WHQR's Sunday Edition is a free weekly newsletter delivered every Sunday morning. You can sign up for Sunday Edition here.
Updated Sunday, January 19 at 1:30 p.m.
In 2022, Melissa Mason was one of four candidates running on a GOP slate for the New Hanover County school board, alongside Pete Wildeboer, Josie Barnhart, and Pat Bradford. In my conversations with those candidates, Mason struck me as the most conservative. While we disagreed on several issues—including her emphatic insistence that teachers were “grooming” students—I can say she had the courage of her convictions.
I would not have predicted she would be taking heavy friendly fire from the GOP just two years later. But that’s exactly what’s happening after Mason used her position as this year’s board chair to appoint two recently elected Democrats—Judy Justice and Tim Merrick—to key positions, chairing the board’s curriculum and Title IX committee, respectively.
Mason said these were part of a draft, not final assignments. Nonetheless, they resulted in a petition calling for the New Hanover County GOP to censure Mason, for “her decision to appoint individuals with extreme liberal views to positions of influence, jeopardizing the integrity of conservative ideals and endangering the well-being of our children.”
While the petition currently has just three signatures, it was enough to prompt a scathing opinion piece in The Wilmington Conservative, a recently founded online site (in fairness, there had also been a fair amount of social media criticism of Mason).
In the piece, published Tuesday, Republican strategist Jonathan Bridges wrote that Mason’s appointments violated her conservative campaign promises. Bridges also threw some shade at the Cape Fear Beacon, another conservative site that, unlike The Wilmington Conservative, publishes anonymous content; the Beacon was founded by Peter LaFond, a Wilmington-area businessman who helped run Mason's campaign. (Bridges didn’t name the Beacon, but linked to two of its pieces; one attacks Josie Barnhart, whose campaign Bridges helped run in 2022.)
“What strikes me most about this is the sheer hypocrisy of Mason and her closest supporters. They have readily attacked other candidates and fellow Republican board members for ‘not being conservative enough,’ yet Mason did a 180 and selected radically liberal and vitriolic members to chair key committees,” Bridges wrote.
Bridges acknowledged the political reality that candidates leave a lot of unfulfilled promises in their wake, and that “most of our politicians would be censured by their party” if that was, in and of itself, grounds for official rebuke.
He wrote that while “any governing body or board must work together to pass meaningful legislation,” this wasn’t about passing policy—which the board’s 5-2 Republican majority can do at will—but political wrangling. He suggested, very plausibly, that Mason’s appointments served as a quid-pro-quo after Justice and Merrick supported her for board chair and argued conservatives are “owed an explanation.”
The next day Nevin Carr, chair of the New Hanover County GOP, sent an email announcing the “extremely disappointing news” of Mason’s appointments.
Carr argued for the importance of shoring up conservative values even after Republicans’ successful sweep in the 2022 school board elections. (While conservatives did win decisively, Carr overstated the case a bit, writing that “New Hanover County completely rejected Democrats running our school system,” when over 48% of the population voted for Democratic candidates.)
Carr had disparaging words for Mason, along with her appointees.
“After being elected as the chair by the only two Democrats and one other Republican this past month, [Mason] has now decided to put a left wing crazy person, Judy Justice, in charge of the curriculum committee, and radical leftist newcomer Tim Merrick in charge of the Title IX committee, which is the committee the Democrats have used to project their weirdness on our kids, like having guys playing in girls’ sports. Absolutely unacceptable,” Carr wrote (adding some casual transphobia to his critique).
Like Bridges, Carr acknowledged that elected officials deserve some grace, but argued “this particular circumstance is so atrocious that it needs to be called out,” adding, “playing footsie with radicals Democrats for personal political power when we have a 5-2 Republican majority board is about as weak as it gets.”
Carr asked conservatives not to “get demoralized” or “turn away from the Republican party,” and solicited future candidates for office.
“I hope you all enjoy a much needed transfer of power next week with Trump at the federal level, and then let’s start looking for a much needed transfer of power back home at our local Board of Ed,” Carr wrote in closing.
Given that the board has a 5-2 GOP majority for at least two more years, it’s hard to know what a “transfer of power” on the school board could mean in the near term aside from kicking Mason out of the chair position—and both state law and board policy say that would have to wait for December 2026, when the board gets its annual chance to elect officers. (Even if it were possible sooner, it would take four votes and, last time around, both Pat Bradford and Josie Barnart could each muster only three; newly elected Republican David Perry proved the deciding vote, casting his ‘Yes’ only for Mason.)
[Note: I reached out to Melissa Mason on Thursday, and she said she was working on a statement which she would release before the weekend. She did send an email from her personal email account on Friday evening. It landed in my spam account and I missed it before scheduling this week's Sunday Edition. I regret the oversight and any resulting confusion.]
Mason issued a statement addressing the issue and noting that the committee assignments of Merrick and Justice were from a draft, not her final decision:
As board chair, one of my key responsibilities is assigning members to committees, a process that naturally involves creating and revising drafts. Unfortunately, the current working draft has triggered unnecessary alarm, which may stem from a misunderstanding of how committees operate. It’s important to clarify that committees do not have the authority to make binding decisions on their own. Additionally, any board member, regardless of their committee assignment, has the right to bring forward a motion on any topic for the Board’s consideration.
Throughout my tenure on the Board, it has been customary for drafts to undergo revisions as part of the collaborative decision-making process. Final committee assignments will be released soon.
School Board Policy 2120 and state law G.S. 160A-86 require all board members to remain impartial and unbiased. I am fully committed to upholding these principles and will never allow any individual or party to exert undue influence or manipulate my decisions.
Maon is correct, both in that committees do not make policy (although they can help craft policy language) and that, even absent a committee, any board member can bring motions forward for a vote. Still, the optics seem to be at least part of what Bridges and Carr are reacting to, and I'm sure conservatives will be watching to see what those final committee assignments are. In the meantime, let’s move on to some takeaways from this week’s dustup.
First, this seems like more evidence of the enduring allure of the chair position on local boards, something I’ve routinely underestimated. Honestly, I don’t really see the appeal, even for the county commission, where the chair position comes with a tidy additional stipend. For the unpaid school board position, the task of managing meetings that have repeatedly descended into chaos both on the dais and in the audience seems onerous—and thankless. But here we are.
Second, this feels symptomatic of our absolutist political moment, a small-stage version of the House Speaker drama, driven by similar dynamics. There are ideologues on both sides of the aisle who will brook no compromise. Democrats have their shibboleths and articles of faith, and their big tent has been stretched (and in places torn) by issues like Israel and immigration. Meanwhile, the purity tests for MAGA Republicans have grown increasingly hard to pass, especially for more moderate candidates. (It often seems there’s no true Scotsman in the party, other than through allegiance to Trump and alignment with his latest positions.)
Lastly, this strikes me as a change—or at least a stylistic shift—in local politics. In my experience, this particular flavor of sausage is usually made way out of sight, especially by Republicans. Over the years, I’ve seen the Democrats air their own dirty laundry now and then, but the GOP has been pretty good about keeping their fights private. Yes, I’ve heard the rumors of screaming matching and parking-lot fisticuffs, but they’ve kept themselves out of the news. Over the last several years, though, Cape Fear conservatives have actually built several media outlets that are now doing the opposite, putting debates about conservative values and decisions in the public eye.
I, for one, am all for the newfound transparency. The secretiveness of the political machine—for both parties—has always struck me as a touch un-democratic (with a lowercase “d”). Over the years, I’ve had many discussions with political newcomers and would-be candidates who have found the situation intimidating, opaque, and frustrating. That’s been especially true for unaffiliated residents with centrist or eclectic political beliefs who are trying to figure out in which party they belong. Both Carr and Jill Hopman, chair of the New Hanover County Democratic Party, are trying to address that in their own ways.
Coming back to the inciting incident here, Mason may well have traded committee appointments for the apparent honor of being chair. And if her party is displeased with her behavior, they can certainly censure her—as they censured Republican Stephanie Kraybill in 2022—and foreclose her political future, at least locally. That’s politics: buy the ticket, take the ride.
But there are broader questions about how our local political parties define and defend their ideological terrain (whether in private or, as we saw this week, in public). In a county where unaffiliated residents make up the largest group of registered voters, representing a must-win election demographic, it’s worth watching how the parties decide to expand their territories—or circle their wagons.
Letters to the Editor
We welcome letters to the editor’s desk on any topic. Our ideal length is around 400 words or less, but if they need to be a little longer, that’s fine. We reserve the right to edit or add context when necessary. We ask that submissions come with your name and where you live (no street address necessary, just your neighborhood, town, city, etc.). Criticisms are welcome, but we ask you to try to keep it civil.
This edition’s letter comes from longtime Wilmington resident Rev. Jerry Winsett, who lives in the Whisper Creek area.
I am writing to you in support of Love Our Children's quest to end out-of-school suspensions for 5, 6,and 7-year-old students, and I ask you to add WHQR's voice and support to their efforts.
I'm an old guy, I remember when I was a kid, if you skipped school they would send a truant officer to find you and bring you back to school! Suspending a kid who didn't want to be there was rewarding bad behavior, they would have never considered it because they knew that the ONLY way a child learns is to be in school.
Out of school suspensions are an unscientific and ineffective methodology. They don’t improve school safety. And records show that out-of-school suspensions disproportionately impact Black students and Special Education students. Those who need education opportunities most. There are many effective alternatives to out-of-school suspensions.
Please, add your voice to help ensure that our youngest learners stay in school where they can learn and thrive.
We get a lot of mail about Love Our Children and their mission to end suspensions for the youngest public school students here in New Hanover County. I can't speak for WHQR as a whole, but I can say as journalists and a newsroom, we don't take sides in policy debates, even when it seems much of our audience (or at least a passionate part of it) feels strongly.
What we can do is cover the story closely, and try to paint as fair and accurate a picture of the issue as possible. That might not lead to the outcome our listeners and readers want, but we hope it will at least lead to the best policies, based on the best information, being advanced. (And yes, we know that's not always the case. Good information gets ignored all the time when leaders at all levels make important decisions.)
The issue of suspensions for young students is obviously a compelling one; we're talking about kids. We know that suspending a kid means removing them from the positive environment of school and services like counseling, mentoring, free and reduced-cost lunches, and more. And the evidence suggests that an out-of-school suspension is often an early step in the school-to-prison pipeline.
But we've also heard from dozens of teachers who are concerned about the behavior of these young students, which often includes acts of overt violence in the classroom (these same concerns were voiced in last year's climate survey). For many of these teachers, keeping a disruptive or even violent student in the classroom is a difficult choice, because it negatively impacts the education and safety of the other students in the room. At best, it's possible with in-class support, but that's not always available.
It's a tough situation, which Rachel Keith wrote about this week as part of her ongoing coverage of Love Our Children's mission and the New Hanover County Schools district's attempts to work with them. There's more to come as the board considers potential policy changes, so stay tuned.
