Gary’s Election Scorecard

So how did I do on my 10 election predictions? Right on four and a half. Wrong on two (happily wrong on one of those). And we’re still counting the votes on three and a half. So I’m hoping I come up 8-2. My predictions from yesterday and the results: Democrats sweep nationally. It’s the…

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Ten Election Predictions:

My Democratic campaign friends are cautiously ecstatic. My Republican campaign friends are nearly suicidal. So here – based on hearsay, guesswork and a dose of wishful thinking – are my Election Day predictions. Democrats sweep nationally. It’s the war, stupid. (Listen up, Mr. President.) Democrats take Congress. We pick up 30 U.S. House seats and…

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Taking Money Out of Politics?

Since 2004, reformers have intensified their efforts in North Carolina and nationally to stop the flow of political money. What are the results? According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, campaign-ad spending this year will top $2 billion, $400 million more than in 2004. You can’t stop money. To comment, send us an email to…

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Sex and Politics

A Florida congressman resigns after sending suggestive emails to teenage male pages. A national evangelical-church leader is accused of paying another man for sex. Wake County’s own Sheriff admits to an affair with a married women 25 years younger than himself. Politics does make strange bedfellows. Let’s watch the reactions local Republicans have to Sheriff…

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Shut-Up, John Kerry

It’s bad enough that John Kerry ran one of the worst Democratic presidential campaigns in history, leaving America in the hands of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. But now he pops up in the final week of this campaign – potentially the Democrats’ best year ever. And he’s apparently determined to sink our swift boat again.…

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Meeker Takes the Lead, But…

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker is taking the lead on the future of the Dix property in downtown Raleigh. That’s a good thing. The Mayor gets criticized for sitting back too often, rather than standing up. But we ask the Mayor: What about North Raleigh? What about, for instance, the Horseshoe Farms debate? People in North…

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Polls Apart – Again

One reason I’ll watch the Wake school bonds vote is to see whose polls are accurate: The News & Observer published a Mason-Dixon poll strongly indicating the bonds would lose. That poll showed support at only 35 percent. But two other polls show the bonds winning. Public Policy Polling said last week the bonds were…

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A Democratic Year — And Years?

NC FREE Executive Director John Davis, like a lot of prognosticators, says this will be a Democratic year. HHHe also raises hopes there will be many more Democratic years. I heard Davis give a presentation in Wilmington this week, and I got some ideas and information from him I haven’t heard anyplace else. About this…

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Y’all Vote

We were asked to help promote a new website – www.yallvote.com – which bills itself as an “ad-free, non-partisan web site promoting voter education and participation in North Carolina.” Check it out. Click to Read & Post Comments

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Getting Personal

I’m afraid my Democrats still don’t get it: politics is about character, not policy. You think we’d learn after Al Gore and John Kerry. But no. The cycle repeats itself this election cycle. Democrats all over the country, it seems to me, are running ads attacking Republicans on complex policy issues. Republicans, in the final…

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