Charlie Harville, formerly of WFMY News 2 Sports and WGHP Channel 8 Sports, is no longer with us, but his spirit lives on with our Charlie Harville’s Saturday Night Racing Roundups….
Tonight/Saturday Night/last night, the racing fans showed up in large numbers again, at the Ace Speedway in Alamance County….
Saturday night’s/last night’s theme was not “The Races at Ace Speedway”, it was the fans are going to Ace Speedway to PROTEST Governor Roy Cooper’s order that has been telling them to stay home…
The fans came out to Ace Speedway as part of a “Peaceful Protest” and Ace Speedway was able to use ‘The Protest Movement” as their way of saying that is why the fans came into the speedway on Saturday night….
Some out-of-the-box thinking by the race promoters at Ace Speedway….”Our fans are not coming to watch the auto races, they are coming to protest Governor Roy Cooper and his restrictions, on our restrictor plates”….
Governor Cooper’s office on Friday relayed a four-page letter expressing concern that the track failed to follow his guidelines, signed May 20 as part of North Carolina’s reopening process to halt the spread of COVID-19.
Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson said that Saturday night’s event at Ace Speedway was a “Unity Event”, like a group of race fans gathering together, for a peaceful protest of Governor Roy Cooper….
“What’s the difference between them having a unity night to try and bring our community together after the shooting of Mr. George Floyd to work together to have some of these issues dealt with?” Johnson said. “That’s no different than the governor marching with 2,000 people in downtown Raleigh. And it’s hard for me to sit there and say, ‘Sir, I know but I don’t have nothing to do with that,’ when the governor is issuing the order to write a citation.
“It puts me, as the sheriff, in the middle. And I’ve told my staff and the county officials, ‘I feel like a hockey puck being knocked all over the floor.'”
**********Johnson said Saturday’s races fall under the First Amendment.**********
“They were going to have signs,” Johnson said. “From my understanding, they were going to have the pace car would go around and asking for unity of our nation for what is going on. You know, the fires, the tax on law enforcement, burning of buildings and stuff.
“And, by doing that, to me, that gives them the First Amendment right to protest peacefully.”
This sign is outside of Ace Speedway tonight.
Governor Roy Cooper urged Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson to enforce his executive order in phase 2, which said no more than 25 people can gather.
Ace Speedway said tonight’s race is a peaceful protest. @WFMY pic.twitter.com/YPOM3MQN0m
— Amanda Ferguson (@_amandaferguson) June 6, 2020
(The speedway attendance limit was set at 25 fans/people, but the actual number of people entering Ace Speedway on Saturday Night, far exceeded that number, set at 25 total fans.)
Ace Speedway holds ‘protest’ race with more than 800 tickets sold despite governor’s rebuke https://t.co/oD8oKHzz9o pic.twitter.com/BASN0uBgab
— FOX8 WGHP (@myfox8) June 8, 2020
Gov. Roy Cooper and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services have ordered Ace Speedway to shut down. Cooper has ordered the speedway, which is near Elon, closed because the track has gone against his executive orders barring mass gatherings.
Cooper declared the venue an “imminent hazard,” and the DHHS issued an order declaring the track an “acute threat to North Carolinians, which must not continue.”