Now back to the question of the hour….
…why is the Uptown paper of record still carrying water for Jim Black? Why haven’t Charlotte readers seen the News and Observer story from Sunday on Black’s relationship with former staffer Meredith Norris? In Raleigh that might just be a political gotcha story, but locally it goes to good government and effective representation.
Here’s what the N&O reported that is evidently too hot for Rick Thames:
It’s the question that has been whispered around the state legislature for years: What kind of relationship did House Speaker Jim Black have with former staffer and lobbyist Meredith Norris?
As a legislative aide to Black, Norris trumped senior staffers in his office when it came to political duties and access to the speaker. When she became a lobbyist, he allowed her to use his state-issued laptop computer and help write legislation that assisted her clients.
None of this has gone unnoticed by federal authorities, who have been examining Black’s legislative and campaign activities for more than a year. Aggressively and publicly, they are seeking an answer to a question that few had been willing to ask aloud.
Last month, prosecutors at the federal trial of former state lottery commissioner Kevin L. Geddings asked Black whether he had a “close personal relationship” with Norris.
And we all know that Black denied any such thing, which the Uptown paper of record duly reported (more on that in a bit), but the questions still lingered. The story continues:
Correspondence, interviews and federal court testimony do show that Norris gained clout and access with Black soon after she came to work for him in 1999.
Former state Rep. Andy Dedmon, a Cleveland County Democrat and a member of the House leadership in the 2001-02 session, said he could not understand how Norris became so powerful so quickly in Black’s office. In just a few years, he said, she went from answering the phones to overruling senior staffers.
Dedmon said it reached the point that when House members were invited to Black’s Raleigh condo for cocktails or a barbecue, “her name would be bigger than the speaker’s on the invitation.”
Former Rep. Ruth Easterling, a Charlotte Democrat, said in an interview shortly before she died this month that she warned Black about the friction Norris was creating among his senior staffers by going over their heads. This was back when Norris was a legislative aide.
Now that is interesting. Easterling, recently celebrated and mourned on the occasion of her passing by the Uptown paper of record, herself harbored questions about Norris. Or as she told the N&O, “She exerted more power than she had, and Jim didn’t keep up with that. I think he thought that he hired very capable people, and he would leave them to do the responsibilities of the job, and sometimes this woman would overstep her power.”
Clearly then, this situation struck sober people as rather odd. It was not just Jim Black’s political enemies wondering what was going on. And here let’s return to the peculiar admission made when prosecutors asked Black about his relationship with Norris and the Observer reported that fact.
Tossed in that report was the revelation that at some point in 2005, someone at the Observer asked Black that very same question, specifically about an extramarital affair. Black is said to have denied it then. But here is the truly curious thing: That question and the denial were never reported by the Observer until October 2006. Why?
Why? Why ask a question that has, manifestly, been kicked around political circles in North Carolina for months if you are not prepared to report the answer?
You do not do any kind of investigative journalism that way. You do not set yourself up so that a denial from the principal subject of your investigation stops you cold and kills your story. You certainly report the denial, but presumably have developed enough independent information before you ever go confront the subject. Otherwise, what is the point?
Well, there is not one if your object is to report a story involving political power and its uses. But what if that was not the point at all? What if the entire point of raising the question with Jim Black was to provide a heads-up to favored insider?
Sorry, there was just too much at stake for all the Uptown goodies that required heavy lifting from a Speaker Jim Black — the car rental tax hike for CATS/the $160 million Wachovia Arts Tower, the hotel-motel tax hike for the $150 million NASCAR Hall, the $45 million UNCC building leap to mind — to believe that protecting Jim Black was not a major goal of the Uptown crowd in 2005 and into 2006.
So, to that end, did someone at the Observer resolve to let Black know that people were talking and that a potentially embarassing sequence of events might unfold? I am open to other interpretations, but the continued unwillingness to cover this part of the Jim Black saga makes me wonder long and hard about the motive. Like someone is hoping this angle dies out so a 2005 decision to spike a story does not have to be re-visited.
Not unlike, by the way, the steely resolve to ignore recent developments in the Duke lacrosse case evidently in the hope that the questionable news judgement displayed in March will be forgotten.
Not likely.
