Carter is a Republican. Gary is a Democrat.

They met in 1984, during the epic U.S. Senate battle between Jesse Helms and Jim Hunt. Carter worked for Helms and Gary, for Hunt.

Years later, they became friends. They even worked together on some nonpolitical clients.

They enjoy talking about politics. So they started this blog in 2005.

They’re still talking. And they invite you to join the conversation.

CarterWrenn200x271

Carter Wrenn

Gary Pearce 2024

Gary Pearce

Archives

Categories

A Scary Time

By Gary Pearce October 15, 2024

Republicans usually are better than Democrats at closing out elections, because they’re better at scaring voters. This year, what Republicans will do if they win should scare voters. As they do every election, Trump and MAGA are stoking fears about non-existent crime waves and fictitious immigrant invasions. And now there’s “tax-paid sex-change operations for prison…

Read More

The Kennedy Ideal

By Gary Pearce October 13, 2024

Ethel Kennedy’s death recalls a time when hope and idealism triumphed over hate and fear. Robert and Ethel Kennedy were noisy, passionate and boisterous, a contrast to cool, stylish and sophisticated Jack and Jackie. But the two very different brothers became “the Kennedys” who stood down the Soviet Union in Cuba and stood up for…

Read More

Flood of Lies

By Gary Pearce October 10, 2024

First came cataclysmic floods. Then came the cascade of lies. The lies – and the lying liars who tell them – compound the suffering in Western North Carolina and complicate the recovery. Like supercharged hurricanes fueled by superheated ocean waters, the lies explode in today’s social-media ecosystem. Elon Musk has turned X/Twitter into a breeding…

Read More

Taboo

By Carter Wrenn October 9, 2024

As a boy growing up in Virginia my grandmother told me, Be polite…to dowager aunts, grandmothers, rudeness was taboo. Courtesy was an old southern habit. In college I sat down in the bleachers to watch a football game – students poured whiskey into paper cups, guzzled, faces flushed screamed, cheered – but politeness still held.…

Read More

Rise and Fall

By Gary Pearce October 8, 2024

As Hurricane Helene ravaged the mountains, my wife and I were thousands of miles away, on a two-week trip to Turkey and Greece. We followed news of the devastation as we toured historic sites in Istanbul, Gallipoli, Ephesus, Rhodes, Crete, Athens, Mycenae and Delphi. We walked on the stones of ancient empires that rose and…

Read More

Two Roads…

By Carter Wrenn October 7, 2024

From Walter Mondale to Obama Democrat politicians preached the same gospel: Government was the way to solve problems – the way they saw it the more money and power government held in its hands the more problems they’d solve. The way Republicans saw it was different: Government didn’t solve problems – it made them worse.…

Read More

Keep Your Fingers Crossed…

By Carter Wrenn October 4, 2024

At the end of the Vance–Walz debate I thought, I wish those two were the ones running for president. Their debate was like a flashback to an earlier time – both men threw punches, got punched, but did it in a courteous way. Without meanness. An old niceness we haven’t seen for a while in…

Read More

Guest Blog by Palmer Sugg

By Carter Wrenn October 1, 2024

In 1984, Carter hired me to work for the Helms campaign.  While my primary assignment was to travel with the candidate, Carter occasionally sent me to speak for the campaign.  In September of 1984, he dispatched me to the campus of NCSU for a Q&A with Fraternity Leaders.  He didn’t bother to tell me that…

Read More

Scandals

By Carter Wrenn September 30, 2024

Bob Windsor owned a small newspaper The Landmark – all in for Jesse Helms back in 1984 he called Jim Hunt a ‘Sissy, prissy and effeminate.’ The first line in his newspaper article claimed Hunt was gay. It was a smear. Pure and simple. Not a word of truth in it. Jesse denounced the smear.…

Read More

A Scary Time

By Gary Pearce October 15, 2024

Republicans usually are better than Democrats at closing out elections, because they’re better at scaring voters.…

Read More

The Kennedy Ideal

By Gary Pearce October 13, 2024

Ethel Kennedy’s death recalls a time when hope and idealism triumphed over hate and fear. Robert…

Read More

Flood of Lies

By Gary Pearce October 10, 2024

First came cataclysmic floods. Then came the cascade of lies. The lies – and the lying…

Read More