This Just In – First off, from the Department of Corrections … I suggested last week that Dr. Monique Felder was on her way out of her job as Superintendent of Orange County Schools in 2021 when Jennifer Moore announced her phony doctorate degree. That was inaccurate. Felder left the Orange County Schools at the end of the 2023 school year – less than a year ago. My bad.
The last week has produced a pretty amazing display of creative approaches to solving the problem presented to Moore supporters who plainly are unwilling to accept what Moore’s admission means for the runoff race.
Let me pause at this point and acknowledge that I obviously don’t know what the outcome of that race will be, except to say that Moore has announced that, along with her immediate resignation, she plans to not serve if the runoff election goes her way. Let’s operate for a moment under the assumption that four more years of Moore as a board member is off the menu.
Moore’s supporters have offered some options to achieve their main remaining goal now. Plainly stated, they simply want to get incumbent board member Bonnie Hauser off the board. They have a plan to achieve this.
First, when Hauser filed to request the runoff, Moore’s advocates complained about this seldom-used Orange County Schools-only ordinance that sets out the rules for a runoff. A former school board member made her argument that runoffs were in fact part of voter suppression, with racial implications.
In the past week, a Moore supporter said on social media that this ordinance was a remnant of the Jim Crow era. I pointed out to her that it was enacted in 1977.
Other Moore supporters, including Jenn Weaver, former Mayor of Hillsborough, have advocated that runoff voters should still vote for Moore, claiming that they will do so “to vote for her vision for the Orange County Schools.”
If Moore were to prevail and make good on promise to resign immediately that would mean that the six sitting school board members would appoint her replacement for a full four-year term. None of those six board members have stated whom they would select to replace Moore.
To summarize, Moore’s advocates find it very unsatisfactory (even undemocratic) for the voters who turn out for the May 14th runoff (early voting is underway right now) to determine the outcome … as stated, it’s because of what a low turnout that’s likely to be (maybe fewer than a thousand people) … terrible since Moore got more than 6,000 votes.
Instead, they ask voters to knowingly vote for a person who egregiously and repeatedly lied to them, electing her on the promise that she’ll quit and allow six people to make this decision.
Six …instead of 600 or more and on the promise that Jennifer Moore will not do something that no one can stop her from doing – changing her mind. She has claimed that her resignation was due to a health problem while making no representation as to what the problem is except to say it was a condition that recently worsened. One wonders why she offered herself for re-election under such conditions.
In 2016, many Republicans who couldn’t stand the idea of Donald Trump being president supported him regardless of his obvious unfitness, citing the GOP agenda. They were voting for that, not the guy on the ballot. They’re doing that again this year.
I’d like to think we’re a bit smarter than that. We’ll see.
(feature image: AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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