A Dead Bear, Slashed Tires and More Dirty Election Moves in N.C.

by James Parks, Oct 22, 2008

Across the country, some Republicans are engaging in the tired tactics of personal attacks and attempts to intimidate voters—especially in North Carolina recently.

According to James Andrews, president of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, dirty tricks are off the scale this election because Sen. Barack Obama’s message about the economy has taken hold in the Tarheel State. Says Andrews:

The Republicans are making every effort to use the same tactics of intimidation, misinformation and outright lies. But they’re not going to trick us. Folks are not going to buy it this time. People have been hurt by the economy. They’re focused and concerned about their jobs and what’s going to happen to their health care and if they can keep their homes. So those distractions they’ve used before won’t work this time.

Consider some of the incidents that have taken place in the state in the past week.

At Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, seven students reportedly dumped a dead bear cub with Obama campaign signs attached to its head at the main entrance to the campus. While school officials claimed the action was a “prank,” writers to the Asheville Citizen-Times were clear about what happened.  

For example, Sadiesmom22 writes:

 I am a McCain supporter, but this was clearly an anti-Obama statement….To call this a prank is ridiculous. It was criminal and cruel and quite disgusting, too.  

Another writer, standup4change, is appalled at the animal cruelty involved:

Animal cruelty is exactly what prompted me to not vote Republican as I had planned to. I just can’t vote for [Sarah] Palin….Her cruelty to animals in Alaska with the aerial gun killings is just too much.”

In an editorial, the Citizen-Times says the McCain campaign is not doing enough to stop such actions:

It’s unfair to lay such reprehensible behavior at the feet of the McCain campaign. But the campaign needs to do more to quell the wrath increasingly in evidence at town hall meetings and other rallies featuring Palin and/or McCain as polls show the ticket falling behind.

The rhetoric McCain and especially Palin use as they attack Obama does little to discourage it.

This incident came just days after U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.) introduced McCain at a rally in Concord on Saturday, claiming liberals “hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.”

Hayes, who is locked in a tough battle for re-election, at first denied he made the comment. But when he was confronted with an audiotape of the comments, he said “it came out wrong.” Yeah. Right.

Hayes and McCain, it seems, would rather castigate “liberals” than talk about the fact that more than 6,000 textile workers, many of them in Hayes’ district, lost their jobs when Pillowtex shut its doors in 2003. At the time Pillowtex CEO Michael Gannaway blamed the closures on unfair competition from cheap imports.     

McCain and Hayes have supported giving tax breaks to companies that move jobs offshore and backed trade agreements that put U.S, companies at a disadvantage. In fact, Hayes cast the deciding vote in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Hayes’s Democratic opponent, former teacher and textile worker Larry Kissell, supports helping working families rise above the poverty line, instead of pushing millions more working families down the economic ladder while giving targeted tax breaks to the wealthy. He also opposes bad trade deals such as CAFTA. In 2006, Kissell came within about 350 votes of beating Hayes.

Pam Spaulding reports that in Fayetteville, vandals slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside an Obama rally on Sunday. But that did not deter voters. She quotes Lynne Steenstra, an Obama supporter who paid $120 to get new tires, who says:

It hasn’t deterred us one bit. It has only encouraged us more. I just hope whoever did this pays the price.

After the rally in Fayetteville, the Washington Times reports, a group of loud and angry protesters shouted and mocked voters at an early voting polling place as they walked in. Among their taunts was one complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.  

But the bottom line, Andrews says, is that workers are determined to make a difference this time. He relates what a union member told him yesterday at a glass plant in Henderson, N.C., a conservative area on the Virginia border.

We [union members] are together on this one. We’re all in a hole because of the economy, and we all gotta get out of this hole.

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