Local News Roundup: County Commission approves $10 million for Discovery Place Nature; Dante Anderson is new mayor pro tem; Patrick McHenry not seeking re-election; CMS approves budget

On the next Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup…

More plans are ahead to replace Charlotte’s Discovery Place Nature Museum in Freedom Park — with a hefty price tag. We’ll hear about the contentious debate that led to county commissioners agreeing to pay $10 million more towards the museum, and why that still may not be enough.

Dante Anderson is the new mayor pro tem after a contentious debate at City Council this week. We’ll talk about the vote.

We learned this week that North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry will not run for re-election. We’ll discuss what this might do to the political picture in the state.

We’re near the end of the second academic quarter for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, but the school board this week approved the budget for the current school year. We’ll discuss the reasons for the delay.

Most North Carolina Democrats voted in favor of an antisemitism resolution this week. We’ll talk about what the resolution says and who voted.

And former North Carolina Senator Fountain Odom has died. We’ll have a remembrance.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and more, on this week’s Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup.

GUESTS:

Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s executive producer for investigations & chief investigative reporter
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”
Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter
Ann Doss Helms, WFAE education reporter

Does Speaker Johnson realize some of his best constituents are Black?

“Some of my best friends are Black” is a phrase that has become cliché, and deservedly so, since it is essentially a dodge. Folks uttering those words are looking for a free pass, credit for knowing what it means to be Black in America without doing the work.

By now, most people know that proximity does not equal understanding.

Most, but not all.

The new speaker of the House, GOP Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has been known to showcase the Black child in his family’s life over two decades, usually when his empathy on matters of race needs a boost. Johnson controls the narrative. He doesn’t want to infringe on the privacy of a now-grown man with a family, he says, so he won’t go into too much detail.

Just enough, though, to show he gets it.

I have nothing against any person of any race who wants to foster, mentor or teach any young person in need of guidance. I applaud the realization that all parties on both sides of such relationships have opportunities to learn and grow. At the same time, I think it’s fair that reporters question just how formal the relationship between congressman and child has been, and why this child is conspicuously missing from family biographies and photographs.

I also wonder about any story cut from the same cloth as “The Blind Side,” with its simple tale of a wealthy white family “adopting” a deprived Black child, rescuing him from an ignoble fate and smoothing his way to football glory in college and the pros. That “just like a movie” story, which has been cited by Johnson as a template, was far more complicated, as the world has come to learn.

Johnson’s tale seems to be similar in many ways, with one particular problem common to these kinds of inspirational parables. They almost always place the white benefactor front and center, instead of the person who was a person before being molded by a Good Samaritan.

Speaker mayhem: When the rules are rigged, it breeds chaos

Just think what you would do if you got the chance to rig the rules in order to win the game every time. Wouldn’t you be tempted? Well, never let it be said that a politician with a seat in Congress let that opportunity roll by. When they have the power to pick their voters instead of letting voters pick them, few can resist.

However, that presents a problem.

What you eventually get is the chaos Americans watched before a slim majority of House Republicans in a closed-door vote chose Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana as their fourth nominee for speaker in three weeks before all GOP members, no matter how reluctantly, voted in favor of his ascension Wednesday on the House floor. Yet, the drama may be only beginning on the worst reality show ever. There is a government shutdown to avert next month and aid packages ready to award to allied countries at war.

For the House members who have been gumming up the works — the works being democracy — it doesn’t matter one bit. There will be no self-reflection or consequences because safely carved districts make most House members untouchable, and actually encourage bad behavior.

House Republicans wanted all the control, while doing none of the real work

In his pre-Sundance, Hollywood golden boy, leading man days, Robert Redford starred in a cynical, sometimes comical take on the world of political campaigns — and even if you haven’t seen the film, you know its memorable final line.

In 1972’s “The Candidate,” Redford, who plays “The Candidate,” sheds authenticity and conviction as he begins to taste a U.S. Senate seat. And after — spoiler alert — he wins, the senator-elect interrupts the triumphant, climactic moment, corners the campaign manager who has shepherded his unlikely ascent, and asks, panic rising in his voice: “What do we do now?”

Jacket or no jacket, Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, bless his heart, is never going to remind anyone of Robert Redford — except that both have a shockingly skimpy record of legislative achievements.

But more and more, as I watched the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives try — and fail — to bring just a semblance of order to its caucus, that scene read as documentary, predicting party members so obsessed with winning the prize, they had no interest in nor inclination to figure out why they wanted it in the first place or what to do if they actually got it.

In Jordan’s case, I wondered about a candidate whose authenticity and conviction were always kind of shaky. Congressman, why would you want to be in charge of a body you always seemed more comfortable attacking, when you served as the first chair of the conservative Freedom Caucus — lobbing fireworks as an outsider — or treated a subpoena from a bipartisan committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection like trash?

You can’t paper over the lack of a reasonable and positive plan that might require compromise by raising the decibel level. And boy, does Jordan yell a lot, usually while interrupting anyone trying to answer one of his convoluted “gotcha” questions during hearings of the Judiciary Committee that he chairs.

Maybe Jordan just wanted to bang the gavel over and over again, or open up yet another Hunter Biden impeachment inquiry.

Some would say Jordan disqualified himself from any leadership post in this American democracy when he decided, after the Jan. 6 riot that endangered him and his colleagues, to join a majority of the House GOP caucus in rejecting President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.

You can count me among the some, scared as I would be of what he might do if a similarly close 2024 election hinges on the integrity, patriotism and courage of a Speaker Jordan, who has been sketchy about his communications with former President Donald Trump about the 2020 election. Even now, he has not brought himself to definitively saying Trump lost.

Jordan’s power grab did not go as planned. Who could have predicted that his bullying tactics — demonizing skeptical GOP House members and enlisting online and on-air supporters to harass opponents — would have had the opposite effect?

The scenario, however, makes perfect sense for the party of Donald Trump. No Plan B? No problem. Trump wanted to be president so he could be president, in the same way House Republicans craved control but had no interest in doing the work, as long as it would create a meme, sound bite or fundraising appeal.

In dangerous times, that’s dangerous.

With scenes of death and devastation in Israel and Gaza, what wisdom does Trump offer? Well, the “rigged election” of 2020 is to blame, in his telling, as grotesque as that clearly sounds.

Local News Roundup: NC’s Patrick McHenry is interim Speaker of the House; CMPD and City Council talk ‘quality of life’ offenses; City works on response about CATS changes

In the aftermath of the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, North Carolina’s Patrick McHenry of Lincoln County, is now the interim House Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. We’ll talk about the role North Carolina’s delegates played in this week’s historical political vote.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police told City Council this week that it supports making offenses like public drinking and defecation arrest-able offenses. However City Council decided against that move. We’ll update what was said.

Charlotte Councilman Ed Driggs said on Monday the city is working to figure out a response to a letter sent by the mayors of Mecklenburg County towns who want to have a greater say in how Charlotte’s transit system is run. We’ll recap.

And in local sports, the Panthers continue their losing streak and go 0-4, Charlotte FC needs all wins in their final games to make the playoffs, and someone is once again whispering that Major League Baseball could come to North Carolina.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and more, on the Charlotte Talks local news roundup.
Guests:

Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal
Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s executive producer for Investigations & chief investigative reporter
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”
Ely Portillo, senior editor at WFAE News

Is this the leadership America deserves? Seriously?

“I think there’s some reason to doubt whether or not Matt Gaetz is serious,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, Republican from South Dakota.

Talk about an understatement. When a member of your own party verbally spanks you, and another characterizes your immediate fundraising following Tuesday’s congressional chaos as “disgusting,” as Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana made a point of doing, self-reflection might be a logical reaction.

But that is not what drives Gaetz, the Florida Republican who definitely got what he wanted — time in the spotlight and, yes, the ouster of now former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.

What do Americans think, the people who don’t much care about the latest congressional preening, not when they came so very close to losing needed food aid, veteran counseling, education funding, access to parks and museums and all the meaningful and essential things in jeopardy when the government shuts down?

Well, of course some of those with worries about everything from the economy to the border who gave the GOP their current majority, albeit a sliver of one, might be pleased with the mess — as long as Gaetz and his tiny cohort disrupt. But what about those who wanted change, but not the drama of representatives such as Gaetz — and Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., George Santos, R-N.Y., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo?

The Fall of Kevin McCarthy: With a party like this, who needs an opposition?

After an arduous series of votes to get the job, it only took one vote to remove Kevin McCarthy from his position as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Guest: Todd Zwillich, deputy Washington bureau chief, VICE News

When being kicked out of a theater is about more than bad manners

I’m not sure why the story of Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Republican from Colorado, getting escorted out of a Denver stage performance of “Beetlejuice” bothers me, and a lot of other people, so much. It’s just a play, right? Musical entertainment. What’s a little raucous behavior when one is having fun?

After all, what did she really do — besides vape in front of a pregnant woman, sing along with the cast, take flash pictures, indulge in a little slap-and-tickle with her date, give the usher the finger and pull the “do you know who I am” card. Plus, followed it up with a chaser of a canned apology.

Well, maybe it was a bit over the top.

Local News Roundup: How did NC delegation vote in debt ceiling deal? Protest over CMS boundaries; video released of CATS bus shooting; County narrowly approves CMS bond request

How did North Carolina’s congressional delegation vote on the debt ceiling deal?

The controversy surrounding the southern Mecklenburg County Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools boundary changes continues as students and parents form a human chain in protest of the proposed changes in boundaries in that part of the district.

Video released this week shows the moment when a Charlotte Area Transit System driver and a passenger shot at each other on a moving bus last month, showing the argument that happened leading up to the shooting.

Charlotte Fire officials are discussing new potential fire-prevention requirements at construction sites after a massive, deadly fire at an apartment building under construction in SouthPark last month.

And Mecklenburg County Commissioners are split on CMS’ request for a $2.5 billion bond package, which narrowly won approval in the budget straw vote this week.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and more, on the Charlotte Talks local news roundup.

GUESTS:

Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”
Hunter Saenz, WSOC-TV Reporter
Ely Portillo, Senior Editor at WFAE News

Why a lost election left Adam Frisch (and his son) optimistic

The announcement this week that Republican Lauren Boebert had won her race, and would be heading back to Washington to represent Colorado’s 3rd District in the House, hardly came as a surprise to her Democratic opponent. The surprise is the optimism of Adam Frisch — about Colorado, America and politics — after coming so close (a 546-vote margin close) to upending predictions and winning the seat.

“We’re all very proud of how well we ran and the way that we did it,” he said when I spoke with him on a Zoom call last week. “We took the high road throughout the whole journey, and that resonated with a lot of people.”

Frisch had already conceded before the recount, citing Colorado’s “very, very strong election laws” and “very high level of election integrity” and finding comfort in that. Based on her well-documented mistrust of government, I doubt Boebert would have accepted defeat quite so easily.

He is human, so “as great as the moral victory is or was,” Frisch said, “it certainly would have been better to have a victory victory.” But I believe Frisch when he says the 20,000-plus miles he traveled during his campaign were more than worthwhile. That’s because I had already met the other person on our call, his frequent companion in his trips throughout the district, the candidate’s 16-year-old son, Felix Frisch.

That any journalist covering politics, culture and race might occasionally succumb to cynicism will come as a revelation to exactly no one. One remedy for me turned out to be teaching a group of high school juniors and seniors and incoming college freshmen for two weeks, as I did this past summer, in a School of The New York Times Summer Academy course in political commentary. Felix was one of the students.

We explored Washington, D.C., including stops at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and, on an early excursion, the memorial to third president Thomas Jefferson, where we had a chance to consider the complicated legacy of one of America’s Founding Fathers.

On the walk back to the Metro on what must have been one of the hottest days of the summer, Felix told me he had been campaigning for and with his father, traveling the Colorado district to convince voters that Adam Frisch would represent their needs better than incumbent Lauren Boebert would.

I listened as he spoke excitedly of meeting voters in corners of the district few candidates had taken note of, and I thought to myself, “Too bad your dad doesn’t have a chance.”

But though it’s natural for any son to think his dad can do anything, Felix was on to something.

The Boebert I covered at the North Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Salt & Light Conference in September was ripe for a challenge, with her emphasis on grievance as she cast herself as victim in a kind of holy war.

Adam Frisch thought so too.