CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
5 JUNE 2012
Meeting held at Golden Corral Restaurant, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:02 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by RO THOMPSON
Invocation by JAMES “Winky” CHADWICK
Present – 43
Three Guest Speakers in attendance tonight who are in a runoff election July 17:
Dan Forest – Candidate for Lt. Governor
Kenn Gardner – Candidate for Secretary of State
Mike Causey – Candidate for Commissioner of Insurance
BOB introduced Dan Forest first – He has worked 23 years in the private sector mostly as an architect. He has two undergraduate degrees from UNC Charlotte, and is a graduate of UNC Charlotte College of Architecture. He serves on several boards. He lives in Raleigh with his wife Alice and four of his kids and has one of his sons with him tonight “Max”.
Dan thanked us for inviting him tonight. “I’ve met a lot of you before and a number of you have heard me give my presentation before so I will not do that today. I wanted to say thank you for your support. We won overwhelmingly in Carteret County and I attribute that to your helpers in this county and your ballot and thank you for putting us on it. If you didn’t vote for us, and there are plenty of people that still didn’t vote for us, I’m coming back to ask for your help. It’s OK, we have good candidates running in this race and I know people voted for other folks and there is only two of us left now so I would love to have your support. We have a July 17th runoff, which I gave most of you a card that has that on there. Early voting starts the 28th of June (absentee voting starts now, and some of you told me you had already voted), but go ahead and vote early if you can because July 17th is one of those days many of you probably remember – you get up in the morning and you get dressed and get in the car and go off to work and pass the polling place and you call your spouse and say are we supposed to be voting for something today? I just passed a polling place. I’ve done it many times. That is one of those days. And so, tell your friends to early vote. Some good things happened on May 8th – one of those I believe is the passing of the Marriage Amendment in North Carolina. (Applause) A great victory for our state. I believe it is evidence that GOD still has his hand on North Carolina for a period of time. That is very good. Another great thing that happened, a little more so, but you may not have paid much attention to, on the Democrat side for President. If you were looking at the election results, there were 200,000 people that showed up on the Democrat or Independent side that said ‘anybody but Barack Obama’. (Applause) Then the third thing was not just our victory in that race but we had four opponents (there were five of us running for Lt. Governor) in NC and the last two months our opponents combined spent nearly a million dollars on media, TV and radio, and so forth. Our campaign spent twenty thousand dollars. We won by 8% of the vote across the state with 62,000 vote margin against our closest competitor. What that means is that grass roots still works in NC and so your efforts and the efforts you put forth every day did make a difference. So if there is ever a time when you get discouraged and you think ‘these phone calls don’t mean anything or working the polls doesn’t mean anything or telling my friends doesn’t mean anything“…it absolutely does. It has a great incremental effect all over the state of NC; so I want to thank you for that and for your efforts and would ask that you do it again on the 17th. What happens is….Well, May 8 there was about 35% turnout in the state. On the 17th of July that is going to drop down to maybe as low as 3%. So where you had 800,000 people vote on May 8, to select your winners, you could have well below 200,000 people across the state of NC to pick your Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, and the like, so this is a very important election. So make sure you are just as energetic on the 17th as you were on the 8th. Just in a nutshell, for those of you I haven’t met or heard me speak before, I am running for Lt. Governor because I believe this is our ‘Generation 1776’. America is at a great tipping point. I am sure you all believe that as well. Come November 6, we make the greatest decision in modern history of our country. Do we tip over into Socialism or do we save Freedom. Do we save the great American experiment. Do we save what so many of you veterans have fought for and so many of your friends died for…protecting freedom around the world. That is really what is on the line right now, and I believe we are here because we have a great leadership crisis in our country. We are here because we have a great leadership crisis in North Carolina especially at the executive level, so I want to go to Raleigh to do my part to remedy that. Three things we talked about on the campaign trail related to the Lt. Governor’s job, really regardless whose job it is, regardless of who sits in the General Assembly, three things…Lt. Governor is president of the senate, presides over the senate, as a member of the council of state…but by constitution Lt Governor serves on the state school board and has a lot of education appointment powers, sits on the North Carolina board of Community Colleges, sits on the NC board of economic development and then has some (? Could not understand) political power. So we are talking about three things….education, job creation and illegal immigration. Those are the three things we lift up. In a nut shell, North Carolina ranks 41st in the nation in the K-12 education. We need to change that. We need to revamp education. I believe we do that by breaking the state government controlled monopoly on education and introducing choice. When you break a monopoly in the business world competition goes up, quality goes up, costs are driven down but most importantly you get innovation. And the reason we haven’t an innovated education in our state is because bureaucracy and innovation are the opposite ends of the spectrum. So, right now we have 5000 bureaucrats in Washington, DC in the Department of Education and another 800 in the Department of Instruction in Raleigh…all telling you right here in Carteret County how to educate your kids. The last 40 years education spending has increased 375%. Education quality has not. 62% of our kids graduate and have to go get remedial reading, remedial math, just to go on to college. So that is not good enough. We need to change education in North Carolina and it is going to take bold leadership to do that. On the business side we are 44th in the nation in business tax climate in North Carolina. There is only 6 states with a worse business tax climate than North Carolina, so we wonder where the jobs are. They are going to the states that have a much more business friendly environment. We should be the number one most business friendly state in America. This is what I believe. And so how do we do that. We start by reducing taxes and reducing regulations. You probably know this but NC has the highest corporate income tax rate in the country…or in the southeast rather (I’m sorry)….the highest gas tax in the southeast, highest personal income tax in the southeast, and we need to right size those things. So, I believe that some of the solutions are: eliminate corporate income tax over time, reducing the gas tax …to be competitive with our southeast neighbors over time, and making sure that we create a small business tax bracket for those 90% of our businesses in NC that file their taxes under the personal income tax. We should not punish small businesses who are creating wealth and hiring people. We shouldn’t do that, so we need to create a small business tax bracket. And then the third leg of that stool is illegal immigration. North Carolina is 42nd in the nation in illegal immigration. The numbers vary. We don’t know how many people are in our state, because we don’t ask the questions….but it is somewhere between 500,000 and a million, basically. That seems like a broad number but you know we have people show up in our emergency rooms and use our most expensive form of health care as their primary care physician. We have people show up in our schools and use our education system without paying anything into our tax system. We have people that are on the welfare dole that are receiving funds from you that have never paid into the system of being American. So, this really needs to end. We need to protect our citizens of North Carolina. We need to implement E-verify for all of North Carolina employers to protect the employers of NC. We need to implement the 287G Program and all the county jails to make sure that we begi
n to eliminate the criminal element from the street in NC. We need to mandate English as the official language of our state (Applause). That is healthy for assembilation. It is healthy for America. So those are some of the things we talk about and I am going to leave it at that. You can call me. You can email me. You can find us on face book or the web site. Anybody wants a business card, I will give it to you. It has my cell phone and my email address on it and you can contact me anytime and I will be glad to talk to you about any of these issues; but thanks for having me. Bob, did you have any questions or do you want to move on to the next speaker?
BOB said no, we’ll go on with the questions.
First Question – “Are you going to bring up the Voter ID question again?”
Answer – “Right now the Voter ID issue remains on the floor in the Legislature every single day.
So if those five Democrats, basically that are opposing it right now, keeping it from
passing the override of the Governor’s veto….any of those five go away at any given
time they will pass that. I doubt that’s going to happen, but there is some movement on
it. It is probably something that has to be brought up again in the next General
Assembly next year. If we have a Republican Governor, Republican House,
Republican Senate, and we maintain all that, then it passes day one. It will probably be first bill of the very first day would be my guess.
Question – Education reform…reducing the amount of state government control…meanwhile trying to support more charter schools…
Answer – “All of the above…. School choice…charter schools….certainly more private schools….home schooling….virtual schooling…I think all of those things, it’s a rising
tide of innovation and competition that will raise all of those. Public school will get
better because private schools get better. Public school will get better because home
schooling will get better. Public school will get better across the board. That rising
tide of innovation makes everything better. And so, a free market economy approach to education will improve the system. It’s a battle. It’s a great battle. That is some-
thing that gets introduced over time. You don’t flip the switch one day and go out to
every county in the state and act like everything is really going to be equal across the state. Our Constitution says that we have to provide a sound, basic education to every student in North Carolina and we need to make sure that still happens in our state. But I believe you can see that through a free market solution that you would see the poorest communities in NC have good solid private schools open up in those communities
because they would have a financial incentive to do that. They’d have a voucher,
they’d have a tax credit system, they’d have money pouring into their system because
parents would want to have their kids educated into that system rather than public
school system.”
Question – Senate Bill 3…I think it is the one where you have the electric companies having to
buy credits that we have to pay for. Sylendra type. Is anybody pushing to get rid of
that thing.
Answer – I’m not sure anybody is now. Kenn would know this as well as I would from an
Architectural perspective… this thing has been around for years where US Green Building Council came in and they started doing the lead credit system and lead
certification of buildings and that led to, if you wanted to get a higher certification of
of your building on of the things you could do was buy energy credits to get points to
get a higher certification on your building and what that led to was bills like this.
Basically what you are doing is you are buying a credit from an energy company for
the promise that sometime in the future they might invest in some other alternative
energy. Basically, you’re just giving money away.”
Question – ‘If you get in there will you do something about that?’
Answer – “I will fight that. Absolutely. They didn’t care a thing about the Lt. Governor’s
position – back in 1984, when Jim Garner was elected Lt. Governor, the first
Republican Lt. Governor we had ever had in the state of NC…when he was elected the
Democrat Legislature stripped his legislative powers away from him and gave it to the
President Pro-tem of the Senate. And so, I will certainly as Lt. Governor make my
pitch to return…maybe not during my administration or my time there, maybe the next
one but to return the responsibilities to the Lt. Gov. The Lt. Governor position is still
the only one that is legislative and executive at the same time in NC, so you do cross
over, you just don’t introduce legislation.”
Question – ‘Are we still paying for people who are illegal to go to Community Colleges? Are we
paying reduced fees for them to go??’
Answer – “There is a model, or lots of models, out there within the Community Colleges and
Colleges systems on how the people pay to get in and what kind of benefits and
incentives they get for going to college. My perspective is that if you are not a legal
citizen or not legally in our country, you should not be attending our Community
Colleges or our College system, or our K-12 system, or anything else for that matter, so
we have to reform all that.”
Question – ‘Just what made you want to run for Lt. Governor as opposed to Governor, or
Secretary of State. Why Lt. Gov.?’
Answer – “I left my architectural practice. I felt called to do that. That was something that I
really felt strongly about that I was supposed to step into the public sector realm and
didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I left and my partners were very
generous, they bought me out of the firm which allows me the time to do this full time
but I spent several months going around and talking to what I would call wise advisors
and almost to a T they said run for Lt. Gov. This is a great jumping in point for
someone with a business background to get into politics and as Kenn would probably
suggest as well, being an architect, architects are well suited for executive leadership
in our state. We are by training we are visionaries, we are planners, we are creative
problem solvers, we are consensus builders. That is what we do every single day.
Government needs more of that and I believe that those gifts and talents will lend
themselves well to the office.”
Thank you all so much. I’ve got to run down the road to get to Cape Carteret and then back to Raleigh. Appreciate what you all are doing. (Applause)
BOB introduced Kenn Gardner, running for Secretary of State. Kenn has been a North Carolina resident for 29 years, and runs a successful Architecture Firm in Raleigh and is a Deacon of the Forest Hills Baptist Church.
Mr. Gardner said “ I am running for Secretary of State because I was a county commissioner in Wake County for 8 years and I really have a business focus and I think that is where business occurs in NC – in the Secretary of State’s office. It is the interface between document, between filing, between corporation trade marks, the whole nine yards. This is where our business is interactive and interface and we need someone who has business sense, one who will stand up for business in our state. Second I went to Georgia Tech and I moved up here 30 years ago so my wife could go to NC State and get a PHD – she teaches genetics at NC State, so obviously I married smart so I am not ashamed of that. We have three daughters, two who are still at NC State and one who graduated from Appalachian. A few years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to purchase a home down in Emerald Isle. We love it down here. We absolutely do. I was running just a little bit late because I couldn’t quite bring myself to go by that house without stopping, so anyway, we have enjoyed it. The only promise I have made this whole time is that if I am elected I will spend as much time down here as I possibly can. Those are just a few things about me. First of all, I am running for Secretary of State, and I have been growing businesses in NC since I came here 30 years ago. What is an architect…a small business owner and as mentioned as a county commissioner I help businesses grow. I have had three careers. I will tell you just a little bit about each. I have been nationally recognized for each. First for the Department of Defense…I was honored by the Air Force Association. As part of that ceremony I had the distinct honor of shaking Jimmy Doolittle’s hand. Now most folks don’t know who Jimmy Doolittle is…you all do? Just 19 weeks after Pearl Harbour he asked for 80 volunteers to get into 15 planes and fly to Japan to retaliate against that strike….knowing they would not have enough fuel to get back. Great man …great hero. Second as an architect I was nationally recognized by the American Institute of Architects…by my peers…college of fellows….only about 2% of architects nationally are so recognized. Third as your NC County Commissioner I was honored as the Nationally Urban Elected Official of the year. All those things have one thing in common…or two things…one is my innovation and my leadership…I think that is why I was honored. It is what I was trained to do. It is what sets me apart. It is what I do well. Jimmy Doolittle did not ask his volunteers where they came from. He asked if they had the background and the skills to get the job done. So you just heard about my background, now I’ll share a little bit about my skills. I already told you I am a gardner and I like to pull up weeds. So I’d like to talk a little about the weeds I’ll pull as your Secretary of State. The first weed is regulations. It has been chocking our businesses for the last decade and a half. We used to have 800 thousand businesses in NC. In 2009 alone, the weight of these regulations helped close 24,000 of our businesses forever. They are gone. I’ll fight for those personal property rights. I’ll fight for eliminating corporate taxes and reduce fees for doing business in NC. I’ll also fight against Agenda 21 which I think is the root of many of these regulations. (Applause) In fact, the gentleman here mentioned electricity and I will just get off topic for just a second. In Wake County, after I was defeated in 2008 by Obama, all of a sudden it was a Democrat board. First thing they did was establish a sustainability task force. I’ll be speaking about that later this week to some folks and one of the recommendations involved electricity and they said we need to penalize for over consumption. That was a recommendation. We need to tax electricity to help reduce its consumption. Those are just a few of the recommendations that I was reading in this report. Fortunately, our county commissioners turned back to Republicans and defeated that. So it was a close call. But it was right there. And while I was driving over here tonight I had the radio on and guess what….you are going to be the first 9 county region to have a reality check…October 24th. And it is going to right at the end of and just down the road in Jones County. Basically the 9 county region is between Wayne County and Cape Carteret. They are talking about a million people coming to this region and this reality check which has always been done in urban centers and always starts with a big map and always starts with legos representing a certain number of people and they want you to put those legos together where you think they should be. And with that, it is all Agenda 21. Just be careful. Number 2, paper work, and I’m going to be very quick from here on out. We have corporations who are submitted 300 pages of documents just to become incorporated in NC. It is not standardized. The only ones making any money at all are the lawyers and so as Secretary of State, I am going to standardize and reduce that paperwork. And then I am going to fight, like I mentioned, to get rid of corporate fees. The third one is Poison Ivy Weed. Believe me, the Democrats have owned the Secretary of State’s office forever….80 years plus. I’m not touching a thing in there until I have an outside auditor come in and look at the books. And then I’m going to conduct a department by department review just as I did as chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners. I am going through that department and we are going to look at what we can weed out. And then I am going to put that budget on line so that you can see how your tax money is being spent. The last thing I want to talk about,and it has been mentioned before, that we need to grow jobs for North Carolinians, not illegal aliens. In Wake County alone I heard a statistic about how many illegals there are in our school system and I didn’t calculate the math. Every year we spend 100 million dollars in our Wake County operating budget due to the impact of these children in our school system. Every employer needs to E-verify and we need to fight for voter ID…which is what I would fight for. The bill that is on the floor, that Dan mentioned is not a photo voter ID. It almost misses the mark. It ties to a utility bill, or something else, and that’s all it has. It has no value. So, if they are out there saying this is great for NC, as Secretary of State where I have to certify election results, I am still wondering who voted because it is not a voter ID. If you are looking for someone with my background and skills, for the next Secretary of State, someone who is a proven North Carolina leader, who has been there for the last 30 years for you in NC, proven locally, nationally recognized, and driven to grow good jobs in our state, I ask for your support. And for you gardners, I can’t resist this, I am shovel ready for this job. Thank you for your time.
BOB asked for question from the floor.
Question – Could you please go back and elaborate a little bit on the Voter ID. I was not aware that it was not a picture ID.
Answer – My wife and I were talking about this this morning and evidently the bill that is on the floor is NOT a photo ID, it is just tied to an address.
Question – Who belongs to that Studebaker pickup?
Answer – That is my Studebaker truck. It is all American. It has a Chevy engine, Chrysler transmission, and has been hit by a Ford. Another thing I wanted to mention is some of the cards I passed out tonight have lapel pins on them. I received a donation from a veteran a few weeks ago and I was really hesitant to take it and he thought about how he was going to use that, and he decided he wanted to do something that would honor him and so he used that donation to purchase those lapel pins. I think he was pretty pleased with that and for me….we have gotten away from wearing pins…his jacket has one but he is not wearing a jacket tonight. Hope you will wear it with pride and just think about the veterans as you do.
Question – As Secretary of State, is there anything you can do about the requirement of lawyers must do title searches and close loans in this state. A lot of states have title companies doing it which cuts the costs immensely.
Answer – I believe there is a lot of things…the General Assembly tells the Secretary of State what…they make the policy and then it is up to the Secretary of State to figure out how to implement that policy. And I believe all of these things that we are currently doing are very complex. When I mentioned the 300 page document… the Secretary has to hire somebody to read that. So she is creating jobs but I am willing to do away with that job. I want to standardize and simplify things so that would be one of those things that as we get in there and start asking what can we standardize and what can we make simpler for folks, because really, the less time you spend filling that out the more time you have to do what they want to do and that is get back to work.
Question – Looking at lowering homeowners costs….every time you buy a piece of property it is around $300.00.
Answer – I believe if we can get rid of all these fees, that would be wonderful. As an architect I didn’t realize our Board of Architecture actually falls underneath the Secretary of States office, as does a lot of associations and registered boards. I paid my fees and I always thought it was probably set by the Secretary of State’s office and it is inflated which I feel and it is probably inflated for everyone else who has to go through.
Question – Court fees, as you know, has gotten astronomical. It used to be $20.00 to sue someone, now it is almost $100.00.
Answer – The fastest growing industry in NC the last few years has been the Lobbying Industry. Now I don’t have a problem with making them submit 300 page documents. I have not problem with that at all, but we need to slow that down.
Question – You said you were going to be fighting for things like illegal aliens that were getting our schooling for free, our hospital and patients for free….How would you do that?
Answer – In Wake County, I can tell you what we did. We established a local ICE unit to arrest and detain and deport illegals in our community. There is a limitation of what you can do at the county level. If the state is not doing their job and the Feds are not doing their job, then your hands are tied. This was probably the only thing we could do. As far as the hospitals go…we worked with our hospitals because …they don’t have insurance, they show up at the emergency room and they don’t speak English. If their child has a cough they go to the emergency room. In Wake County Wake Med has someone there that immediately says …wait a minute, we established (and this is now a non-profit hospital), but they have established another hospital right next door that says….why don’t you go over there, because what you are doing is clogging up our emergency rooms with a cough that doesn’t need you to be here. Over there they do participate on a small level. How do you keep our system working with folks that are not being deported because of state and federal regulations. I am hoping that will change with a new governor and a new president and will not give so much a sanctuary environment. If you can have a sanctuary in Durham, which it is, there is no common way of fighting this issue.
Someone in the audience said they thought they should park a bus outside the hospital with a banner stating Mexican Health Care and when the bus get full, it drives down to the border and unloads. Mr. Gardner said ’What happens with the ICE we do deport them. We give them a plane ticket back to Mexico. They fly down to Mexico, visit their folks there, and after a couple of days…it takes them about a day and a half to get back to NC, to Charlotte, to Raleigh. Until the border situation is figured out it is more of a ’here’s a free ticket home, whether by bus or airplane.’ ERIC BROYLES said he thought if they fined the employers heavily enough then there will be a dis-encentive to hire them. Mr. Gardner said ‘Absolutely. E-verify is one solution but right now it is at too high a level. If you have less than 5 employees you don’t have to E-verify. I want to see it go down to everyone having to E-verify.’ You want the playing field level for all. Here’s another I want leveled. If you are a company that doesn’t pay your taxes, which means the rest of us have to pay your taxes, then you are not going to be allowed to do business with the state of NC or the counties. If you are not paying your taxes you are also beating out the guy who is paying. If you are not paying, then I want to just take that privilege away from you and you can find some other places to do business, but you are not going to compete against a good company in NC. This contractor was talking to me about everyday he gets folks who come in and have three documents, some of which the ink is still now dry on, but he is prohibited by law to ask any questions. He can look at the documents, and if they don’t make sense in some little way, he can turn them away. One of the things might be if the birth dates don’t match up on all three documents. Another one is if the social security number begins with the number ‘9’ he can turn them away, because we don’t issue social securities with number 9. There are a few little things but when he hands the papers back, then they know what to go back and fix.
Question – Agenda 21…Hearing more about it.
Answer – There is any number of organizations that actually are suddenly trying to implement
and infiltrate the agenda into local governments. In NC there are several towns that have bought
into the Agenda 21. Chatham County was one of those that when the county commissioners
turned Republican, they voted it out. Said no, no, no, we are off of this list. The typical
Cary, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, etc, those are the folks that are there. Wake County was
ground zero for Agenda 21. It has been that way for 15 years. Before I was County
Commissioner, I was fighting against Cary, who was just extending their ETJ for no particular
reason other than they didn’t want to raise taxes on their citizens, so they would annex some land
and then you pay taxes and you don’t get a vote. They never provided any benefits. As a
county commissioner we had to re-route the Clayton bypass, because of the dwarf wedge mussel.
Somebody spotted three shells along the Swift Creek basin there and so we had to reroute it. It
was one of these heavy handed things by the federal government…you will do this or we
will take back and not fund the road. They made Johnson and Wake County commissioners vote
and you don’t have a choice. You don’t want the road not to happen. This is the sort of heavy
handedness you get when strings are attached by the federal government.
Kenn Gardner thanked us for inviting him and said a kind word is always appreciated.
Remember to vote because your vote this time is going to count about 6 times what it did in the
primary. (Applause)
BOB then introduced our next distinguished guest, Mike Causey, who is running for Insurance
Commissioner. He is not an architect, but fortunately he has a 30 year background in insurance
with experience as selling as an agent., manager and superintendent of an agency. One of the
interesting comments on his web site says ‘the only candidate with experience in all aspects of
insurance department, insurance management, instructions, building codes and property. This
race is really important to us because Richard Morgan is the one Mr. Causey is going to be
running against and Richard Morgan is on record as stating that the western part of the state
should not be subsidizing the coastal counties for hurricane insurance, basically. I understand
that has been removed from his web site. A second reason against Richard Morgan is because he
was booted off the GOP Executive Committee for some backdoor dealings with Jim Black, when
he made a deal to become co-speaker of the House. Mike is a life long resident of NC, born and
raised in Gilford County. Mike we supported you on our May ballot and we definitely will have
you on our July 17 ballot.
Mr. Causey said ‘It is good to be back in Carteret County, I am Mike Causey. I am running for
Insurance Commissioner. I want to lower your car insurance and rates and more important I want
to lower your home insurance. (Applause) I want to give you better service from the department
of insurance so when you call up there you don’t get those push button runaround for different
things. I do want to thank all of you that helped me win Carteret County. I won Carteret County
I had over 5,000 votes in the primary. My two primary opponents combined only had about 3500
votes, so that was very strong and I appreciate it and you helped me really win. We knew it was
going to be a tough primary and I will tell you I won’t say anything negative against…. I had two
strong opponents, one that was an All State Insurance Agent out of Mooresville who was very
strong up in his area, Charlotte, Mooresville area. And then the other gentleman has been
referred to as a career politician. He was former speaker of the House, a co-speaker of the
House and he had a half million dollars to spend and he spent about 100 thousand dollars in the
primary. We spent less than 15 thousand dollars and we were within 2% but the good news was
we were able to keep them from getting the 40% so we are here in the runoff and I need your
help again. I need you to go vote one more time. Just briefly I’ll tell you a little bit about my
Background and then a little bit about why this race is so important and what the Department of
Insurance does that a lot of you may not know about. And then we will take some questions. I
was born and raised in rural Gilford County on a farm. I still live on the same farm where I grew
up. We still farm that same land our great-grandfather and his father farmed. I run a farm market in downtown Greensboro today and we sell local produce from all over NC. We sell sea food from right here in Carteret County and other coastal counties. They bring it up fresh every Friday and we sell grass fed beef. We try to promote local NC products to get people focused on that. My background, I have 30 years experience in the insurance business. Prior to the insurance business I was in civil engineering construction management. I went to school in Raleigh, Wake Tech, NC State. I was drafted. I served in the military. For this primary, I said all three of us have insurance backgrounds, but I am the only military veteran. I served overseas in the United States Army back during the Viet Nam era and I served as military police officer and also played in the US Army band. I came back home and I served one year in the National Guard and four more years in the Army Reserves in Charlotte and Raleigh. So I am a strong supporter of our military and I believe I got a lot of votes from the veterans in the primary. I spent 30 years in the insurance business at all levels. I was in college…I went back to school after working as a field engineer to UNC Charlotte, studying engineering over there. The largest insurance company in America at that time was Met Life (Metropolitan) and they came to me and said you need to get out of this engineering and come into the insurance business. I did….started out as an agent sales and was promoted to management and later general management. Then another smaller company recruited me and I became their general manager and later superintendent of agencies for North and South Carolina. So I’ve seen every job there is to see in insurance. On the sheet (that BOB had) it said I was a Lobbyist. In North Carolina if you do any work in the Legislature you are required by law to register as a lobbyist; even if you are a volunteer and I was a registered lobbyist but I was a consumer advocate. I was up there in Raleigh to fight against the insurance companies on behalf of the consumers and the small business owners and we got a law passed in 2001 called a consumer motor vehicle repair act to give you the right if you have an accident to take your car to any body shop you want to. We got the law passed. The problem is nobody has ever enforced it. That is my explanation of the lobby thing. I don’t want you to think I was a lobbyist working for any big insurance company. I was helping the little guy. There was one of me working against all those powerful insurance companies lobbyists. The Insurance Commissioner affects your pocket book more than you realize. You know what you are paying on home owners insurance and your other insurance but the Insurance Commissioner is a very powerful job….like it has been mentioned before, all those councils of state have pretty much been controlled by the Democrat party. I think it has been almost intentionally secretive thing, not to let people know what all these offices cover so you won’t realize how much it affects your pocket book. The Department of Insurance was started in 1899 and since 1899 it has been a one party rule…Democrats have controlled that office and they still do today. The governor, the lt. governor, and those eight council of state…very important offices…we have two Republicans. That is Agriculture Commissioner and Labor Commissioner. The others are Democrats. We need to change that. I believe we can this year. Insurance Commission regulates all types of insurance except for federal. Federal flood insurance and Medicare is not covered by the Insurance Commissioner. Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Property, Casualty, all other forms of insurance, comes under that department. That Commissioner has the power to put a company out of business with a stroke of a pen. That is how much power they have. You know the problem in eastern NC from I95 east…there is only seven or eight companies left that even write property insurance. That is getting even smaller, so we have a crisis that needs to be addressed. The Insurance Commissioner is the chief fire marshal so all your fire departments and rescue squads, and that includes the volunteer fire department; come under that department of insurance. The Insurance Commissioner is chief building inspector, so all your building inspections are under there. The state building codes. I have been all over this state, from Murphy to Manteo, and I don’t think you can find three building inspectors in any county to agree on the interpretation of the state building codes; so I think we need to do a little work on uniform interpretation. Worker’s compensation comes under the Department of Insurance….and that has made headlines since February, if you read the News and Observer. All these companies out here without workers compensation and the companies that are buying ghost policies and people who get hurt on the job and they find out the company didn’t have worker’s comp. There’s 68,000 claims pending right now from people who aren’t getting any money because employers didn’t have worker’s comp or fraudulently reported that they had worker’s comp. Nobody has addressed those problems and I want to do something about it if you will help me win this office. The Insurance Commissioner regulates collection agencies. A lot of people don’t realize that. Any collection agency has to have a license through the Department of Insurance to operate in NC. Insurance
Commissioner is in charge of all bail bondsmen, bail agents, bounty hunters, all those people come under the Department of Insurance. There’s 20 sworn law enforcement officers operating in that department. Travel clubs, motor clubs like Triple A, manufactured housing, mobile homes, modular homes…all of that comes under that huge umbrella of the Department of Insurance. And last but not least there are two other items…risk management…the Insurance Commissioner has to make sure all state owned buildings and all state owned vehicles are covered with insurance, and the senior health information program where the seniors get information about Medicare or health insurance. There’s over 800 volunteers all across North Carolina in that program. Did anybody have any idea that all that fell under the Department of Insurance? We have the fifth largest Department of Insurance in the United States. They handle billions, I’m not talking about millions, but about Billions of dollars of insurance money flow through that department and there have been so many problems that even the current Democrat auditor issued a blasting audit on that department before the end of last year. This department didn’t even know how many state buildings the state had. They had 118 buildings they didn’t even have listed on the state property records. Somebody in the legislature wanted to know how many vehicles the state owned. They didn’t know. They said our best guesstimate is 27,000. You know folks, that is a big problem when you don’t know that. I’ll tell you this. I’m not a lawyer, and I am not a career politician, but in my lifetime every Insurance Commissioner we have had, has been a lawyer and a Democrat career politician. The current Insurance Commissioner was a legislator. He wanted to be Labor Commissioner. 2004, he ran and lost against Cherrie Berry. He had his wife appointed to his seat. Commissioner Long took him into the Department of Insurance and now he is the Insurance Commissioner with aspirations for higher office. He is a nice guy. I don’t have anything against this current commissioner. The problem is he knows nothing about insurance and he has really hurt people in eastern NC about what he has done to you all with your property rates. So, there you have it. We need a change. I think that if we can elect…if I get elected…and starting next January I believe
we can fix a lot of these problems. I’m in favor of limited government. I believe in the
free market system and we don’t have a free market system. That’s why you have the problem
you have today. Some people call me a conservative constitutionalist with common sense. I
brought my helper, (Shannon and Terry Chance – not sure of name or spelling), our campaign
manager…(Applause). Terry keeps Chance straight or at least tries to…she does a lot of our
scheduling. They are driving me around tonight to try to keep me awake. I would appreciate
your help and support. There is going to be very low turnout. We had 700,000 turnout for the
primary. They are looking at maybe 100,000/150,000 statewide for the runoff. The previous
speaker said every vote is like 5 votes. I’m telling that every vote in a runoff is like 5,000 in a
general election. It is that powerful. My primary runoff opponent has a lot of money. He has
two of the best consultants that money can buy and they are buying radio ads and television ads
and they are going to try their best to win this thing. So I am counting on the grass roots. I am
counting on people like you. I believe I received endorsements from most of the TEA Party
groups in NC, from most of the conservative groups, and I was real pleased…but sorry we didn’t
get the 40%, but I believe I can win this thing. I’m confident we can win in November but I am
asking for your help to win in the runoff. I thank you for allowing me to be here. (Applause)
HOWARD GARNER said he wanted to make a couple of statements and then Mr. Causey could
elaborate. One insurance you didn’t mention that is becoming a problem is long term care
insurance…we have had it for several years and I don’t know how much longer we will
be able to afford it with the way it keeps jumping in price. Mr. Causey said, “That is a problem
and he read in a newspaper in Greensboro, that there was some lady in Winston Salem that had
been paying for 10 or 12 years and when she got the bill this year, it had tripled.” HOWARD
said ‘another thing…a dead man helped you a whole lot here in Carteret County. Did you know
Frank Rouse? Frank Rouse convinced me, (Howard) several years ago that your opponent was
nothing but a damn rascal. Therefore when the names came up, we didn’t know anything about
probably any of you, but I spoke right up and said we don’t want this guy, Morgan.’ Mr. Causey
said, “Thank you Frank!!”
GLADYS SUESSLE – I don’t know if you remember when Bev Perdue signed something that
North Carolina would get a lot of money, but then they had to go with a building code from the
government or from the UN. The UN building code.?? Mr. Causey said, “I vaguely remember
seeing something in the paper about that but I do not know what has happened to that. Some
discussion about this being a part of Agenda 21. Mr. Causey said, “I will say I am vehemently
opposed to Agenda 21 and I am opposed to Obamacare and all of those things and I will fight on
your behalf to oppose all of those things.
ERIC BROYLES – One of the ways to oppose Obamacare is to bring in a horrible type of
accident health-type policy for the poor folks in our communities that they can afford…when
I went to college they had like a $10.00 policy that gave you the basic accident coverage…if you
broke an arm or something. A lot of these people, that is all they need in most cases. Pat
McElraft, said they were working on that. What is your feelings on that? How would you move
it forward? Mr Causey said, “ What I would propose and I think Chad or somebody on our
campaign had mentioned it. When a student is in college, they are eligible for certain types of
low cost (like you were talking) medical coverage and I believe it wouldn’t be too difficult to
extend the age to that same policy. To say age 25 or 26, until that person is gainfully employed
that they would be allowed to stay on that policy and that would help tremendously with people
that might be un-insured and not have any coverage. But I will say this, on the health insurance,
it is a bigger picture than just one or two things. You might have read this, there is only eight
companies in the whole state of NC that will write health insurance. We have 160 some
companies to write automobile policies in most of the state, but there is only 8 companies willing
to write health insurance…Blue Cross is the main company. They have 85% of all the health
business in NC. So until we open this state up and get more companies here willing to write
health insurance, you are not going to have that available.” – ERIC said so if you want to sell car
insurance, you must sell health insurance. Mr. Causey said “Good point. I like that.”
HOWARD said, “Mike, it seems to me that Blue Cross has a monopoly because they are the
PPO’s for most of these hospitals. And if you go to a doctor or a hospital that is not a PPO or
you have another insurance, they will eat you alive. We have been down that route…and I
despise Blue Cross and their power in NC but we were forced to go with it because…before we
got on Medicare….because of this PPO thing. Although we had catastrophic coverage that
kicked in at $2,500.00, it didn’t work that way.” Mr. Causey said, “What we need is a
Commissioner that will be willing to take a stand and fight on your behalf and if you have a
problem you will be able to call up there and that is one thing we don’t have today. That is why
we need to make some changes.” HOWARD said Blue Cross has too much power. Mr. Causey
said it was political. HOWARD said he had noticed that and when they were trying to correct
things in the Legislature…who did they bring up there? The head man of Blue Cross. They
brought the seat of the problem up to tell them how to straighten it out.” Mr. Causey said,
“Exactly. Yes sir.” FRED DECKER said he knew if you could buy insurance across the state
line you would create more competition and you would get it cheaper.” Mr. Causey said,
“Insurance is regulated at the state level and one of the problems we have in NC…we are
different from 49 other states. We have a rate bureau. It is called the NC Rate Bureau. I call it
the Insurance Cartel. If everybody in this room owned an insurance company we can legally get
together, compare notes…these insurance companies under the umbrella of the Rate Bureau can
write their own policies. They set their own rates. They do whatever they want to do and they
have the blessings of the federal government because there was a law passed in 1945 that
allowed them to do that. If any other company does it they will take you to jail for collusion,
price fixing, but for the insurance industry, that is legal. The Rate Bureau worked pretty well
when it was first set up by the legislature but it is not working so well today. I would like to
bring about Free Market system and let each company submit their own policies, submit their
own rates and let the competition work to bring down the costs. ERIC asked if he would be
opposed to a citizens panel. Mr. Causey said, “ I am in favor of a citizens panel. I am in favor of
setting up a consumer advocate to work on behalf of the consumer and also a citizens panel on
hospital insurance, health insurance, as well as home owners insurance and these different things
and let the people of NC have a stronger voice. BOB said wouldn’t there be a lot of politics
about who gets on that panel. Mr. Causey said, “Well, it could be. If you go to the Department
of Insurance’s web site and listen to all the…I call it propaganda….the Insurance Commissioner
says we have the lowest rates in the country. It just simply is not true because everybody I talk to
that moves here from another state says they are paying more than they were. HOWARD asked
if he was familiar with ISO ratings. In our fire district we are rated a 9. When you go to try to
find out what they have got to do to drop it to a 7, which will amount to about $200.00 per year
for 100 thousand dollars coverage. The Insurance Department won’t tell you. We have tried.”
Mr. Causey said, “That is another issue too. The Insurance Commissioner should be doing
everything he can to help all the fire departments…the volunteer fire departments, as well as the
others.” HOWARD said he should tell us…HOWARD said he was on the local Fire and EMS
Commission. We consider all the budgets. He has been trying to figure out how to get us an ISO
a 7. Without knowing what the rules are, it is hard to do.” Mr. Causey said “Let me say this, fire
departments and rescue squads. There is enough fire departments and rescue squads in the state
of NC to elect anybody they want to elect in a statewide office. Now the problem is
getting them all on the same page. For years and years Jim Long was the commissioner and I
outlived Jim Long. If you could help me get my name out to the fire departments and rescue
squads and tell them how important this runoff is that will help me win and if I win this office we
can change these problems you are talking about. If you want to know, you should be able to
find out what the rules are. (Discussion on ISO ratings and what they are and mean)
Mr. Causey told the audience that he had campaign handouts, stickers, and a few yard signs if
anyone would like to pick them up tonight. He said, “Every person he had working on his
campaign was a volunteer. (Applause) They put in a lot of hours on your behalf. BOB told him
that one of the things we were going to do was letters to the editor campaign…really slamming
Morgan here on the coast about the hurricane insurance thing and in the western part of the state
it will be about the GOP issue there. HOWARD said right now we are scheduled to be in a local
4th of July Parade and we are planning to pass out pocket constitutions and we plan to enclose
our recommended voting list in each constitution we pass out.
Mr. Causey thanked us for having him and I’ll be back again. We have to go down to Cape
Carteret for the meeting with that TEA Party group as soon as we leave here. BOB gave him
directions on how to get to that meeting. (Applause).
BOB asked NANCY BOCK, Treasurer to give a Treasury Report. She said we have a whopping
$822.00. He then gave her what was currently in the Donation Jar.
FRED recommended we get a list of Republican and Unaffiliated voters in this past primary and
try to call these people and make sure they get out and vote. BOB asked him if he could set that
up and he said he could. BOB said we are going to work on our July 17th ballot. It will be on our
web page, face book page. We are going to try to publish it the Sunday prior to the election on
Tuesday, the 17th in the county paper. Figure it will be about $150.00 cost. Supporting Mike
Causey, we really need to start ginning up letters to the editor. If you go to the web site, the face
book page, there are a couple of articles there written by Rex Foster. He has all this back ground
information on Richard Morgan who we do not want in the Insurance Commissioner job. So we
need to make sure we educate the voters as best we can through letters to the editor.
FRED said in case you all didn’t know Sue Myrick is Dan Forest’s mother. BOB said she was a
good congresswoman.
RUTH PARKER wanted to know how the meeting went with the TEA Parties last week. BOB
said it went well, mostly they sat and listened to the candidates speak and after we heard them
Ken and I bent their ear to get them down here. The guy that was running for Commissioner of
Education…Tedesco….This guy, I’m telling you what he is dynamic. I was so fired up. The
more this guy talked, the more I was going….I like this guy. FRED said he started his speech
with I’m a Christian and I am going to run my campaign that way. (Discussion on Alexander,
Royal, and other candidates.) BOB said he was trying to get Alexander to come and speak with
us. He asked PEGGY if HOWARD ever got up with Goodwin. PEGGY said that BOB
and KEN were supposed to get some information on him last week so we could.
PEGGY reported that she had confirmed our entry in the Beaufort 4th of July Parade. The parade
will be held on Wednesday, July 4th at 11:00. Need to be in line at 10:30. Our assigned spot is
number “5”. Lady in charge of the parade wanted to know if we planned to have music. They
would really love to have some playing during the parade. We are trying really hard to find that
guy that rode on our float in the Morehead Parade, but so far no luck. BOB and FRED, both
have run into him recently, but failed to get his name, phone number or address. We will meet at
EULA PARKIN’s home at 1513 Ann Street Extension around 9:00 to decorate the float.
HOWARD and PEGGY will bring the chairs and posters (which we now have framed). BELVA
MANNING said she thought we would probably have 6 or 8 on motorcycles. BOB said he didn’t
think ROY MUSSER would be able to ride since he tore up his cycle in an accident recently.
PEGGY said she needed to know how many motorcycles were planning to ride in the parade,
since she would have to let Martha know. That would expand the amount of space we would
need in the parade. She was advised to tell them we would probably have approximate 10 riding.
BELVA wanted to know if we found someone to wear the Uncle Sam suit in the parade.
Yes, we did. BILL HODGE has graciously volunteered. RUTH wanted to know if he had gotten
with NANCY about the float and other items needed for the parade. BOB said yes, but we
needed a truck to pull the float. He wanted to know if NANCY’s husband would be willing to
pull the float. She said yes. It is early but we need to start buying candy for the parade, so we
can make sure we have what we will need. BOB asked TOM HARMON if he had had the
opportunity to run down getting the constitutions. He said he had contacted the Heritage
Foundation and the cost would be $250.00 for 1,000 copies. NANCY said let her look around
and see if she could find some cheaper. She would like to check on small flags, since she has
none left. BOB told her to go ahead and order the flags. BOB said some of our members had
gotten some pocket constitutions from Walter Jones, Richard Burr and some of the other
representatives. Maybe we should look into checking with them again. RUTH said we probably
won’t be able to get any from Jones since he won’t come down and talk to us. It was thought that
he would be coming down sometime this month but now he is no longer even taking emails or
calls from ERIC so, we don’t know. Jones was kinda upset with us since we did not support him
in the primary. ERIC tried to explain that we were all about term limits, but now that you have
won the primary, we will support you in the general We still would like for you to come on
down and talk to us. He has quit writing back ever since then. I guess he feels he is going to get
re-elected and doesn’t need us.
BOB recognized Clint Rowe who is becoming a friendly, familiar face with our group. He is
running for District Court Judge. So don’t forget “Row, row, row your vote”.
BOB wanted to know how many are willing to work the polls on the 17th. We need to hit as
many of these polling precincts as possible to influence the vote as best we can. As we get into
July, we’ll start firming up the list of poll volunteers to pass out our recommended voting ballot.
HOWARD said this one can probably do us the most harm or the most good. BOB said with the
Lt. Governor’s race he would be satisfied right now with either Forest or Gurley. Does anyone
have an issue with either one of them? He has heard them both speak. HOWARD said he would
still like to get that other candidate for Secretary of State, if we can get him. “Goodwin”. He is
chairman of the county commissioners in Edenton. The county was in financial trouble and he
pulled it out. They now have a surplus. It is a Democrat county and he is a Republican. That is
why I would like to have him speak to us. I have heard him and I was impressed by him. BOB
said if HOWARD could get a hold of him and work something out for him to come and talk to
us, please do so. HOWARD was asked which candidate he preferred since he had heard both
Gardner and Goodwin speak. HOWARD said he thought they were both good, but he would like
for us to hear Goodwin speak, so we could decide for ourselves. If we only have the opportunity
to hear just one, that handicaps the other. It helps to make our decision a little easier if we can
listen to both candidates. BOB said once we get through the primary, it might be nice if we can
get some of the Democrat candidates to come and speak to us also.
Meeting adjourned at 7:50pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary
