Former Buncombe GOP chairman Johnson making waves in Raleigh

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

1

Here’s a Raleigh News & Observer bit from their Under the Dome political column. It appears that former Buncombe GOP Chairman Timothy Johnson, who is also the vice chairman of the state Republican Party, is making some waves in Raleigh, just as he did here in Asheville.

From Under the Dome:

N.C. Republican Party chairman Tom Fetzer has chastised the party’s vice-chairman over an incident involving a staff member.
The rebuke has prompted the vice-chairman, Timothy F. Johnson, to accuse Fetzer of trying to exclude him from party business at least in part because Johnson is black.
In a letter to Johnson dated Sept. 3, Fetzer described an Aug. 23 incident in which Fetzer says Johnson, grabbed and berated a party staff member at a Greater Greensboro Republican Women’s Club event.
“You approached her, grabbed her by the hand and would not let go of it while you berated her about the performance of the staff at the NCGOP headquarters for several minutes,” Fetzer wrote. “During the entire conversation, she felt ‘cornered’ and unable to escape. She found your attitude to be condescending and the entire encounter to be very embarrassing.”
Fetzer wrote that Johnson only let go after a witness got another party staff member to intervene.
“At best, as reported to me, you exhibited extremely poor manners, and at worst, conduct unbecoming an officer of the North Carolina Republican Party,” Fetzer wrote.
Johnson said Fetzer’s account is inaccurate. Johnson said while he talked, the two held hands in a protracted handshake.
“I surely was not trying to be angry with her,” Johnson told Dome. “I wasn’t trying to control her and not allow her to walk away.”
One of Johnson’s complaints was that he was not receiving e-mail messages from the party, implying that he had been deleted from the mailing list.
Johnson told Dome that he is being excluded from the party. He said he has asked for an office at party headquarters and to be included in events and planning.