Carter is a Republican. Gary is a Democrat.

They met in 1984, during the epic U.S. Senate battle between Jesse Helms and Jim Hunt. Carter worked for Helms and Gary, for Hunt.

Years later, they became friends. They even worked together on some nonpolitical clients.

They enjoy talking about politics. So they started this blog in 2005.

They’re still talking. And they invite you to join the conversation.

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Carter Wrenn

Gary Pearce 2024

Gary Pearce

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A Nasty Guy?

By Carter Wrenn January 20, 2016

“He’s a nasty guy. A very nasty guy.” Donald Trump was talking about Ted Cruz and with the same uncanny instinct that unmanned Jeb Bush with two words (“low-energy”) he’d put his finger on Cruz’s Achilles heel. In many ways Ted Cruz looks like the archetype of a candidate who should win a Republican Primary:…

Birther Karma

By Gary Pearce January 20, 2016

The constitutional question about whether Ted Cruz is a “natural-born” citizen is as good a reason as any to deny him the White House. If we want a President from Canada, let’s get Justin Trudeau. The issue is sweet confirmation of the Universal Law of Payback. How many Cruz supporters were “birthers” who questioned President…

The Reaction

By Carter Wrenn January 19, 2016

A girl who thinks she’s a boy asked to use the boys’ bathroom at her high school. The principal allowed her to use a staff bathroom instead. Then a boy who thinks he’s a girl circulated an internet petition saying the principal was wrong. And it landed, beneath a picture of the two teenagers, on…

He’s baaaaack!

By Gary Pearce January 18, 2016

Long before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, a lot of people in Raleigh didn’t like John Edwards. Like insurance executives, defense lawyers and doctors, to be exact. They took great delight in Edwards’ fall from political grace. Schadenfreude is the word for it: “a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing…

Obama Redux

By Gary Pearce January 15, 2016

Franklin D. Roosevelt said the Presidency “is preeminently a place of moral leadership.” President Obama’s State of the Union met that standard. The President channeled FDR, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan all in his speech. He rose above the usual political theater than these speeches have become. He set out an optimistic vision of…

Womb Police

By Gary Pearce January 12, 2016

Republicans are right: Our freedoms and liberties are at risk from an overly intrusive, overreaching government. Like the Republican-controlled government in North Carolina that requires doctors who perform an abortion after the 16th week of pregnancy to send an ultrasound to state officials. That’s kind of creepy, when you think about it. Are the DHHS…

Saint Barbara

By Gary Pearce January 11, 2016

Barbara Buchanan deserved the Nobel Prize for Patience. For 20 years, she lived at the center of the F5 tornado that was Jim Hunt. The remarkable thing: I never once saw her lose her temper. From Hunt’s 1972 campaign for Lieutenant Governor, through four years in that office, through eight years in the Governor’s Office,…

The paradox of George Herbert Walker Bush

By Gary Pearce January 7, 2016

To read Jon Meacham’s new biography of Bush 41 (“Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush”) is to realize how much politics has changed in 20 years, to understand why Jeb Bush is going nowhere in the presidential race and to marvel at GHWB’s admirable character – and fundamental cluelessness. The…

Who’s being weak here?

By Gary Pearce January 6, 2016

It damn sure isn’t President Obama, who is unafraid to show his grief, anger and determination to combat gun violence. No. It’s the cowardly Republican politicians who are so scared of the NRA they react hysterically over the smallest steps to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. The NRA…

Independents Turn Against GOP

By Gary Pearce March 17, 2026

North Carolina voters don’t like either the Democratic or Republican parties. But Independent voters – who…

Getting the News

By Gary Pearce March 13, 2026

How do you get your news? Our statewide poll asked North Carolina voters what their primary…

MAGA-gator

By Gary Pearce March 12, 2026

Thom Tillis and Phil Berger fed the MAGA alligator. Then it ate them. Thomas Mills wrote…