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We started this week by breaking what we thought would be the political story of the week: the arrest of Justina Nicole Guardino, a Wilmington political activist, on charges she participated in the January 6 insurrection attempt.
After getting a tip about the arrest, my colleague Rachel Keith and I tracked down legal filings from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the prosecutor handling the case, and Guardino's federal public defender. Guardino, we should note, is pleading not guilty, although that state's case seems fairly strong and well-documented.
As we noted in this week's reporting, Guardino initially told investigators in August 2022 that she hadn't been to the Capitol. She later admitted she had, but claimed it had been something like a public tour. Presented with evidence, like the photo of her above, Guardino acknowledged that wasn't the case.
At the risk of sounding flippant, most tours, especially those of historic federal buildings, don't involve climbing in through the window alongside a throng of rioters clamoring for Mike Pence's head.
We took some time in this week's edition of The Dive to think a little more about Guardino’s arrest. She had been, after all, the vice-chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter and the campaign manager for Natosha Tew, the chapter’s founder who is now running as a Republican candidate for the New Hanover County school board. Would there be any fallout for the organization or for Tew?
The answer seems to be a hushed "no." Moms for Liberty washed their hands of Guardino, saying only that she had recently resigned. And Tew scrubbed Guardino from her social media feed and declined to answer questions about the arrest.
Ordinarily, that story would still be reverberating this weekend, but on Thursday we got CNN's scandalizing – and possibly career-ending – report on
Speaking of the Trump campaign, which we covered on Saturday, I want to acknowledge that, yes, we get a lot of emails accusing NPR, and the media writ large, of having Trump Derangement Syndrome or at least of being biased against the former president.
I think that’s been true in a few cases. But, at the same time, it’s frustrating seeing the coverage – nationally and locally – of Trump’s speeches that paper over his logorrhea by saying he “discussed the economy” or “touched on border security.” That’s generous to a fault. And omitting Trump’s compulsive swipes at people’s physical appearance, intelligence, and gender – well, that’s just a fault.
Reporters, of course, feel the allegation of bias pressed to their backs like a gun barrel. And they should be mindful of those biases, and be equally critical of any candidate they cover. But it would be biased, in Trump’s favor, to paraphrase his remarks on Saturday afternoon as a conventional speech.
Also, for the record, it’s frustrating for local journalists to have any presidential candidate come to town. Because, at best, they give a rousing stump speech, full of ambitious policy initiatives and free of the kind of weedy details that we like to get into. And they don’t stick around to answer questions.
And that's a serviceable segue into my last bit of political news this week, a very mild-mannered town hall featuring state senate challenger Democrat Dr. David Hill and incumbent Republican Michael Lee. Sponsored by UNCW’s departments of Sociology and Criminology and Public and International Affairs, and the Wilmington chapter of Braver Angels, the event had a bold goal: put on a civil public forum to discuss the issues in a very fraught race.
Braver Angels, for those who aren’t familiar, is an organization working to restore civil discussion (and disagreement) in communities where folks have separated themselves into Team Blue or Team Red. I interviewed two members of the local group last year on The Newsroom – and pushed them on whether they actually thought they could find common ground on the most divisive issues. They told me they really do.
This week’s event was an attempt to bring Braver Angels’ methods to the political stage.
Hill and Lee, I will say, are good candidates for the experiment. Their campaign has been vitriolic, with Lee attacking Hill’s stance on transgender rights with some misleading advertising, and Hill’s campaign firing back at Lee’s record on abortion with ads that also sometimes missed the mark in terms of accuracy. But both candidates, when I’ve sat down with them one-on-one, off the record, are sane, sensible people, who care about their families and their communities.
So, how did they do? We’ll have more reporting in the coming weeks – and hopefully, a chance for you to listen to the town hall yourself – but I can say, personally, I thought the event was refreshingly low-voltage. There were a few eye rolls, definitely some stumping, but also some articulate responses to tough policy questions, without the noise of cross-talk and ad hominem attacks.
After the event, I spoke with a handful of students who attended the event. They told me they were surprised at how well it went and, as first-time voters, that it gave them a sense of who the candidates were that they didn’t get from mailers or Facebook ads.
The students all noted that Lee and Hill did an admirable job playing by the Braver Angels rules, except one which prohibits addressing the other candidate by name. Both candidates broke that one, although it was to agree with each other on a few common-ground issues, not to trade barbs.
As one student noted, that infraction was kind of the highlight of the evening.
“The fact that the only rule that was broken was both candidates addressing the other saying ‘I completely agree,’ actually made me emotional and hopeful,” they said afterward.
