North Carolina – Democrats
Hell, yes! Let’s vote on HB2!
Democrats in the legislature should immediately embrace a statewide referendum on HB2. This issue is killing Republicans. A referendum will keep it alive all year. A cascade of national money will flow in to help Roy Cooper, Deborah Ross and Josh Stein. Pat McCrory’s “Carolina Comeback” will drown in a tide of ongoing news about…
Read MoreGrading teacher pay
Here’s another way the crowd in Raleigh today is hurting North Carolina. WRAL will broadcast a documentary at 7 pm tonight, “Grading Teacher Pay.” The station’s overview: “During the 1990’s Governor Jim Hunt worked with Republicans and Democrats in the legislature to raise the average salary for public school teachers to the national average in…
Read MoreCivil War
North Carolina politics used to divide regionally: East vs. West. For much of the 20th Century, there was a tradition that a Governor from the West was succeeded by a Governor from the East. And each region had one U.S. Senator. Today, the civil war is City vs. Country. The ever-wise Ferrel Guillory, director of…
Read MoreMcCrory: “Oops”
After weeks of staunchly defending HB2 and slamming opponents as a “politically correct” mob of perverts, left-wingers, their allies in the media and their corporate lackeys, Governor McCrory rose from his sickbed – at least, via video and one careful interview – to waffle, wiggle and waver. As one wit said of McCrory’s executive order,…
Read MoreMcCrory’s March Madness
If Pat McCrory loses in November, he’ll regret March. He came into the month like a lion. John Davis wrote that McCrory’s big primary win and passage of the Connect NC bonds positioned him well: “(His) seven terms as Mayor of the City of Charlotte seasoned him well to lead an urban dominant swing state.…
Read MoreMcCrory caves to the bullies
Pat McCrory is like the schoolboy who knows it’s wrong for the bullies to pick on the weak kid. But instead of standing up, he goes along with the bullies. It is an absolute failure of moral leadership. Republicans can spin it how they will, but this is about picking on politically vulnerable people to get…
Read MorePosting Pictures
Last Monday, the day before the Presidential Primary, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers spent the day campaigning and tweeting and posting photographs of herself (speaking at events) on Facebook then returned home to Dunn for the night. Up in Washington, the same night, the House voted on a resolution condemning ISIS for committing genocide against Christians –…
Read MoreBehind the bickering
Here’s an idea for the North Carolina Leadership Forum that Rob Christensen wrote about this week. The Forum is a group of prominent leaders from both sides of the political aisle. Rob described its mission this way: “Why not get North Carolinians of all political stripes together to have conversations, to better understand one another’s…
Read MoreSigns
Old people watch for signs: Pains shooting down a man’s arm, a hardly discernible lump in a woman’s breast, all either portents of disaster or false alarms and in politics there’re signs too: Like Roy out-raising Pat by $1.2 million. $5.1 million to $3.9 million. A portent? Or a hiccup? Roy raising more money than…
Read MoreDemocrats: storming the castle
Hillary Clinton has the bad luck to be the Establishment in a bad year for the Establishment. She’s living in the castle just as peasants with pitchforks and torches storm the castle. She took $200,000 speaking fees from Wall Street just as Democrats turned against Wall Street. This is galling to Baby Boomers like the…
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