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Bivins Hollar likes to post videos from his bedroom. About weight loss. About Pokemon cards. About selling chewing gum at a flea market. But it’s the video where he casually talks about “shooting” and starving black South Africans – and kidnapping the country’s president – that caught the attention of people who track white supremacists.

Hollar, who is running for the N.C. Senate from Catawba County, is one of two Democratic candidates whom state party officials have taken the unusual step of denouncing, reports Jim Morrill.

The other is Carrol Crawford, a former Ku Klux Klan leader once convicted of burning a cross in Charlotte. He’s running for Rowan County commissioner.

“The North Carolina Democratic Party believes that hate-based, violent, racist positions are fundamentally anti-American,” said party chairman David Parker. Read more here and see the preserved video below.

N.C. Democratic Party Chairman David Parker dismissed the indictment of Bev Perdue's campaign associates, defending the governor and saying "it's time to move on."

In his statement, Parker took a harder line than Perdue, pushing back at Republicans and issuing a rallying cry to supports about why the governor will win re-election.

His statement: "Republicans are going to use the District Attorney’s action today in every way they can to score cheap political points.   They will use it as an excuse to avoid talking about their own record of slashing funding for our schools, colleges and universities.  But voters won’t be distracted from the real issues, and they will reject the smear tactics and baseless innuendoes that some Republican leaders will be tempted to resort to as their party’s best chance for victory. 

"The citizens of North Carolina will re-elect Governor Perdue in 2012 because she has the better vision for North Carolina’s future, particularly when it comes to strengthening our schools and creating economic opportunities for all of our citizens.  It’s time to get back to the issues.  That’s what voters care about. We are confident that most North Carolinians share Governor Perdue’s vision for our state and that she will win their votes next November."

North Carolina Democrats did bit of a victory dance Tuesday, saying that victories in local elections across the state showed that the party was energized and ready for the 2012 elections.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who easily won re-election, said the Democratic victories “bodes well for Democrats over the next year as we go into the 212 elections.”

Foxx said supporters made 200,000 phone calls on his behalf.

The Democrats had major pick ups in the Wake County school board, and municipal elections in Greensboro, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Sanford and elsewhere.

“It sets us up for a very positive projection for the governor and the president,” said Yvonne Johnson, the likely Greensboro mayor pro tem.

President Barack Obama's organization was involved in several cities including Charlotte and Greensboro, although party officials could not quantify the level of that involvement.

State Democratic Party chairman David Parker said the election was a rejection of the “Pat McCrory-Tea Party” philosophy. Party officials said that in races where McCrory, the likely GOP candidate for governor worked for candidates, they lost.

Foxx reiterated that he had no intention of challenging Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue in a primary.

“I don't know what part of no can't be understood,” Foxx said. “Let me say it very clearly. Not only am I not running in any primary against Gov. Perdue. I am looking forward to supporting her campaign for re-election.”

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry is visiting Charlotte to raise money today -- and Democrats are using his visit to raise their own campaign cash.

In a fundraising letter, party Chairman David Parker issues this missive: “Despite his poor taste in barbecue, Rick Perry should feel right at home with the extreme agenda of Thom Tillis, Pat McCrory and the rest of the North Carolina Republicans."

He continued: "Rick Perry endorsed the Tea Party Republicans’ plan to end Medicare, slash resources for K-12 education and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs. When it comes to economic policies that erode middle class security, Rick Perry is in lockstep with Thom Tillis, Pat McCrory and the rest of the Republicans who want to turn back the clock on North Carolina.”

The solicitation from Democrats includes this humorous Photoshop job:

State Democratic Chairman David Parker Friday criticized the legislature's use of public money to hire Tom Hoffler, the former director of redistricting for the Republican National Committee, to help draft North Carolina new maps.

“Taxpayer money is paying for a partisan Republican bonanza,” Parker said in a statement. “Women are paying this man for the elimination of female incumbents. African Americans are being forced to pay a Republican consultant to cram 49 percent of them into three congressional districts.”

Parker called for an audit of redistricting committee expenses.

Hoffler was RNC redistricting director from the 1980s until at least 2002.

 

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire will be the major speaker when the Democrats gather in Raleigh for their annual Jefferson-Jackson fund raising dinner.

Shaheen, the only woman to serve as both a governor and a senator, will top the $100-per plate dinner to be held at the Raleigh Convention Center on April 30th.    Earlier in the day, the state Democratic Executive Committee will meet.

In the morning, Gov. Bev Perdue and Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton will speak at a breakfast hosted by the Wake County Democratic Women that will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Cary.

The Republican-controlled legislature is being used as an incentive to get Democrats to attend.

In a letter inviting Democrats to attend the dinner, state Democratic chairman David Parker writes “with the first 100 days of their control of the North Carolina General Assembly, Republicans have sought to dismantle public schools, deny health care to seniors, kill job creation programs, disenfranchise the voting rights of college students and the disabled and permit people to carry guns in our parks and restaurants.”

“Governor Bev Perdue and the Democrats are the only forces standing in the way of this right-wing assault on the middle class,” Parker writes.

The North Carolina Democrats have hired a new executive director with experience in working in Republican territory.

State chairman David Parker announced Tuesday that Jay Parmley will be the new executive director. He replaces Andrew Whalen, who resigned earlier this year to work for a political comittee tied to Congressman Heath Shuler.

“Democrats have hired the right guy for this election cycle,” Parker said. “Jay Parmley comes to us battle-tested and ready to go, with extensive experience working with the grassroots, as database director and executive director. It's exactly what we need.”

Parmley served since June 2008 as executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party and two terms in 2001 and 2003 as the state chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. At age 30, he  was the youngest chairman of a state party in the nation.

The Oklahoma native has also worked for the Democratic National Committee as a state party liaison in Mississippi, and served as a member of the Democratic National Committee. He holds an associate of arts degree from Northeastern A&M College and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Oklahoma.

UPDATE: When Parmley left as state chairman of Oklahoma in 2005, the party was left with a $500,000 debt after an unsuccessful effort to defeat Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. For a short period of time, the Oklahoma Democratic Party had no staff.
 

The Democrats are going after GOP freshmen Senators Thom Goolsby of Wilmington and Buck Newton of Wilson for co-sponsoring bills to repeal the plastic bag ban along the North Carolina coast.

The Democrats have produced a video featuring talking turtles with human bodies complaining about plastic bags showing up in their food. The turtles blame Goolsby and Newton, and ask why they aren't focusing on creating jobs.

The YouTube video has received more than 4,000 hits since it went up over the weekend.

The 2009 plastic bag ban effects Dare, Currituck and Hyde Counties.

According to the Democratic Party, the American Chemistry Council,  the plastics lobby, launched a plastics bag defense campaign last week.

Goolsby told a Wilmington TV station that “it's time we opened that discussion” on whether the disposal shopping bags should be banned. He noted that he was a surfer.

State Democratic Chairman David Parker said Goolsby wasn't seeking a discussion but repeal.

“It's what I believe surfers like the senator call a wipe-out,” Parker said. “For a freshman senator from a coastal county to attempt to repeal popular coastal environmental legislation is a major early mistake – and hopefully a lesson for him.”

Republicans focused on voter ID: After years of arguments muted by Democrats, the newly installed Republican majority at the Legislature is resolute this year on expanding identification requirements before voters enter a polling booth.
Requiring a photo ID in order to vote was on a list of fall campaign pledges GOP legislative candidates said they'd follow through on in the session's first 100 days if they were in power. Democratic leaders refused to take up Republican-penned ID bills over the years. (AP)

State Dems pick Parker: North Carolina Democrats on Saturday chose a veteran activist, David Parker, to lead the party's comeback effort next year, when it will try to hold on to the governor's mansion and retake the legislature from the Republicans. (N&O)

Tech schools brace for cuts: Community colleges across North Carolina are jammed with record numbers of students, some of them laid-off workers hoping to retool for new careers. In the past three years, the 58-campus community college system has added the equivalent of 50,000 full-time students - an increase of 25 percent. But during the same period, per-student state funding has slid 12 percent. And the coming year could present challenges unlike any the community colleges have seen. Like other state agencies, the colleges have been asked to prepare plans for budget cuts of 5 percent to 10 percent. (N&O)

State workers fear the worst: Every day, Bonnie Johnson shines a flashlight into the mouths of the state's most vulnerable children, hunting for crumbled teeth and infections they suffer in silence. For now, Johnson is a state employee, a dental hygienist paid by state taxpayers to make sure children's oral health isn't standing in the way of their success at school. By year's end, she could join the droves of North Carolina's unemployed, which swelled to more than 439,000 in December. Johnson's $54,000 salary could be used to help close a $3.7 billion deficit lawmakers say they will conquer by cutting government spending. (N&O)