Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
“Is HB2 the worst self-inflicted wound in the history of North Carolina politics?” That’s what a young whippersnapper asked at breakfast the other day. (When you’re my age, you get a lot of questions about history.) I couldn’t think of a worse one. Terry Sanford’s food tax? It hurt him politically, but Sanford didn’t push…
Another police shooting of a black man. Another city ripped by unrest, protests and, the media says, “riots.” This time it’s Charlotte. This time Charlotte is in the news for something other than bathrooms. Carter’s blog on this, by the way, is thoughtful and insightful. I commend it to you. So often in cases like…
Yesterday two reporters asked me if the riots in Charlotte were going to have a ‘political impact.’ On the radio, while driving to work, I’d heard about the riots but hadn’t read any news reports and didn’t know the answer—then last night at home I turned on the television and the second night of riots…
Pat McCrory acts like the Queen City has become Queer City. Now, the city that made him may break him. He got elected because he had a reputation as a moderate, pragmatic, pro-business Mayor of Charlotte. He may lose reelection because he has a reputation now as a gay-bashing, bathroom-obsessed, bad-for-business Governor. He won in…
One poll question asked, Should transgender men be allowed to use women’s bathrooms? and another question asked, Do you support HB2? and the answer to both questions was ‘No’ which sounds like a contradiction but isn’t: It’s a paradox – a case of voters saying to Republicans, We agree with what you set out to…
Dan Kane’s N&O series this week (“Carolina’s Blind Side”) shows anew that UNC leaders never learned The First Rule of Crisis PR. The rule: It’s the crisis. Not the PR. When you think it’s the PR, you ask, “How do we put this behind us?” When you recognize it’s the crisis, you ask, “What the…
Carter and I were interviewed by The Charlotte Observer Monday about the election outlook. So, instead of having to organize our thoughts and actually write something, we’ll just post the following story by the Observer’s editorial board, “50 days out, here’s what political experts think (and predict!) about N.C.’s biggest races”: We’re less than 50…
The Washington Post recently published an article headlined: ‘Megalomaniac’ Trump vs ‘deceitful’ Clinton: How Virginia voters see the presidential race. The Post reported, according to a focus group of thirty undecided voters Donald Trump is “phony,” “crazy,” “arrogant,” “dumb,” “bigoted,” “self-centered,” and a “charlatan.” Hillary, the voters said, is “old,” “deceitful,” “a liar” and “slimy.”…
Here’s the harsh reality of 2016 politics, as demonstrated by Hillary Clinton last week and Pat McCrory over the past many weeks: If you lead the news, you lose in the polls. You’re news, you lose. In an angry, negative political environment, more media attention translates directly into more negative feelings from voters. The ongoing…
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…