners at least 90% of the time.


**** Expected to agree with conservative gun owners on at least 90% of gun issues
*** Expected to agree with conservative gun owners on at least 80% of gun issues
** Expected to agree with conservative gun owners on at least 70% of gun issues
* Expected to agree with conservative gun owners on at least 60% of gun issues

0 Expected to agree with conservative gun owners on less than 60% of gun issues or else candidate failed to return survey & insufficient information exists to make evaluation. Is he / she hiding something?

NRA Will Score Contempt Vote On Holder

In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Chris Cox of the NRA-ILA indicated that the NRA will be using the vote on the contempt citation for Eric Holder to evaluate candidates. They also said that they support the contempt citation for Holder.

The American people – including millions of NRA members and tens of millions of NRA supporters – deserve the truth about these issues, and we will support any effort that leads us to that truth. This is an issue of utmost seriousness and the NRA will consider this vote in future candidate evaluations.