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The executive director of the N.C. Republican Party is resigning at the end of the year to join his wife in a new lobbying firm that opened earlier this year in Raleigh.

Scott Laster, 45, served as the party's day-to-day manager for a year moving from the House GOP caucus where he coordinated politics after the party took power at the legislature for the first time in more than a century. 

He is joining Southern Strategy Group, a lobbying firm that opened in July. His wife, Kristen Laster, is the managing partner in Raleigh.

Former U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes wants to represent North Carolina Republicans as chairman of the state party.

“I am running hard,” Hayes told staff writer Barbara Barrett on Tuesday.

Hayes said that along with visiting grandchildren and spending time hunting and fishing, he’s been working recently on a campaign to replace Tom Fetzer, the outgoing state GOP chairman, who has said he plans to resign in January.

Hayes, 65, said he wants to build on Republican successes, but not just to increase the number of Republicans in office.

A Republican Senate candidate has filed a defamation suit against state Sen. A.B. Swindell and the state Democratic Party, saying they maliciously brought up drug charges they knew to be false.

E.S. “Buck” Newton, a GOP candidate who is challenging Swindell, is the subject of a mailer that accuses him of having been charged in Watauga County on eight felony drug counts, including selling cocaine. The Republican Party says the charges, in 1990, were a case of mistaken identity. Court documents show the charges were dismissed in 1991.

The lawsuit says that Swindell and the Democrats knew the facts – and distributed the mailer anyway, reports Rob Christensen.

State GOP Chairman Tom Fetzer announced the suit at the Wilson County courthouse today, where the suit was filed.

“In politics, it is fair to strike hard blows, but not foul blows,” the suit reads. “Defendants’ actions show that they will go to any lengths, including publishing outright lies, to destroy any opponent."

Andrew Whalen, executive director of the state Democratic Party, defended the flyer.

“I think the public record is clear on this,” Whalen said. “Orders for an arrest were sworn out by a judge for Buck Newton...He was indicted by a grand jury of his peers on multiple counts.”

Whalen said the district attorney offered no reason for dismissal in the documents at the time. In 1999, the DA's office offered an addendum saying Newton's arrest was a case of mistaken identity.

North Carolina Republicans plan to embark next week on a “100 days that will change North Carolina” tour in which they present their argument about why voters should elect a Republican legislature in November.

At a news conference at state GOP headquarters Tuesday, state Republican chairman Tom Fetzer predicted that the Democrats would lose control of the General Assembly for the first time since 1898, reports Rob Christensen. (The GOP controlled the state House for two terms in the 1990s.)

Fetzer cited a number of good omens for Republicans, including a new Gallup Poll giving Republicans an unprecedented 10 percent advantage in generic congressional balloting. Also, historic trends show the out-of-power party with big pick-ups when the president is polling under 50 percent, as is the case with Democratic President Barack Obama.

“This is the best crop of candidates in North Carolina I have ever seen,” said Fetzer, flanked by about a dozen state House and Senate candidates.

The candidates, given a few minutes at the microphone, generally voiced support for limited government, lower taxes, and reduced spending. They promised policies that would be more business friendly.

“We are becoming an anti-business state,” said Mike Stone, a House candidate from Sanford.

The tour will start in the mountains Sept. 7 and will continue until Sept. 23. Fetzer said the candidates will present some specific ideas of what they will do if the Republicans gain a majority.

UPDATE: Andrew Whalen, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said the criticism of Democrats being anti-business was "completely bogus."

He noted that CNBC has rated North Carolina in the top five states for business and that Site Selection magazine made North Carolina the top state in business climate in eight of the past nine years. He said Forbes ranked Raleigh as its 3rd best city for businesses this year.
 

State Republican Party Chairman Tom Fetzer has become a proud father.

Thomas Harrison Fetzer III, to be called Harrison, was born July 2.  Fetzer reports that his son, who was born in a Wilmington hospital, was 7 pounds, 9 ounces at birth.

“He is absolutely delightful,” said Fetzer.

Fetzer, who is 55, said baby and wife Kate are doing fine.

N.C. Republican Party chairman Tom Fetzer says U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge should be investigated for an incident in which he was filmed grabbing a videographer on a Washington sidewalk.

Republicans have seized on the incident for which Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, has apologized. Fetzer said in a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on House Administration that the apology isn't enough.

"If our young people cannot ask a member of congress where they stand on an issue without being assaulted then I fear for the Republic," he wrote.

He asks Reps. Robert Brady, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Dan Lungren, a California Republican, to authorize the Capitol Police to investigate the incident.

UPDATE: N.C. Democratic Party Executive Director Andrew Whalen said Fetzer was “grandstanding” on behalf of Etheridge’s Republican opponent, Renee Ellmers. He noted that the two videographers who were taping Etheridge are still not identified.

“Important questions remain unanswered like: who are these men who staged this ambush, who were they working for and why have they remained in hiding?” Whalen told Dome.

At the state GOP Convention in Winston-Salem over the weekend, state Republican Chairman Tom Fetzer said there were plenty of signs that the recent Republican slide in North Carolina was over.

During the May primary, 54 percent of the unaffiliated voters chose to vote in the Republican primary, while only 42 percent chose to vote in the Democratic primary, Fetzer told the convention.

He said the Republicans had not only closed the huge Democratic edge in early voting in 2008, but actually had a large advantage in early voting in the May primaries, reports Rob Christensen.

Fetzer said for the first time in recent memory, the state Republican Party had more money on hand at the end of the first quarter than the state Democratic Party.

N.C. Republican Party Chairman Tom Fetzer sent an e-mail blast to supporters encouraging them to take advantage of early voting.

Fetzer also included the electoral equivalent of a secret decoder ring for judicial candidates. Judicial races are officially nonpartisan. Voters often search news stories or biographies looking for keywords or clues that might be a tip off on whether the candidate is a Democrat or Republican.

Fetzer's e-mail seems aimed at making that hunt easier for voters.

Primary voting is especially critical for our judicial candidates. This year, we have solid conservatives running in our statewide judicial races. Please don't forget to vote for these conservative judicial candidates:

Barbara Jackson - Supreme Court

Sanford Steelman - Court of Appeals

Ann Marie Calabria - Court of Appeals

Rick Elmore - Court of Appeals

Steven Walker - Court of Appeals

Dean Poirier - Court of Appeals

N.C. Republican Party Chairman Tom Fetzer is calling for Michael Steele, the embattled Republican National Committee chairman, to resign.

"I believe that the best service you can render to your party at this critical juncture is to graciously step aside and allow the party to move on from this current quagmire," Fetzer said in a "Dear Michael" letter to Steele dated Thursday, Rob Christensen reports.

Fetzer is apparently the first state GOP chairman in the country to publicly call for Steele's resignation.

Steele has been the subject of a string of gaffes and missteps including $2,000 paid by a an RNC staffer at a bondage club in Hollywood. In another embarrassment, a recent GOP fund raising letter directed donors to call a number belonging to a phone sex operation.
Some donors have threatened to withhold funding to the GOP because of the mishaps under Steele.

When Fetzer and Steele appeared together at a press conference in Greensboro last month all was friendliness, with Steele kidding about Fetzer's impending fatherhood and Fetzer noting that Steele has a son enrolled at nearby Elon University.

"I have prayed for you and hurt with you these last few weeks," Fetzer wrote in the letter. "Some of the criticism directed at you has been deserved, some of it hasn't, but no one could criticize you for lack or effort or enthusiasm."

But Fetzer wrote that Steele's position was "becoming increasingly untenable."

"More than ever, America needs the Republican Party to be a force for reform, transparency, and ethics in government," Fetzer wrote. "If we are going to be an effective agent for reform in America, we must first reform our party."

Longtime Democratic consultant Gary Pearce says Republicans have a big advantage heading into this year's elections.

Tom Fetzer.

The new chairman of the N.C. Republican Party has been visible and relentless in his attacks against Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, Pearce says on his blog, Talking about Politics.

Fetzer is traveling around the state like a heat-seeking missile. His attacks on Governor Perdue make headlines week after week. Democratic Chair David Young is a stark contrast. He’s clearly not comfortable playing the role of political hit man. Unlike Fetzer, who is a total political animal, Young has other things going on in his life: his business, a young family and the UNC Board of Governors. Plus he lives in Asheville. As the campaign goes on and Fetzer goes on and on, some Democrats may get restive — and start calling for Young to speak up and lash out.