More Crooked Than a Dog's Hind Leg

When we last checked in on political doings in the Carolinas, UN Ambassador-to-be Nikki Haley was the target of both unseemly rumors and flat out racism. In the interim, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) revealed himself as the grossest kind of power-over-principle hypocrite and/or victim of some serious Russian blackmail in his groveling subservience to the President*.

North Carolina, it seems, was tired of the Palmetto State getting all the press.

Republican Mark Harris won a U.S. Congressional seat in North Carolina's 9th District in 2018, defeating Democratic challenger Dan McCready by a razor-thin 905-vote margin. The district, which is just north of Charlotte, has been reliably Republican, though it was redrawn in 2016 because courts determined that North Carolina is one of the most gerrymandered clusterfucks in modern American politics.

Shortly after McCready conceded, and before Harris had an opportunity to be sworn in, rumors began to swirl about some honest to goodness voter fraud. As in, Harris campaign representatives went to the homes of people expected to vote the Democratic ticket (mostly older African Americans) posing as poll representatives, took their ballots claiming that they would take them to be cast, and threw them away. Not garden-variety bullshit, never-happens voter fraud claimed by the President* and his minions, but actual Boss Hogg up-to-no-good chicanery.

The fraud was investigated by the North Carolina Board of Elections, which ruled on February 21 that the election results would be voided and a new election held in September.

This is where it gets really fun.

Harris has declined to run in the reelection, citing health issues, which are loosely translated as 'I'm a buffoon who broke a lot of laws and I really don't want to go to jail so I'm bowing out, which is best for everyone, really'. Harris' own son testified that the candidate was aware of irregularities in the 2016 election, and warned him that people in his campaign might be up to no good. In stepping away from the race, Harris did offer an endorsement, tapping shooting range owner Stony Rushing as the GOP candidate best positioned to win.

The Washington Post offered a headline that better paints a picture of Rushing than I ever could: "Gun enthusiast and real-life ‘Boss Hogg’ seizes GOP mantle in congressional race tainted by fraud."

Real. Life. Boss. Hogg.

That's gotta be just a colorful metaphor, no?

No.

Here's our hero in the flesh:

Seems Rushing isn't just a gun enthusiast. He's a damn Sorrell Booke impersonator, right down to his buddy Roscoe, who has a dog named Flash. (That part might not be true.)

Goddamn, North Carolina. You're a daisy. A fucked-up, insane, retrograde, racist, bass-ackward daisy. Hope the future arrives soon.