THE GOOD: ASHLEY CANADY
Ashley Canady, the president of the McDougald Terrace residents council, was tired of living in a hotel room and subsisting off of mac-and-cheese cups. So last Tuesday, she made her presence known at the Durham City Council: “If I have to disrupt every city function, every county function, I want it. Because if they disrupt our lives, we ’bout to disrupt theirs.” Two days later, she and other Mac residents disrupted a council work session. On Friday—despite death threats—she appeared with council member Jillian Johnson and Bernie Sanders’s campaign co-chair Nina Turner at a town hall in East Durham, where she said she plans to run for city council and demanded the recall of the DHA board and executive director Anthony Scott. Through her activism, Canady is making sure that no one forgets the Mac’s residents as the crisis recedes from the headlines—not today, not next month, not next year.
THE BAD: THOM TILLIS
There are probably senators who’ve acquitted themselves just as poorly during Trump’s impeachment, but they don’t represent North Carolina. And so we’re once again going to talk about Senator Thom Tillis, a human-squid hybrid who has somehow survived 59 years on Earth without a backbone. Tillis, who’s been diligently kissing Trump’s derriere ever since his national border emergency flip-flop last year, long ago declared Trump’s innocence. But on Sunday night, the news about John Bolton’s book—and Bolton’s claim that Trump told him he was linking the Ukrainian aid to an investigation into the Bidens—gave Tillis another chance to show a smidge of moral courage. Here was a bona fide conservative refuting the president’s chief defense; who wouldn’t want to learn more? Well, Thom Tillis. By Monday morning, he’d reiterated his position: Nothing to see here, move along.
THE AWFUL: DENNIS NIELSON
Dennis Nielson, 71, a gun-shop owner in Johnston County, is running in the Republican primary for state Senate. He is also accused of domestic violence. But that’s just the beginning. As Carolina Public Press reported, Nielson allegedly told one of his primary opponents that she’s not qualified to hold office because she’s a woman. (Nielson denies that.) According to records Nielson provided to The Wilson Times—he believed “the paperwork is proof that any woman can say whatever she wants and officials will automatically believe her,” the paper reported—his wife’s application for a restraining order accused him of taking her cellphone and keys, preventing her from working, bullying her disabled son, tracking her movements with electronic devices, physically assaulting her, and threatening to file criminal charges against her unless she had sex with him. He also gave her an eight-page document on “How to be a submissive wife.” (Side note: Nielson refused to discuss the domestic violence allegations with a lady reporter from the Times, so the paper reassigned the story to a man, which is bullshit.) If elected, Nielson told the Times, he wants to make it harder for women to file #MeToo-type allegations. Of course he does.
Contact editor in chief Jeffrey C. Billman at jbillman@indyweek.com.
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