Recap of Serial’s ‘The Improvement Association’ Chapter 4: ‘Pull the Red Wagon’
This is a recap of the fourth episode of the five-episode podcast series “The Improvement Association,” from Serial Productions. In the series, reporter Zoe Chace uses a case in Bladen County, North Carolina, to examine the power of election fraud allegations. This is not a transcript and is not meant to be a substitute for listening to the podcast episodes.
▪ In the first episode of “The Improvement Association” podcast reporter Zoe Chace gave listeners background on the Bladen County absentee voter fraud scandal of 2018, particularly in regard to the relationship between the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, a Black Democratic voter advocacy group, and McCrae Dowless, who is facing criminal charges for his actions while working for NC Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris.
▪ In Episode 2, Chace explored allegations from critics of the Improvement Association PAC who believe, essentially, that whatever Dowless did, the PAC was doing it first. She interviewed Bladen citizens and looked into their allegations, finding no proof of wrongdoing.
▪ The third episode, released April 20, focused on an allegation that the PAC was involved in its own absentee ballot scandal — an incident involving absentee ballots at a nursing home — long before the Dowless incident of 2018. Chace found no evidence of wrongdoing in that incident. She did learn about another incident of voter fraud in Bladen, but it wasn’t by the PAC.
Chapter Four: ‘Let Them Pull the Red Wagon’
In the fourth episode, Chace looks at some of the fallout from the Bladen Improvement Association PAC having its name tossed around during the McCrae Dowless investigation and during the special election that followed.
In a televised debate, the Democratic candidate in that special election, Dan McCready, failed to defend the PAC when his Republican opponent, Dan Bishop, implicated the group in election wrongdoing.
Further, McCready tried to publicly distance himself from the PAC by not asking for their help to “get out the vote” in Bladen County. McCready wouldn’t even have his picture taken with Michael Cogdell, a Bladen County commissioner who is a member of the PAC.
Chace says that McCready seemed to be avoiding the PAC “like it was toxic.” McCready, a Democrat the PAC supported in the first election, was now helping to stoke allegations against them by deliberating distancing himself from the group, says Chace.
The night after the debate, Chace attends the monthly meeting of the Bladen Improvement PAC, at which Cogdell and Horace Munn, the head of the Improvement PAC, make their case for not working for McCready.
McCready didn’t want to be associated with the PAC, but now they come crawling back, asking for help? Nope, Munn says. “Let them pull the red wagon.” (Which is another way to say, they made their bed, they can lie in it.)
Cogdell talks about how Democrats have started calling, offering gas and food money for PAC workers to get out and rally voters. It’s a week before the election, Cogdell tells him, and it’s too late to “crank the machine.”
The McCready campaign had hired “outsiders” to work in Bladen, so good luck with that, is essentially Cogdell’s rallying message to the PAC members.
But one person in the room pushes back.
Minnie Price steps up, speaks out
Minnie Price, a 77-year-old member of the Bladen PAC — the PAC’s treasurer, in fact — speaks up and says that she is volunteering for McCready and making calls to ask people to vote for him.
Munn and Cogdell disagree with that, saying they don’t want any PAC members helping McCready. But they keep interrupting Price while she’s trying to speak, and she doesn’t stand for it. She calmly repeats that she’s being interrupted until the men stop talking and let her finish what she’s trying to say.
And what she is trying to say is this: McCready is the Democrat and she wants the Democrat to win, so she’s helping him. And, she says, if McCready doesn’t want to be associated with the Bladen PAC, well, she can’t really blame him.
Price says that even though the PAC has done nothing wrong, it has become too visible — “our name is out there, it’s in Raleigh” — and she doesn’t blame a candidate for not wanting to be attached to a group accused of doing something wrong while trying to win a campaign.
Chace says that Price tells the group that they are damaged goods now because of being dragged into the fraud investigation in Raleigh, and that they should put their egos aside and help McCready as Democrats.
Munn sounds angry, and defends his position to not help McCready, shouting budget information at Price, saying they can’t cover the cost of getting out to rally voters. Price reminds them that she is the treasurer and is well aware of whatever money they have or don’t have.
There’s a little chaos as members of the PAC argue over whether the PAC should automatically just vote for all Democrats.
Then the meeting is abruptly adjourned, and Chace realizes that the threat to the PAC is now due to dissension from within.
Chace talks to Price after the meeting. Price is still angry, and believes Munn and Cogdell are letting their egos get in the way of doing the right thing, which Price believes is supporting the Democratic candidate.
And not only is Price supporting McCready against the wishes of Munn and Cogdell, she’s also just kinda had it with Munn and Cogdell.
Chace says Munn and Cogdell should worry about what Price thinks.
Price “with her big leather briefcase and her ever-present notebook, is a political force in Bladen County, all on her own, separate from the PAC.” She’s the secretary of the local NAACP chapter who goes to every town meeting, every county meeting, every school board meeting, and runs a nonprofit and helped found the only public military charter school in the state.
Price says a small group — Munn, Cogdell, Prentis Benston and Arthur Bullock — run the PAC like it’s theirs, and have become too controlling. They’re like dictators, Price says, and they treat the members like foot soldiers. They decide what they think the PAC should do and then steamroll the members, she says.
Munn’s father originally ran the group, she said, and he didn’t do things that way.
What’s more, Price doesn’t think it’ll be a huge loss to the county if the PAC goes away, because a lot of people don’t understand it anyway, she says.
But if the PAC falls apart, Chace tells her, the white people who oppose them will be happy. Price says maybe that would teach the PAC leadership a lesson.
McCready loses, PAC wins
On election day, McCready loses, and it’s not even close.
Munn tells Chace he feels “vindicated” by the loss, because McCready distanced himself from the Black voters to try to get more white votes, assuming Black voters will just “go along” because they’re Democrats.
Munn said it was a hard lesson for McCready to learn: not to take the Black voting bloc in Bladen for granted.
Chace says McCready confirmed to her that he distanced himself from the PAC because of the (unfounded) allegations swirling around it, but McCready didn’t think that cost him the election. His loss margin was too high for the PAC to have made up that difference.
But still, Munn says, the loss may remind candidates not to take the Black vote for granted in the future.
Election in E-Town
Munn believes he knows better than Price about how elections work in Bladen County, and he and Cogdell decide to test their ideas a few weeks later in a small election that will determine the makeup of the town council in Elizabethtown, the Bladen County seat.
Three seats are open and they are backing three Black female candidates. To understand why the PAC would become invested in this small election, Cogdell takes Chace on a tour of Elizabethtown, with a population of around 3,800, and gives her a bit of background.
Chace mentions notable Elizabethtown landmarks: “a gas station, a Hardee’s, maybe a peanut plant, a Dollar Store, and then you’re out of town,” Chace tells us. Later Chace notes a KFC, Bojangles, Taco Bell, McDonald’s and “Giorgio’s, the only real restaurant to speak of, where you can actually get a drink.”
Cogdell’s tour of Elizabethtown is all about who owns what, and he tells her that four white families own the major commercial blocks there: the Greenes, the Crosses, the Clarks and the Campbells.
Cogdell says the four families have owned the land for years, and by owning much of the commercial land there, they have a lot of control over the economy.
Meanwhile, in the Black part of town, Cogdell says almost none of the area is zoned commercial, so it’s much harder for Black people to open businesses. “Take a look at these messed up roads, that’s how you know Black people live here,” Chace says Cogdell told her on the tour.
Cogdell wants more Black people to vote in Elizabethtown and then change the zoning rules so that Black people can open businesses in the Black part of town. Cogdell tells Chace that Elizabethtown demographics show a slight majority to Black citizens, but in the seven-member town government, five leaders are white and two are Black.
Cogdell and Munn — on their own, without the PAC officially involved — want more representation on the Elizabethtown town council. There are three Black women running in the new election against the three white incumbents, and Cogdell and Munn are working to get them elected.
Long story short: the Black candidates lose. By a lot.
On Election Night, Chace talks to a Democratic poll watcher, who tells her if she wants to know why this happened, she should talk to “Miss Minnie” (Minnie Price). So Chace goes to Price, who is there, taking notes on the results.
Chace asks her if she has a theory about what happened that night, and Price chuckles. “I’m just glad it happened this way,” she says.
Price says the people who were running were running for the wrong reasons.
Price doesn’t elaborate on the record that night, but in a later interview, Chace says Price tells her she believes Cogdell’s dream of a thriving Black business district in Elizabethtown is a pipe dream. Price thinks they should focus on giving Black children the skills they need to lead one day.
Price also just doesn’t think the three Black candidates were qualified to run. They didn’t go to town meetings, had no clear agenda, didn’t campaign much, Price says. Price thought the women were just being used by Cogdell and Munn, as “Black faces they could use and control.”
Chace talked to the women during her time reporting there, and said they were very nice, and they all wanted change, but “they seemed really green.”
When Chace talked to Cogdell and Munn right after the election, she says they were taken aback by the loss.
Later, in a phone interview with Munn, he tells Chace he thought the loss was a backlash over the McCready loss, and also blames the loss on class divisions among Black people — some of the “elite” Black people (“elite” is Munn’s word) are fine working with the white establishment in town.
In a flash of irony, Munn also suggested that some voters had to have been “bought” by some of the white candidates, getting free stuff. He can’t prove it, he said.
Chace poses a theory to Munn: Maybe the Black voters aren’t all “the same,” maybe they just see things differently. Munn doesn’t agree. “It’s something else,” he says. “Think about it. Open your mind up and look at the whole picture.”
Chace says Munn believes he sees what’s happening in Bladen County (“like Neo in ‘The Matrix’,” Chace says).
But there’s someone there who doesn’t see things the way Munn sees it, Chace says, and that person is just as determined, just as influential and has just as many connections. And that person believes it’s time for new leadership in Bladen County.
That person is Minnie Price.
Next time on “The Improvement Association.”
How to listen to ‘The Improvement Association’
There are five episodes of “The Improvement Association.”
You can listen from “The Improvement Association” landing page on The New York Times website, or download through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you normally listen to podcasts.
