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Raleigh
Gary Pearce posted on May 20, 2013 09:51
One word can say a lot. So it was with last week’s heated meeting between the Wake County commissioners and school board.
That “victory” was Senate passage of a bill taking control of building schools away from the Democratic-majority school board and giving it to the Republican-led commissioners.
First, Bryan was giving himself a lot of credit: “the victory we had.” Given the partisan lineup of the Senate, it wasn’t much of a contest.
Second, the comment betrays an underlying theme in this legislature. It’s not about good public policy. It’s not about good ideas. It’s not even about ideological consistency.
It’s about payback. Political revenge. It’s about: “We’re going to undo everything Democrats did, just because we can.”
Wake County voters will have a chance to ponder whether Republicans are putting their party’s interest above the public interest. What does Bryan’s quote tell them?
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Gary Pearce posted on April 28, 2013 15:00
If you need comfort or inspiration, take an hour to watch the moving memorial service for Jamie Kirk Hahn. If you’re pressed for time, watch Nation Hahn’s remarkable eulogy (at 34:00) and Anthony Quillar’s powerful rendition of the Lord’s Prayer (1:04).
Looking at the oversized portrait in the sanctuary, you’re overwhelmed by the impact that beautiful, lively, smiling girl had on people. (Yes, I said “girl.” When you’re a parent, you can’t help but see a little girl.)
I commend the video to you regardless of your politics. Republicans, you may grit your teeth once or twice; just substitute your own beliefs. For all of us who care about politics and public service, it’s a testament to the difference one person can make – and why we’re in it.
Democrats, take heart from it. That church was filled with many, many young people just as dedicated and just as idealistic as Jamie. There are thousands more across the state. They are an army waiting to be mobilized, and they have an arsenal of mobile weapons with which to mobilize.
Nation gave us this advice from Jamie:
1. Be kind to others. Lift other people up.
2. Be a helper. That is true power.
3. Work at it. Because it’s hard work. Stick to it.
Jamie brought a lot of people together. She’s still doing it. And she’ll be doing it for a long time.
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Gary Pearce posted on April 24, 2013 11:51
Absolute good met absolute evil in a quiet Raleigh home Monday evening. Early Wednesday morning, Jamie Hahn lost her fight to live.
Her husband Nation and her family are devastated. But, as always happens at times like this, the best in people comes out. All day Tuesday, friends streamed into WakeMed to do what they could, say what they could and simply be with her family and with each other.
Mid-afternoon, their friends decided there should be a prayer vigil. Less than four hours later, hundreds of people jammed into Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. We lit candles for her. Nation spoke. We hugged, and we wept.
Together, Jamie and Nation had a unique quality that people responded to. They liked people. Their home was a familiar gathering place. People had fun.
Jamie liked politics, and she was good at it. She exemplified all that is good in politics. Nation is familiar to readers of this blog. He has been a guest blogger and will again, I trust.
This is one of those times when what unites us as people is so much bigger than what divides us in politics.
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 15, 2013 14:27
Republicans and Democrats over in the legislature have been battling hammer and tongs but, still, it raised eyebrows last week when the News & Observer reported Republicans have declared war on the cities.
House Speaker Thom Tillis explained the new conflagration philosophically, saying ‘Part of the conflict is due to a different world view of the role of government.’ Other legislators were blunter, saying ‘Cities are getting too big and too powerful’ and ‘Cities are too arrogant.’
The mayors (who’re mostly Democrats) tried to fight back but the legislators (who’re mostly Republicans) had them over a barrel: The General Assembly had the power – legally – so it rolled happily forward redrawing school board districts, rewriting local housing regulations, and taking the airport from Charlotte, the water system from Asheville and Dix Park from Raleigh.
But, a year from now, this war may take a turn that surprises the General Assembly: Years ago, when Jesse Helms first ran for Senate, most of the voters lived in small towns and rural crossroads not big enough to be called towns. But those days have long-since vanished. Cities are now the political dynamos and cities and suburbs decide elections and mayors (like Raleigh’s Mayor Nancy McFarlane) are popular – more popular than, say, a Republican legislator from Raleigh.
So what began as a legal fight may spiral into a political fight and, next election, if Mayor McFarlane decides to lead one of those independent Super PAC campaigns, Republican legislators in swing districts in Wake County could become casualties.
There’s also another more nuanced problem. Legislators changing government policies – like cutting spending or reforming the tax code – is one thing. But Republican legislators passing laws to weaken Democratic mayors is another thing entirely. Voters are pretty tolerant of politicians’ foibles and clay feet and hardly a soul believes anymore American Democracy is an exercise in selflessness or clean hands – but sometimes when a politician goes too far he runs afoul of a political current that runs bone-deep – then the wind changes and tolerance ends and a bedrock American spirit (that cannot abide a politician who grabs for too much power) breaks loose and wreaks havoc.
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 10, 2013 11:10
My grandmother used to say, ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop’ – and while legislators are waiting for the Senate to introduce its budget over in the General Assembly, they’re making a strong case that temptation and too much time on your hands is as deadly a combination as ever:
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One legislator sponsored a bill to make teaching cursive handwriting mandatory in public schools, saying teaching cursive would develop brain activity in third graders and help them read historical documents like the Constitution – which a Google search shows, is available in print on the Internet in 123,000 places.
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Two legislators declared the 1st Amendment (and the Freedom of Religion Clause) of the Constitution doesn’t apply to North Carolina, and that under the 10th Amendment, the legislature can nullify federal laws they don’t like – but they missed one crucial fact: The last time the state legislature tried to nullify the Constitution it didn’t work out too well.
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A Senator filed a bill to prohibit male students and female students from rooming together in dormitories at UNC – it’s hard to argue with that, but a better question to ask might be how on earth UNC ended up with a Chancellor who could be gulled into believing it made common sense to allow gay men to room with straight women in UNC dormitories?
So, with the time they had on their hands, legislators wrote bills that enraged women, nullified the Constitution, stimulated brain activity, separated gay men and straight women at UNC, and threatened FBI agents – is it any wonder (according to the latest polls) only 23% of the voters approve of the way the state legislature is doing its job?
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Gary Pearce posted on April 05, 2013 09:41
Roy, who died this week, was one of North Carolina’s great reporters and editors. He was founding editor of the Fayetteville Times. Back in the 1960s, he was a political reporter at The News & Observer – and a classic newsroom character.
Terse and sardonic, Roy would stalk in late in the day and go into a manic two-fingered typing trance, turning out page after page of copy. He had more sources and more scoops than any reporter in Raleigh.
In those days, Under the Dome ran on page one every day. It was a place for rumors, trial balloons and gossip that would never get in the paper today. Legend had it that Roy made up some of the items but, to give them credibility, would walk over to Capitol Square, mutter to himself: “I heard such-and-such today,” then go to the newsroom and write, “It was heard on Capitol Square today that ….”
One governor’s press secretary told of a particularly effective technique Roy used. He would stalk into a state official’s office, sit down across the desk and … say absolutely nothing. He would sit silently and stare at his poor prey. The silence was unnerving. Soon his victim would start talking, anything to ease the tension. Before long Roy would have a Dome item, some inside poop or a front-page exclusive.
Roy left the N&O to work in Skipper Bowles’ campaign for Governor in 1972. After Skipper lost, Roy went to Fayetteville to start the Times, and he offered me a job. I said no because I didn’t want to move to Fayetteville. But I thought so much of Roy I thought about it hard.
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Gary Pearce posted on April 02, 2013 10:25
A TAPster offers these observations on “the nasty civil war between the legislature and cities, now manifesting itself in high-profile fisticuffs over the Charlotte airport authority and the fate of the Dix property in Raleigh," as follows:
“First, there have been other disputes like this over the years. Charlotte leaders (including the former mayor and now current Governor McCrory) stayed frustrated for years with former Senate leader Marc Basnight, whom they viewed as an eastern North Carolina rube who had no concept of the challenges of their great city. He wouldn’t send money for transportation projects, much less visit.
“Meanwhile, legislative leaders -- whose core ideology is a disdain for a powerful central government and a passion for John Locke’s theories of individual freedom in civic, economic and religious life -- have abandoned those principles to use their new-found power and authority to micromanage the affairs of local governments.
“Finally, the politics of this mess will be revealed if these issues come to a vote. If the local legislative delegations are split (especially among the GOP members) and the issues advance anyway, then it’s a sign that the legislative leadership has run amok and thinks it is the boss of everybody. If, however, the delegations are unified, then it will be up to voters to decide whether their representatives in Raleigh are reflecting local values or they are mere vassals of the new king in town.”
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Gary Pearce posted on March 27, 2013 08:49
When President Gerald Ford nixed financial aid for New York City back in the 1970s, the front page of a brassy Big Apple tabloid blared: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Which brings us to the Republican bill undoing the Dix deal. Which brings us to two GOP Senators from Wake County who cut and ran from their party.
Chad Barefoot and Neal Hunt got what Senator Josh Stein was getting at when he said Republicans are killing the park plan because Raleigh is “a city you don’t like.”
Barefoot and Hunt might look safe politically. They have good districts. They have a big money advantage.
But, to keep winning, they have to win moderate Independents. The kind of voters who don’t like partisanship. The kind of voters who might see the legislature as a bunch of rural Tea Party extremists who hate cities in general and Raleigh in particular. The kind of voters who see Republicans nationally as a gang of vengeful, angry old white men.
Barefoot and Hunt have to worry that a future opponent might figure out that there are a lot of well-heeled people in Raleigh who are mad enough to give big money to a Democrat – or to a super-PAC helping Democrats.
They also have to worry that, in 2014, President Obama’s OFA might pump a lot of money into North Carolina. Or that, in 2016, Hillary Clinton might set off a Democratic tidal wave among moderate Independent women in their districts.
Hunt and Barefoot have no control over a lot of that. They could control how they voted. So they voted with Raleigh and against their fellow Republicans.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 18, 2013 10:09
In his novel Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner wrote if you have something outside the ordinary to do and it’s got to be done quickly, don’t waste time on the men – go get the women and children. Thirty-seven years ago, here in North Carolina, we built Ronald Reagan’s first Presidential campaign around women and young people, then landed at the Republican Convention where we learned politics’ adamantine heart devours youth and passion when a self-proclaimed conservative stalwart (who was also Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party) made a backroom deal and Reagan lost by a handful of votes.
This year, since the election last November, I’ve been watching and waiting for the old guard Democratic standard bearers in the General Assembly (like Martin Nesbit and Larry Hall) to breathe life back into their party but they seemed too stunned by the defeat to stir. They went through the motions like sleepwalkers. With barely a sign of a pulse.
Then some mischievous genie leaked the ‘Secret Not for Distribution Democratic Campaign Plan’ to the Charlotte Observer and, suddenly, there was a sign of a pulse – but it was coming from a pretty strange place. It wasn’t coming from the old guard or any of the long time Democratic standard bearers – it was coming from a young man and a young woman, a pair of ‘grassroots organizers.’
The young woman Jessica Laurenz, according to her biography, graduated from Vanderbilt with degrees in Women’s Studies then sailed into Democratic politics working for liberal groups to advance the rights of Southern women – which is sort of like advancing the rights of a Bengal tigress. It’s a fine sentiment. But the tigress (or maiden aunt or steel magnolia) is more than capable of defending herself not just against Southern men but most anything else that crosses her path.
The young man, Sean Kosofsky, had been a spokesman for LGBT groups in Michigan then came to North Carolina to head Blueprint NC.
Neither, according to their bios, had ever faced the terrors of a statewide campaign but Sean Kosofsky provided a poll and Jessica Laurenz wrote a plan for Democrats to, as she put it, ‘eviscerate’ Pat McCrory, Thom Tillis and Phil Berger.
To be continued…
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Gary Pearce posted on March 18, 2013 10:04
A TAPster and veteran of the Raleigh scene says “undoing” and “recycling” are the GOP trademarks thus far.
Last week, he noted: “The GOP focused on un-doing the deal on the Dix property, un-doing the state’s renewable energy policy and un-doing other done deals like the death penalty moratorium.
“In their zeal to remake the state in their own image and undo what Democrats have done, they fail to articulate or implement a coherent strategy about what they want to do.
“Why is this?
“One theory is the lack of leaders and leadership skills within the GOP. The GOP legislative leaders were on the back row when Dems ran the legislature and certainly didn’t learn much from the back row.
“Also, the majority of legislators are in their first two terms, and many of the newcomers have little or no political experience. They never served on city councils or county commissions where they would’ve learned to prioritize and compromise, and would’ve learned tolerance of those who disagree.
“This leads to the current state of things: a GOP with a to-do list that only includes un-doing.”
Then the TAPster notes the Republicans’ recycling:
“They’ve recycled a garbage truck full of old pols, including Art Pope and Jim Gardner, who now spend their time angrily getting even with Democrats and Democratic programs.
“Another recycled product came this week when the McCrory administration plopped Dale Folwell into the role as head of the Employment Security Commission. It’s unclear if Folwell is qualified for this task, but it’s clear he’s a former legislator, a flunky for Thom Tillis and a failed candidate for lieutenant governor.
“Legislative insiders recall that Folwell is so clear and focused on his mission that he famously changed his vote on a bill two weeks after the bill passed the General Assembly. And, Republican voters themselves made it clear they didn’t want him in politics with his rousing third-place finish in the primary election for lieutenant governor.
“Republicans had better learn not to mix their recycling with trash or they’ll all be on the curb when the big green truck comes through the neighborhood in the next election.”
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