War Under the Waves-The Struggle for Political Control of Forsyth County

A few years ago, I wrote a reg­u­lar Fri­day col­umn for our local news­pa­per. Nobody paid me. I nev­er want­ed to be paid, and dont charge for sub­scrip­tions today. That is because I do not want to make writ­ing into a job that I have to do. I do not write, nec­es­sar­i­ly, for oth­ers to read. I write for myself, to learn, to ana­lyze, to bet­ter under­stand what is real­ly going on in an intrigu­ing world filled to the utmost with false por­tray­als. I pub­lish what I write pure­ly as a pub­lic ser­vice.

But, for almost three years, I spent time each week choos­ing a top­ic of rel­e­vance and offer­ing up my best analy­sis on the sub­ject, the only dif­fer­ence then, as opposed to now, is that I had a reg­u­lar sched­ule and was lim­it­ed to 900 words. If you search back, you will find each of those arti­cles pub­lished right here onhanksullivan.substack.com, many which remain rel­e­vant and use­ful today.

Due to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of my col­umn, I began receiv­ing con­tacts from local politi­cians run­ning for office, per­haps hop­ing I would say a few kind words about them in print. Some desired to meet for lunch, which I gen­er­al­ly oblig­ed. And it was dur­ing those oppor­tu­ni­ties that I would make it a point to express some­thing I thought most impor­tant for politi­cians to hear. My speech was along the lines of:If you win,do not trust any­body. Do not trust the indi­vid­ual you share an office with. Do not trust the guy who walks in the door to say hel­lo. Do not go out to lunch with them. Do not let them give you a fundrais­er. Stay pleas­ant, but aloof. Keep your head down, remain ground­ed in the work of your dis­trict. Make sure that if you vote for some­thing, it has a pos­i­tive ben­e­fit for the peo­ple you rep­re­sent.

I would make it a point to give that speech, or one very sim­i­lar, because prac­ti­cal­ly every politi­cian I know, or know of, even­tu­al­ly falls into the same trap. Im sure you remem­ber the guys who got mixed up with the wrong crowd in high school. Maybe they start­ed off smok­ing cig­a­rettes behind the shop build­ing. But even­tu­al­ly they would find them­selves mixed up with a crowd of unsa­vory char­ac­ters, and bad things would hap­pen. Well, the capi­tol com­plex in Atlanta is over­run with unsa­vory char­ac­ters com­pris­ing, the wrong crowd. So, when green, well-mean­ing politi­cians involve them­selves smok­ing behind the shop build­ing, among that same crowd, bad things will gen­er­al­ly occur. Time after time, the most civic-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als, folks who go into pol­i­tics for the right rea­sons, get sucked in, think­ing they can smoke with­out inhal­ing. Even­tu­al­ly, how­ev­er, enough self-addict­ing pur­pos­es cloud their think­ing and those politi­cians gets hooked. Thats just what hap­pens.

Last week, I was remind­ed of one of the politi­cians with whom I sat down for lunch sev­er­al years ago. He was one who received the lunch time Hank speech. In the paper, I had writ­ten a very com­pli­men­ta­rycol­umn, the effect of which was cer­tain­ly a boost in his chances of win­ning elec­tion, and not sur­pris­ing­ly, he won by quite a bit. That politi­cians name was Marc Mor­ris, now, for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Geor­gias 26th Dis­trict here in Forsyth Coun­ty.

The evening of the pri­ma­ry elec­tion I was invit­ed to join numer­ous oth­ers at a vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion. At the event, among oth­ers I recall see­ing two indi­vid­u­als I knew, or sort of knew, at the time. There was Marc Mor­ris of course, but also a fel­low who has since made a local name for him­self, for var­i­ous rea­sons. His name is Justin Hawkins. Justin was extreme­ly hap­py that night and he and I had a very pleas­ant time togeth­er. If I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, we left it that we would get togeth­er soon. We nev­er did. Accord­ing to Justins appraisal that night, my col­umn was the rea­son for Marc Mor­ris vic­to­ry. Whether that is true I can­not say, but it did not hurt. And now, six years lat­er, as things have turned out, Marc Mor­ris served only one term, and Justin Hawkins became Marc Mor­ris boss, appar­ent­ly in sev­er­al ven­tures, one of which is a firm for which Hawkins became a founder and CEO, Tal­itrix, LLC.

The rea­son I bring this up is that now for­mer pri­vate cit­i­zen Marc Mor­ris, retired from pub­lic ser­vice three years ago, recent­ly sub­mit­ted an op-ed for the same paper I wrote for at the time he was elect­ed, seem­ing­ly announc­ing his res­ur­rec­tion of sorts from polit­i­cal retire­ment, in effect re-estab­lish­ing him­self as a pub­lic fig­ure. Had he remained a pri­vate cit­i­zen, retired from pub­lic ser­vice, I would prob­a­bly not be writ­ing this piece. But in re-estab­lish­ing his pub­lic cre­den­tials in the fol­low­ing let­ter, and not­ing sev­er­al mate­r­i­al and appar­ent­ly pur­pose­ful errors in the let­ters por­tray­al of events, I have decid­ed this to be the appro­pri­ate time to dis­cuss a few mat­ters I have pre­vi­ous­ly avoid­ed. This arti­cle may be the first of sev­er­al, thus, I enti­tle it, Chap­ter One. Lit­tle did Mr. Mor­ris know at the time he sub­mit­ted the recent op-ed, doing so may have opened Pan­do­ras box. Here is the op-ed Marc Mor­ris recent­ly pub­lished, print­ed in the Forsyth Coun­ty News.

Note the use of sta­tionery from the desk of a mem­ber of the Geor­gia House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Also note, twice, the title, Hon­or­able, pre­fixed to his name, all of the above effec­tive­ly re-intro­duc­ing Marc Mor­ris to the Forsyth Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty as a pub­lic fig­ure. And while I expect that is indeed his sig­na­ture, frankly, whether the let­ter is sole­ly pop­u­lat­ed with his own words and thoughts, Im not so sure. I say that for sev­er­al rea­sons. For one, in my opin­ion, the Marc Mor­ris I knew six years ago would nev­er write hit-pieces. And this let­ter, pub­lished not only in the Forsyth Coun­ty News, but also across sev­er­al oth­er out­lets online, was a well-orga­nized, well-con­ceived, albeit poor­ly writ­ten from a gram­mat­i­cal stand­point, hit-piece. I expect the only rea­son the Forsyth Coun­ty News would have pub­lished a hit-piece such as this is that Marc Mor­ris used the cre­den­tials of his for­mer elect­ed office in the let­ter to con­vey legit­i­ma­cy. But I have oth­er rea­sons, which I will share below, and per­haps in the future, to sus­pect Marc Mor­ris at least had help in craft­ing the cen­tral bul­let points and over­all mes­sage of this op-ed.

War Beneath the Waves in Forsyth County Politics

Whether you have rec­og­nized it hereto­fore or not, there is a polit­i­cal war, of sorts, wag­ing under the waves in Forsyth Coun­ty. While polit­i­cal mat­ters in Forsyth Coun­ty may appear some­what tran­quil above the water­line, just below the sur­face a strug­gle for polit­i­cal pow­er rages. At a recent event held at the Forsyth Coun­ty Cham­ber of Com­merce, cer­tain war­ring com­bat­ants sur­faced to face one anoth­er, cre­at­ing an inci­dent anal­o­gous to those which, accord­ing to leg­end, occur peri­od­i­cal­ly at Loch Ness, in the case at hand both sides choos­ing to reveal them­selves, but only for a few moments before resub­merg­ing. That is the event Marc Mor­ris ref­er­ences in the let­ter. Accord­ing to Mor­ris, since leav­ing office he has held his peace as a pri­vate cit­i­zen, choos­ing sim­ply to pray for those elect­ed offi­cials with whom he dis­agrees. But now, prac­ti­cal­ly as Pop­eye would declare dur­ing his hey­day,Thats all I can stands, I cant stands no more, cer­tain cir­cum­stances have tipped Marc Mor­ris per­son­al scale of out­rage, in effect forc­ing him to pub­lish that he can no longer reframe (refrain) from com­ment­ing pub­licly. That is how Marc Mor­ris explains his sud­den irre­sistible urge to return to pub­lic life and pub­lish his polit­i­cal com­men­tary while invok­ing the author­i­ty of an elect­ed state rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Doing so was com­plete­ly out of char­ac­ter for the indi­vid­ual I knew a few years back, or at least thought I knew, Marc Mor­ris choos­ing to sign his name to the mul­ti-pronged polit­i­cal attack you see above, in effect tor­pe­do­ing two mem­bers of the Forsyth Coun­ty state leg­isla­tive del­e­ga­tion, Brent Cox (R‑28) and Lau­ren McDon­ald (R‑26).

To bet­ter under­stand the Mor­ris hit-piece on Cox and McDon­ald, and to place it in con­text with­in the larg­er war fought among Forsyth Coun­ty elect­ed offi­cials, one set of com­bat­ants recent­ly sup­port­ed their can­di­date for Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Edu­ca­tion, Trisha Hoyes, against the incum­bent, Lind­sey Adams. There is noth­ing wrong with sup­port­ing a can­di­date for office. How­ev­er, Adams, alleged­ly, has been involved in a domes­tic dis­pute, the details of which Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cox con­tend­ed dur­ing theCham­ber eventhad been used as fuel to cyber­bul­ly Adams and her chil­dren on social media, a polit­i­cal tac­tic which accord­ing to Cox should not be tol­er­at­ed. With respect to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Coxs remarks, theForsyth Coun­ty News report­edthe fol­low­ing :

The con­tro­ver­sy began when Cox men­tioned what he calls con­stant hate dis­played by Forsyth Coun­ty politi­cians, refer­ring to recent inter­net posts alleg­ing that Dis­trict 5 School Board mem­ber Lind­sey Adams has been involved in sev­er­al domes­tic dis­putes and call­ing the posts cyber­bul­ly­ing.

He sug­gest­ed that the local del­e­ga­tion should work on leg­is­la­tion that would make cer­tain Sher­iffs Office doc­u­ments exempt from open records requests, claim­ing that fear of domes­tic dis­putes being made pub­lic could dis­cour­age cit­i­zens from call­ing law enforce­ment in the future.

Whether lib­er­al, con­ser­v­a­tive, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, it is unac­cept­able to cyber­bul­ly and make women and chil­dren less safe, said Cox.

Once Cox fin­ished his remarks, the micro­phone passed to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDon­ald, who, point­ing a fin­ger at Com­mis­sion­er Lau­ra Seman­son sit­ting oppo­site of him in the front row, alleged her to dis­play cer­tain antics and body lan­guage, includ­ing smirk­ing dur­ing Coxs time at the mic, which accord­ing to McDon­ald, is the prob­lem, appar­ent­ly equat­ing Seman­sons behav­ior with bul­ly­ing. Seman­son stood and offered a few words of her own, which can­not be under­stood from the video, before return­ing to her seat.

Retir­ing lat­er to Face­book, Lind­sey Adams took an oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank Brent Cox for his remarks against cyber-bul­ly­ing. Adams wrote,

to which Lau­ra Seman­son fol­lowed with this com­ment and a few more like it:

Could it be that the remarks by Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son against Lind­sey Adams might be the kind of cyber-bul­ly­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cox was talk­ing about at the Cham­ber event? How about the fol­low­ing remarks, pub­lished online by Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son, insult­ing and den­i­grat­ing retir­ing com­mis­sion­er col­league Cindy Mills:

I will let you be the judge whether these posts qual­i­fy Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son as a cyber­bul­ly.

In Politics, One Must Choose a Side

Regard­ing all of the afore­men­tioned, there is an appar­ent pur­pose to the let­ter signed by Marc Mor­ris, and pub­lished in our local paper, one I believe that goes well beyond a guy who is final­ly so burst­ing with out­rage that he can no longer con­tain his words. But before I ana­lyze the let­ter to which Mor­ris signed his name, to show you what I mean, it is impor­tant to iden­ti­fy the sides appar­ent­ly at odds in this war for polit­i­cal con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty.

In this pho­to, you will find sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als I iden­ti­fy to be mem­bers of the present­ly-estab­lished polit­i­cal order of Forsyth Coun­ty, whether all for­mal­ly rec­og­nize it the way I see it, or not. For lack of a bet­ter term, I will call them mem­bers of the Club. This pho­to, depict­ing all smiles along with a broom con­not­ing a clean sweep for the Club, was tak­en the night of the Clubs recent pri­ma­ry vic­to­ries:

Add State Sen­a­tor Greg Dolezal and for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mor­ris to the pho­to above, and you will have the first-string of present and for­mer elect­ed play­ers on the side of the Club. Every­one else in the Forsyth Coun­ty del­e­ga­tion would there­fore rep­re­sent what I will term, Out­siders. Out­siders, by choice or fate, are not, and can­not be mem­bers of the Club. The Out­siders to whom I refer present­ly con­sist of rep­re­sen­ta­tives Brent Cox (R‑28) and Lau­ren McDon­ald (R‑26).

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Carter Bar­rett is sort of in the mid­dle. He was once con­sid­ered to be a mem­ber in the Club, and he is offi­cial­ly stuck in the Club, but appar­ent­ly would like to leave the Club to become an Out­sider, or per­haps sim­ply main­tain inde­pen­dent free agency. The Club will not allow Bar­rett to leave the Club, even though the Club no longer wants him in the Club. That is because the Club does­nt want Bar­rett to become an Out­sider with Cox and McDon­ald either. Thus, one will not find Carter Bar­rett in the pho­tos tak­en at the vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion or voic­ing his opin­ion on cyber-bul­ly­ing at a Cham­ber event.

Here is anoth­er pho­to from the Club vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion:

The fel­low in the mid­dle is an indi­vid­ual who I choose to call the Club Man­ag­er. He is Jay Williams, own­er of The Stoner­idge Group (SRG), a polit­i­cal con­sult­ing agency well-known not only in Geor­gia, but also around the coun­try. SRG engi­neered each of the Club mem­bers pri­ma­ry vic­to­ries, about which they are all smiles. Between the two pho­tos, you will notice that four out of five like­ly Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers for next term are in the Club. The fifth com­mis­sion­er, Todd Lev­ent, is not in the Club. The polit­i­cal pow­er rep­re­sent­ed in these pho­tos due to the asso­ci­a­tion of the indi­vid­u­als depict­ed above will like­ly deter­mine what Forsyth Coun­ty will become decades into the future.

Below you will see the pub­lish­er of the Marc Mor­ris Let­ter, Mr. Mor­ris him­self (red shirt on the right), with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Todd Jones (left) and Coun­ty Com­mis­sion Chair­man, Alfred John.

Why Teams Against Each Other?

So, why does Forsyth Coun­ty seem­ing­ly have teams of politi­cians at war against each oth­er? Why cant elect­ed offi­cials sim­ply work earnest­ly, and inde­pen­dent­ly, for the ben­e­fits of those they rep­re­sent, and leave it at that?

Ambi­tion, for one rea­son. It is unde­ni­able that a cer­tain dose of high-lev­el polit­i­cal ambi­tion is a dri­ving force among sev­er­al mem­bers of the Club. Among the Out­siders, and I will throw in Bar­rett, in my opin­ion, not so much.

Sec­ond­ly, at least as far as cen­tral fig­ure Jay Williams is con­cerned, elec­tions are like horse races. What you see in these pho­tos is a sta­ble of Forsyth Coun­ty hors­es. Not only would a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant in his posi­tion nat­u­ral­ly want his hors­es win­ning local­ly, but there are some of them who may some day go on to the Ken­tucky Der­by or Preak­ness, mean­ing statewide or even nation­al cam­paigns, in which case Williams com­pa­ny would be first in line to run their cam­paigns and recruit replace­ments. That grows a polit­i­cal con­sult­ing busi­ness. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Williams gen­er­al­ly oppos­es hors­es not in his sta­ble. That fac­tor prac­ti­cal­ly cre­ates a local team of politi­cians in oppo­si­tion against all oth­ers, effec­tive­ly divid­ing a local del­e­ga­tion, such as that from Forsyth Coun­ty, into fac­tions. And that is what we are see­ing.

Unpacking the Marc Morris Letter

Now that we know the play­ers, and the teams, lets spend a minute or two unpack­ing the let­ter which Club mem­ber Marc Mor­ris pub­lished about Out­siders Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald. Con­cern­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cox, Mor­ris wrote:

First of all, it is instruc­tive to know that unless anoth­er Club mem­ber informed him about the cir­cum­stances to which the let­ter refers, there would be very lit­tle of a way for Marc Mor­ris to know any­thing about that which is writ­ten, con­firm­ing that Marc Mor­ris is, indeed, a mem­ber of the Club.

Sec­ond­ly, Mor­ris writes,as I am told he is the per­son who launched anunwar­rant­ed ethics inves­ti­ga­tionagainst Forsythsonly Jew­ish female Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­eras she was lit­er­al­ly dying of can­cer.TheJew­ish female Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­erto whom Mor­ris refers was Mol­ly Coop­er, who I knew as a friend. Now, how­ev­er, very unfor­tu­nate­ly, she is deceased. I am uncom­fort­able dis­cussing this sub­ject, giv­en that Mol­ly is no longer with us, how­ev­er, since Marc Mor­ris made her an issue in his hit-piece, to do my job here, I must at least set the record straight.

Mol­ly Coop­er was one of those polit­i­cal can­di­dates who invit­ed me to lunch one day, at which time she let me know she was a Chris­t­ian who con­vert­ed to Judaism when she mar­ried hus­band, Scott. Just so you know, Com­mis­sion­er Coop­ers roots, there­fore, were not so deeply Jew­ish, as Mor­ris por­trays, that they extend­ed to ancient or per­haps the mod­ern State of Israel, the well-being of which has always been a pub­lic con­cern of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Brent Cox. To lead the pub­lic to believe oth­er­wise was such a stretch in the Mor­ris hit-piece, doing so was much more like­ly to have been a cal­cu­lat­ed, polit­i­cal attack.

Fur­ther­more, there was nev­er any ethics inves­ti­ga­tion, either request­ed or launched against Com­mis­sion­er Coop­er, as alleged by Mor­ris. There was, how­ev­er, a request by Brent Cox, then a pri­vate cit­i­zen, for Coop­er to recuse her­self from a vote for a zon­ing change on a 57 acre par­cel locat­ed near Pil­grim Mill Road and Free­dom Park­way.

Approach­ing the time of the vote, Cox wrote a text to coun­ty gen­er­al coun­sel Ken Jar­rard iden­ti­fy­ing for the attor­ney a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est involv­ing Mol­ly Coop­er, the mes­sage advis­ing Jar­rard of Coxs belief that she should recuse her­self from the vote. The con­flict involved the cir­cum­stance that Ms. Coop­ers hus­band, a local neu­rol­o­gist, and Justin Hawkins, who, again, would become Marc Mor­ris boss at Tal­itrix, found­ed a busi­ness togeth­er to mar­ket neu­ro­ceu­ti­cals as you see below.

Per­haps not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the suc­cess of the busi­ness found­ed by Hawkins and Coop­er, was staked on the pas­sage of a bill into law,HB324, which would legal­ize the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of low-THC cannabis oil in Geor­gia. The lead spon­sor of the bill, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mic­ah Grav­ley, like for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marc Mor­ris, soon after­ward retired from pub­lic office and went to work for Hawkins atTal­itrix. Once again, you do the math. Whether Grav­ley or Mor­ris own equi­ty in the firm is not known. In 2023, for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive Grave­ly also became a mem­ber of the Geor­gia Board of Trans­porta­tion, with a vote and influ­ence over the selec­tion of state road-build­ing projects, an impor­tant posi­tion for a real estate devel­op­er to pos­sess influ­ence.

Thus, the alleged rea­son Ms. Coop­ers vote might have pre­sent­ed a con­flict of inter­est was that her hus­bands busi­ness part­ner, Justin Hawkins, appar­ent­ly had an inter­est in the project under con­sid­er­a­tion, both he and for­mer Geor­gia Lt. Gov­er­nor Casey Cagle known to have pushed the devel­op­ment to sev­er­al mem­bers of the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers. That Hawkins had (or per­haps still has) an eco­nom­ic inter­est in the project is sup­port­ed by the fol­low­ing stream of text mes­sages received through open records requests, sent by pri­vate cit­i­zen Brent Cox to Forsyth Coun­ty Coun­sel, Ken Jar­rard, pri­or to the meet­ing at which the vote would take place. Per­haps this text exchange plays direct­ly into a rea­son for cer­tain Club mem­bers hard feel­ings toward Out­sider Brent Cox.

As the texts above indi­cate, some­how, after the coun­ty attor­ney received Coxs text advis­ing that Mol­ly Coop­er should recuse, Hawkins learned of Coxs text to Jar­rard. Per­haps word advis­ing Hawkins was con­veyed via one or more of the three com­mis­sion­ers who wound up vot­ing for the zon­ing changes Hawkins alleged­ly sought in their report­ed mutu­al con­ver­sa­tions. That could have been Mol­ly Coop­er her­self, or Club mem­bers Lau­ra Seman­son and/or Alfred John. In the end, Mol­ly Coop­er did not recuse and the zon­ing changes passed by her swing vote.

So, you can see, there was nev­er anyethics inves­ti­ga­tion against Forsyths only Jew­ish female Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er as she was lit­er­al­ly dying of can­cer,as Marc Mor­ris osten­si­bly alleged. That was made up by who­ev­er tru­ly designed the let­ter. Instead there was only a rea­soned advi­so­ry sent from pri­vate cit­i­zen Brent Cox to the coun­ty attor­ney regard­ing a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est and urg­ing Mol­ly Coop­er to recuse from vot­ing on the pro­posed Pil­grim Mill project. Being the swing vote,had she recused, the rezon­ing would not have passed.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the pub­lish­er of the let­ter under analy­sis here, again, for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Club mem­ber Marc Mor­ris, sum­moned the moti­va­tion to tes­ti­fy at least twice to the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers, in favor of the pro­posed zon­ing changes, appar­ent­ly on behalf of his then friend, who became his boss, Club mem­ber Justin Hawkins. I pre­dict you will become a math wiz­ard by the end of this arti­cle.

Back to the let­ter, Mor­ris attack against Out­sider Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cox now in the books, in the next para­graph the author turns atten­tion to State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Out­sider Lau­ren McDon­ald, writ­ing:

Obvi­ous­ly, for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mor­ris should have viewed the video of the event pri­or to pub­lish­ing the let­ter. In thevideo, as Brent Cox begins to speak on the sub­ject of cyber-bul­ly­ing on social media, Com­mis­sion­er Lau­ra Seman­son, sit­ting direct­ly in front of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDon­ald, becomes notice­ably ani­mat­ed. And with every spo­ken ref­er­ence to cyber-bul­ly­ing, Seman­son shifts in her seat, shak­ing her head, and rock­ing it side to side. When Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDon­ald takes the micro­phone, he does not speak about Rotarys 4‑Way Test as the Mor­ris let­ter indi­cates. Instead, McDon­ald imme­di­ate­ly points at Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son and calls out what he terms, antics, body lan­guage, and smirk­ing, alleg­ing, Thats the prob­lem, appar­ent­ly equat­ing Seman­sons behav­ior to bul­ly­ing indi­vid­u­als with whom she dis­agrees, even to the point that she appar­ent­ly finds it dif­fi­cult and uncom­fort­able to hear ref­er­ences to that kind of behav­ior with­out phys­i­cal­ly react­ing, per­haps assum­ing Brent Cox to be speak­ing of her.

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Fin­ished with attack­ing Out­siders Cox and McDon­ald for the moment, Club mem­ber Marc Mor­ris next turns his atten­tion to the effect of com­pli­ment­ing all of the Clubssea­soned lead­ers,who camepre­pared to dis­cuss com­pli­cat­ed issues.Accord­ing to Mor­ris, only Club mem­bers (my term) have anabil­i­ty to artic­u­late seri­ous prob­lems and pro­pose inno­v­a­tive solu­tions.

Mor­ris con­tin­ues, relat­ing that it is only Club mem­bers (again, my term), not Cox or McDon­ald, who dis­play thetype of lead­er­ship that tru­ly ben­e­fits our com­mu­ni­ty.The Marc Mor­ris let­ter is a clever, though gram­mat­i­cal­ly taxed attempt to demo­nize Out­siders Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald in the eyes of the Forsyth Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty at-large, and to bol­ster the image of those in the Club, con­tend­ing that with­out the lat­ter,our influ­ence on mean­ing­ful leg­isla­tive mat­ters would be severe­ly dimin­ished.

In his last para­graph, Marc Mor­ris, or as I sus­pect, some­one work­ing under the tute­lage of Club Man­ag­er, Jay Williams, final­ly gets to the point and makes a pub­lic plea that both Out­siders, Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald, be replaced, writ­ing:

In his sum­ma­tion, the clever author attempts to turn the focus of bul­ly­ing female elect­ed offi­cials back on Out­siders Cox and McDon­ald, alleg­ing that it is they who are guilty of bul­ly­ing Club mem­ber Lau­ra Seman­son, not Seman­son and oth­er Club mem­bers guilty of bul­ly­ing Lind­sey Adams and her chil­dren. And for that rea­son, the writer con­cludes that Out­siders Cox and McDon­ald must be replaced by new Club mem­ber chal­lengers. Hope­ful­ly, you now see the shrewd­ness of the Marc Mor­ris mis­sive. It is writ­ten as a skilled, albeit some­what gram­mat­i­cal­ly-chal­lenged, court­room attor­ney might address final argu­ments to a jury:

Para­graph 1: Why I am writ­ing this.

Para­graph 2: My cre­den­tials; you can trust me.

Para­graph 3: Out­sider A is bad.

Para­graph 4: Out­sider B is bad.

Para­graph 5: Thank Good­ness we have good Club mem­bers, much bet­ter than Out­sider A and Out­sider B, to lead our coun­ty.

Para­graph 6: In the near future, Forsyth Coun­ty vot­ers should replace bad Out­siders A and B with Club mem­bers.

Do we think the for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the 26th Dis­trict craft­ed that kind of mes­sage pure­ly out of per­son­al out­rage in an attempt to remain in good con­science, espe­cial­ly when he made so many, appar­ent­ly pur­pose­ful, yet strate­gic fac­tu­al errors? Were it not for a few gram­mat­i­cal faux pas, I would call this piece a mar­ket­ing mas­ter class, the pur­pose appar­ent­ly being to begin con­di­tion­ing the pub­lic mind to replace Out­siders Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald with Club mem­bers at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. This is the kind of work I would expect from a tal­ent­ed, sea­soned polit­i­cal strate­gist, such as Club Man­ag­er, Jay Williams, not nec­es­sar­i­ly from Marc Mor­ris. What we see in this let­ter is the kind of prod­uct Jay Williams pro­duces at Stoner­idge. He projects false, well, per­haps bet­ter expressed, enhanced can­di­date images designed to encour­age polit­i­cal sup­port for his sta­ble of can­di­dates, or, as in this case, to dis­cour­age sup­port from his can­di­dates adver­saries. Do not be fooled. The let­ter above, signed by Marc Mor­ris, is a text­book polit­i­cal cam­paign hit-piece. Jay Williams is a text­book polit­i­cal con­sul­tant. His com­pa­ny writes cam­paign hit-pieces for his clients. In my opin­ion, Stoner­idge fin­ger­prints appear to be all over the Marc Mor­ris let­ter.

It is my bet that Stoner­idge and the Club are prepar­ing to run Club mem­ber Repub­li­can can­di­dates to pri­ma­ry Cox and McDon­ald in 2026. Lau­ren McDon­ald now occu­pies Marc Mor­ris old seat. Per­haps the Mark Mor­ris let­ter is the first sal­vo of a cam­paign to reclaim it.

Summary-Chapter 1

At this point, per­haps you are ask­ing, is that what the war under the waves in Forsyth Coun­ty is all about, replac­ing non-Stoner­idge politi­cians with Stoner­idge politi­cians? Well, I sus­pect par­tial­ly. But there are oth­er mat­ters at work as well. I do not believe those act­ing in effec­tive con­trol of the Club can sim­ply coex­ist with Out­siders like Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald in their midst. There are rea­sons for that. These Out­siders appar­ent­ly present a per­ceived threat to the Club. If that were not true, and if all of these elect­ed offi­cials tru­ly have the best inter­ests of the peo­ple they rep­re­sent at heart, Club mem­bers would not be so pre­oc­cu­pied to rid Forsyth Coun­ty of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald, and would spend more time work­ing for their con­stituents.

Next up, Chap­ter 2