Posts by Gary Pearce
The Virginia Dilemma
Democrat Creigh Deeds’ disastrous campaign for governor of Virginia may give North Carolina Democrats a foretaste of 2010. Politico.com wrote: “Faced with the choice of running as an unapologetic Democrat in a state trending toward his party or keeping his distance from Washington in the fashion of a generation of Southern Democrats, Creigh…
Read MoreGet Out of Jail
Governor Perdue didn’t need this flap about dangerous killers being let out of prison. She’s done everything she can think of to protect herself politically – even saying she’ll go to jail before she lets them out. That’s going a bit far, but it tells you how worried her team is. Republicans…
Read MoreRand’s Bombshell
Democrats who didn’t panic after Tuesday’s election might panic over Tony Rand leaving. They can see the dominoes falling. Martin Nesbitt replaces Rand as majority leader. The campaign machine that Rand and Marc Basnight built sputters. Republicans win a Senate majority in 2010. Nesbitt becomes minority leader. Raleigh is abuzz with conspiracy theories…
Read MoreHe Drives Them Crazy
One thing I appreciate about Jim Hunt is that he still drives Republicans crazy. I see that – and enjoy it – in their comments on my blog. Now comes Tom Fetzer. With a straight face, he blames everything that’s wrong in Raleigh today with Jim Hunt passing succession 32 years ago. …
Read MoreRemain Calm
Democrats got a thumping in Virginia and New Jersey. But they don’t need to take a long walk off a short pier yet. Republicans will be whooping that the party’s over for Obama. With any luck, they’ll proceed on that assumption – and wreck their chances of a real comeback in 2010 and…
Read MoreA Failure to Communicate
Mark Johnson noted in Under the Dome that – counting her 2000 campaign – Bev Perdue had five communications directors as lieutenant governor. Now David Kochman is leaving that job in the governor’s office. The problem isn’t the staff. It’s that – after a dozen years in the legislature, eight years as lieutenant…
Read MoreHunt, Easley and Edwards
Jack Betts wrote Sunday about the contrast between Mike Easley being grilled by the Board of Elections and Jim Hunt breaking ground for the new Hunt Library: “It was hard not to draw comparisons between Hunt’s visionary rhetoric and Easley’s labored accounts about the past.” What accounts for the difference? Why did Hunt…
Read MoreMore on Coordinated Campaigns
Ferrel Guillory – political expert extraordinaire and director of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill – offers a good perspective to my question (see below) about coordinated campaigns. He cites an article by two of his students about the 2004 coordinated campaign. Ferrel notes: “As you know, Jim Hunt used to…
Read MoreWhere’s the Truth?
Are reporters and reformers skirting the truth by suggesting – and even stating flatly – that the Easley campaign and the Democratic Party skirted the law? As I understand it, coordinated campaigns are not a loophole – or a way around the law. They are actually encouraged by the law. The law was…
Read MoreCleaning Up
There was one odd sidelight in former Governor Easley’s testimony. He was busy as governor and candidate, too busy to go to headquarters or keep up with flight invoices. But he was home vacuuming his chimney?
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