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Mystery Mailer
We’ve just about reached the peak of election season, with campaign ads and signs on nearly every thoroughfare, billboard, radio station, and TV channel — and, of course, jammed into every mailbox.
There’s a special place in hell for the inventor of the campaign mailer, notorious for providing little to no information (and often a fair amount of fear mongering and misrepresentation). Every even-year election cycle, I watch dozens of my neighbors in the apartment complex mailroom as they take stacks of these glossy flyers and shove them into an overstuffed garbage can (I don't live in the city, so I'm spared the mailer blitzkreig during municipal elections).
Candidates, I’ve heard, can be equally miffed or annoyed — especially when the motivations and intent of a mailer aren’t quite clear.
Take the mailer pictured above, touting a “team of Democrats and Republicans we can get behind,” and picturing four Wilmington candidates. There are two incumbents, Democratic Mayor Bill Saffo and Republican Councilman Luke Waddell, and two challengers, Democrat J.C. Lyle and Republican Richard Collier.
Waddell confirmed to me that the flyer was “not affiliated with my campaign in any way,” adding that anything from his campaign would be labeled “Committee to Elect Luke Waddell.” Lyle and Collier also confirmed they weren't aware of it ahead of time (Collier said he found out when he saw the flyer in his mailbox).
The mailer was, ostensibly, sent by The Future Empowering Committee, NC — an independent expenditure political committee (often called a Super PAC). The offspring of the contentious Citizens United case, IEPCs aren’t allowed to coordinate with candidates — but they can spend unlimited amounts of money on behalf of candidates and issues. Sometimes, when a group is offering earnest support, it’s a welcome shot in the arm for a candidate. But the laws around Super PACs also mean that candidates can be caught off guard and left with little recourse to counteract inaccurate, confusing, or even malicious messaging.
This particular IEPC appears to have been somewhat hastily set up, seemingly after the mailers had already gone out. I first saw them around October 16, the same day the IEPC was registered with the state (it was initially called Empowering the Future Committee NC and was renamed four days later). According to state campaign finance records, the IEPC has no reported receipts or expenditures.
The IEPC’s treasurer, Greg Fornshell, appears to be the accounting director for the North Carolina GOP, a post he’s held for a decade (at least, according to LinkedIn). The PO Box listed as Fornshell’s address is the same as several other Republican campaign committees, including Addison McDowell’s congressional committee, and (following her contentious party switch) Tricia Cotham’s state representative committee.
The address listed for the IEPC itself is the same as The Stewart Group, a respected consulting firm with offices in Raleigh and Charleston (the firm touts an 80% success rate for political campaigns, and has worked with a number of high-profile candidates, including Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry). Neither Fornshell nor The Stewart Group responded to emails.
So why would an apparently conservative-leaning organization support Democrats like Saffo and Lyle?
It’s possible that, on some key issue(s), party was less important than policy. Back in 2020, a conservative IEPC supported two Republicans and one Democrat for the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, reportedly based on economic and development issues. Collier and Lyle — who served together on Wilmington’s planning commission – come across as a moderate Republican and a moderate Democrat, respectively, and aren’t light years apart on issues like housing or economic growth.
And, while the New Hanover County GOP has since endorsed dark horse candidate Kelly Roberts (after initially declining to do so), at the time the mailers were sent out, the local Republican party only had two endorsed candidates — so perhaps whoever funded the mailers felt Lyle was the least objectionable Democrat on the slate.
More than one reader suggested that The Future Empowering Committee, NC might be playing “four-D chess,” and attempting to sabotage Lyle by associating her with Republicans in the hopes that it would cost her votes from Democrats. That’s possible — but I’m not sure it’s plausible. Low information voters (of which there are more than a few) wouldn’t get what the mailer was implying, and high information voters would already know Lyle is running with the county Democratic party’s endorsement. You might sway a few people, but that seems like a lot of work for a mailer campaign. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
For her part, Lyle took the mailer in stride.
“No one was more surprised than I was to receive the postcard endorsing me and the other three candidates. But I'm not surprised to have bi-partisan support. From the beginning of my campaign, I've proudly shared my track record of working with people from all over the political spectrum to get important work done. I do not put personal ideology over delivering real solutions to residents: the issues facing our City are far too urgent, and putting Wilmingtonians first means finding common ground with people who don't agree with me on every issue. That is the way we make things happen in municipal government; that is what democracy is supposed to look like; and I firmly believe that good elected leaders should be able to work within a diverse group without compromising their values,” she told me in an email.
And why would the IEPC support Saffo, given that the local GOP has its own endorsed Republican candidate for mayor — Billy Craig? (A colleague of mine joked that the IEPC might have suffered from ‘Too Many Billies syndrome,’ but I don’t suspect that’s it.) Here, it’s possible that conservatives have supported Saffo both because they prefer him to fellow Democrat and four-term county commissioner Jonathan Barfield, Jr. and because, at the end of the day, Saffo has been relatively good for business in Wilmington.
That was certainly the case in 2021, when Saffo raised six figures from a pool of donors that included many moderate Republicans — conservatives who, as several explained to me, saw Saffo as a safe, moderate bet compared to fellow Democrat Harper Peterson, who challenged him for mayor that year (Saffo’s name was even circled on the local GOP’s sample ballot).
And it appears to be the case with Charlie Rivenbark, who served as a Democrat on city council for many years before changing his party to Republican; Rivenbark opted not to run for another term this year, but has publicly voiced support for Collier, Waddell, and Saffo. In something of a farewell address posted on social media, Rivenbark wrote, “My heartiest recommendation for mayor is our sitting mayor. BILL SAFFO HAS BEEN AND IS A VERY GOOD MAYOR!”
All of this aisle-crossing goodwill is, of course, likely to frustrate folks who have grown disillusioned with the Wilmington status quo (I can hear shouts of “uniparty!” from the back of the room). However, I doubt that tapping into the anti-establishment demographic was the goal of the mailer — and I’m not sure that contingent is large enough to move the needle, at least not among the dismally small minority of registered voters who actually show up for municipal elections.
In the end, we may never know what The Future Empowering Committee, NC hoped to accomplish here. One hopes that voters pay more attention to local reporting and the candidates’ own policies and voting records than they do to mailers. Based on that mailroom garbage bin, one suspects they might.
Novant's MyChart Message
After the federal government shut down on October 1, Novant posted the following message atop its MyChart patient portal login page:
ATTENTION! Because of the federal government shutdown, Medicare may not cover your telehealth appointment. Out-of-pocket costs can range from $221-291 for established patients and $341-484 for new patient visits.
The message referred to increased flexibility for Medicare telehealth services that Congress added near the end of the first Trump administration during the Covid-19 pandemic. Basically, this allowed Medicare to reimburse providers for telehealth services in more situations.
Telehealth flexibility quickly became very popular and proved beneficial long after the worst of the pandemic had passed, especially in rural areas where accessing in-person care is more difficult. There’s been bipartisan recognition of telehealth’s popularity (it helps that many lower-income rural areas, especially agrarian regions, tend to lean Republican). But, while Congress has passed numerous extensions, they’ve yet to make the increased telehealth flexibility permanent.
The most recent extension was expected to be passed alongside other budgetary measures, and in fact, language funding telehealth flexibility through November 21 was included in the continuing resolution that passed the House, but stalled in the Senate as part of the ongoing federal shutdown battle.
A week or so later, I got an email from an attentive reader who noticed the message and felt it was inaccurate to cite the shutdown for the lapse in telehealth services — since the real culprit was continual Congressional can-kicking. They wondered, pointedly, if Novant was playing politics with the framing.
After all, the shutdown is contentious and unpopular, with at least some voters blaming Democrats (about 39% according to recent polling); meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress could have easily made the telehealth extensions permanent, with plenty of Democratic support, had it not been pulled into the shutdown fight.
Is there a meaningful difference here, or is this just nitpicking? After reading through a bunch of policy articles on the topic, it does seem like telehealth is collateral damage of the shutdown fight. If the continuing resolution had passed the Senate, Medicaid reimbursements would have continued — so Novant’s message isn’t completely without basis.
On the other hand, resolving the shutdown doesn’t necessarily mean telehealth will get refunded. It’s not the same as government services — like park rangers, EPA inspections, and federal loan processing — which will unpause when the shutdown ends. Congress will still need to agree to fund telehealth, and it’s not guaranteed to be in the next continuing resolution (although one hopes it will be). Further, a one-month extension — as provided by the House resolution — does not provide long-term stability.
So, I put the question to Novant, asking them if they’d had any internal debates about the phrasing of the MyChart message.
“Our motivation is to ensure our patients have the information they need to make informed healthcare decisions. Addressing this issue will require congressional action, which is being impacted by the shutdown. Our hope is that when federal leaders resume normal operations, they will permanently address telemedicine access,” a Novant spokesperson wrote back to me.
While that felt like Novant’s last word on the topic, it seems like there were some more internal conversations, because about a week later, the MyChart message had been given a minor but notable tweak:
ATTENTION! Until further congressional action, Medicare may not cover your telehealth appointment. Out-of-pocket costs can range from $221-291 for established patients and $341-484 for new patient visits.
Apparently, the distinction between “because of the federal government shutdown” and “until further congressional action” was more than nitpicking. And it probably helped that more than one patient let Novant know how they felt about it.
