2007: Back to the future (2)

My second local highlight for 2007 is by far my favorite story of the year.
Yes, it's our own local "family values" republican turned perverted hypocrite: Mr. Coy Privette.

On July 19th, Former state legislator Coy C. Privette, a Cabarrus County commissioner and Christian activist, was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.

Privette, 74, was led to the Rowan County magistrate's office. He was charged with six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution. Privette on two occasions allegedly paid the prostitute, Tiffany Summers, with checks and then reported those checks as stolen, officials said.

When Privette had to appear in Court I was right there with him.
His attorney entered a guilty plea. Not surprising if you heard all the evidence the Rowan County DA had:

Mr. Privette had rented a room in 2 motels under his own name. Closed circuit camera surveillance in those motels showed Privette and Summers entering the premises. Summers had taken pictures of Privette with her Camera cellphone, which she handed over to police. Summers then also agreed to make some phone calls to Privette which were recorded.

Rowan County district attorney Bill Kenerly agreed to defer prosecution which means if Privette meets the conditions of the court orders, the charges against him will be dismissed. Those conditions include supervised probation for the next year, completing 48 hours of community service, which I'm not sure he's done yet, paying court fees and continuing psychological counseling (I'm sure he needs it).

The charges Privette was convicted of were misdemeanors and according to state law you can't force a County Commissioner to resign after being convicted of a misdemeanor.
Why Privette was never prosecuted for allegedly falsely reporting some of his checks stolen, which is a felony, is a question you have to ask his fellow republican Cabarrus County District Attorney Roxann Vaneekhoven. The answer might be important, because if Privette was convicted of a felony he would automatically lose his seat on the County Commission. The only excuses I've heard so far on why Privette wasn't prosecuted for a felony basically come down to "we have too much work to do" and "we have so little time that we want to concentrate on prosecuting more serious crimes".

It's pretty funny to look back at some of the political views Privette in the past always claimed to have and then look at this prostitution conviction. When he was still an NC State legislator for example, he sponsored legislation to require schools to teach sexual abstinence and the sanctity of marriage.
Can you say HYPOCRITE?

At first Privette blatantly refused to resign as a County Commissioner, stating that:

"I realize the mistake I made in my private life affects my reputation. This mistake has been dealt with, and I am ready to move forward."

I wonder if he was also "ready to move on" when the whole Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke?

But thanks to the ever increasing public pressure, of which I, and about 100 other people, was a small part of, and the continued press attention, Privette finally caved in and announced at the September County Commissioner meeting that he would resign. At the same meeting he also had the balls to say the following:

"All Republicans talk about being conservative," Privette said. "But there's a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk."

Apparently Mr. Privette needs to listen to his own words every now and then.

Why, 4 months after he announced his resignation, Privette is still very comfortably sitting in his County Commissioner seat, is a very good question which I'll try to answer in an upcoming post on this very blog.

Heck, these days you apparently can't even publicly say anymore that what Privette did was wrong. Hopefully that'll change in 2008.