Gary Bartlett has a good reputation as the director of the North Carolina Board of Elections. He's accessible, reasonably candid, knows his job and has done some good things, including overseeing a useful website. There's no reason to think Bartlett generally is any less competent when it comes to hiring people for his organization, which is supervised by a five-member board appointed by the governor. That board is bipartisan.
Bartlett has been in the news lately because of his friendship with a vendor who prints ballots and represents a company that maintains voting equipment. He was rather defensive about it when quoted in a News & Observer article, which was followed by other reports of elections officials being feted by that same vendor. These were lapses, cases of poor judgment.
Now, however, The N&O's Michael Biesecker reports that it just so happens that four of Bartlett's friends from Goldsboro found jobs with his agency. Three are still there. One, Ralph Gable, was fired July 29 after female employees of the agency complained that he had, among other things, called them pet names, which Gable acknowledged. Yes, he said, he did call women in the office "Hon," "Sweetie," "Babe" and in one case, "Fat Ass." His explanation for that last one: "She suffers from a glandular condition."
Clearly someone needs to explain to Gable that we arrived in the 21st century some time back. The mildest thing one can say about his behavior is that he lacks manners. (And that's very mild.) He is, by the way, trying to get his job back and says his critics are "sad, little bullies."
To his credit, Bartlett's agency did fire Gable, but it took a while. In affidavits, some of the women said they feared complaining about Gable because he was one of the "Goldsboro mafia," a nickname for Bartlett's group of friends. And Gable, when questioned by a manager as to why he had missed work on a Friday, responded in a 2008 e-mail that the question should be directed to Bartlett. No doubt the manager got the message in that.
Bartlett says his still-employed friends are all qualified for their jobs, all of which pay more than $50,000 and range from an elections technician (he'd managed a real estate office) to a worker in the campaign finance division (he'd helped run a family hardware store) to a district elections technician (she works out of her house in Goldsboro and is a friend of Bartlett's wife).
Bartlett says he disclosed to managers doing the hiring when applicants were friends of his, but that what he said wasn't intended to influence their decisions.
If this isn't old-fashioned patronage, it sure looks like it. Bartlett, a one-time chairman of the Wayne County Democratic Party, should have been more aware of the appearance of having several of his hometown friends working for an agency he runs. He should know, better than anyone that the old custom of "networking" with friends to land nice state jobs has changed, and changed dramatically in North Carolina in view of some embarrassments in the last few years. (Former regimes at the Division of Motor Vehicles were sometimes the best, or maybe that's worst, examples of patronage run amok.)
Bartlett's agency is getting some scrutiny it deserves. And the public deserves some explanations.
