Hard Mailers. Two Swing Counties. Hard Drugs and Oregon? What Does It All Mean | WFAE 90.7

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Voters in North Mecklenburg will receive a new political flyer.

Progressive Super PAC Majority Rising sent an article with a photo of Republican House candidate Melinda Bales, who is running in a tight district.

But the mailer mostly talks about Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor. It quotes some of the things Robinson has said about school shooting victims — “spoiled little bastards” — and asks, “So why does Melinda Bales support him and his dangerous plans?”

Democratic consultant Thomas Mills, who writes political columns, recently said: “Democrats would be wise to start surrounding Robinson with the rest of the Statehouse and judicial candidates. They elected him as the GOP candidate, and now they should be forced to defend him.”

It’s a smart strategy. And a fair one.

But Republicans are playing this game too.

North Carolina Republican Party sends out flyers with a powerful message — nasty flyers — about two Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives in undecided Mecklenburg constituencies.

One of the targets is Nicole Sidman, who is running in the 105th District election against Republican Tricia Cotham.

The second opponent is Beth Helfrich, Bales’ opponent in District 98.

One anti-Sidman article said she was “backed by radicals hell-bent on causing mayhem…who…want to legalize prostitution and hard drugs like heroin and methamphetamine.”

One page of the leaflet shows Sidman standing in front of a photo of a syringe and various pills.

If you’re a Democrat, you’ll probably find the package… disgusting.

Stephen Wiley, director of the state House Republican Caucus, said the language comes not from a little-known organization but from the North Carolina Democratic Party platform. The platform says there should be “a coordinated review of all laws to remove discriminatory practices, including decriminalizing sex work, gambling, homelessness and drug use.”

The party program’s position on decriminalization

To be clear, the platform isn’t calling for legalization — but for decriminalization. That means law enforcement could still ticket someone for, say, smoking crack in public. But they wouldn’t have the authority to arrest them. (We’ll discuss this in more detail below.)

The proposal aims to reduce what Democrats see as inequities in the criminal justice system, where low-income and minority people are arrested at higher rates than whites.

Whatever the intention, Wiley said, “We’re just emphasizing what their own party platform says. So if they don’t like what’s there, they shouldn’t have supported the party platform in the first place.”

Sidman said the letter was not serious and that the issues of prostitution and drugs “are not things that I don’t hear about at the door and that reflect anything I’ve ever said or my politics.”

The commentary against Helfrich goes far beyond what was said about Sidman.

Helfrich speaking supports legalizing prostitution and hard drugs. Wiley said she took the step because Helfrich sought and received the endorsement of the state Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, which also calls for decriminalization. She then celebrated the endorsement with an Instagram post.

Helfrich said families who have experienced addiction or overdose deserve better treatment and called the mailing a scare tactic designed to manipulate voters.

“They are a distraction,” Helfrich said of the articles. “I am not running to legalize drugs and prostitution, and that is ridiculous to say. I am running to restore and protect reproductive freedom, fund our public schools and advocate for the needs of our district.”

A platform that surprises

Party platforms are largely ignored. Many candidates probably never read them (and I would bet that average voters never do).

These are documents that do not have much positive potential, but as the Republican Party shows, they also have a lot of negative potential.

The Democratic Party’s 2024 national platform talks about fighting opioids and states that “no one should go to prison for using or possessing marijuana.” It doesn’t talk about decriminalizing hard drugs or prostitution.

So why is the Democratic Party in North Carolina — a swing state that is more conservative than the country as a whole — doing better than the national party?

Another question: Should the state party call for drug decriminalization, given what has happened on the West Coast since the pandemic?

Here’s How National Public Radio Works summarized Actions Oregon took in 2020 to decriminalize hard drug use:

In 2020, Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved a bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of hard drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. The initiative was accompanied by new investments in addiction treatment and support services. The move was welcomed by national drug reform advocates who have long decried the so-called war on drugs as a self-destructive policy that filled prisons, disproportionately harmed the poor and communities of color and failed to deter drug use.

Four years later, Oregon’s experiment went wrong. While Oregon officials didn’t want to send people to prison for using hard drugs, they found that the lack of authority to arrest users was a big problem.

Here’s how New York Times described what happened next, in 2024:

But after a flood of overdose deaths and frequent chaos on the streets of Portland, Gov. Tina Kotek signed a bill Monday to restore criminal penalties for drug possession, completing a key part of one of the nation’s most ambitious attempts to find alternatives to prison for drug addicts, embodied in a 2020 voter initiative known as Measure 100.

The rollback has supporters among a wide range of public officials, including Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland, who has presided over a series of crises since taking office in 2016. They have included a rising homeless population, tumultuous street protests, an exodus of businesses from the downtown area, record homicides, the rapid spread of fentanyl and a spike in overdose deaths.

California has taken similar steps to move away from a laissez-faire approach to drugs and homelessness.

Closer to home, the Charlotte City Council — where Democrats control nine of 11 seats — voted this year to reinstate penalties for quality-of-life issues like public drinking, public urination and defecation. Charlotte police have said they need the authority to arrest people as a last resort to deter repeat offenders.

Position on the platform

In interviews last week, WFAE asked Sidman and Helfrich if they supported decriminalizing prostitution and drugs. The conversation focused mostly on drugs.

There was no clear yes or no answer.

Sidman said we need a holistic approach and that “study after study shows that just throwing people who are addicted to drugs in jail doesn’t help them and doesn’t solve the problem. We need to stop the people who are selling drugs, stop the people who are bringing drugs in… and not focus on criminalizing people who need our help.”

Helfrich said she wants “common sense reform.”

“There is certainly a place for law enforcement, and there is also an urgent need for a humane and holistic approach to helping people recover. This is the strategy currently being implemented in Mecklenburg County, and I am committed to supporting these efforts,” she said.

Escape from Project 2025

Speaking of platforms that do more harm than good…

Democrats at their convention brought up the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a right-wing plan to expand presidential powers if Donald Trump wins a second term.

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, even though many of its authors worked for him in his first administration.

The NC Republican Party clearly views Project 2025 as a liability. It has sent out at least two flyers in which Trump disavows the document.