Cabarrus Cheap Seats

On Tuesday, I told you about a lobbying class that I sat in on. For the first part of the strategy was bribery. And the second part, be rude:

Fella From Odell: Alright, so if bribery doesn’t work like we mentioned in Step 1 - what do you all think that might work?

Participant #1: Work with them and come up with shared goals while taking the need of the entire community…

Fella From Odell: BORING!!! Why don’t you go home and rent “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”, you wuss. How about you, tell me what “#2″ would do?

Participant #2: I would build coalitions with effective political factions and mount strong campaigns to put broad-based political pressure on elected officials.

Fella From Odell: You’re closer; but that’s, like, hard. What we did is act like total jackasses whenever we got the chance.

Participant #1: This contrarian approach to lobbying is entertaining - please share more.

Fella From Odell: Well, after a landslide election, Cabarrus County entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the cities to govern the annexation of the Northwestern portion of the County. They didn’t ask us first. So, we showed up to the County Commissioners meeting and threatened to sue them. Oh, my personal favorite was when a guy laid a $1 bill on the dais as a contribution. In the course of doing all of that, we called Kannapolis an “undesirable address” [CLICK HERE FOR A LINK TO THAT WHOLE FIASCO]
Participant #2: Did that get you anywhere?

Fella From Odell: Well - funny story - it turns out that, according to North Carolina Law, to incorporate you need approval of the surrounding municipalities.

Participant #1: Let me guess, Kannapolis didn’t care to be called an “undesirable address”

Fella From Odell: I guess not. Actually, we didn’t get any approval from any of the cities.

Participant #2: Bummer.

Fella From Odell: It’s not too bad. Defeat helps fuel your sense of self-righteousness. On top of our cynical attempt to suggest that Representative Barnhart was open to taking a bribe…

Participant #1: That was the one that tried to help you?

Fella From Odell: Um, yeah. Well, because he get what we wanted we sent this to him via e-mail out of spite:

Participant #2: How did that turn out?

Fella From Odell: We were close to being satisfied; but we needed a little something else.

Participant #1: What did you do next?

Fella From Odell: We filed a phony ethics complaint against a state lawmaker.

Note: As you can tell - this is a work of satire. There is no Odell Charm School; but all of the facts referred to here are true.