Archive for 2012
Bru Cashes In
Sometimes Iâm naïve. I didnât get why Rep. Harold Brubaker was resigning in the middle of his House term. Heâs been in the legislature since Governor O. Max Gardnerâs administration â or something like that. He was Speaker in the 90s. He is one of the most powerful members of the House. His party…
Read MoreConvention Wisdom
The mainstream media is obsessed about potential problems with the Democratic convention in Charlotte. Will labor and liberals protest and boycott? Will Charlotte and the party raise enough money? Was it a good choice in light of Democrats’ problems in North Carolina? Etc., etc. Get real. Nobody is going to cast their vote…
Read MoreThe Second Most Watched Race…
The most watched campaign in North Carolina this fall will be the Presidential race but the second most watched race may not be the Governor’s race – it may be the race between Paul Newby and Sam Ervin for the lone Supreme Court seat. The way Republicans see it, sooner or later, the Democrats’…
Read MoreFracking Out
Methinks the fracking freakout by Democrats is overwrought and overdone. And Becky Carney need not contemplate hari-kari. Maybe it’s age. Or maybe it’s that for too many years I’ve heard too many dire warnings about how some legislative action is certain to lead to environmental devastation. It never does. And every time something…
Read MorePartisanship
North Carolina’s most famous Democrat, Jim Hunt, ran for statewide office six times and each time gave the liberal Democrat running for President a wide berth – and so did Mike Easley when he ran in 2000 (Al Gore) and 2004 (John Kerry). And no one thought much of it. But now two Democratic…
Read MoreLeBron Obama
President Obama is the LeBron James of politics. No one else in the game inspires the same passions – pro and con. No one else has the same political skills. No one else can put as many points on the board – for both sides. For all the talk about Mitt Romney –…
Read MoreHow Politics Works
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time: A group of people building a swimming complex in Cary hired an architect, Kenn Gardner, who was also a County Commissioner, who as Commissioner had been advocating for a government subsidy for their complex. But, in the end, it didn’t work out well at…
Read MoreJust Tuning In
When you’re running a political campaign, it’s hard to keep your perspective. It’s especially hard to remember that not everybody is paying as much attention as you are. Even worse, the voters who count the most – the truly undecided voters – aren’t paying any attention yet. Harrison Hickman, who was Governor Hunt’s pollster…
Read MoreHuck’s Complaint
Mike Huckabee always struck me as a likeable Republican. So his critique of his party in The New York Times Sunday was striking. He was asked: “Is this different from the party that you know and love?” His answer: “Very much. It’s one of the reasons that I did not think this was…
Read More2, 7 or 12?
In the old days there were only around a dozen political pollsters in the whole country and men like Lance Tarrance and Arthur Finkelstein spent years bent over poll books looking for trends and subtle enigmas and if you were in politics – like Tom Ellis and Jesse Helms and me – what they learned…
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