Allegations of Nazi beliefs, political gamesmanship mar NC election challenge
A battle to keep a Republican candidate off the GOP primary ballot in Rockingham County has entered a strange new phase — one that includes allegations of Nazi beliefs, attitudes towards casinos, political gamesmanship and now, for the second time, intervention by North Carolina elections officials.
Podcaster and ex-convict Joseph Gibson wants to run in the GOP primary against state Rep. Reece Pyrtle, a retired police chief who defeated Gibson in 2022 for a seat in the legislature.
The Republican Party claims Gibson isn’t eligible to run due to his history of felony convictions in Connecticut. North Carolina allows convicted felons to vote only after they’ve fully served their sentence. Gibson says his past is behind him and he has regained his rights.
But GOP operatives don’t think he’s been able to prove that, and elections officials have waffled: The Rockingham County Board of Elections originally voted to kick Gibson off the ballot. But after he appealed that decision and presented his case, the board reversed course on Wednesday and approved him to run against Pyrtle in the March primary.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections is now preparing to hear what could be the final challenge to his eligibility, after the GOP on Friday appealed the decision to let him run.
That most recent county vote came down along party lines, with the board’s three Democratic members voting to allow him on the ballot while the two Republican members voted to block his candidacy.
One of the GOP insiders fighting to keep Gibson off the ballot believes there’s a simple explanation for why that decision changed, and came down along party lines: The board’s Democratic majority wanted to embarrass the Republican Party by allowing Gibson on the ballot.
“The only thing that changed was that his Nazi beliefs became broadly aware,” said Stephen Wiley, the North Carolina House Republican Caucus director who has led the effort to keep Gibson off the ballot.
Gibson strongly denies that he’s a Nazi.
“I’ve never been to an NSM rally,” he told WRAL, referring to the National Socialist Movement, one of the nation’s largest white supremacist political groups. “I’ve never supported them. But I think that’s coming from my podcast because I have had them call in. But I’ve had Black Panthers call in. I have all sorts of people call in. I believe in the First Amendment.”
Wiley said that in between the election board’s first vote and the second vote, a report from the Anti-Defamation League, a national pro-Jewish group, began circulating that showed screenshots of Republican politicians — including Gibson — supporting the National Socialist Movement or other white supremacist groups.
Wiley said he believes Democrats on the Rockingham board became aware of Gibson’s alleged Nazi support and then voted to let him on the ballot, in an attempt to connect the broader GOP with white supremacy and extremist views.
Thurman Hampton, one of the Democrats on the Rockingham elections board, said that’s entirely false.
“How would I know he’s a Nazi?” Hampton said, adding that if the GOP was concerned about that, they never brought it up during either of the hearings. Those hearings focused solely on whether Gibson was legally eligible to be on the ballot, based on his previous felony convictions.
“We were not there to talk about his credibility, or his suitability, or anything like that,” Hampton said. “It was one simple question: Was he eligible?”
Wiley contested that version of events, saying the GOP’s lawyer at the hearing tried to bring up Gibson’s alleged Nazi support but that the board ordered him to “move on” to other testimony.
'One of our members in NC'
Gibson said Friday that if people listened to his podcast, it would become clear what the Nazis really think of him. The reason he’s living in North Carolina, he said, is because of threats to his life due to his work as an informant for the federal government while in prison in Connecticut.
“There was a show I did a couple of years ago where one of the NSM people called in and threatened me,” he said. “We don’t get along.”
The ADL claims that when Gibson previously ran for office in 2022, the NSM referred to him in an internal chat as “one of our members in NC” — and that in another post on the group’s internal messaging platform, an account using Gibson’s name and photo wrote “hello 88 everyone.” In neo-Nazi culture, 88 stands for “Heil Hitler” since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Gibson said those screenshots are fake, and that he thinks the real reason Republicans are calling him a Nazi and trying to keep him off the ballot is that he opposes casinos — a top priority for Senate leader Phil Berger, who is also from Rockingham County. Wiley says that’s not true; he simply doesn’t think Gibson is legally eligible to run for office due to his convictions.
The law on felon voting rights
State law says people can’t necessarily vote once they get out of prison on felony charges; they also have to finish probation or parole first. Republicans who oppose Gibson say they don’t believe he’s proven that he’s eligible.
But the county board found that Gibson appears to have gotten off probation in 2008 and has not been convicted of any felonies since then. Gibson provided the board with a copy of his criminal record, which shows several domestic violence convictions since then, as well as traffic charges. But none are felonies.
The hearing Wednesday was largely based on testimony, not documents. The board’s order in Gibson’s favor noted that Gibson provided no proof to back up his testimony that he’s eligible, but that the GOP provided no proof that he’s ineligible. Lacking evidence against him, the board voted to let Gibson run.
Hampton added that the board members had no private conversations about the political implications of their vote, or anything else: “All of our conversations took place on the record,” Hampton said.
On Friday, the GOP appealed the county board’s decision to allow Gibson on the ballot. The appeal says it’s not as simple as Gibson no longer being on parole or probation. They say state law requires him to show a document from Connecticut saying he has been granted an “unconditional discharge.” Gibson testified that he received such a discharge, but he hasn’t shown the proof, the GOP claims.
Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said the hearing for that appeal had not yet been scheduled as of late Friday but that one would be held soon. The deadline for printing ballots is fast-approaching.
