North Carolina – Democrats
Budget Passover
The King Has Left the Building
Reading the Sunday Paper
Tom Fetzer is a smart guy. Iâm thinking of endorsing him for state Republican Chair. Thatâs because he would be good, and I donât want a good GOP chair. I figure my endorsement would be the kiss of death. Tom has a gimmick in his campaign: help put The News & Observer out of business.…
Read MoreBowles Rolls
How confident is Erskine Bowles of his standing in the legislature? Confident enough to tell the Appropriations Committee that Governor Perdue’s UNC budget is “ludicrous.” Bowles’ bluntness raised eyebrows around Raleigh. The Governor said she was “miffed,” but then assured us that she and Erskine talked and that love is in bloom again. Bowles knows…
Read MorePass to Play
State Senator Charlie Albertson has a bill guaranteed to get people talking. It’s simple. Just one page. It prohibits any participation in athletic competition by “schools in which a majority of the students are below the 50th percentile on end-of-course and end-of-grade tests for two or more consecutive years.” In other words, if schools don’t…
Read MoreBudget Cuts?
It’s right there on the front page of the newspaper: The governor’s got a $3.4 billion hole in the budget to wrestle to the ground and fill – so she’s cut spending $1.3 billion a year. But there are two other numbers in the newspaper that are peculiar. $21.4 billion – which is what the…
Read MoreA.I.G., Alcoa and Taxes
Well, Obama’s after A.I.G. hammer and tongs. Which is fine. More than fine. But there’re also a couple of overlooked questions worth considering: Like why didn’t the Washington genius (and it’s beginning to look like it was Treasury Secretary Geithner) who poured $170 billion into A.I.G. have the good sense to tell A.I.G. up front,…
Read MoreBev’s Budget
I give Governor Perdue and her staff an A+ on message management. They pulled off a neat three-step strategy: Spend weeks warning people how awful the budget cuts are going to be. Then devote her State of the State speech – and the next week’s media events – to saying education would get more money.…
Read MoreWalter Davis Sends Some Fish
News coverage of Ned Cline’s new book about Walter Davis – and his “bags of cash” – reminds me of my two encounters with Davis. The first was in the Senate Dining Room in Washington during one of Governor Hunt’s first two administrations. I don’t recall the occasion or anything else about the meeting. But…
Read MoreA Happy Ending
Gary’s plenty kind to say back in 1984 the folks in Jesse’s campaign ‘were smarter’ than the folks in Hunt’s campaign but I suspect the better term is more experienced – by 1984 we’d been using direct mail to raise money for eight years and airing ‘negative ads’ for four years; Governor Hunt hadn’t but…
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