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North Mecklenburg voters are getting a new political mailer.
Progressive Super PAC, Majority Rising, sent a piece that features a photo of Republican state House candidate Melinda Bales who is running in a toss-up district.
But the mailer mostly talks about Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor. It quotes some of the things Robinson has said about school shooting victims — “spoiled little bastards” — and asks “So why does Melinda Bales stand with him and his dangerous agenda?”
Democratic consultant Thomas Mills, who writes a political column, said recently: “Democrats would be wise to start wrapping the rest of the Council of State and judicial candidates around Robinson. They chose him to be the GOP standard bearer and now they should be forced to defend him.”
It’s a smart strategy. And fair.
Republicans are playing that game, too, however.
The N.C. Republican Party is sending hard-hitting mailers — nasty mailers — about two Democratic state House candidates in swing Mecklenburg districts.
One target is Nicole Sidman, who is running against Republican Tricia Cotham for District 105.
The other is against Beth Helfrich, who is Bales’ opponent in District 98.
One mail piece against Sidman says she is “backed by radicals bent on creating havoc…who…want to legalize prostitution and hardcore drugs like heroin and meth.”
One side of the mailer shows Sidman in front of a photo of a syringe and various pills.
If you are a Democrat, the mailer probably seems ... revolting.
Stephen Wiley, caucus director for the state’s House Republicans, said that language comes not from an obscure organization but from the North Carolina Democratic Party platform. The platform says a “concerted review of all laws should be conducted to remove discriminatory practices, including decriminalizing sex work, gambling, homelessness, and narcotics use.”
The party platform’s position on decriminalization
To be clear, the platform does not call for legalization — but decriminalization. That means law enforcement could still write someone a citation for, say, smoking crack cocaine in public. But they wouldn’t have the power to arrest them. (We will discuss this more below.)
And the spirit of the proposal is to reduce what Democrats see as inequalities in the justice system, with low-income people and minorities being arrested at greater rates than whites.
Whatever the intent, Wiley said: “We’re just highlighting what their own party platform says. So if they don’t like what’s on there, they shouldn’t have supported the party platform.”
Sidman said the mailer is not serious, and that issues about prostitution and drugs are “not what I’m not hearing about at the door and reflected about anything I have ever said or my policies.”
The mailer against Helfrich goes far beyond what’s said about Sidman.
It says Helfrich supports legalizing prostitution and hard drugs. Wiley said he made that leap because Helfrich sought out and won the endorsement of the state Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, which also calls for decriminalization. She then celebrated the endorsement with a post on Instagram.
Helfrich said that families who have experienced addiction and overdose deserve better and calls the mailer a scare tactic to manipulate voters.
“They are a distraction,” Helfrich said of the pieces. “I’m not running to legalize drugs and prostitution, and it’s ridiculous to say so. I’m running to restore and protect reproductive freedom, fund our public schools and advocate for the needs of our district.”
A platform head-scratcher
Party platforms are mostly ignored. Many candidates probably never read them (and I’d wager average voters never do).
They are documents with little upside —,but as the GOP is demonstrating, plenty of downside.
The national Democratic Party’s 2024 platform talks about fighting opioids and says “no one should be in jail for using or possessing marijuana.” It doesn’t talk about decriminalizing hard drugs or prostitution.
So why is the North Carolina Democratic Party — in a pinkish swing state that’s more conservative than the nation overall — going farther than the national party?
Another question: Should the state party be calling for decriminalization of narcotics, considering what has happened on the West Coast since the pandemic?
Here’s how National Public Radio summed up Oregon’s move in 2020 to decriminalize the use of hard drugs:
In 2020, voters in Oregon overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. The initiative was accompanied by new investments in addiction treatment and support services. The move was hailed by national drug reform advocates, who've long condemned the so-called war on drugs as a self-defeating policy that filled prisons, disproportionately harmed the poor and communities of color, and failed to deter drug use.
Four years later, Oregon’s experiment had gone awry. While Oregon officials didn’t want to send people to jail for using hard drugs, they found that not having the power to arrest users was a big problem.
Here’s how the New York Times described what happened next, in 2024:
But after a deluge of overdose deaths and frequent chaos in the streets of Portland, Gov. Tina Kotek signed into law on Monday a measure to restore criminal penalties for drug possession. It brought to an end a key portion of one of the nation’s most ambitious attempts to find alternatives other than jail for drug users, embodied in a 2020 voter initiative known as Measure 100.
The rollback has supporters among a wide range of public officials, including Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland, who found himself presiding over a series of crises since taking office in 2016. They included surging unsheltered homelessness, turbulent street protests, an exodus of downtown businesses, record numbers of homicides, the rapid spread of fentanyl and soaring overdose deaths.
California has undertaken a similar rollback of laissez-faire attitudes toward drugs and homelessness.
Closer to home, the Charlotte City Council — in which Democrats control 9 of 11 seats — voted this year to reinstate criminal penalties for quality of life issues such as public drinking, public urination and public defecation. Charlotte police said they needed the power to arrest people as a last-resort way to stop repeat offenders.
Position on the platform
In interviews last week, WFAE asked Sidman and Helfrich whether they support decriminalizing prostitution and narcotics. The conversation mostly focused on drugs.
There was not a clear yes or no answer.
Sidman said we need a holistic approach and that “study after study shows that just throwing people who have drug addiction into jail doesn’t help them and doesn’t stop the problem. We need to stop the people who are selling the drugs, stop the people who are bringing in the drugs ... and not focus on criminalizing people who need our help.”
Helfrich said that she wants “common sense reform.”
“Of course there is a place for law enforcement and there is also an urgent need for a humane and holistic approach to help people recover. This is the strategy currently underway in Mecklenburg County and I am committed to supporting those efforts,” she said.
Running from Project 2025
Speaking of platforms that do more harm than good ...
Democrats made hay at their convention over the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which is a right-wing blueprint for expanding presidential powers should Donald Trump win a second term.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, despite many of its authors having worked for him in his first administration.
The N.C. Republican Party apparently sees Project 2025 as a liability. It’s put out at least two mailers that devote space to Trump disavowing the document.
