I’ll admit that when I first saw this little gem courtesy of the person who drew up North Carolina’s latest travesty of a Congressional map that would officially make every last one of our 14 seats in the US House of Representatives completely noncompetitive, I’ll admit that I was shocked and more than a little bit angry.
It’s not often that politicians who theoretically know how to minimise verbal diarrhea as a survival technique really say the quiet part out loud.
Well, unless they’re the Great Pumpkin masquerading as the President of our country and the Brawndo Brigade of sycophants infesting his Cabinet.
But most politicians are so afraid of the next opinion poll that they try desperately to say nothing at all or when pressed to speak will toss out a veritable word salad that at the end of the day says nothing at all and wasn’t given under oath so caveat emptor!
At face value, this would seem to be breathtakingly inflammatory because even though it’s clear that North Carolina’s politicians hand pick the constituents they want and are now so entrenched in safe districts that it’s rare that more than a handful are competitive in any given election, part of the deal of getting rich at the public’s expense is that they’re supposed to have at least some measure of class and couth and pretend to listen to the voters even when they didn’t actually vote for them.
That’s right…a hyper-partisan gerrymander that was already being challenged in court has actually been made even worse by the Republican majority in the General Assembly.
Forcing the previous map to return 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats was bad enough in a state where the electorate is perennially divided right down the middle but now he’s managed to find a way to carve up the one district (North Carolina’s 1st District) that actually was competitive and did so in a particularly nasty way:
- Several counties with large Black populations were switched to the 3rd District which will almost certainly take out Representative Don Davis who is one of only three Black members of the current Congressional Delegation.
- The counties leaving the 3rd District for the 1st are predominantly coastal counties which are generally more white and lean Republican diluting the power of the Black voters who remain in the 1st District.
- Don Davis won’t even live in the district he represents with Greene County now moved to the 3rd District.
Triple word-score for racism!
Even though Hise went to great lengths to point out that race data wasn’t used in the drawing of the maps, taking out a Black representative that’s represented a district that’s consistently elected a Black representative certainly seems to suggest that even if racial (or as Wake County found out in the 1990’s…socio-economic) data wasn’t explicitly used, the intent was very clear with the expected consequences of the redraw of the map.
But back to the viral statement attributed to Senator Hise.
It certainly grabs the attention and it’s gotten widely circulated.
However, there’s some important context that went missing and that’s really the point of today’s article that you just can’t take things you see on the Internet or hear for what passes for “news” or “journalism” in this country at face value.
You’ve got to be willing to invest the time to research for yourself and find out did he really say what he’s being accused of?
In this case, the statement occurred during the 20 Oct 2025 meeting of the North Carolina Senate Elections Committee and yes, he did utter those words just after 57 minutes on the video (sadly, the General Assembly doesn’t seem to go for quick and timely transcripts of their proceedings).
The problem is that the actual quote had “in the Senate” prior to the period and that context matters.
The relevant exchange begins at 56:50 of the video of the NC Senate Committee on Elections (NC Senate Ethics Committee – 20 Oct 2025) :
- Senator Smith – OK. So again, just for the public but I’m saying for the Democratic members who represent like you do in the Senate, did you invite them to the table to assist with this map that you put out on the Monday the 13th for the drawing to happen?
- Senator Hise – I do not represent Democrats in the Senate. I represent nine counties in Western North Carolina. But no there were no Democrats involved in the drawing.
I’m no fan of what he and his fellow Republicans have done to bring more shame upon our great state but the cause is hardly helped by materially misrepresenting what he actually said and leaving out that very important context.
It didn’t take long at all to verify what he’d actually said from reputable news sources. What took forever was having to transcribe the words from the YouTube video… 🙁
Never fear, Senator Hise won’t disappoint you for quotes that really have a great shot of winning Harry Doyle’s famous “Trojan-Enz Boner of the Week Award” and I offer these two for your consideration to nail the Senator’s trousers to the mast.
The first candidate is this little gem that occurred at the 43:45 mark of that same video where the Senator makes a Freudian slip that kind of gives his game away…see if you can spot the word he really wished he hadn’t uttered in public:
As for the Voting Rights Act, in order for the predominant use of race to be justified under Section 2, there must be a strong basis in evidence of three Jingles preconditions. Even assuming the presence of three Jingles preconditions, the use of race to draw districts must also be supported by the totalitarian (sic) (pause)…totality of circumstances. (laughter from Democrats)
Whoopsy-doodle!
The second statement for your consideration really makes it clear that Senator Hise apparently didn’t pay as close attention to the “separation of powers” lessons in civics class when he cut lose with this gem:
The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular. Republicans hold a razor-thin margin in the United States House of Representatives. And if Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo President Trump’s agenda.
He seems to think that a person who won 50.9% of the popular vote in the 2024 election is entitled to a majority in Congress to do his bidding for whatever he wants.
That’s not how the Constitution works in practise and the Founding Fathers were prescient enough to design the system with enough ways for a determined opposition in the minority to have at least some say on behalf of the constituents that the modern majority party would rather just shut up and take whatever they want to dish out.
We’re seeing that play out right now with the current government shutdown where the Democrats are using the one tool they still have left to actually try to reverse damaging if not evil cuts to safety net healthcare programmes (Medicare and Medicaid) and restore subsidies in the Affordable Care Act to help people actually purchase dreadfully overpriced health insurance that will otherwise force millions of our citizens to do without.
It’s not like the millionaires and billionaires aren’t still going to be able stuff a king’s ransom of taxpayer money into their treasure vaults thanks to that abomination of a budget bill but at least this would tip the scales at least slightly back in favour of the poor and disadvantaged that the current majority clearly could care less about.
I’m sorry but it’s kind of hard to see how the Democrats seeking to restore cuts to vital programmes that might well save many American lives somehow makes the Democrats the bastards in this scenario!
The filibuster was intended to ensure that the minority couldn’t be summarily ignored and the current majority certainly didn’t seem to have any problem with it when it suited their needs to stop Democrat sponsored legislation they opposed.
It’s our version of Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act in the UK. Every opposition has vowed to repeal it and every government in Westminster has chosen not to do so for fear of the consequences of it being used against them.
The late Senator Harry Reid proved just how disastrously stupid weakening the filibuster turned out with the extremist Supreme Court we’re going to be dealing with for decades! Yeah, he won a tactical battle for a short-term gain but the American people may well have lost the war to protect our representative democracy as a result.
A President isn’t entitled to a darned thing just because they got elected President.
They’ve got to work the legislative process and get the votes to pass their agenda just like everyone in Congress has to cut deals with their colleagues to get the legislation they prefer enacted.
Back in the day, that often led to compromises which often weren’t perfect but at least they were workable.
Not anymore…Senator Hise is clearly just as much into a President being a king who can bend his parliament to his whims rather than the person entrusted with the “bully pulpit” by which he can sometimes get Congress to go along with his desired policies by the usual methods such as selling the policies to the public to force Congress to consider their position and not just the arm twisting and childish personal insults and public humiliation this particular administration tends to prefer.
I would suggest that the President might well consider policies that actually are appealing to more than the 40% of the electorate that will blindly accept whatever policy he spouts on a given day and that might well help him with his historically bad approval numbers and make it easier for him to get legislation through Congress. It might even get him a lot less smack downs from the Federal courts below the Supreme Court whose majority seems hell bent on using our beloved Constitution as lavatory paper.
He can start by reversing course on the massive screwing he’s given much less fortunate citizens and actually come to the table and negotiate in good faith as the Founding Fathers intended.
This shutdown will last as long as he decides to remain stubbornly opposed to accepting reality. The fact is his party controls all three branches of the government and this shutdown is entirely his doing and theirs regardless of the spin they would like to have you believe.
And no one is fooled by the “pass a clean continuing resolution now and we’ll discuss the restoration of ACA subsidies later”, not the least the Democrats who have been burned by promises made that were not kept.
Time is of the essence to restore the subsidies and restore the cuts to Medicare/Medicaid that have had the perverse outcome of disproportionately hurting those voters who make up his MAGA base who are bearing the brunt of the cuts and watching their rural hospitals close without any hope of ever reopening.
When Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia of all people has seen the writing on the wall and knows that the BS that the administration and Karoline Leavitt have been pushing as hard as they can isn’t fooling the voters, you know you’ve really lost the plot.
Somehow, I don’t think that child of King Lear and King Midas currently inhabiting and destroying one wing of the White House he doesn’t actually bloody own is inclined to listen to anyone but those evil people who are manipulating him from behind his throne in the Oval Office.