North Carolina – Republicans
1984
One of this blog’s regular readers – a good Democrat – accosted me at breakfast today to demand that I respond to Carter’s series on the Hunt-Helms race. I had to confess to him that I’m partly to blame for what Carter is writing. I’m writing a book about Jim Hunt. Lately, I’ve been writing…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Casper Milquetoast Whips King Kong
After a year of reading all our research files on Jim Hunt and watching Hunt on TV I’d come to the conclusion Hunt was kind of political Caspar Milquetoast – a politician who always had his finger to the wind and changed with the breeze. Well, Hunt had his finger to the wind but at…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Gays and Death Squads
One thing is like fate in political campaigns: The unexpected always happens. It happened to us three days after we caught Hunt in the polls. Bob Windsor was an aardvark. He must have been a farmer – once – because he wore bibbed overalls like a farmer but he’d decided his real calling was newspaperman…
Read MorePolitical Stories: The New York Committee to Elect Jim Hunt
There comes a moment in a political campaign – if you’re fortunate – when for one moment the stars align and you can see with almost clairvoyant certainty exactly what the campaign is all about and how to win – that moment came for us in December of 1983: We knew Jesse’s campaign was about…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Finding the Key to Beating Jim Hunt
When you start a campaign 25 points behind but have a lot of money you start running ads early and we did – 20 months before the election. Now the folks who worked at the Congressional Club were ideologues. True believers. We saw the world in black and white. Us versus Them. Light versus Darkness.…
Read MoreHead of the Class
Everybody agrees that North Carolina’s educational-governance system is dysfunctional. June Atkinson wants the legislature to give her real power. Some legislators want to do away with her job. Governor Perdue bypassed the whole byzantine system by creating her own schools CEO. You can’t blame Atkinson. She has been elected superintendent of public instruction twice.…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Jesse Sees a Second Poll
Nobody ever accused Jesse Helms of being naïve but he made a pretty serious misjudgment when it came to running against Jim Hunt â Jesse didnât think running against Hunt would be a cakewalk but he had the idea he was as popular (or more popular) than the governor and on top of that he…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Jesse’s First Poll
Like Billy Flynn in a Chicago courtroom Obama’s speech to Congress was all razzle-dazzle. It takes a silver tongue to spend a trillion dollars then say you’re against big government and get away with it. I don’t know who else could have done it. Surely not Bobby Jindal. Politics is pretty discouraging these days –…
Read MoreThe Governor’s Next Press Conference
The governor’s been doing a lot of talking lately about cleaning up the probation mess and Senator Phil Berger’s just announced he’s taking her at her word and introducing a bill to help. First, Senator Berger wants the legislature to pass a law to make it legal for all “probation and law enforcement officers…
Read MoreWhat Republicans Lack: A Voice
These days Mike, the Republican Political Warrior, has the blues. In three short years he’s witnessed a political meltdown, which he expressed this way the other day in an email: I always reckoned the end would come. I just didn’t expect it to come in my lifetime. Eight years ago, Mike had high hopes for…
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