Dallas Woodhouse

Woodhouse started his career in broadcast journalism, working as a political reporter and television host.[1] Woodhouse was a reporter and photographer at WKFT from November 1994 to May 1995. He then worked at WNCN-TV from June 1995 to November 2001, where he was a political reporter and host of the current affairs program At Issue. He was also an adjunct instructor at Campbell University from July 1999 to October 2001. He worked with NBC 17 and was a reporter with WLFL from March 2003 to September 2005.

Woodhouse has been involved in North Carolina politics for many years. He served a one-year appointment as communications and congressional director for USDA Rural Development from March 2002 to March 2003. He was a spokesperson and communications director for Virginia Johnson's Congressional bid from May 2004 to November 2004.

Beginning in 2006, Woodhouse worked for Americans for Prosperity as their communications and legislative director. He took a position as state director of the chapter in August 2007. He stepped down as state director in September 2013.

Woodhouse served on the North Carolina Institute of Constitutional Law Advisory Board from January 2008 to May 2011.

Woodhouse worked with Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory to stop an expansion of taxpayer funding of political campaigns in 2010. The two also traveled together on the “Hands off our Health Care Tour” in leading the opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in North Carolina.

From September 2013 to January 2014, Woodhouse was campaign manager for Phil Berger Jr., who was running for U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 6th congressional district.[2]

Woodhouse founded the 501(c)(4) conservative advocacy group Carolina Rising in February 2014. He is the former president of the organization, which has supported North Carolina Republicans and Governor Pat McCrory.[3] Woodhouse is also the owner of Solutions NC, a limited liability company formed weeks before Carolina Rising was founded. During the 2014 midterm elections, Carolina Rising raised nearly $4.9 million and spent $4.7 million on political ads for Thom Tillis's Senate campaign.[4]

In June 2014, Woodhouse was removed from a Moral Mondays event by NAACP security.[5]

Woodhouse and his brother Brad, who is active in Democratic politics, were featured in filmmaker Bryan Miller's 2014 documentary Woodhouse Divided. During a joint appearance with his brother on C-SPAN's Washington Journal promoting the film, Woodhouse's mother Joyce called in to the show to say she hoped the brothers would "have some of this out of your system when you come here for Christmas."[6][7]

In April 2019, Woodhouse announced he was stepping down as the executive director of the North Carolina GOP. At the time of his resignation, the state party faced "a federal criminal indictment of outgoing Chairman Robin Hayes, an insurance magnate and two others on bribery, conspiracy and other charges."

Woodhouse was selected as executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party in September 2015.[8]

During the 2016 elections, the North Carolina Republican Party was mired in multiple controversies surrounding voter suppression. After a federal court ruled in February 2016 that two of North Carolina's congressional districts must be redrawn as they were based too heavily on race, Woodhouse said he believed that "these districts were drawn in accordance with the Constitution and are fair and legal." He also criticized the Moral Mondays protests, saying they were "backed by out-of-state labor unions and special interests."[9] In July 2016, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the photo ID requirement of a restrictive 2013 law, finding that the new voting provisions targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision" and that the legislators had acted with clear "discriminatory intent" in enacting strict election rules, shaping the rules based on data they received about African-American registration and voting patterns.[10][11] On August 11 and August 14 of 2016,[12] Woodhouse sent emails to Republican county election board members encouraging them to "make party line changes to early voting" by keeping polling sites closed on Sundays, closing college campus voting sites, and limiting hours that the sites are open.[13][14][15]

In a November 3, 2016 interview with Hallie Jackson on MSNBC, Woodhouse denied that the Republican Party was suppressing votes, saying "We don't know exactly why those election monitors are coming." During the interview he held up a pair of handcuffs, suggesting that if Hillary Clinton were elected, she could be wearing them as "inauguration jewelry."[16][17] In a later interview with The New Republic, Woodhouse acknowledged that false allegations of voter fraud had occurred during the 2016 elections and said that "whether there's widespread voter fraud or not," that people believed there was. He said that expansive voting laws in North Carolina created "havoc and chaos," suggesting that new legislative limits on ballot access would "restore confidence" in the system.[18]

In December 2018, after reports of voting irregularities in North Carolina's closely-contested 9th Congressional District race (including the destruction or altering of absentee ballots), Woodhouse called for the North Carolina elections board to certify Mark Harris (the Republican candidate) as the winner.[19] Woodhouse claimed that there were not enough ballots called into question to actually overturn the result; PolitiFact described Woodhouse's statement as "misleading" and "mostly false."[20]