Posts by Gary Pearce
Kay and the Gay Factor
A Democrat poses this question about Kay Hagan’s run for U.S. Senate: “It is going to be interesting to see how voters respond to Hagan’s candidacy and whether she can dance around the question (or put it to bed) of whether she is running b/c Neal is gay. If you think back to the Sanders/Gantt…
Read MoreThe Real Issue for Perdue and Moore
If Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue stop sniping over resumes, degrees and ages, they will see the real target in the Governor’s race. And they can remind voters why North Carolina needs a Democratic governor next year. Republicans always say that North Carolina’s schools are failing. Their solution, always, is to starve the schools of…
Read MoreStudent Video Trips Up Edwards Campaign
John Edwards’s campaign staffers blew it when they blew up over a UNC journalism student’s video story. No more than few thousand people would have seen the original post on YouTube. After the campaign went nuclear, hundreds of thousands saw it. It’s a double whammy for Edwards. First a minor story gets more attention. Then…
Read MoreMercedes Drove Us to Incentives
The News & Observerâs recent examination of economic incentives said âattitudes have changedâ here since North Carolina lost Mercedes to Alabama in 1993. Actually, attitudes changed because we lost Mercedes. The story accurately noted that North Carolina didnât get the Mercedes plant because we didnât match Alabamaâs incentives. The N&O noted that my old boss,…
Read MoreElectrifying ElectriCities
Carter and I started Talking About Politics when we become intrigued by how blogs create an alternative form of political communication. It’s happening on our own site right now – without either of us lifting a finger. Click here to read a post that somebody (we don’t know who) put on our site about ElectriCities…
Read MoreRough Sailing Ahead for Hillary
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is living on a diet of fingernails. The Main Stream Media (MSM) and the Democratic Establishment have proclaimed her the winner. But John Edwards asks the apt question: Did I miss something? Did Iowa already vote? Did we already pick a nominee? History says that no Democratic front-runner sails to the nomination…
Read MoreRun, Kay, Run
Even before Jim Neal outed himself, Kay Hagan was looking at getting back in the U.S. Senate race. Now she’s getting more encouragement – from home and from Washington. Hagan, a state senator from Greensboro, had looked at running earlier. She pulled back because Senator Charles Schumer from New York, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial…
Read MoreGood PR, Bad PR
I watch “60 Minutes” Sunday nights to see who shines and who fades in the close-up TV glare. The results are often surprising. Valerie Plame and Erik Prince, to take two examples. I was predisposed to like Plame, the outed CIA agent. After all, she’s taken a blowtorch to the Bush Administration. And she looks…
Read MoreThe Colbert Factor
Since Bill Clinton blew his sax for Arsenio Hall, presidential candidates have been using TV talk-show hosts. Now a TV personality is turning the tables. Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central says he’ll run in South Carolina’s primary – as a Democrat and a Republican. This is no joke – to the candidates. Colbert, who is…
Read MoreIs Richard Moore too Negative?
Some Democrats are asking: Isn’t Richard Moore’s campaign too negative? Won’t he suffer a backlash for attacking Beverly Perdue? The answers are no and no. For nearly thirty years, since the onset of negative TV ads, I’ve heard the same arguments: “People won’t believe those attacks.” “Voters don’t like negative ads. You need to stay…
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