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Gary Pearce posted on May 17, 2012 10:28
The breakfast talk turned to John Edwards’ trial – and to a recent PBS special on President Clinton. Someone asked: “Is George Holding going to go down in history as the Kenneth Starr of North Carolina politics?”
Starr will forever be remembered as the obsessed special prosecutor who produced a detailed, explicit examination of Clinton’s tawdry, seamy sex affair with Monica Lewinsky. In the end, the panting, near-pornographic report hurt Starr’s reputation more than Clinton’s.
So the question arises: What happens to Holding’s reputation if John Edwards gets off (pardon the expression) or gets a light penalty?
It was Holding who started the government’s Javert-like pursuit of Edwards. At the trial, it appears, the government spent several weeks and called a lot of witnesses to prove something that everybody knew: Edwards behaved badly.
Less clear is whether he broke the law, which is what our tax dollars are supposedly being spent to determine.
Even a conservative Republican like Paul Coble, who lost the 13th Congressional District nomination to Holding, questioned whether the whole thing was a waste of tax money.
Republican primary voters, presumably, think this was no place where Holding should have honored his vow to cut federal spending.
Holding will doubtless be in Congress next year. Less certain is what reputation he will take with him.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 16, 2012 14:02
Walter Dalton got good news this week: Public Policy Polling showed he had narrowed the gap with Pat McCrory. That’s the natural result of his primary-winning TV ads and the spotlight that comes with victory.
Then Dalton got bad news: A big Republican Governors Association TV buy attacking him.
But Dalton’s gun is out of bullets. He spent his money winning the primary. He can push back online and in the news, but he can’t even bring a knife to the TV gun fight.
This is normally when the Democratic Governors Association rides to the rescue. But there’s a hitch: Generalissimo David Parker and the Democratic Executive Committee. Will the DGA trust Parker with its money – or save it for another gunfight in another state?
Which raises a question: Why would the party chairman and executive committee sabotage the party’s gubernatorial nominee at a critical time?
For your answer, look no farther than Greensboro and the John Edwards trial: Never underestimate a politician’s greed for power and money.
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Carter Wrenn posted on May 16, 2012 10:44
Awhile back, like incubi of old, mischievous Anony-mices descended on the News and Observer’s website and set up camp; giving themselves colorful names (the way wrestlers on TV do) like Tarheel Crusher, Yosephus and Agent Pierce (who describes himself as Agent Pierce, News Personality, Legendary Cyber Commando) they set about tormenting any hapless victim who happened by.
Before the Primary when the News and Observer reported George Holding had a poll showing him leading Paul Coble by a dozen points a coven of Pachyderm Anony-mices congregated on Under the Dome, piping George and I were liars and worse and they were still carrying on four days later. Then a cohort of Liberal Anony-mices wandered by and in seconds George and I were forgotten and the two tribes were tearing one another to shreds.
Awhile back the Anony-mices got to be such a nuisance News and Observer Editor John Drescher, perhaps in the hope that ending anonymous blog posting would lead to more civility, wrote a column offering to buy ‘Agent Pierce, News Personality’ lunch if he’d post his devilment under his own name but the legendary Cyber Commando declined.
But there is an ablution. Imagine this: Tomorrow morning when the Anony-mices open the newspaper there on the front page is a list of their monikers and, as if by magic, beside their pseudonyms are their real names.
Are you listening Yosephus, Tarheel Crusher and Agent Pierce? It could happen… tomorrow.
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Posted in: Raleigh , Issues
Gary Pearce posted on May 15, 2012 17:35
If President Obama doesn’t carry North Carolina in November, he can look back to two days on a weekend in May.
On Saturday came the David Parker disaster. Remember: the worst wounds in politics are self-inflicted.
Sunday, at the 3,000-member Upper Room Church of God in Christ, a black Pentecostal church in Raleigh, the Rev. Patrick Wooden (last seen on Page A1 of the N&O celebrating the passing of the gay-marriage amendment) told the Mother’s Day congregation that President Obama went “against God” when he endorsed same-sex marriage.
Obama carried North Carolina in 2008 by about 14,000 votes. That’s going to be hard this year in the face of Parker and Wooden.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 15, 2012 07:16
All kidding aside, here’s why Democrats fear the David Parker fiasco could sink the party this year:
Parker promised the party’s gubernatorial nominee he would step down. Then he didn’t.
So people in Washington who decide how much national campaign money flows through the Democratic Party to North Carolina ask a simple question: Can we trust David Parker?
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Carter Wrenn posted on May 14, 2012 17:32
Back in 2010 instead of giving a million dollars to candidates the Democratic Party decided to give the money to local party officials to spend; it didn’t work out too well as the Democrats lost control of both the State House and Senate but it was popular with local officials who then elected bow-tied David Parker (who supported the plan) State Chairman.
Parker promptly landed in hot water by hiring Jay Parmley who promptly got accused of sexually harassing a young man which Parker promptly covered up with a financial settlement paying the young man to go away.
Next just about every major Democratic elected official said Parker had to go and, after a bit of foot shuffling, Parker agreed to go then added, Just give me a little time. The Democratic elected officials said Yes then got flummoxed. Parker went to the Democratic Executive Committee, resigned, then threw everyone a curveball – his advocates on the Committee rejected his resignation.
So how did a bow-tied gadfly outfox the Governor, the Lt. Governor and a bevy of Democratic Congressmen? The old-fashioned way. By promising the Executive Committee members he’d give them another million dollars to spend this election – instead of giving the money to candidates.
So here’s what’s happened in North Carolina politics over the last month: John Edwards’ trial, a sexual harassment scandal, two married lobbyists carrying on with two members of House Speaker Thom Tillis’ staff, a gadfly buying himself re-election with a million dollars of other people’s money, and the Governor of North Carolina enraging the whole state of Mississippi by announcing North Carolina had sunk to the level of Mississippi by banning gay marriage.
If we take the admonition to ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ what on earth do we do now?
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Gary Pearce posted on May 14, 2012 16:08
A frustrated TAPster vents at both parties:
“The ‘check engine’ light is flashing on the dashboard of North Carolina politics, and a quick look under the hood shows the problem is more than a bad tank of gas.
“We are emerging (hopefully) from a generation of incompetent political leaders. Governor Perdue’s mindless comparison to Mississippi, Speaker Tillis’s inept management of his sex-craved staff, the NC Democratic Party’s self-immolation over the weekend and the succession of convicted and accused criminals have created a political world where there simply is no leadership. It’s all about political convenience and ease, not what’s good for the state. There’s some hope with Pat McCrory, Walter Dalton and others, but it will require political bravery and fundamental competence that is missing from today’s battlefield.
“That bravery is needed because we have three major political parties: crazy right, crazy left and the well-populated but largely ignored moderate middle. And, the loud message from voters who ousted Indiana’s Richard Lugar and Granville County’s Jim Crawford is that any conversation with the other party, any attempt to collaborate or any movement towards moderation means political death for the miscreant.
“Nothing happens when weak leaders are pulled to the fringes by an intolerant and hostile voting public, and plenty needs to happen.”
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Gary Pearce posted on May 14, 2012 11:31
After I posted my blog on the Democratic Executive Committee’s meeting being a plot hatched by Art (“I Am Not An Heir”) Pope, a TAPster emailed me: “You're being facetious, right?” Surprised, I replied: “Of course.”
She wrote back: “I figured, but you'd be amazed how many of my rabidly Dem friends are posting it as literal proof of their longstanding suspicions about Pope. Oy.”
Oy, indeed.
Art got the joke, though. He emailed me: “They ain't seen anything yet. Wait until my next plot comes to fruition. It is already too late to stop it!”
Well, I think he was joking.
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Carter Wrenn posted on May 14, 2012 11:15
Like almost everything else in modern times politics has changed – in odd ways. In the old days when Jesse would run for Senate the Republican parties scattered across counties across the state had one mission: They figured their job was to elect Republican candidates. A lot of times what they could do was limited because they didn’t have much money but what money they had they spent on candidates.
A decade into the third millennium those days have passed. Instead of giving money to candidates the local parties take money from candidates. A local party has a convention and a candidate has to pony up a donation to the party to get his name in the program; a local party hosts a banquet and a candidate has to make a contribution to set up a table or open a booth to pass out brochures or bumper stickers. According to the newspaper Sunday a week ago, one local party Chairman is actually taking legal action against a candidate who wrote the local party a bad check.
That’s modern times – but it sure seems like the old timers had a better way of doing things.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 13, 2012 10:54
There is only one logical explanation for what happened at the Democratic Party Executive Committee meeting: It was a vast right-wing conspiracy masterminded by the Dr. Evil of North Carolina politics, Art (“I Am Not An Heir”) Pope.
Here’s how the nefarious scheme worked:
Years ago, Pope saw that David Parker had run so many times he was bound to be elected party chair one day. Pope realized that Parker’s overweening ego and arrogance would make him a useful idiot.
Then Pope saw the usefulness of the Howard Dean-inspired netroots activists who flooded the party. He especially liked their contempt for any Democratic politician craven enough to get elected statewide – and for what Parker pilloried as “centrist consultants,” i.e., political professionals who try to get candidates elected in a state conservative enough to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions by a 61-39 margin.
Once Pope had moved the pieces into place on the chessboard, he needed a triggering event. So he arranged the sexual harassment scandal involving Jay Parmley. Parmley saw the right-wingers’ hands behind it all, but everybody scoffed.
Then all Pope had to do was spring the trap. And his timing was perfect: four days after the primary and gay-marriage referendum and four months before the national Democratic convention.
His plot was almost foiled when 206 executive committee members refused to go along. But Pope’s dupes carried the day.
Now, as Democrats survey the ashes of their party, they can only say with dismay and grudging admiration: “Well played, Mr. Pope, well played.”
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