Home » Posts tagged 'Richard Burr'
Tag Archives: Richard Burr
U.S. Senate race, Madison Cawthorn’s fate on ballot Tuesday in North Carolina primary
Donald Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Ted Budd favorite for GOP nod in Senate primary
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) — Voters across North Carolina will pick their nominees Tuesday for a pivotal U.S. Senate race that could determine party control, and voters in the western panhandle will decide if Republican U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s political career gets derailed after a string of controversies and bad headlines.
U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn faces stiff primary challenge Tuesday
Nominees will also be selected for U.S. House seats being contested under new maps. Three open seats have drawn crowded fields, which include American Idol finalist Clay Aiken – making his second run for Congress — and former Republican U.S. Rep. Renee Elmers, who is trying to make a comeback after losing her seat in 2016.
Local and legislative seats are also up Tuesday; statewide offices are not on the ballot this year.
Polls for in-person voting open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.
The Senate race features a heated 14-candidate Republican contest expected to come down to a race between U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker and former governor Pat McCrory. The incumbent, Republican U.S. Senator Richard Burr, is retiring.
Budd has been vocally backed by Donald Trump, who came to the Tar Heel State to campaign for him. Under state law, he only needs 30% of the vote to avoid a runoff, and recent polling indicates he’s likely to clear that threshold.
Eleven Democrats are running for their party’s nomination. Former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley – who has raised nearly $10 million for the race – is the prohibitive favorite.
North Carolina is considered as one of the Democrats’ prime pick-up opportunities in the fall, which will make the likely race between Budd and Beasley a high-decibel, high-spending affair that gets outsized national attention.
In the state’s 11th U.S. House district, which takes in 15 counties in the western end of the state, Cawthorn – elected to office in 2020 at just 25 — is battling for his political life against seven Republican challengers and the active opposition of state GOP leaders, including U.S. Senator Thom Tillis.
Cawthorn has been enmeshed in a bevy of controversy and questionable behavior: He was caught twice trying to take a gun through airport security, cited twice for driving with a revoked license, and infurated colleagues by musing in a podcast that he had been invited to orgies and witnessed cocaine use.
He also raised eyebrows by dismissing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “thug” and has been featured in a photo wearing women’s lingerie and in a video naked in bed with a male friend.
He also made a political blunder by abandoning the 11th District to run in a neighboring district, then reversing course after a state court drew a new map that obliterated his new district.
However, Cawthorn has strong name recognition, a fervent following in the MAGA base and, perhaps most importantly, the backing of Trump – which could be enough to clear the 30% threshold and avoid a runoff.
His chief Republican competitors are State Senator Chuck Edwards of Hendersonville and Michelle Woodhouse, the Republican party chair in the district.
Here is a look at some other U.S. House races on the ballot Tuesday.
1st District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield gave up this seat in eastern North Carolina after Republican state legislators made the seat more Republican, setting off a scramble in both parties. Although the state Supreme Court later reserved some of those changes, there are still four Democrats and eight Republicans in the race.
Among the Democrats are State Senator Don Davis and former State Senator Erica Smith, who got out of the U.S. Senate race to run here instead. On the Republican side, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson and Sandy Smith, a farmer and businesswoman from Nash County, have both raised more than $1 million for the race.
4th District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. David Price is retiring in this district, which includes Durham and Chapel Hill, drawing a field of eight Democrats to succeed him, including Aiken, who contested a Raleigh-area district in 2014. Leading the field are State Senator Valerie Foushee from Chapel Hill and Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, the first Muslim woman to win political office in North Carolina.
6th District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning is trying to hang on to this seat, which became more Republican under the final court-drawn map. Seven Republicans are vying to take her on; the GOP fundraising leader is Christian Castelli, a businessman and former U.S. Army Special Forces officer from Randolph County.
13th District: This newly configured, Republican-leaning district, centered in suburban Raleigh, has drawn eight Republicans, including Ellmers, and five Democrats. Trump waded into this district to endorse Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political newcomer and former college football star who did not live in the district before running here, a move that angered local Republicans.
14th District: This newly configured swing district in metro Charlotte drew two challengers from each party. Democratic State Senator Jeff Jackson exited the U.S. Senate race to run here and is likely to face Republican Pat Harrington, a Green Beret and firearms dealer.
We tweet @ChkFriPolitics Join us!
Louisiana US. Sen. Bill Cassidy is only Southern Republican to support Jan. 6 commission
All 5 Southern Democrats vote for bipartisan independent panel to take deep dive into Capitol assault by pro-Trump mob
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana stood alone among his Southern Republican colleagues Friday in supporting formation of an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana
The bill setting up the commission died after supporters fell six votes short of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who said the panel would add an “extraneous layer” of investigation into events at the U.S. Capitol, which was stormed by a pro-Trump mob trying to block certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.
All five Southern Senate Democrats — Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia — voted in favor of the independent probe.
Eighteen Southern Republicans voted no, while four did not vote, including U.S. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, who, along with Cassidy, voted to convict Donald Trump in an impeachment trial for his actions that day.
The three other Southern Republicans who did not vote on the commission bill were Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. All three had previously indicated that they were opposed to the commission.
In a statement defending his decision not to support the commission, Burr said several investigations are already underway “being led by the committees with jurisdiction, and I believe, as I always have, this is the appropriate course. I don’t believe establishing a new commission is necessary or wise.”
But Cassidy warned his colleagues that if the independent commission wasn’t approved, Democrats in the House would push ahead with an investigation by a select committee “the nature of which will be entirely dictated by Democrats and would stretch on for years.”
The proposed investigative commission — modeled after the panel that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 — would have had 10 members, half appointed by each party. Subpoenas could only have been issued if agreed to on both sides, and the investigation would have wrapped up by the end of 2021, nine months before the 2022 midterm election.
When the measure passed the House, 35 Republicans had voted for it. But when it got over to the Senate, McConnell began urging GOP members to oppose it as unnecessary and potentially politically detrimental.
Trump also came out firmly against the idea, calling it a “Democrat trap” and castigating House Republicans who supported it.
Manchin, the leading centrist voice among Senate Democrats, had been particularly forceful in lobbying his Republican colleagues to support the investigation, saying there was “no excuse for Republicans not to vote for this unless they don’t want to know the truth.”
But Manchin also refused to budge on his long-standing opposition to eliminating the filibuster, the procedure that allowed Republicans to block the commission even though 54 senators were in favor of it.
The Republicans who voted against formation of the commission were:
- Tommy Tuberville of Alabama
- John Boozman and Tom Cotton of Arkansas
- Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida
- McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky
- Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker of Mississippi
- Thom Tillis of North Carolina
- James Lankford of Oklahoma
- Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina
- John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas
- Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
We tweet @ChkFriPolitics Join us!
Southern Republican U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, Richard Burr vote to convict Donald Trump
All 5 Southern Democrats join unsuccessful effort to convict and disqualify Trump from future office
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Richard Burr of North Carolina broke with most of their Republican colleagues to vote to convict former president Donald Trump Saturday on charges of inciting the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy and Richard Burr
Cassidy and Burr were the only Southern Republicans to vote for conviction in Trump’s impeachment trial; all five Southern Democrats voted to convict, including U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a state Trump carried by nearly 40 points in November.
While a majority of 57 senators voted to convict Trump, the number was not enough to clear the two-thirds majority required for conviction under the Constitution.
“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person,” Cassidy said in a statement. “I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.”
In his own statement, Burr said, “I do not make this decision lightly, but I believe it is necessary.”
“By what he did and by what he did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Burr said.
Cassidy was elected in November to a six-year term and won’t face voters again until 2026. Burr has announced he isn’t seeking re-election in 2022 and will retire from the Senate at the end of his current term.
Machin, in a statement, said he voted to convict Trump “to hold him accountable for his seditious actions and words that threatened our democracy.”
“It is time to move forward as one nation to focus on helping Americans suffering from the pandemic,” Manchin said. “Now more than ever, it is on each of us to seek unity over division and put partisanship aside for the good of our country.”
Twenty-one Southern Republicans voted to acquit Trump, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who had denounced Trump’s claim of election fraud on the Senate floor less than an hour before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on January 6.
However, in remarks after the vote, McConnell delivered an extensive and passionate rebuke of Trump in which he excoriated his behavior as a “disgraceful dereliction of duty,” said he bears direct responsibility for the assault on the Capitol, and suggested that he could face criminal prosecution.
But McConnell said the Constitution prevented the Senate from convicting Trump of impeachment now that he’s left office.
“We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen,” McConnell said. “Impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice. Impeachment, conviction and removal are a specific intra-governmental safety valve.”
Also voting to acquit was U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, whose phone call from Trump during the siege of the Capitol became a focus of the impeachment case brought by House managers.
Tuberville told reporters that he had informed Trump that Vice President Mike Pence had been evacuated from the Capitol, contradicting statements from Trump’s defense attorneys that he did not know of the peril in which Pence had been placed by the pro-Trump mob.
The Southern senators who joined Cassidy, Burr and Machin in voting to convict included Georgia’s two new Democratic members, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and two Democrats from Virginia, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner.
We tweet @ChkFriPolitics Join us!
Outgoing GOP U.S. Rep. Mark Walker launches 2022 U.S. Senate run in North Carolina
Walker is first Republican candidate in race to replace retiring U.S. Senator Richard Burr
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
GREENSBORO, North Carolina (CFP) — With the dust still settling from November’s election, Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Walker has jumped into next campaign season by announcing he will run for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2022.
Walker opened his campaign December 1 with a video featuring endorsements from leaders around the state and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and conservative talk show host. Walker said he was running “because serving others is my life, and I have the experience to fight and to win in Washington.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, R-North Carolina
“Washington has lost its mind. Job killing regulations, the Green New Deal, defund the police, end our military — seriously?” Walker said. “I’m proud of my record taking on the radicals as well as the establishment.”
Watch video of Walker’s announcement below
Walker, 51, from Greesboro, was a Southern Baptist pastor before his election to Congress. He has represented the 6th U.S. House District since 2015 but did not seek re-election in November after a court-ordered redraw of the state’s congressional districts made his district more Democratic.
Earlier this year, he considered a primary challenge against U.S. Senator Thom Tillis but eventually decided against it. Tillis was re-elected in November.
The seat Walker is seeking will be open in 2022 because incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Richard Burr has announced his retirement.
Given the Tar Heel State’s partisan competitiveness, the race will likely be one of the most hotly contested and expensive battles of the 2022 cycle and a top Democratic target. However, a Democrat has not won a Senate election in North Carolina since 2008.
Among the names being mentioned as possible Republican candidates are Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, who grew up in North Carolina; Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, who lost in November’s governor’s race; and former Governor Pat McCrory.
Among Democrats, Governor Roy Cooper will likely face pressure from Senate Democratic leaders to make a run but has not indicated he is considering it. Erika Smith, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Senate nomination this year, is the party’s only announced candidate so far.
Watch video of Walker’s announcement
We tweet @ChkFriPolitics Join us!
North Carolina U.S. Senator Richard Burr steps down from chairmanship after FBI searches phone
Burr is under investigation for stock trades made before markets tanked due to coronavirus crisis
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — The political and legal jeopardy facing U.S. Senator Richard Burr intensified Thursday, after the FBI executed a search warrant for his phone as part of an investigation into stock sales he made before the coronavirus crisis caused a market plunge.
Just hours after the Los Angeles Times broke the news about the search warrant, the North Carolina Republican temporarily stepped aside as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Burr would relinquish the chairmanship “during the pendency of the investigation.”
“We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee,” McConnell said in a statement.
U.S. Senator Richard Burr, R-North Carolina
In brief remarks to a reporter Thursday, Burr, who has previously denied any wrongdoing in the stock sales, said he had been cooperating with the investigation, which he said should be allowed “to play out.”
Burr said he decided to step down from his chairmanship because the investigation “is a distraction to the hard work of the committee, and the members and I think that the security of the country is too important to have a distraction.”
Burr had been cruising toward retirement in his last term in the Senate as head of one of its most important committees before he was hit by blowback from stock sales he made in February, which are now being investigated by both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
At issue is whether Burr used inside information he obtained as a senator to make the stock sales, which would violate federal law.
An FBI search warrant would have required a finding by a federal judge of probable cause that a crime had been committed and approval at the highest levels of the Justice Department, an indication of the seriousness of Burr’s potential legal jeopardy.
An analysis of financial disclosure reports by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group, showed that on February 13, Burr sold 33 stocks worth between $628,000 and $1.7 million dollars, including stocks in hotel companies hard hit by the coronavirus. The stock market began to plunge about a week later.
Senators only have to report financial transactions within ranges on disclosure reports, so the exact amount of Burr’s stock sales is unknown.
Prior to his stock sales, Burr, as the intelligence committee chair, was receiving daily briefings from Trump administration officials about coronavirus.
ProPublica subsequently reported that Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, sold stock on the same day.
Members of Congress are permitted to own and trade stocks. However, trades have to be disclosed, and it is illegal for them to buy and sell stock based on insider information that isn’t available to the general public, under a law passed in 2012 that Burr voted against.
Burr has said his stock trades were based solely on publicly available information.
In addition to the stock sales themselves, Burr’s public comments during the early days of the coronavirus crisis have contributed to the firestorm he now faces.
On February 7, Burr co-wrote an opinion article for Fox News in which he said that the United States “is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus” and said public health officials were moving “swiftly and decisively” to deal with the threat.
But a week later, he began selling stock, and on February 27, he told a private meeting of North Carolina business leaders that coronavirus “is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” according to audio of the speech obtained by National Public Radio.
Burr also likened coronavirus to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that is believed to have killed at least 17 million people worldwide, NPR reported.
Burr, 64, was first elected in 2004. He has announced he won’t seek re-election to a fourth term in 2022.
It will be up to McConnell to pick a new chair for the intelligence panel Among the names being considered is Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Rubio indicated he would be wiling to serve but downplayed the impact of the change, saying “whoever gets it is going to be a backup quarterback coming into the game for a few plays while the guy goes through a concussion protocol.”
Several other senators have had their stock trades come under scrutiny amid the coronavirus market plunge, including Kelley Loeffler of Georgia and Dianne Feinstein of California.
A spokesperson for Loeffler said Thursday that she has not been served with a search warrant.
Chicken Fried Politics 