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Gary Pearce posted on March 10, 2010 09:08
The worst injuries in politics are often self-inflicted. Two examples are in the news today.
Then there’s old political veteran Jack Hawke distancing himself from 8th District GOP candidate Tim D'Annunzio over the candidate’s blog, “Christ’s War."
Politicians just can’t help themselves. They fall in love with the sound of their voices.
Barber won’t be hurt so much, but Margiotta and D’Annunzio did real damage to themselves.
If D’Annunzio is too far out for fellow Republicans, he’s destined for a brief run as a political sideshow.
As for Margiotta, he’s about to blow the political advantage the election gave him and his allies.
He was already accused of racism, and he bears an unfortunate resemblance to Archie Bunker.
Now he has broken the first rule of You Tube politics: Everything you say in public is public.
He gave his opponents a sword. If they’re smart, they can thwart him the way Republicans in Washington have blocked President Obama.
Margiotta & Co. already have half the county mad at them. How long will it take to make the other half mad?
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 09, 2010 18:07
As far as political shenanigans go this isn’t in the league with John Edwards’ goings on but it’s pretty strange. Down in Onslow County, after twenty-four years in the State House my old friend Robert Grady decided not to seek re-election and to run for Clerk of Court instead.
Now what you have to understand – to see the brilliance of what the Democrats are doing to win Robert’s House seat – is this: There are safe Republican seats and safe Republican seats – but Robert’s is about as safe as they come. He hasn’t had an opponent in years. This year no Democrat even bothered to file.
But a group of Onslow County Democrats came up with a unique solution to how to win a Republican seat: They’re running a candidate of their own in the Republican Primary.
And they found a Republican willing to oblige them in Phil ‘The Voice of Onslow County’ Shepard.
Phil Shepard’s political activism goes back about a decade to when he served a stint on the Onslow County Republican Committee – then was removed from the committee for helping elect a Democratic State Representative, Russell Tucker, over a Republican candidate.
Now he’s back in politics, running himself, with the support of some of the biggest Easley/Perdue supporters in the state.
How big? Louis Sewell contributed $76,000 to Governor Perdue and other Democrats, raised $125,000 for Mike Easley, got himself appointed to the State Transportation Board, then had to resign after he paved $375,000 worth of roads past his own property.
Billy Sewell – who’s also supporting Shepard – has given $39,000 to Democrats and was subpoenaed to testify at the State Board of Elections hearings into Governor Easley’s campaign finances.
John Pierce gave Democrats $90,000, and John Warlick, Garland Tuton, Mike Tuton, Steve Wangerin, Randolph Thomas (Shepard’s Treasurer) and Tony Padgett (who has run five times for County Commissioner as a Democrat) who are all Perdue/Easley supporters – are all supporting Reverend Shepard.
By a quick count this group of Perdue/Easley supporters have given $250,000 to Democrats – and now they’re supporting Phil Shepard in a Republican Primary.
We’ve had a Governor getting his wife a job at NC State University, a Democrat Speaker of the House stacking the Lottery Commission, environmental permits swapped for campaign donations, sweetheart land deals with developers and free airplane flights and vacations for politicians but never, until now, have we seen Democrat moneybags bankrolling a candidate in a Republican Primary to win a safe Republican seat.
Phil ‘The Voice of Onslow County’ Shepard is a first – if he pulls this one off he’ll go down in history.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 09, 2010 10:21
Those four words – scrawled by James Carville in the Clinton 92 war room – may be the smartest ever uttered in politics.
And they say more than the river of words unleashed lately about What’s Wrong With Obama.
Washington is awash in the debate. Is it Rahm’s fault? Or Axelrod’s? Why has Obama lost control of the “narrative”?
Obama’s problem is simple: The economy sucks.
And he appears to be investing everything in health-care reform – not fixing the economy.
If the economy gets better, he will look better – regardless of what Rahm, Axelrod and the “narrative” do.
Reagan beat Carter in 1980 because of the economy. Clinton beat Bush in 1992 because of the economy. Obama beat McCain because of the economy.
I don’t know how much a President can affect the economy. But the economy sure affects the President. And a President has to convince people he’s fixated on fixing the economy.
That’s where Obama is failing.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 08, 2010 08:51
The Tea Party crowd is in a frenzy over rising deficits and the national debt.
In Asheville Friday, Republican candidates fell all over themselves at a Tea Party meeting that featured a clock tracking the debt.
Do these people have any memory cells whatsoever?
Obviously not, so let me remind them that, just 10 years ago, the budget deficit was heading toward zero. The debate in Washington was whether to spend the coming surplus on Social Security, tax cuts or paying down the debt.
That’s right: paying down the debt.
That was during the administration of a Democratic President named Bill Clinton. Before George Bush and a Republican Congress wrecked the budget.
And the Tea Party wants to return that crowd to power?
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Gary Pearce posted on March 05, 2010 08:30
Jerry Brown is one of those idiot-savant politicians who can be both a genius and a self-destructive fool.
Years ago, he was California’s youngest governor ever, and he succeeded an actor (Ronald Reagan). Now he’s trying to be the state’s oldest governor ever, and he would succeed another actor.
Brown’s own roles have included Governor Moonbeam, Linda Ronstadt’s boyfriend, Zen Buddhist, Mother Theresa acolyte, presidential candidate, talk show host, state party chairman, mayor of Oakland and attorney general of California.
He may self-destruct, or he may be the one Democrat agile enough to navigate this treacherous year.
He says he has “insider experience and an outsider mindset.”
Brown got the “Moonbeam” moniker back when he suggested that California launch a weather satellite. Now the sky is full of weather satellites.
It’ll be fun watching the Moonbeam shine again.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 04, 2010 10:23
A supporter of the new Wake school board held up a sign at this week’s hearing: “Elections matter.”
At the health-care summit President Obama told John McCain: “The election is over.”
They’re right. And Obama should ram through health-care reform just like the new school board majority is ramming through its new policies.
Obama needs to get something – anything – passed. Then move on to jobs and the economy.
And he’s better off being strong and wrong than weak and right.
Few people will understand what’s in his bill – or whether it makes things better or worse.
The Republicans will have a devil of a time overturning it, no matter how November turns out.
Similarly, in WakeCounty, there’s talk of a recall election of the new majority.
Two problems: How do you do a recall in North Carolina? And what makes you think it would turn out any different?
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Gary Pearce posted on March 03, 2010 10:29
WakeCounty is North Carolina’s most Democratic county. President Obama carried the state in 2008 because he racked up a 60,000-vote margin in this county alone.
But two big and bitter battles yesterday showed what a split county this is – and that there are no final victories in politics.
The votes – the City Council on Raleigh’s public safety center and the Wake school board on the diversity policy – were direct slaps at some formerly high-riding politicians: Mayor Charles Meeker and the staff and ex-majority on the school board.
Just last week, Meeker’s record of rebuilding downtown was toasted at a big dinner.
This week, he got only four votes for another downtown project. The left and the right joined hands to beat him.
As for the schools, the staff and the old board majority (including the mayor’s wife) had earned a reputation for turning a deaf ear to parents’ concerns.
You may not like what the new majority is doing, but they’re listening to the people who elected them.
Sometimes in politics, victory sows the seeds of defeat. That’s because, too often in politics, winners get so full of themselves they forget to listen.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 02, 2010 16:17
Sometimes you come across a rascal who’s got so much brazenness and old-fashioned nerve you just can’t help but admire his audacity – throw him in a briar patch and he’ll land on his feet and end up owning the place.
That’s why it’s hard not to keep an eye peeled to see what Lanier Cansler is up to next –like Fagan or ‘The Artful Dodger’ when it comes to chicanery Lanier’s in a league of his own.
Last summer, right after he got himself appointed to the Governor’s Cabinet, he ambled over to the General Assembly and told legislators he was shocked to discover thousands of seventy and eighty year old patients in the Medicaid Home care program were cheating like blazes.
45% of the patients, he told legislators with a straight face, were cheating and shouldn’t be receiving one dram of care.
And of course as soon as legislators got a glimpse at the picture Lanier painted of massive welfare fraud they cut every dram of care those patients were getting and told him to get the cheats off the rolls. Lanier nodded and said he was up to the job but that to do it he might have to hand out a few no bid contracts – and legislators gave him the green-light to go ahead.
Which Lanier promptly did, passing out $250 million in contracts – a lot of them to his friends and former clients.
The first sign Lanier had made a slip popped up when the “Independent Assessments” (to identify the Medicaid patients who were cheating) came back. It took a court case and a deposition to pull the report out of Lanier’s mitts – and the reason was simple: The report showed 3% (not 45%) of the patients were ‘cheats.’ (Another 5% of the elderly people had failed to fill out their paperwork properly – so Lanier promptly branded them cheats too).
Miscalculating the number of cheats tenfold would have daunted a lot of folks but not Lanier. He had 36,000 sick patients on his hands in need of care and no money to care for them but he came up with a solution that was a masterwork of simplicity: He simply changed the definition of sick. With the stroke of a pen he redefined an 80 year old patient who was very sick into a patient who was barely sick and who – Lanier said – was cheating to get a lot of care he didn’t need.
Next he cut 87% of the patients’ care 45%.
That’s when a State Judge stepped in and stopped him dead in his tracks with an Injunction – a temporary problem Cansler will surely overcome in some ingenious manner none of us have imagined.
And what does our self-proclaimed “Jobs, Jobs, Job’s” Governor have to say about all this? She’s got a Cabinet Secretary who’s hoo-doo’ed legislators and gotten sued twice and enjoined twice – all of which is bound to come home to roost on her doorstep. So is she having, maybe, doubts? Or second thoughts? Nope. Lanier’s got her sold. Those two judges who enjoined him may have given him a spot of trouble but he’s got the Governor convinced he’s dead right when he says 97% (his latest figures) of the Medicaid patients are cheats – the Governor hasn’t even chirruped once in disapproval.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 02, 2010 15:10
The candidate filings show where the energy is this year. And it’s not encouraging for Democrats.
Republicans fielded candidates in all 50 state Senate races and nearly all the state House races. There are 40-plus Republicans running in congressional primaries.
We may be seeing the three ingredients required to make a landslide:
That perfect storm gathered for Republicans in 1994. It happened for Democrats in 2006 and 2008. It may drown Democrats this year.
Some Democrats claim the Republican primaries will turn into a divisive civil war.
And, true, the Tea Partiers could wreck the Republican china cabinet.
But primaries can also tell you who is excited – and who will vote in November.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 01, 2010 11:15
While Secretary Lanier Cansler’s former firm has been lobbying his department, it’s also been making payments to Cansler, personally.
Another Democratic scandal?
Back when Governor Perdue appointed Lanier Cansler to lead North Carolina’s biggest state agency, he announced had severed all ties with his former lobbying firm – they had parted company and gone their separate ways.
But there was one small caveat.
Instead of selling his part of the firm outright, for cash, the firm gave Cansler a note. And, now, it seems while Cansler’s old firm is lobbying Cansler’s department they’re also paying his note – which makes a $30 million no bid contract Cansler gave CCME Corporation a big problem.
Last August, CCME hired Cansler’s former firm to lobby for them. Two months later, Cansler awarded a $30 million no bid contract to CCME. The money (or part of it) travels in a circle: From Cansler’s Department to CCME to Cansler’s former firm then back to Cansler.
How much did CCME pay Cansler’s firm? We don’t know. How much CCME paid for lobbying will be part of the public record. But how much it paid for consulting or public relations may never be known.
Plus, there’s one other oddity about CCME’s contract: A nonprofit organization made an offer to Cansler’s department to have doctors examine Medicaid patients for $75 each. Cansler turned that down. Then agreed to pay CCME Corporation to examine the same patients with nurses for $225 – three times as much.
How does Cansler justify giving a no bid contract to a corporation that’s paying his old firm which in turn is paying him? He says he recused himself from the decision to grant the contract – that his aides picked CCME.
Follow his logic: Cansler had his handpicked aides, who he hired, and whose salary he pays, to decide if CCME got the contract. That’s not a recusal – that’s like letting John Dillinger pick the fellow with the key to Fort Knox. A recusal would have been Cansler stepping aside so someone he has no control or influence over made the decision to grant that $30 million contract.
A deputy Cansler hired and can fire tomorrow doesn’t fill the bill. Nor do any of Cansler’s cronies in the Perdue Administration who, after all, may be lobbying him to hire their cousins or nephews or brother-in-laws.
The question, now, is how does Governor Perdue handle all this?
The current scandals rocking the state are phenomena born and bred of Democratic politics; that is not a tribute to Republican virtue – it is a tribute to Republicans complete lack of power in state government. The Republicans can’t muster enough influence in Raleigh to be tempted by corruption, while the Democrats have so much power when it comes to corruption the only thing standing in the way is, Will the News and Observer find out?
If the Governor thinks what Cansler has done is wrong, sacking him would be a way for Democrats to send North Carolinians a message they’re finally getting serious about cleaning up state government.
On the other hand, not sacking Cansler is the same as the Governor saying she believes what he’s done is fine, which sends a message to anyone in her administration who has an itch to follow in Cansler’s footsteps, Go ahead.
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