North Carolina – Democrats
Post Mortem
The story of how the state budget got made and passed reads like a plot from a bad Gothic novel. On page one Governor Perdue is sitting, looking at last year’s budget and dreaming of all the new things she is going to spend money on this year; she dreams and dreams then adds…
Read MoreGood Luck Pearce Edwards
You’ll need it. Governor Perdue is bringing you from Washington State to save her administration. She may as well have painted a big target on your back. At least you’re from here. You’ll work for a governor who has a reputation for being tough on her staff – and erratic. You’ll be…
Read MoreBev Needs a Dick Morris
No, not the Dick Morris you see on Fox who apparently came unhinged from working for the Clintons. The Dick Morris who rescued Bill Clinton’s presidency after 1994. Governor Perdue needs somebody who will do what Morris did then: scour government agencies for a series of popular, bite-sized things she could do by executive…
Read MoreHold Town Meetings
Memo to Congressman Brad Miller and all congressional Democrats: Stop ducking town meetings on health-care reform. Open the doors wide. Invite everybody – opponents included. And let them rant and rave if that’s what they are determined to do. Nothing could do more to help the health care-reform campaign. The more the…
Read MoreThat Dog Won’t Hunt
Whenever a lady starts a sentence by saying with perfect politeness, I just wanted to point out…well, any male who’s dealt with southern women knows he’s in deep trouble. A very nice lady called from state government the other morning about a blog I wrote about the State Department of Transportation spending $29,000 to…
Read MoreObama Up! Perdue Down!
Why is the President’s popularity holding up – while Governor Perdue’s has collapsed? Back in the old days Jim Hunt and Jesse Helms cut a broad swath through our neck of the woods; they were political heavy-weights and it’s beginning to look like Barack Obama’s cut from the same bolt of cloth. President Obama,…
Read MoreDemocratic Disaster?
I’ve got a bad feeling about this. My hair’s standing up on my neck the way it did early in 1994. But four months earlier this time. Obama is struggling to keep control of the agenda. August will be crucial. If the right-wing attacks on health care reform, deficits, cash-for-clunkers and “Not Born…
Read MoreIn a League of Her Own
The most audacious woman ever to draw breath in North Carolina has now outdone herself and passed into the annals of political lore;—no one knows exactly how Mary Easley lit a fire under her easy-going husband but it’s a fact the Governor got stirred up enough to carve out a political sinecure for her over…
Read MoreKen and Cal
Recently I blogged that, if Elaine Marshall gets in the Senate race, her candidacy should give pause to Ken Lewis and Cal Cunningham. The reverse is also true. Yes, Lewis and Cunningham are both unproven unknowns. But don’t overestimate how well known Marshall is. Or Richard Burr, for that matter. In recent…
Read MoreThe Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight
It’s a fact: One hand in Governor Perdue’s administration doesn’t have a clue what the other hand is doing. The Governor’s out telling everyone who’ll listen that if she doesn’t raise taxes a billion dollars she’s going to have to make terrible, terrible budget cuts – but the factotums in her administration seem determined to…
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