He Said, She Said

The Senate race is all about sex. It is Supportive Mommy against Stern Daddy.   And the debate may make me amend my rule about how the most comfortable, confident and commanding person in the room always wins: Except when it’s a man against a woman and his “commanding” slips over into “condescending.”   Thom…

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Debate Prep

Several reporters have called to explore “what’s at stake” in tonight’s U.S. Senate debate and “what Hagan and Tillis have to do.”   Well, the answer is a lot simpler than we make it sometimes in politics.   The media will bravely try to focus on substance and whether either candidate “said something new.” (The…

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Hagan, Dole and the 90s

WRAL’s Mark Binker says the claim that Senator Kay Hagan votes with President Obama 95 percent of the time is “something of karmic payback for Hagan, who benefited from a similar claim leveled against then-Sen. Elizabeth Dole in 2008.”   There is a little-noted back story to the Dole ad: It wasn’t really about voting…

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The Next Big Issue?

When the pollster asked voters, Who should pay for the coal ash cleanup, Duke Energy or consumers? the answer came back loud and clear: Voters had no doubt. Almost to a man they said Duke Energy.   Now that didn’t mean that was the right – or fair – answer.   But it did mean…

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Senate Ads Are Working

As much as I respect Rob Christensen and the political experts he talked with in today’s column, I disagree with their conclusion that the money spent in the U.S. Senate race has had “little effect.”   In fact, I think the ads by Senator Hagan – and on her behalf – have painted Thom Tillis…

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Three Strikes

Republicans strode up to the plate in Raleigh with big bats and high hopes, then whiffed on three straight pitches.   Strike one was teacher pay. Their top goal was to stop the bleeding on education. But their so-called pay raise was so full of holes, questions and confusion that nobody is satisfied, teachers are…

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Day Two, But Still Part One

Governor McCrory’s blast at The N&O got him another day of the “blaring, top-of-the-fold” headlines he blasted. But this is just the beginning of the Coal Ash Saga. We soon will have a U.S. Attorney’s investigation and a fight over who pays: McCrory’s former boss, Duke Energy, or his current boss, the People of North…

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Infectious?

Well, looking back, it was bound to happen.    First, John Boehner decided to sue Obama for not enforcing the Obamacare laws and most of the House Republicans went along on the theory even if they didn’t like Obamacare the laws are the laws and the President can’t just change one whenever it suits him.…

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The Best Lobbyists on earth

 The other day Gary wrote, “For Democrats this election year, this legislature is the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe they’ll stay in session all the way to November” – considering by Speaker Thom Tillis’ announcement the legislature is about to return to town and pass the stuck ‘coal ash’ bill, Gary may get more…

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T

It was unusual summer – first Governor McCrory reared back and threw a punch at the old Bull Mooses, then he threw another, and another.   Back in May, when he’d sent his budget over to the Senate, the Bull Mooses had unceremoniously dumped it in the waste bin, just as they had the year…

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