Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
On Election Day Republicans lost their majority on the State Supreme Court, but this morning the newspaper reported – when the General Assembly returns to town next week – Republicans may try to ‘pack’ the State Supreme Court by adding two new Republican Justices. Since the election there’s been a story – more of a…
Today’s paper reports that, if Republicans repeal Obamacare, some 30 million Americans will lose health insurance. Another 10 million will lose subsidies and have to pay more for insurance. Give Donald Trump credit. He may do something President Obama never could do: get Americans to understand and appreciate Obamacare. How’s that Make America Great Again…
Will next week’s legislative session be about hurricane and fire relief – or political relief? Will the legislature help people who lost loved ones, homes and property – or help Republicans who lost elections? And will Republicans give Roy Cooper a nuclear weapon to use against them in 2017, one that dwarfs HB2? Senate Republicans are…
Last week Congress passed legislation to make our ‘missile defenses’ stronger and immediately a hue and cry went up from ‘arms control activists:’ Strengthening our missile defenses, Union of Concerned Scientists declared, would frighten Russia and China which would lead to instability. So what do we do? Wait and hope no rogue nation like North…
Republicans may have supermajorities in the legislature, but Governor Cooper will have a superpower: the biggest microphone in the state. Or, in today’s world, the biggest smartphone. Forty years ago, Stephanie Bass and I were setting up Governor-elect Jim Hunt’s first press office. And we had a theory. We had come out of the capital…
A troop of determined anti-Klan demonstrators, who’d probably read the News and Observer’s story – based on an Internet website – about a ‘Klansmen for Trump’ rally in Pelham, showed up at 9am to protest. The same day – last Saturday – anti-Klan protestors gathered in Moore Square in Raleigh and across the state. There…
Millions of words have been expended the last month analyzing, over-analyzing and struggling to understand why the American people – or, at least, the Electoral College system – would make Donald Trump President. Democrats are frenziedly trying to figure out what happened and, as usual, find somebody or something to blame. As in: “Hillary was…
After 16 years of mediocrity, North Carolina will get to see excellence again in the Executive Mansion. I know something about excellent Governors. I worked for Jim Hunt for four terms. Cooper reminds me of Governor Hunt. Not so much the young, ambitious Hunt I and II of 1976-1984. But the seasoned, focused and farsighted…
An ally of the Governor’s – The Civitas Institute – sued to stop the State Board of Elections counting 90,000 ballots cast by people who’d registered and voted on the same day; normally the State Justice Department would have defended the Board but, since those voters cast ballots in Attorney General Roy Cooper’s race against…
The political sniping began even as chaos still reigned at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…