North Carolina – Democrats
Two Warriors
There are newer names and bigger stars campaigning for Democrats this year: the Obamas, Bruce Springsteen and Beyoncé. But two veteran warriors, Bill Clinton and Jim Hunt, were back together this month doing what they’ve done for decades: campaigning for progress, fairness and equal opportunity. Hunt and Clinton were at a get-out-the-vote event in Hunt’s…
Read MoreBe Like Rosie
North Carolina Democrats have reason to be optimistic about this election. But the ghosts of 2016 and 2020 keep us scared. Both years, our hopes were high. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was so optimistic about North Carolina that she held an election-night rally in Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum. Notwithstanding performances by Lady Gaga and Jon…
Read MoreStories about Politics
My memoir – The Trail of the Serpent – is going to be published next Tuesday, on October 22nd. The title comes from a line by Irish poet Thomas Moore: “Some flow’rets of Eden ye still inherit, but the trail of the Serpent is over them all.” Telling stories I follow the trail of the…
Read MoreStarring Mark Robinson!
Mark Robinson should get an Emmy for Most Appearances in Other Campaigns’ TV Ads. For months, he has starred in Josh Stein’s ads, admonishing women who didn’t “keep your skirt down” and warning that “some folks need killing.” Stein’s ads drove Robinson’s negative ratings so high that every Democrat from Kamala Harris down is linking…
Read MoreA Scary Time
Republicans usually are better than Democrats at closing out elections, because they’re better at scaring voters. This year, what Republicans will do if they win should scare voters. As they do every election, Trump and MAGA are stoking fears about non-existent crime waves and fictitious immigrant invasions. And now there’s “tax-paid sex-change operations for prison…
Read MoreThe Kennedy Ideal
Ethel Kennedy’s death recalls a time when hope and idealism triumphed over hate and fear. Robert and Ethel Kennedy were noisy, passionate and boisterous, a contrast to cool, stylish and sophisticated Jack and Jackie. But the two very different brothers became “the Kennedys” who stood down the Soviet Union in Cuba and stood up for…
Read MoreTaboo
As a boy growing up in Virginia my grandmother told me, Be polite…to dowager aunts, grandmothers, rudeness was taboo. Courtesy was an old southern habit. In college I sat down in the bleachers to watch a football game – students poured whiskey into paper cups, guzzled, faces flushed screamed, cheered – but politeness still held.…
Read MoreGuest Blog by Palmer Sugg
In 1984, Carter hired me to work for the Helms campaign. While my primary assignment was to travel with the candidate, Carter occasionally sent me to speak for the campaign. In September of 1984, he dispatched me to the campus of NCSU for a Q&A with Fraternity Leaders. He didn’t bother to tell me that…
Read MoreScandals
Bob Windsor owned a small newspaper The Landmark – all in for Jesse Helms back in 1984 he called Jim Hunt a ‘Sissy, prissy and effeminate.’ The first line in his newspaper article claimed Hunt was gay. It was a smear. Pure and simple. Not a word of truth in it. Jesse denounced the smear.…
Read MoreCrazy and Crazier
We’ve never seen anything quite like this before – it’s all over the news not just here but around the country: Stories about how Mark Robinson dove into a porn site, posted checkered comments for four years. It’s either the worst smear ever – or it’s true and just plain shocking. Robinson, himself, said it’s…
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