That'll have to be done absent the "blessing" (or curse) of the NCGOP.
Rifts like these will only serve to confirm the GP's perceptions of NCGOP's inability to unite Repubs and bring viable candidates before voters. Uncommitted voters will be dismayed and repelled by such news from NCGOP and will go the path of least resistance, which to them, will appear to be the incumbent. Both Taylor and Peaslee will effectively divide camps and end up affording Easily another term.
I think the camps are pretty well divided already, and I doubt the gubernatorial race will hang on Taylor and Peaslee.
I have no opinion on Peaslee, and I've heard enough bad things about him to be cautious, but what we're looking at here is clearly a hatchet job against Peaslee (and probably Cobey and Blount). What is Taylor's agenda? Why go to the press about something from a year ago? Is it part of the Morganite PR offensive against the Republican Party? Or does it have more to do with the Ballantine-Cobey race?
This was not a rift. It was a tiny, little, squeaky, rotten splinter that was flicked off a solid piece of oak...