Posts by Gary Pearce
Why Dole Is Winning
Word around Raleigh is that Kay Hagan wants to run – a la Bev Perdue – a “positive” campaign. If she does, Democrats can forget beating Liddy Dole. You don’t beat an incumbent by being positive. You have to offer voters a better alternative. If it makes you feel better, call it a “contrast” campaign…
Read MoreObama’s Head Fake
Barack Obama is supposed to be quite the pickup basketball player, and he’s putting quite the head fake on John McCain in North Carolina. It’s good strategy. Obama has the money and the grassroots organization to make the Republicans worry – at least for now – about how much time and money to spend here.…
Read MoreHow McCrory Can Win
Pat McCrory was always the Republicans’ best bet to win the Governor’s race in November. But how can he win in what may be a Democratic year? There is only one way: Use Obama’s strategy. Be the candidate of Change. Attack “a culture of corruption and mismanagement in Raleigh.” He doesn’t have to overstate things.…
Read MoreWhy Obama Will Win
Because the choice between Obama and McCain will come down to Change versus Race. And Team Obama is smart enough to make McCain pay for a race-based campaign. Obama owns Change. It’s one big reason he beat Clinton, Edwards, et al. That one-word Change message gets ridiculed. It would be worthy of ridicule if change…
Read MoreUnhappy Newsrooms
Frank Daniels, the acid-tongued former N&O publisher, greeted a Raleigh reporter recently thusly: “Still got a job?” It’s a question of lot of newspaper employees are asking these days. Two big trees fell last week: Paul O’Connor with the Winston-Salem Journal and Chuck Riesz with the Wilmington Star took buyouts. Word is that more axes…
Read MoreDrescher Vs. Easley, Round II
Raleigh hasn’t seen a good fight between an editor and a Governor in 20 years. John Drescher, Executive Editor of the N&O, has a good one going now with Governor Easley. Witness these zingers from Drescher’s Sunday column: “He’s a big-picture guy detached from his own government.” “It’s not that we don’t like Easley and…
Read MoreRuthless Republicans
I’m back from a week in California (Big Sur and San Francisco), where I soaked up good food, good wine and Nancy Pelosi values. Deprived of my usual North Carolina political diet, I indulged in HBO’s “Recount” about the 2000 Florida election theft. On the flight back Sunday, I read The New Yorker profile of…
Read MoreReintroducing Obama
Barack Obama needs a Manhattan Project. No, not a bomb. But an intensive strategic and research project like the one the Clinton campaign undertook in 1992, when they figured out why Clinton was running third (behind Bush and Perot) – and how to fix the problem. The ’92 Clinton campaign is more famous for its…
Read MoreCaution to Business: Left Turn Ahead
Toe-sucking transpartisan consultant-turned-pundit Dick Morris, the only man alive who advised both Bill Clinton and Jesse Helms, is right about one thing: Politics in America is headed left. Race may keep Barack Obama from becoming President. But otherwise 2008 looks like 2006 continued. That could mean more Democrats in the Senate and House. It could…
Read MoreThe News and the Observer
Some members of Governor Easley’s email study commission are privately critical of the news media – like the N&O – for both covering the story and being part of the story. The commission members believe the dual role has led to slanted coverage. They think media representatives have been unreasonable and inconsistent in their appearances…
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