North Carolina – Democrats
GOP Lite or Real Dems?
It’s an argument I’ve heard for 40 years: “Southern Democrats, meet your future: No more Republican lite.” That’s the headline on a recent article by Bob Moser, Senior Editor at the National Journal. He wrote, “Candidates like (Kay) Hagan are stuck between the past, when Southern Democrats’ recipe for victory involved courting white moderates…
Read MoreIf Dan Blue…
As soon as Conor the Jessecrat sat down at our regular political dinner he unfolded a newspaper, pointed, and said, There’s a headline to strike terror in every Congressman’s heart. I read ‘Judge Orders Districts Redrawn’ and thought about the half-a-dozen lawsuits in North Carolina about redistricting but it turned out this lawsuit was in…
Read MoreWe Report, You Decide
New Yorker magazine, as I recall, once had a department called: “Which newspaper do you read?” It juxtaposed totally opposite headlines about the same story. To wit this week: “Clay Aiken outpaces GOP candidate in 2nd quarter fundraising” (Sandhills Tribune). “Rep. Ellmers ahead of Aiken in fundraising in 2nd Congressional District” (Fayetteville Observer).…
Read MoreUncertainties
Locked in a wrestling match with the Governor over Medicaid (and how much it will go over budget) the Old Bull Mooses invited Art Pope (the Budget Czar) over to the Senate for a cordial visit then added if he didn’t come along peacefully they’d send him a subpoena. Pope, responding like a gentleman,…
Read MoreAaron Fussell
Aaron Fussell was one of those modest World War II heroes who saved the free world, then came home and spent the rest of his life building a better world. I knew him as school superintendent and a legislator. But I got to know him best much later, on the golf course. That’s where…
Read MoreA Lit Stick of Dynamite
There’s a lit stick of dynamite – and one unanswered question – being blithely passed from hand to hand in the backrooms of Raleigh: Who will the State Senators and Representatives make pay to cleanup Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds – which Duke says is going to cost $10 billion and which, Duke also says,…
Read MoreDangerous Terrain for an Optimist
The Governor sent his budget over to the Senate. And as Rodney Dangerfield used to say, He got no respect. It was DOA. The Senate sent its budget over to the House. And it got no respect either. DOA, again. The House sent its budget to the Senate. And met…
Read MoreA Year Later…
Last year (after their big victory in the 2012 election) as soon as Republican State Senators and State Representatives got to Raleigh they went to work to cut spending and it was almost like a competition: The House would announce it had cut a hundred million dollars. And the Senate would top that…
Read MoreWho Captured Whom?
As much as I admire the Old Bull Mooses’ single-minded pertinacity, I’ve been unkind lately to the State Senate but at dinner last night Conor, who may be the last of the Jessecrats, set me straight. I’d written – a couple of days ago – how the Democratic political wizards around Raleigh believe the…
Read MoreThe Wrong Cure
Mike, a young down-the-line rock-ribbed Republican partisan who sees eye to eye with Senator Bob Rucho (who once tweeted ‘Obamacare has done more damage than the Nazis’) but is too smart to say anything that foolish within earshot of a reporter, and Jim who would like Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for President because Hilary’s…
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