RALEIGH — With two of Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps’ former aides pleading guilty to federal crimes, a whopping fine imposed by the state board of elections, devastating media coverage, and editorials and politicians urging her to resign, you’d think that the growing scandal surrounding Phipps’ administration and 2000 campaign had already found all of its victims.
But now we see evidence of another damaging legacy of the Phipps campaign finance scandal: the political implosion of her father, former Gov. Bob Scott.
Few political insiders in North Carolina have believed that Gov. Scott didn’t have some idea of what was going on, and going wrong, in his daughter political organization. But due to his ill health, and the veneration many still felt for him and his lifetime of public service, there has been surprisingly little commentary about his role.
That will change, thanks to an interview that Gov. Scott gave Wednesday to the Asheville Citizen Times. Furious at Gov. Mike Easley and other Democratic Party leaders for pressuring his daughter to resign her elected post, the former governor excoriated the current one, urged Democrats not to support him in a 2004 re-election bid, and even regretted that he was not up to the task of challenging Easley himself in a party primary.
“I’d love to take him on – and I could beat his ass,” Scott told the newspaper.
Obviously there are many politicians, in both parties, who aren’t big fans of Mike Easley. If the recent polls are any indication, there’s no great public approval for his tenure, either, so his re-election prospects are iffy. But Gov. Scott’s tirade scored few points against Easley. Mostly, it looked like a desperate attempt (but an understandable, paternal one) to defend his daughter and to shift the blame from her.
Scott actually suggested that Easley’s call for the resignation stemmed from the current governor’s inability to work with a Democrat-Republican split in the N.C. House. I guess the idea is that Easley is trying to shift public attention away from his fecklessness. But other than his inability to pass a state lottery bill, Easley has gotten much of what he wanted so far this year. His budget wasn’t all that far apart from what the House and Senate later fashioned. Fecklessness, to be sure, will be a charge — arguably a legitimate one — used against Easley next year, for reasons that have to do with failed policies more than any perceived trouble with Speaker Jim Black and Co-Speaker Richard Morgan. Suggesting that Easley was trying to cover up his political problems in the Phipps matter are off the mark, however.
The real reason for his resignation call is obvious: Phipps, if she stays in office and, even more improbably, seeks re-election, will become a serious drag on the statewide Democratic ticket over the coming months. That’s why Easley and party leaders are asking her to step aside.
Now she has another, more personal reason: to protect her father from further embarrassment.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.