Art Pope

Chris Heagerty speaks out in an LTE:

I have copies of these ads. They were mailed to thousands of voters in my district. They falsely claimed, among other things, that I had voted for a billion-dollar tax increase before I ever served a day in the legislature. They clearly say at the bottom: "Paid for by Real Jobs NC. ... Donors include ... Variety Stores, Inc.," which is Pope's family company. I have at least seven more of these mailers that all list his company as a funder.

Which was in response to this bald-faced lie:

In its defense of Art Pope:

I think Art Pope has a right to use his money to support candidates he favors, and the New Yorker has a right to use its money to accuse the voters of North Carolina to be dumb enough to vote for whoever a businessman tells them to vote for. ‘Cause, you know, it couldn’t have been a general national swing against the Democratic agenda that caused voters to turn out Democratic majorities in the North Carolina legislature.

If Art Pope thought that "general national swing" would be enough to get the job done, he wouldn't have pumped hundreds of thousands into individual District elections. Or $800,000 to the CATO Institute...

Art Pope's best friends, the Koch Brothers, turn out to be terrorist-loving traitors. No big surprise. Hat tip to Dave Ribar for the story.

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

According to Taegan Goddard at Political Wire, this is a must read.

Of course, James has been saying all of this for the past six years. The New Yorker dedicated ten pages in the online edition to the piece. I can't wait to see it in print.

Even some North Carolinians associated with Jesse Helms think that Pope has gone too far. Jim Goodmon, the president and C.E.O. of Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owns the CBS and Fox television affiliates in Raleigh, says, “I was a Republican, but I’m embarrassed to be one in North Carolina because of Art Pope.”

Bob Orr withdraws offer to establish a Pope Foundation center at the NCCU School of Law in the wake of concerns over Art Pope's radical agenda. Here's the N&O version of the story.

Indy Week has a slightly different take, in which a Republican student at NCCU Law misses the point entirely.

"What bothers me is the message the firestorm has created, that if you're tied to a Republican, don’t come to Central," Doucette said. "But that's not what we're about."

Art Pope isn't "a Republican," Mr. Doucette. He is a one-man army engaged in class warfare. He is supporting legislative assaults on the very Constitution his Center proposed to study. His friends in the General Assembly are dismantling public education through draconian budget cuts. His scorched-earth approach to political reform will set North Carolina back for generations.

News of the Great Law School Giveaway has been trickling out for more than a month now, with word today that the NCCU Law faculty will be considering Art Pope's low-ball offer sometime soon.

A faculty committee at the North Carolina Central University School of Law is expected to recommend within the next few weeks whether the school should establish a constitutional law center partially funded by a Republican activist ...

• You'll need to block out a lot of time to read it all.