CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
JUNE 12, 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:01pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUH
Pledge of Allegiance led by DAVID COX
Invocation by LYN BAKER
No. In Attendance – 43 (including Guest Speaker and Campaign Manager)

GUEST SPEAKER – Ed Goodwin, Candidate for Secretary of State

GUESTS- Betty Gardner (wife of Candidate for Secretary of State Kenn Gardner)
Mary Lou Mason (friend of Lyn Baker), Garrison & Barbara Swigert,
Art and Patricia Sims (friends of ED and GLADYS SUESSLE)
Richard Blackwell (Mr. Goodwin’s campaign manager)

Welcomed members not seen recently – STEVE and DONNA BIBB, MADELEINE SCHAW

Welcomed members from other TEA Party groups – SANDRA HELMS and JOYCE MANLEY             (members of the Western Carteret TEA Party group), and
LILLIAN CREGER and SARA PEREGOY, (from Craven County TEA Party group).

BOB asked Mrs. Gardner if she would like to say a few words.  Mrs. Gardner said, “Kenn really enjoyed coming and speaking with you last week and unfortunately he had a prior commitment, a meet and greet, so he wasn’t able to come tonight; but he asked me to come because last week some really exciting news happened in our campaign — Dr. Mike Beitler endorsed Kenn for Secretary of State.  And I have a quote from Mike here that says ’Kenn is a proven conservative businessman who has been recognized nationally for his innovation and leadership.  For thirty years he has grown businesses across North Carolina and has the experience we need as our next Secretary of State.’  So we are really thankful for Mike’s endorsement and looking forward to a great campaign.”  (Applause)

BOB read the announcement LYN BAKER had given him ‘Celebrating GOD and Country’, Sunday, July 1, at the First Baptist Church in Morehead City.  It is their annual Independence Day Pig and Chicken Pickin’ at the Family Life Center.  It starts at 6:00 pm with music and speakers.  Tickets must be purchased in advance.  LYN has the tickets or can tell you someone else who also has them.  The tickets are also available at the Church Office beginning Monday, June 4th through Friday, June 29th from 12:00pm on.  No tickets will be sold after 12:00pm, Friday, June 29th.

PEGGY GARNER requested that, when members ask questions, to please state their name prior to asking.  Transcribing the minutes from the recording, sometimes it is hard to tell exactly who is speaking.

BOB informed the group that Ed Goodwin, Candidate for Secretary of State was with us tonight.  He said it was very good of Mr. Goodwin, at such a late date, to be able to find time to come on down to see us.  ‘I say it was such a late date because the primary runoff is July 17, so the clock is ticking.  We are still trying to get John Tedesco, Candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Hopefully we will have him in early July.  I think he is shooting for July 3rd, but no promises; but we supported Mr. Tedesco in the May Primary and will probably do so again in the runoff‘.

He then told us that STEVEN BEST had information on a gentleman who was running independently for president.  He asked STEVEN if the gentleman had confirmed if he would come and speak to us.  STEVEN said it was not confirmed as yet.  He has been informed that he is welcome any Tuesday night prior to the election.  He is Terry Jones, a preacher out of Florida who wants to be a write-in candidate.

BOB said, ‘You all have seen the handouts here on Mr. Goodwin.  He is from Edenton…a local boy…and he is Chairman of the Chowan County Commissioners.  He is running for Secretary of State‘.  He then turned the floor over to Mr. Goodwin.  Told him to take as much time as he wanted.  We’ll have a question and answer period after he completes his talk.

Mr. Goodwin said, ‘Thank you sir and Good Evening.  I am from Edenton, North Carolina.  That is where I was born and raised on a farm there and that is where I was taught my conservative values…not just by my mother and father but my church family as well as the many families of the people I worked with on the farm.  I retired after many years of being away from home.  I stayed away 33 years total and I retired and came back to farm.  That is one time that I did exactly what my daddy told me to do.  He told me to go off and see the world, son, and after you are satisfied, come back home and take care of me and Momma in our old age.  And the Good Lord saw fit to allow me to do that and I had six years with my daddy on the farm before he died.  My brother and I farm the same farm (5 generations of farmers)…the family farm.  We do not own all the land.  We rent half of the land.  We own 300 acres and we rent 325.  My daddy rented some of that land for 45 years.  He always wanted to buy it but the families would never sell, so we still farm that rented land….peanuts, cotton, soybeans, wheat, milo, rye, butterbeans, snap beans and field peas.  So we do stay busy.  After I got out of high school I went to East Carolina University.  I thought that was where I should be.  My momma did not want me to go, ‘cause I was 17 years old when I left and I turned 18 in my freshman year.  I was not ready for college life, of being independent and on my own.  Especially at that time, East Carolina was known as the number two party school in the country.   And my momma did not like the fact that her 17 year old son was going off and being dumped into that environment and my momma was right.  My grades were not good and I got drafted.  By the time I went into the service I was 19 years old but how do you tell a 19 year old young man or boy to tighten up and do right.  That’s kind of tough.  Some of us are hard headed.  I had to learn the hard way, and I did learn the hard way.  So I got that nice piece of paper that all of you signed, that represented all of you.  I think you can appreciate this letter…it said…’Greetings! Your friends and neighbors have chosen you to represent them in the armed forces of the United States of America.  Report to Fort Jackson, South Carolina on so and so date on so and so time.  Then you read the next page and it says the bus will pick you up at the local bank at 6:30 on a certain date and you will be on that bus and be gone.  Well, my daddy, a World War II veteran, who had instilled in me a love of this country, told me ‘I don’t want you to go, son’, and he just cried and cried when he told me that.  He said listen to your cousins…they are killing them over there at an increased rate because they are sending all the green horns over there.  Use your head one time, boy.  You know how to shoot a gun and I taught you how to fight with your hands.  So, I went to see a recruiter.   The Army had me.  I went to see the Air Force recruiter.  I had to drive 60 miles to see the nearest recruiter.  I walked in and said I want to join the Air Force right now and I want to do this or that.  He said ‘Did you just get drafted?’  I said ‘Yes, sir’.  He said, ‘OK, I can get you out…you are late reporting…but you are not in the cycle where you are violating the law, yet.  If you’ll do good on this test, I can do something for you.’  And I thought about what my daddy said, ‘Use your head, son!’  So, I took that test.  Got through and the guy graded it and said ‘you can be anything in the Air Force you want to be up to this, right here’.  He showed me all the military specialty codes.  That was a 31652G-1…that was like an MOS (military occupational specialist).  What that meant was they sent me to nuclear school.  So guess what?  Did we ever nuke Viet Nam?  Nope, should have, that’s what my daddy always said.  If they would just do what was right, they could go ahead and win that war…you wouldn’t have to go over there.  But, I did not have to go over there.  I went to nuke school…intercontinental ballistic missile school…underground silos at that time.  And that is what I did for 4 years while I was in the military.  Got out.  Got my head straight.  I farmed for a while, fished some, built some houses, moved some houses, and then I went back to East Carolina to finish what I started.  I’ve always been like that.  If I start something, I got to finish it.  Might take me a little while.  Some of you ladies know that ’honey do list’ that you give to your husbands?  You know he is going to get around to it sooner or later, right?  (Laughter and several nos.)  No?  I was trying to help you guys out.  (Someone said when you have a composition book full, it is kinda hard! More laughter.)  One of you will get trained after while.  I don’t know which one it will be.  But I went back to East Carolina and I finished; and school was fun then because I was hungry and I knew I would not get a second chance.  So I went to school under the GI Bill.  I feel like I earned it.  And then Uncle Sam recruited me and hired me as a Special Agent NCIS and I did that for 23 years before I retired and came home.  During that period of time, they needed somebody in the Soviet Union as a Nuclear Weapons Treaty Inspector and they needed an agent who was kinda espionage trained, kinda intelligence trained and somebody that knew nuclear weapons.  That is kind of an odd combination.  And they found an old farm boy from eastern North Carolina.  So I went for 4 and ½ years.  I did not live over there permanently. I would go and stay anywhere from 40 to 60 days at a time; four or five trips per year for 4 ½ years.  And I did nuclear treaty inspections in the Soviet Union.  That is the coldest I have ever been in my life.   (Laughter)  Sometimes we watched them launch ’em and blow ’em up.  And you know what….everyone they ever launched …worked.  I am sure they had it rigged so we would see that; but everyone of them worked.  I did that 4 ½ years.  I spent 5 years in Japan running operations in that part of the world for the United States and what I was tasked to do.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was trained in many different specialties in there as well as being on protected service details for a lot of foreign leaders and presidents of the United States as well.  So I have had a very blessed career there.  So I can tell you this, before I retired and came home… as a gun specialist and a unarmed defense specialist I worked at Blackwater for two years…training military guys because military guys are not trained how to act like police officers and go into local homes or businesses and find the bad guys.  That is not what the military has been trained to do.  So I worked under a contract at Blackwater, training military people when they would go overseas to teach them how to go into urban combat.  Go into a house and get somebody and take them out…best to bring them out alive…That is what I did.  I got tired of that.  I got it out of my system and then I came home and started to farm with my daddy.
I started to build my house and found out that regulations were unbelievable that the county had, as far as me building a house.  So I asked to see the land utilization plan, the development plans, and I asked to see the county budget.  And they asked me why do you want to see them?  Because I am a citizen and I am entitled to it.  What are you looking for?  I said I will know when I find it.  So that was like a red flag to me.  Something wrong in my local government if they would not let me see that.  So I had a job to do…wanted to finish building my house, farming with my daddy and everything, and then I decided to run for County Commissioner.  So in 2008 I ran for County Commissioner in my home county.  I ran against a minority female in a Democratic controlled county and I was the first Republican elected in that county.  You know your North Carolina history…real quick….Edenton, North Carolina was the colonial capital of this colony (before it was New Bern, before it was Raleigh …it was Edenton).  One man from Edenton signed the Declaration of Independence.  One man from Edenton signed the Constitution of the United States.  One man from Edenton was on the first Supreme Court of this country.  Another man from Edenton was the first Secretary of the Navy.  And the first political activism by women in this country occurred in Edenton, North Carolina….the Edenton Tea Party.   When the TEA Party started to develop in North Carolina, they had a ‘tea party’ and they planned it in Edenton, North Carolina because of those women.  There was about 600 people on the court house green down there on the wharf.  And that was years ago.  That was the first tea party thing in modern times, if you would, in North Carolina, like that.  So I come from a place where we get fed up kind of quick and we don’t like to take a lot of junk.  So when I got elected to the Board of Commissioners, as a Democrat controlled board, they elected me chairman and I have been chairman four years in a row.  Now why would five Democrats elect the first Republican to be chairman?  (HOWARD said hoping you would make a fool of yourself).  There you go.  They are smarter than you think.  They wanted to elect that Republican so that if it gets any worse that what it already was, they could blame it on him.  It has been brought to my attention by some people that are against me that think that I have inflated my story of Chowan County.  You can look it up.  You can read the news.  Chowan County was bankrupt.  We had a thirty million dollar slush fund, and nobody knew it.  When I won the election, and before I got sworn in, it was announced that Chowan County was broke.  The state was going to take us over.  We were 32 million dollars in debt and we had lost a 30 million dollar reserve fund that we had had and we still had to make payrolls.  We still had debt service to do.  So anybody that want to challenge whether or not Chowan County saved theirself, come see me.  Five Democrats and two Republicans…we worked our tails off for the last three and a half years.  We have rebuilt Chowan County’s administrative system and financial system.  We have reduced our loans from 23 loans to 11.  Any money we saved for the first 2 and ½  to 3 years we paid on debt service.  We had to change our asset  to debt ratio and if we didn‘t do it we would go under.  I made the motion, as Chairman of the County Commissioners to raise taxes one time, and I raised it 3 and ½ cents.  I made that motion at 6:15 one night….the first budget we worked on… I made it at 6:15 that night.  The motion was approved at quarter to 1 the next morning.  It is in the newspaper.  You can Google it, you can search it, you can find it.  We sat there.  We rejected every budget that the County Manager brought forth.  He brought forth five budgets.  We threw everyone of them out and then everybody said what are you going to do.  He threw up his hands and said you all can do anything you want to.  We said fine, we’ll write the budget; so that is how long it took us…from 6:00 that night until quarter to 1 the next morning.  We wrote the budget.  We cut almost 4 million dollars out of that budget.  And we are still operating on that budget.  We are operating on a budget from 5 to 6 years ago.  But people want to challenge that and say it is not true.  It has been inflated.  I didn’t do it.  We did it.  Democrats and Republicans.  Why?  Because we are citizens of that county and we love our home and we will push to the max.  There is no telling what we can do when we really resolve ourselves and we are pushed to the max.  So 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans changed that.  But guess who would have gotten blamed for it if it didn’t work?  I would!  Guess who never takes credit for anything?  Me.  I don’t.  Ask some of you people who have heard me talk before, I never say I did it, We did it….Chowan County did it.
There is also some dispute about my business interests.  I created two businesses from the ground up.  One of them was based upon a patent that me and my business partner developed based upon my years experience with the government and his years of experience as a computer specialist/programmer.  Have a patent on that.  We built the business up and sold it because somebody wanted it more than I wanted it.  So I made a business decision.  I unloaded it.  And I unloaded it at a good time too.  The other business was something that was near and dear to me.  It is a biostat. It is what is called a hemostatic agent.  It stops blood flow.  In combat situations and emergency and hospital operating rooms.  It is made from ground-up shrimp shells from a certain body of water in the world.  And the product enzymes is called ’chitizen’.  It breaks down in the human body into glucosamine, and do you know what that is?  Basically sugar, right?  Our current combat goals in quick clot that the military uses is ’clay’ based.  It is made from dirt – clay.  We haven’t had soldiers live long enough to see if there is any health side effects from having that introduced into their bodies, yet.  We’ll probably find out in the future about that.  So I still own a percentage of that business and we have been tested and we have been run through the wringer and we have started to sell that, so I’m still interested in that…..and my farming business.
Farming is the hardest one.  But farming is the one that helped make me and has taught me so much.  As I looked at it and tried to bet everything straight business-wise and everything, it made me start looking at North Carolina…the business climate in the state of North Carolina….and I saw a very unfriendly obstructive business climate in this state.  That means, something has to be fixed.  Let me tell you what happens.  Failed leadership in Washington, DC, results in failed leadership in Raleigh, North Carolina and that results in failed leadership in your home counties.  That is just the way it goes.  We are addicted to a handout.  Once you take the money, you’ve got to do like they say.  So, I’m kind of hard-headed when it comes to certain things, as a constitutionalist.  Everybody says you are a Republican.  I say, Well, I can be a constitutionalist and be a Republican.  Everybody says you can’t prove you are a constitutionalist.  Oh yeah! I’ve got 31 years of public service…27 of those years I raised my hand to my GOD and said I will die for you.  When Chowan County elected me and swore me in as commissioner, they didn’t ask me to die for them, they just asked me to abide by the constitution.  They didn’t ask for my life.  So when push comes to shove, you always have to do what is right and what that little book that a lot of us have and carry in their pocket…mine is in the car right now….called the Constitution.  The first thing in there highlighted is…you know what it is in my book?…you know what it says?…’We the People’.  That’s good enough.  Remember that letter I told you you sent me?  ’Greetings, your friends, neighbors, and countrymen…we the people have chosen you…Did you tell them whether or not you thought I was qualified?  Did you care whether or not I had any experience?  Not at all.  You just wanted a warm body.  I think that attitude has gone haywire in our governmental system.  Why does North Carolina lose businesses to Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee?  The playing field is not level.  They beat us all the time.  Nobody can give me a reason why they beat us.  Why did Caterpillar refuse to come down here?  I have heard four or five reasons, haven’t you?  You know they said the port was not deep enough to handle the boats coming in.  Well those same boats come in there and pick up Army and Marine tanks, armor personnel carriers, buffalos, and everything else.  Does a bulldozer weigh more than a tank?  It didn’t the last time I looked at them.  An Army personnel carrier weighs as much as a bull dozer.  And these new things they got now, that were strange to me back when I was in service…they are heavy things.  Why are we losing?  We are losing because of this:  Six things is what we need to address the cost of doing business in this state.  These are the things that businesses look for. … (1) Business costs…. That includes taxes, all these licenses, and all that kind of stuff.  (2) Regulatory burden….We are regulatory overrun.  We have regulations governing regulations.  Real quick, I’ll give you an example….My brother and I wanted to dig a pond on the farm to irrigate our farm with.  Four government agencies, 2 state and 2 federal, came in to look at our land and where we wanted to dig a pond.  I could not dig a pond on my land that I pay taxes on.  So they come up there and say ‘Why do you want to dig a pond?’  I told them.  They wanted to know why I wanted to dig it here.  I said look in the ground.   There is a place about as round as a silver dollar where water is just bubbling out of the ground.  I said that will be a good place for a pond right there.  So they finally agreed with us because the water off the farm drains underneath and when it gets down close to that wetlands to that swamp going to the Chowan River, it comes to the top of the surface.  So I said that would be a good place.  It will replenish itself quicker, probably.  So the Army Corps of Engineers had the final say.  They said Mr. Goodwin, you can dig it this long right here, this wide right here and it can not be over 10 foot deep and you’ve got to stack the dirt on each side and you can not move the dirt.  So I’ve got 3 stories tall of dirt on both sides of a pond about 200 yards long and I can not move the dirt.  (Someone asked ‘why’.)  Rules and regulations.  He showed me right there.  He said there it is…there’s the regulation right there.  And then he also has a penalty down there.  If I violate what he says, you know what he told me I had to do…push all that dirt back in that pond, level it out and plant trees on top of it.  So I use that example as a business regulation.  How about if you were trying to come to North Carolina and bringing your business and you had to weed through a bunch of regulations like that.  But at the same time we have regulations in here if Golden Corral is to move somewhere…guess what they have to do on that piece of property.  They have to have a retention pond, right?…to handle the water that GOD puts on them that runs off.  (Someone said a skeeter breeding hole is what they are).  So, right!… to us down east, it becomes a mosquito breeding hole.  So during the summer a state health department inspector comes around and says ‘We have tested some of these mosquitoes.  They have West Nile virus and other mess in them, right?  And they will kill you if they bite you…so we have a public health hazard, so they go around with a bunch of people to find all standing bodies of water that are stagnant, mosquito breeding holes, and tell you to drain it.  Well, you can’t drain that retention pond.  It’s got to percolate into the earth or evaporate with the sun.  So there is a regulation that they think is good to control water runoff and it breeds mosquitoes and could possibly kill us.  So one regulation is contradiction to health and the regulation of the people.  It is crazy.  It is out of whack, so, if you were a business, how would you feel about that?  You’d go somewhere else and spend your money.   (3)  The Labor Force – We do not need to be spending a lot of effort and time to try to put a business, a factory, a manufacturing facility somewhere where we do not have the labor force to support that.  What would you rather have here in this county.  Would you rather have one business that had 1500 employees or would you rather have 10 that had 15 employees.  I’d rather have 10 because if the economy gets bad, we probably won’t lose all of them, but if the economy gets bad, I could probably lose that one big one and the impact would be greater.  So the business costs, the regulatory burden, and the labor force.  Next is (4) the economic climate….What is the economy in this state like?  When I was growing up North Caroling was great.  I mean North Carolina was strong.  I can’t tell you how many pepsi colas and hamburgers I have won off of my home state of North Carolina when I was in service and as a special agent traveling and living all over the world.  I won a lot of pepsi colas.  I don’t drink, so I didn’t win a beer or a drink like that or a bottle.  And I’m not a gambling man, but I don’t think it is gambling if you are betting on a sure thing.  Right?  One of the things I used to get the guys on was the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi is in North Carolina.  No, it’s not!!  Pepsi cola or lunch, either one you all want.  You all know where it is, right?  Mt. Mitchell.  It is about 200 feet taller than Mt. Washington up in New Hampshire where the wind blows so hard all the time.  Then you get them on other things.  My home town….I used to love to get the guys from the bigger cities….oh, your little home town down there, nobody from there even knows or can spell constitution.  I’d say ‘I’ll bet more people from my home town signed the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence from your big cities.  You are on!’  And then they would go do the research and I’d take my free p
epsi and free lunch.  But our economic climate we really have to look at what we are doing to affect that.  What are we doing to hurt it?  Let me give you an example of how we are hurting it…you know what the number one business in the state of North Carolina is?  Anybody have any idea?  Farming!!! Agriculture is number one in North Carolina.  What is number two?  Military!!!  What is number three?  Tourism!!!  So how many of you in here have been a tourist?  Everybody has been a tourist.  How many of you have been in the military?  All right, some of you.  How many of you have been a farmer?  How many of you have earned your living farming?  It is hard to make a living farming isn’t it, sir?  Very hard.  So let me give you this example…farming is the number one industry in North Carolina.  Chowan County is very narrow.  When you hit the Chowan County river, there is a bridge there that is about two miles wide.  1.28 miles something like that.  And from there…from the west to the east line is about 3.8 miles wide.  When you come up to the Chowan River it is a 55 miles per hour speed zone.  When you hit that elevated, high rise bridge over the river, it changes turns to 70.  So it goes the next 3 miles at 70 miles an hour and when it gets to the next county, it drops right off to 55.  We asked the state why did you do this to us.  Well, it’s a limited access highway there….4 lane now….I said well explain that to me…there is no turn arounds in there.  You know when you see a divided highway and you see a turn around for emergencies only….there is none of that in there.  So you know what that means??? No farmer in Chowan County can put his tractor on that stretch of US17 to get from one end of the county to the other.  Now the state made a highway through the county that’s 62% of it’s land mass is involved in agricultural production.  And that is the number one business in that county and the number one business in the state and they made a 70 mile an hour speed limit through there.  So you know how you have to get from this end of the county to that end of the county, the town of Edenton is right over here.  You know how you have to get there…the only way you can get there…you have to take all that big farm equipment right through downtown Edenton.  Now what is the state thinking?  If you were a businessman wanting to come to North Carolina and you saw they were hurting the number one industry in the state, farming, that bad and they do not have any thought ahead of time about what they are doing to you.  If they do that to the number one industry, what would they do to me as a businessman coming in from out of state.  That is crazy.  So, our economic climate needs to be looked at.  Next (5) Our growth prospects – Do we have growth within our county.  Do we have growth within our town.  Do we have economic growth…is that climate there to grow in the state and in the nation and internationally?  You know used to if you talked about something coming to Chowan County, Pamlico County or Carteret County, that was going to be shipping stuff overseas, international business, everybody would have laughed, right?  That is the common thing now.  We have a business in Chowan County…only one of two places in the world…where they recap those giant earthmoving tires.  The tires are taller than ocean cargo boxes.  They have to cut the tops out of them and they can only put two tires in there.  And they ship them into Edenton and that guy recaps them and ships them back out.  Would you ever think there would be international business like that… he is only one of two places in the world.  So we have to look at that.  So if I am a business coming to North Carolina I am going to look for businesses that exist like that and how the state treats international businessmen and he recaps a lot of truck tires for the state of North Carolina and the United States.  You know recapping kind of went out and then they changed the law and allowed recapping to start back again.  They are probably going to change it back again.  You notice how many recap tires pieces you see on the 4 lane highways now?  They are shredding them off like they used to.  So the glue is not working like they said.  But we do have to look at that.  Then we have to look at (6) Quality of Life – That includes education.  That includes recreation.  That includes your hospital facilities.  Well, Secretary of State can not affect all of those.  Yes, they can….You are not going to bring a business to another state and bring some of your employees with you and not know something about the educational possibilities, recreational possibilities or the health care possiblities in that area, are you?  You are going to study that.  So we do need to address that.  That is part of that business climate.  When Chowan County was going through their dire economic crisis, I got letters or phone calls from every department of state in the state of North Carolina.   Every council of state job I got a letter or personal phone call from or email except for one.  Guess which one it was?  Secretary of State!!!  It was the worse economic time in this country, right?  2008 we went busted.  I’m kind of naïve when it comes to that, I thought an elected official, who was supposed to be working for me, would call my county and say ’Mr. Goodwin, what is it we can do to help business in your county?’  I want too much, don’t I?  How come the Secretary of State in a four year term can not make 100 phone calls.  You know why I say 100?  100 counties!!  That is a built-in quality control system, isn’t it?  You call up every county, county manager, chairman of the county commisioners, chamber of commerce, economic development….tell me the things that are detrimental to business in your county that you have identified that the state can help you with.  So you make a list.  After you make 100 phone calls, you think you are going to have a big list?  You will have a lot of repetition in that list too. But then the Secretary of State takes that, analyzes that list, prioritizes them and in my opinion takes the low hanging fruit.  The ones you know can probably be fixed and make the biggest impact and the quickest.  Take that down to the state legislature and say ladies and gentlemen change this and the business climate in this state will improve.  If that is done every year, on a continually revolving basis, I guarantee you in a four year span, the business climate in this state will change.  I hope to say it will change for the better, you know, but some of that has already been started.  Look, Dale Falwell, when he was running, he used to say this on the campaign trail, when he was running for Lt. Governor…some of you may have seen him do this….he had a little rubber tire and he said the Good Year plant down there had to make 3000 tires a day just to pay your workman’s comp.  Did some of you all see him say that?  The plant down there was relieved, because the playing field is not in North Carolina’s favor.  They were going to a plant in Tennessee and doubling up a plant over there.  They wanted to keep this plant open.  The state legislature eased the workman’s compensation rules in the state of NC.  It is outrageous.  Do you know what an OBGYN doctor delivers a child today…do you know that doctor is on the hook and paid the insurance premium until that child is 18 plus 2 years over.  So for 20 years he pays insurance on that and any given time after that, that doctor can be sued or be blamed for something that happened to that child.  I asked Mr. Falwell, ‘Are you sure and he showed me.  I said that needs to be changed…and he would carry around a workman’s comp book for NC that was about this big.  And then he would pick up and say this is Georgia, this is South Carolina, this is Tennessee, this is Virginia…put them all together and it was still not as big as North Carolina.  So we got a lot of work to do to make us a business friendly state.  Small business in this
state is the backbone of this economy…always has…They are always against everything we try to do.  Farming is important to us.  Not just because I am a farmer.  But I’ll tell you how important it is to you.  Let’s pretend I am the best magician in the world.  And when I clap my hands, everything that is made out of cotton that you have on your body is going to fall to the floor.  You all want me to clap my hands?  (Laughter)  Think about that!  And where are we having this meeting?  At Golden Corral, buffet.  Khrushchav said in the early 60’s, if you remember he took his shoe off in the United Nations and beat on the podium and said the way to whip the United State is to what??  Through the stomach.  That is scary, isn’t it?  So if you control all the food, and there is all kinds of treaties, there is all kinds of agenda, you can call them Agenda 21, you can call them anything you want to…they want to take away the property rights and it is all about controlling the food.  You control the food…you control the world.  You know the old saying ‘ the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’.  Look, at one time I was a pretty good size man…my chest was up here and now it’s fallen.  (Laughter)  I can not make it get back up there.  I have tried and tried.  But after 60 years I guess it got tired too and it fell.
I have a lot of fight in me.  I have enjoyed everything I have done in life.  I tell my story to you tonight and a lot of people do not believe it….how could a boy from eastern North Carolina, tobacco farm boy, farmer’s son, do all those things that you did.  I don’t know.  GOD has blessed me and he knew I was crazy enough to do some of those things I did.  But for GOD and Country I will die.  I’ve proven it.  When I got discharged from the United States Air Force, they called me back after I was out for about a month…and they were concerned about how I was going to come back…but they were not calling me back as a military member, they were calling me back as a civilian.  They wanted to do something for me.  So I dressed up like this.  I was going to be nice.  I never wore my military uniform in public or my military orders when I traveled.  They would put down there, do not wear your uniform…wear civilian clothes.  When I was discharged my Momma said ‘I do not have a picture of you in your military uniform.’  I went in the house, took it out of the box, put it on and said ‘take a picture Mom’.  But that is the way we were treated then, but they called me back and they called me back for one reason…and they gave me the Airman’s medal for heroism for something I did.  It took them a month for them to get me to come back and take it cause I wouldn’t take it.  I’m not brave.  I’m not brave at all.  If I had time to think about what I did I wouldn’t have done it.  But one thing I am is I am not afraid.  There is a difference between being brave and afraid.  I’m not afraid.  I can prove that.  Look, I’m from eastern North Carolina.  I don’t have a big name.  I don’t have a big name person behind me.  You do your research, you can’t find anybody that knows me or a big name person that knows me.  I don’t have money.  I don’t have a big name money person behind me.  And I decided I was going to run for Secretary of State.  Mr. Gardner lives in Wake County.  Millions of people live in Wake County.  That’s tough isn’t it?  14,785 people in Chowan County.  How many times have you seen someone run for a state wide office from the eastern part of North Carolina?  You don’t.  So what I am saying to you.  Go out and run over this entire state today on this trip down here I went pass 26,000 miles on my car.  And I have seen gas right at $4.00.  Today I filled up at $3.23.  I was excited about $3.23 cent gas today.  But I want some of that below $3.00 stuff, though.  It could be done.  It could be fixed.  But I’ve got enough fight in me.  I just love sticking my nose in something.  That is what my Momma says…you got a lot of fight in you like when you were little.  I couldn’t stand to see someone being taken advantage of.  When I was going to school we didn’t have this bully problem.  ’Cause if we saw somebody bullying somebody, guess what happened?  I’d say, come on and help me, we are going to get this guy.  So we’d go, play at recess, something like that… the bell would ring and we’d go back in and he would be sitting out there up against a tree crying.  Teacher would come out and say ’what happened to you?’  Nothing I just fell down and hurt myself.  So, we just say, don’t you ever pick on that boy over there again.  They would never pick on somebody that was strong.  They’d only pick on somebody that was weak.  I don’t like to see that.  I equate that to being bullied by the government.  I worked my tail off for four years to make sure that the people of Chowan County didn’t think their government was a bully.  I think the state of North Carolina government is a bully right now.  Our federal government is a bully right now.  I wouldn’t be where I am except for one thing and that is people like you…the grass roots people…who are willing to come to a meeting like this and listen to a funny talking boy from northeastern North Carolina.
That is how it works.  The American way  says anybody can do it.  Right?  Well, let’s say any citizen.  I can prove it to you, can’t I?  Ran for state-wide office and won the primary but not by the percentage required to absolutely win.  Our law allows for the number 2 finisher to call for a runoff and that is why Mr. Gardner and I are in a runoff. I think it was, what, 45,000 votes different between the two of us.  The law in North Carolina says he can call for a runoff, so he is exercising his legal right.  We can‘t hold that against him.  I can prove I am electable because I done it across this state.  I have had two primary races in my life, one general election, one runoff that I am in right now.  So, actually I get past that runoff, I go into another general election.  It is an amazing ride.  It is a heavy burden to carry too.  In that car and those 26,000 miles, me and GOD have had a lot of conversations in there.  I ain’t ashamed to admit it.  I talk right out loud ’Am I crazy?  I’m sleepy and I’ve got 2 ½ hours more to go and it is 1:00 now.  Then all of a sudden the conversation stops, not on my part, but on HIS part.  You ever had GOD stop talking to you?  He got tired of hearing me.  Why are you crying.  Why are you complaining so much.  Just do what I told you.  Kind of like my Daddy used to say….we’d be out there pulling tobacco…anybody in here ever pull tobacco?  You know I’ve been like this…this is how we were all day, alright.  Raise up, put the tobacco in the cart and then go back down.  Good land I reckon.  I’d say Daddy, this is tough….and he’d say ’shut up boy you don’t even have a back.  You ain’t old enough to have a back problem yet.  It was hot and cold out there in that tobacco field.  My Momma said last year, she came out to the field…about 100 degrees and we were out there working side dressing cotton…sweating, hot as I don’t know what and the humidity was high and Momma said I am concerned about you boys.  I said what do you mean Momma.  She said it is so hot out here and look at you all sweating.  You all are getting too heated up.  So I said Momma, why are you saying that.  She said cause I love you.  I said ’didn’t you love me when I was 15 or 16? (Laughter)  You know if you talk to your momma like that a zinger is coming….She said, son, I don’t need to tell you this but you are different now than when you were 16.  I said Momma you got me there.  But the bottom line is somebody has to do it, right?  I believe I am qualified for the job I am seeking.  I believe I am experienced enough for the job and I ask for your support again.  I didn’t get it last time.  I got a lot of support out here, but I didn’t get it last time.  There were only two counties east of 95 that did not vote for Ed Goodwin last time.  That was Carteret County and Pamlico.  Every other county east of 95 I won.  I’m not blaming you for it.  Did I come down here and talk to you last time?  No, I didn’t.  I went to your district convention, your congressional district convention and talked there.  That’s not going to reach everybody.  But you know, I told you I drove 26,000 miles already.  You know, I still have not been in all 100 counties.  Mrs. Gardner, I don’t believe your husband has been in all 100 counties already has he?  (She said he has been to an awful lot of them.)  I have been to an awful lot of them also.  This is a big state, people.  So you try to maximize it the best you can.  I always planned to run up the coast right quick like and everything but everybody keeps telling me you are from eastern North Carolina, you’ll be alright.  Well, I wasn’t sometimes.  I got calls there at the last saying you got to come.  One county called me and I was on the other side of Ashville and I said I can’t get there until tomorrow.  We’re going to have a meeting tonight.  I said it is 418 miles from my front doorstep to where I was in Asheville last night.  But anyway, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for good people like yourselves.  People who believe the same way I believe.  When we go to the general election we will have to pull off some Democratic votes that’s for sure in order to win.  But we have to make sure we are solid and we do the work.  I didn’t do this by myself.  I was surprised how hard my wife and boys worked and then there’d be some other people.  Richard Blackwell, sitting over here, he’s my campaign manager from Lee County.  Never run a statewide campaign before.  Isn’t that interesting?  A boy from northeastern North Carolina running for a statewide office and nobody knows who he is and his campaign manager is from Lee County and nobody knows who he is (someone said most probably don’t know where Lee County is)  Sanford, North Carolina actually.  And we have put together a system and we do the work.  I was taught by my granddaddy and my daddy with hard work I can get anything I want.  Didn’t mean it would be quick…didn’t say it would be easy…but hard work will get you anywhere.  And you know what?  I still believe that.  And it is still holding true.  So I ask for your support next time and the next time.  Thank you. (Applause)

Question – The problem with that pond you were talking about digging….you used common sense, the problem is how did you get those others to go along with it.
Answer – I tried to stay out of it and let my brother handle it so you couldn’t say the Chairman of the County Commissioners was influencing them or this guy that is running for Secretary of State influencing them, so we would talk on the phone and the only time I saw them, I was back there looking at the pond when I got home one time and a guy came driving up out of the woods.  He was one of those guys.  But my brother would talk about it.  One thing that really sold them was the word ‘green’.  I told my brother to tell them this is a green thing.  My brother said what are you talking about. I said the water on the farm runs underneath the ground and then right at the edge of that swamp as it goes down to the Chowan River it just bubbles out of the ground right there.  I said tell them we are going to recycle that water that is automatically falling off that field, we are going to collect in that pond, use it to irrigate and spray it back on that field and then its going to run back to the pond.  We keep it going.  Brother said that sounds good.  I think that had something to do with it and when my Brother told him that as a farmer, by law, we are allowed to seek water to irrigate our fields if we need to.  I told my brother to tell him, we can fill in that swamp all the way to the river, about 300 yards, and we can pull out of the Chowan River.  The Corps of Engineers said please don’t do that.

Question – You haven’t mentioned the unions in North Carolina and how they help or hinder industry.
Answer – Right now we are still a Right to Work State.  When I got out of service I had a permit to work hanging high steel in buildings and running instrumentation air lines through those buildings and I had a permit to work at that union job.  Unions have run their course in my opinion.  Unions are responsible for getting the wages up like they are now but now a union looks like to me exists solely to keep a sorry worker employed, a non-productive employee employed.  Unions may have run their course, but I don’t think North Carolina will change from their right to work state.  That has been a big issue in the Democratic National Convention.  They are going to be protesting there like I don’t know what.  It is a right to work state and they want to bring all those unions in to do that and after what happened in Wisconsin I don’t know whether that is going to fly anymore or not.  It is time for the unions to go or reorganize or something.  Just like with the teachers’ union, why in the world should the county or the state have to pay and spend all that money to collect dues from you as a teacher and send in and you have no choice in the matter.  It automatically had to be taken out of your check.  That is outrageous.  If you want to belong to a club, you pay it yourself.  Don’t put that burden on the state or the county.  I am not too big on unions.

Question – This state east of 95 survives on tourism and agriculture.  What do you think can be done to change that around and bring business industry in here…and develop the energy we have available in this part of the country.
Answer – Those 6 things I told you about, some of that is business costs.  We have to do something east of 95 to show we are a place where you can make it.  The cost of business is not that great and CAMA and all that stuff with all the regulations we have on some of the stuff here.  You can’t go out there in some places east of 95 and convince me that runoff from that manufacturing facility is going to end up in the ocean and hurt the fishing.  I don’t believe that.  We’ve got to address some of those issues.  We’ve got to make it more attractive here.  We’ve got to educate our labor force.  In our system right now we say every child should go to college.  But every child is not college material.  I’m sorry but GOD did not make us all equal.  I can do some things you can not do and you can do some things I can’t do and she can do some things I can’t do or neither one of us can do.  Everybody wants to say everybody is equal but everybody is not equal.  Everybody doesn’t want to go to college but we teach our children that if you want to be successful, you’ve got to go to college.  Well, I know a lot of people that are successful and never went to college.  That has always been the case.  So when I was going to school in Edenton, it was voc-tech or college prep.  Back then, they laid bricks, they welded (they had to do a project).  I still got one at the house that my brother made during his vocational tech.  He did not want to go to college but he went to a two year machinist school.  He can look at a John Deere planter there and all those gears that spin around that chair (I have to check which one makes it go like this and which one makes it go like this), he just looks at it an says this is the one we need to tighten up right here.  I’ll ask how did you do that and he says they don’t teach you that in college.  And they do not.  But I handle the paperwork for the farm and I do all the working capital and all the selling and all that kind of stuff.  He always says he is the manual guy and I am the mental guy.  So, we need to change…and those 6 things will help that a whole lot.  We do not push and we do not have representation that pushes for is east of 95.  The western part of the state feels the same way we do.  They feel like they are getting left out.  But for us, agriculture is so big, east of 95.…how many food processing plants do we have east of 95?  We grow peanuts, corn….they take my peanuts and they ship them out of here.  Once they ship them out of here, guess what they do?  We have a peanut mill right in Chowan County.  They ship them back.  There is a nationally known carrier, a national company, (Southern Air).  We take our peanuts up on the Virginia, North Carolina line and store them in a warehouse and when that mill needs peanuts to fix, to shell, roast or salt, or whatever, those peanuts that were hauled from my farm up there are hauled back to Edenton where they were grown and then they process them.  We got to process stuff right there.  The nearest milling complex we have for animal feed is Goldsboro.  That is amazing to me.  So we have missed an opportunity to increase that.  In businesses that fit we got a grant from a utility company in Chowan County to do a study on the economic climate and the business development in Chowan County.  Out of 10 things, the top 6 all related to agriculture.   One of the things was ’you need to recruit food processing plants for your diverse agriculture crops.  You need mills….cotton seed mills, soy bean mills, all types of crushing mills and processing plants for the food that is processed there.  Because all of our food is loaded up on a truck and is hauled away and processed somewhere else.  So we are losing a big opportunity right there where that home grown product could be processed right there at home and we could get all the benefit and all the tax revenue from those people being there and it creates jobs.

Question –  If we had that supply of energy that we do have right here, which our government prohibits, we can not go out there and drill, but it is out there.  We could bring in more natural gas in this country just in this part of the state, than we would ever need, but our wonderful government in Raleigh says ‘no you can’t drill’.  What is wrong with drilling for natural gas off the coast.  Have you ever heard of a spill of natural gas?
Answer – We are like Saudi Arabia in natural gas.  When I was a teenage boy all those things I told you about those food processing plants…and those mills…they existed then.  There was 8 cotton gins in my home county….5 peanut mills….3 textile mills…and that is my own county.  Booming!  Well, we didn’t have the road system  We didn’t have the energy, but they left.  The last thing that put them out of business was regulations.  At one time Chowan County was the ‘herring’ capital of the world.  Every land owner up the Chowan River, had a fish house where our herring boats would come in and they hauled fish out.  If I get caught on the back side of the farm with a herring in my possession you know what it costs me…..$100 per fish is the fine and they will take my boat or my truck, whichever one it is in.  (State and Federal regulations) They don’t want us to fish there.  For years and years the striped bass, rock fish what we call them, striped bass population disappeared from our waters but one of the only two fish hatcheries, natural fish hatcheries in the United States that still spawn and breeds rock fish and they ship them all over the US and we said ‘why don’t you release some in our waters and bring them back here.  Well, it took about 20 years of fighting to get them to release some so now our rock fish population has come back some.

Question – Do you support Agenda 21?
Answer – No ma’am.  I am a farmer and I will fight in this country for my property rights and the property my family has had for so long.  You will not take my property from me.  You will not tell me what I can do with it, even though they tell me what I can do with my pond and everything, I am against that.  As County Commissioner someone came in and wanted to offer us
free help in writing our land utilization plans and our urban development plans.  No, they are going to want something in return.  In my judgment passing something like that and the people vote on it and it’s fine but then it could become law.  But nobody from another country is going to tell me what I can do with my land.
Question – But it is becoming law in the United States?
Answer – Yes ma’am.  And it is our fault.  We have allowed it to happen.  And we elect people and continue to elect people who abide by that or believe in it and support it.  So it is a time for us to make a change.  The American system is still working.  That’s why we are all here today, because we want to make a change and we know we can.

Question – The problem is a lot of these counties do not know about Agenda 21, so they accept monies from the government to do certain things and then they are stuck with Agenda 21.
Answer – Yes, and it is crippling all of us.  You can read some of that stuff in Chowan County.  It is in there.  I can find it by the words.  I was at the state house a couple of months ago/last month, talking about that very thing.  I said any time you put ‘sustainable development’.  You put that word in front of development….Chowan has been developing itself since the beginning of time, and we have been sustaining ourselves pretty good.  Don’t put anything in front of development other than business or economic development.  Don’t tell me sustainable development.  If you look at the definition of development you don’t need the word sustainable in front of it.  Development means and continues goes on and continue to develop.  Right?  It is kind of like me as a human.  I started off like this and I am still developing.  I don’t need anything….say he is still growing….yeah, I’m growing old now.  But yes, I am adamantly opposed to Agenda 21.  As a land owner, a farmer in the United States, I have no problem at all with progress in the US with what I own and what my people worked so hard to get and acquire and hold on to.

Question – I believe that before this year is over we are going to have a civil war.
Answer – I certainly hope not.

Question – What about Voter ID?
Answer – That goes without saying for somebody for 27 years of his life said he would die for it, that is one of the most precious things I did that for….for you to have the right to vote and everybody else the right to vote.  I have no problem…I have always tried to live by what my Daddy taught me.  When I vote, I walk in, they know my name, and I take my drivers license and I show them.  They always tell me…this past primary…and they said Mr. Goodwin, we don’t need to see that.  I said I know you don’t but I need to show you.  I am an American and this is a precious right and men like me, and women too, have risked their life for this.  Two days later my brother and I were in town.  We had a broken piece on the planter and he drove by the early voting place and he said have we got time for me to stop and vote.   I said sure.  So when we got out the truck, I was going to go in with him and somebody started talking to me so then after we finished, I went in and everybody was laughing.  I said what are you all laughing about?  They said your brother is just like you, he is showing us his ID, his drivers’ license.  We don’t need that and my brother and I didn’t laugh, we just starred at each other because I didn’t know he did it and he didn’t know I did it, but we had seen our daddy do it and Daddy always said this is a precious right.  With this one vote you can change this country.  You can say your vote doesn’t count but yes it does.  I have seen foreigners, their first time to vote, I have seen them stand in line at the threat of being killed, take their thumb print and put it on that ballot and American marines stand on each side with high powered weaponry to protect them from being killed because they were earning the right to vote.  Voter ID, that is kind of simple.  We are going to have that.  We are going to have that pretty soon.  That will happen maybe not before the November election.  There is a distinct possibility but I don’t think it is going to happen by then.

Question – What about drug testing for people who are receiving public assistance?
Answer – Well, when I was doing my job, when I was in the military and when I was in as an agent, I got drug tested on a regular basis and I was risking my life and I was getting paid for what I did and I had all the security classifications you had heard of …all the background checks you could think of …and I still had to go in there and a man had to stand right there and watch me.  They took the doors off the stall…stood there and watched me…put a piece of litmus paper in there to make sure it turned a certain color and then checked the temperature and every thing else to make sure everything was alright.  That is how serious they were and I was risking my life for my country and they did me like that, so I have no problem with somebody getting assistance realizing OK you need assistance, it is something you got to do.  I have no problem with that.

Question – All these questions about the various things (Voter ID, Agenda 21, Drug Testing, etc), how can you as Secretary of State have impact on those issues.  Seems as though they are legislature issues and should be resolved in the Legislature.  How does the Secretary of State interface with all that and bring about change?
Answer – Well, I think it is kind of simple.  It goes along with what I said before, the Secretary of State needs to find out everything that is impacting business.  So do those things that impact business?  I believe they do.  So I see the Secretary of State’s job as a business diplomat.  Dealing with businesses when they want to come here….dealing with the legislature and saying this is what the study or assessment I have done of what is hurting businesses…this is what it is.  So that can continuously be taken down to Legislature and lobby the Legislature as Secretary of State.  Because once you show them proof, this is what I got from all 100 counties, and this is what I got from the businesses who refused to come here.  See, right now, nobody has gone back and asked those businesses why did you decide not on North Carolina….was it infrastructure …was it taxes….was it business costs….was it labor force….what was it?  So we can have a study there to see what we need to fix there.  So I thing the Secretary of State is a business diplomat to find out the things that affect businesses and take it to the Legislature and say this is killing business around here.  In my hotel room this morning I got a call from a state representative that said ED would you like to include Chowan County in this bill I am going to introduce in your neighbor county so we can do away with that 70 mile an hour speed zone where no farmers can put their vehicles out there.  I said absolutely.  When do I need to be at the state house.  I’ll stand there with you.  I’ll sign or do anything.  That same type of thing.  You’ve got a relationship with those people and work that up the Secretary of State can have a big impact.

Question – One of the big issues down here is the 100 year sea level rise study.  It has been off, delayed, then on again, then off and on again.  What can the Secretary of State do to kill that thing. We have already talked to the Legislatures and  one of our local members, Dr. John Drose, is spearheading the science behind fighting that program.  He has had sessions with Legislatures, and all kinds of meetings with people on the Coastal Resources Commission, etc. and the issue just doesn’t seem to go away.  It is certainly going to impact all of the North Carolina coast because they are talking 100s of thousands of acres of usable/developable land they want to take out of future use predicated on an artificial rise in sea level.
Answer – Mad science should not dictate a reaction on our part the way that’s happened.  We have to be smart about that and there is strength in numbers.  You get two fishermen from Carteret County or two fisherman from Chowan County and you go to the state legislature and lobby you will not get far….but when we rise up in mass, just like that sea level thing they came out here and everybody was OK and then the ground swell started.  Then the next thing you know they backed off of it a little bit….instead of being so many feet, it was going to be just one foot.  I’ve watched it rise and fall.  It does it all the time.  But mad science should not be accepted as reality.  Maybe we do not, but our elected leaders do.  So that is where our part comes in again.  We’ve got to make sure we are electing the right ones and if that person is not the right one, throw them out.  If I win the general election and become the next Secretary of State of North Carolina and in four years I can’t make a difference at all…you will never see me again.  I’ll drag my tail back to Chowan County like a scared dog.  You have seen a scared dog, how he walks, right?  He tucks his tail between his legs and goes like this.   You have got to be able to make a change, you know.  You don’t know what you are going to be up against, but you’ve got to be full of fight to get something done.  You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything and we have elected officials that will fall for anything right now.

Question – Seems to me I read somewhere that the state of Alabama has thrown out the entire Agenda 21 and will not allow it in the state.
Answer – They had an Agenda 21 press conference at the state house and the people there knew how I felt about it and they called the campaign manager and asked would I come and talk about how I dealt with it in Chowan County…how I feel about it as a farmer and property owner.  In that room there was about a third of the people in that room that are here tonight.  You could have taken all those people in the Agenda 21 conference and it would have amounted to about this many people here in this small space.  What the rest of the people see when this 21 issue comes up at the state house and we have about 10 people in there that are up in arms about it, you know what they say…..that is just a fringe, they don’t know what they are talking about any how.  They will go away now because they have had their say.  When you go in there and you fill the house up and the halls, why is everybody here, because it is our house.  We can go in there any time we want to.  So if so many of us go in there when they’ve got a bill before them for consideration or they have a committee meeting and we fill the house.  Every county commissioner in the state is invited to Legislative Day once a year.  A lot of us go.  We go to Raleigh for County Commissioner Day and we go in the Legislature in mass.  I have accomplished more for Chowan County in that one day than the rest of the 364 days of the year, because I can’t always get an appointment with them…I can’t always see them…but on that day they know better because the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners will write it up in their newspaper….which legislator was available and which one was not.  So they make sure they are there….and we get a lot accomplished on that day.  We had a new senator in our district there and I had four county commissioners with me and we walked in there and met him right on the floor.  When they broke, we got to him real quick, and I said you need to help us and this and than and the other.  That was in May.  In August we had a hurricane hit us.  I finally told that senator, Senator you don’t have to call me anymore…you have called me every day… or his staff called.  Do you need anything in Chowan County.  I said No sir, appreciate your call but we will be fine.  Once they find out you are coming in mass, it puts them on notice and we had told them we needed some help, that’s it.  Then he got redrawn out of our district, so he is gone now.  That is a way you can impress them.  You remember when the constitution was changed to give 18 year olds the right to vote?  I did not have the right to vote when I got drafted.  No social media, no national news support and the young people along with the old people as well in support forced the change to the constitution of the US.  When the people come in mass, it can be done.  When I am asked about this garbage of Agenda 21…they say you never talk about it.  I say I am a farmer, I don’t want to get upset.  I get upset every time someone says they are going to take my land away from me.   The government tells me what I can plant on it right now and how much.  They force me to take insurance on my crop if I don’t want it.

Question – What I am finding with a lot of people is they do not believe you.  It is like it can’t happen here in this country.  I have relatives in Wisconsin and they are already having problems with regulations.
Answer – That is why my brother and I dug a pond.  We have 300 yards through the swamp and there is a river 1.8 miles wide.  Why did I go through the hassle of digging a pond?  If I pull out of that river which is public property, sooner or later they are going to tax me.  Out west they are trying to tax some of the farmers on water they use out of public rivers now.  I don’t think they can get to me with my own pond.  I don’t think they can get to me as fast that way.  I can slow them down some now.

Question – Tell them about the meter they wanted to put on the intake on your pump.
Answer –  We’ve got a couple of irrigation rigs on the farm there.  Our land looks like beach sand so we have to have a lot of water on it.  If we don’t have water, we can’t make a crop.  They came out and said Mr. Goodwin for conservation of water, you’ve got overhead sprinklers on the top and you are losing about 10% to evaporation.  We will give you drop sprinklers which go up and go all the way down about this high off the crop.  We will put them in for you for free.  We’ll give them to you.  (The Soil and Water Conservation people).  I asked why would you do that.  What do you want in return?  We just want to put a flow meter on your intake line and you allow us to come look at it when you irrigate.  So they wanted to know how many gallons of water I was pumping so they could write it down and keep a record and then they could go and say we need to tax these guys.  They are pulling this much water out of the river.  So I’m pulling out of a pond that has a artisan spring underneath of it and it fills up that quick.

Who do you think the best environmentalists are?  ….Farmers…. Why?  They have to.  Do you think I want to see the land contaminated?  Do you think I want to see that water all around me where I go to fish, and use for recreation where it looks so pretty.  Do you think I want to contaminate something like that?  Do you think I want dead fish out there?  No!  Blue crabs (soft crabs) came back into the Albamarle Sound and Chowan River and I haven’t seen them like that since I was a boy and a lot of the guys are going back crabbing and fishing now.  You know why the crabs left?  Because the water was polluted.  You know why they came back?  Because it wasn’t polluted anymore.  They say they want these regulations to save the environment.  I said everything I do, I do to save the environment.  Right now on the farm I can handle all the chemicals dressed as I am right now.  If I hire him to work on my farm he has got to be in a total suit, goggles, gloves, helmet, special coveralls, feet got to be covered up.  I’ve got to have so many gallons of washable water for him to wash off in and he has to have a change of clothes and all these other things.  But they don’t care if I take it and drink it…cause I asked him….I said why are you doing that and the state guy, who rides around and looks and stops by your farm and tells you what you are doing wrong.  When I asked him why he was doing this, he said well Mr. Goodwin, terrorists might get these chemicals and might hurt somebody.  I said what do you know about terrorism.  He said well, I have been trained to do this so I told him how many years I had chased terrorists for a living.  And he promptly said I probably shouldn’t have talked about terrorists to you and I said that’s right.  I said my name is on this land.  I’m paying for these chemicals.  He said well, you don’t have to wear nothing, but that man that is helping you does…but you have to keep detailed records.  I said yes sir.  And then when he comes to your barn and says do you have your poster displayed for your workers to see about how to handle chemicals.  I said I have my brother, my cousin, me and my two boys.  What do you want me to display?  Well you have to keep records.  I said do I have to keep records on my family.  He said no, but on those other people that work for you that are no kin to you.  I said, OK you can leave now.  I do not have anyone working for me that is not kin to me any more.  They will come to the farm and they will walk under the shelter and see that jug that is about half full.  And if that label is not on there anymore or they look at the date on that I will get a tremendous fine for having those chemical laying around.  My next door neighbor, he does a lot of cooking under his open equipment shelter there and he had some big jugs there.  They were peanut oil jugs and the paper label was off it.  So he came home and there was two state people there walking under his shelter looking at all the “chemical” jugs there.  If  they are empty, they are supposed to be triple washed and then supposed to be disposed of instantly.  You can’t have them just laying around.  So he walked up and the people looking at them started asking questions and so he started begging because he knew he was in trouble.  The lady inspector said what is this jug here sir?  He knew what it was so he grabbed it and said I don’t know.  He screwed the lid off it and took a swig and said it tastes like peanut oil.  He said that was the biggest mistake he made.  It cost him.  But he cleaned up every thing he had.  We’ve got a place on the back side of the shelter and when we come up there with the sprayers, the water trailer and everything.  We got a closed in thing we throw them in there and when that thing gets full I rinse them out and take them to the recycle bin, that as a county commissioner, we got put at the recycling center.  We’ve got a recycling bin there if we will wash out those plastic jugs we can throw them in there and they will take them.
It just gets me that I can drive by there and somebody is on my land.  Stopped the game warden back there and asked him what he was doing.  He said he was just riding around seeing what is going on back here.  I said you can’t do it.  You can walk back here but you take your car out there and park it on the state right of way, then you can walk back here.  But otherwise I don’t want to see you back here any more.  He said you can’t talk to me like that.  I said well, check the law.  That is what the law says.  You can not just arbitrarily walk on my land.  I said I was a federal agent and I could not arbitrarily walk on that man’s property or his house without a warrant for probably cause that a life was in danger.  A game warden can’t just ride around back here.  He said he was just seeing if anybody is violating game laws.  So that same game warden wrote me a permit to kill 10 deer in my peanut patch the other night.  I lose about 5 to 8 thousand dollars every year on my peanuts to bear and deer.  As nice as I like to be about it, I have no choice, I have to start shooting them.  But that same game warden gave me that permit.  I can do that without getting a permit but as a candidate for a statewide office, I know somebody will shove it right in my face just as soon as they know I shot a deer at night.

Further discussions on drilling for natural gas, size of drinks allowed in New York, natural gas in Wisconsin, education, teacher’s tenure, remedial studies.

Mr. Goodwin closed his question and answer period and thanked us for having him speak to us tonight.

REMINDER – Don’t forget to buy candy for the parade.!!!

EULA PARKIN gave her weekly report on things that have caught her attention this week and read an article on her grand niece who will be going to college on a softball scholarship.  She told about a special food bank she was interested in’s goal to provide 10,000 meals.

HOWARD GARNER bragged on his great granddaughter (a teen member of our chapter) who has been selected to speak at an East Coast Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on Sex Slave Trafficing. She is the youngest speaker at the conference.

Next week we will be taking a vote on who we are going to put on our runoff primary recommended list.  We will do it just like we did last time.  We will take a vote here and BOB will then run down to the western part of the county and take the votes there and tabulate them.  We need to go ahead and vote next week because the next meeting for the western group will be the 3rd of July, which will be too late to be able to prepare the list to put in the constitutions we will be passing out at the July 4th parade in Beaufort.

Meeting adjourned at 7:50 pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.