Now that Jim Black is totally disgraced, can former state Rep. John Rhodes get an apology? Not just from the Uptown paper of record, but from local Republicans who thought Rhodes too much of a bomb-thrower to support him.
Let the record show that when Rhodes was throwing his bombs directly at Jim Black and his corrupt regime, Rhodes was told to pipe down and “play the game.” When former Black aide Meredith Norris, last seen pleading guilty to violating state lobbying laws, called Rhodes “a true nutcase” there was no outcry in Rhodes’ defense from far too many in Mecklenburg. Just cowardly silence.
Instead, for 2006 Rhodes got a primary challenge from former Cornelius town commissioner Thom Tillis. Tillis quickly loaned his campaign $40,000 and in no time had a $63,000 war chest, roughly twice the size of his opponent’s. Rhodes went down fighting, but went down all the same in the May primary.
Still last summer Rhodes, virtually alone, tried to stop the craven Wachovia Arts Tower deal and the bait-and-switch car-rental tax hike. Rhodes was supposed to play nice, like local GOP legislators Ed McMahan and Doug Vinson, and support the scam. But Rhodes seemed to be one of the few elected officials who understood that the deal explicitly commits the city of Charlotte to using General Fund revenues from property or sales taxes to pay for local arts ventures. CATS, meanwhile, gets the dedicated revenue from the car-rental tax — to do with as CATS pleases.
With Black in the dock and no doubt ready to spill his guts, maybe now Panderer General Roy Cooper will consider looping back to investigate the Northeast Partnership and the Northeastern North Carolina Regional Economic Development Commission. Rhodes also tried to draw attention to corruption there.
In North Carolina, no good deed goes unpunished.
