North Carolina – Democrats
The Marshall Plan
Senator Richard Burr’s ad shows he knows he could be vulnerable. Voters don’t know him or what he’s done. Which supports Elaine Marshall’s case for getting the $10 million she needs from the DSCC to be competitive. Senate Democrats are playing defense most everywhere this year. It would be nice to make one…
Read MoreA Win for Perdue
Remember the furor last year when Governor Perdue announced that dozens of long-term, convicted criminals might get out of prison early because of an issue over “good time”? Remember how everybody said what a disaster this would be for her? Remember how critics said she overreacted by threatening to stand in the jailhouse…
Read MoreFlight of Fancy
My friend Damon Circosta, executive director on the N.C. Center for Voter Education, gets an A for effort but an F for persuasiveness. Circosta, according to Under the Dome, says the flap over Governor Perdue’s campaign not reporting some flights is an argument for “voter-owned” (publicly financed) campaigns. http://projects.newsobserver.com/dome#ixzz0yBS20BU0 The logic goes over…
Read MoreHolding for AG?
The rumor among Republicans is that George Holding will run against Roy Cooper for AG in 2012. That assumes, of course, that Holding doesn’t stay on as U.S. Attorney forever. It also assumes he finally handles his high-profile cases: Mike Easley and John Edwards. Maybe Holding will punt Easley to the state,…
Read MorePerdue’s Luck
Governor Perdue can’t catch a break. Today should have been a big news day for her: North Carolina winning one of the 10 “Race to the Top” selections. That’s a big step forward in school reform. And, by the way, one of the most significant and least recognized achievements of the Obama administration.…
Read MoreNot ‘94?
The last couple of weeks, I’ve talked with Democrats and Republicans who are deeply involved in this year’s elections. And I found a ray of hope for Democrats: 2010 may not be 1994 revisited. The reason: 1994 itself. What happened that year is hard-wired into Democratic DNA – in North Carolina and…
Read MoreStories About Journalists
For twenty years the state ‘crime lab,’ the News and Observer reports, has been withholding evidence and misleading juries at trials and sending innocent people to prison – but no one has been fired, which makes the fate of Eszter Vajda (another state employee who did lose her job last week after the firestorm over…
Read MoreObama-care and Perdue-care
Seven hundred fire breathing Democrats gathered in Fayetteville for their convention and just about came to blows over reading the riot act to three Democratic Congressmen who had the sheer audacity to vote against Obama-care. What saved the poor Congressmen from humiliation (or perhaps mutilation) was one of their more adroit supporters standing up…
Read MoreEthics North Carolina Style
As House Democratic Leader Joe Hackney and House Republican Leader ‘Skip’ Stam watched beaming, Governor Perdue signed the states latest ‘Ethics Law.’ Hackney then said it was wonderful that Democrats were cleaning up the mess in state government, and Stam said it was a shame the Democrats had created the mess in the first…
Read MoreNC-SBI
Over in Davie County a dentist tells the District Attorney his wife stabbed him with a spear, then he stabbed her back with his pocket knife, and she died; the DA calls in the SBI’s Chief ‘Blood Splatter’ expert to figure out exactly what did happen; two investigators stare at the bloodstains on the husband’s…
Read More