Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Some two-score years ago, I started going to the National Governors Association winter meetings in Washington. These were at the time great bipartisan policy wonk-fests, three days of earnest discussions about issues, ideas and innovations, with plenty of after-hours barroom political gossip. Three young governors stood out at the time (during the day sessions,…
Carter and I spoke Wednesday at a post-election panel sponsored by the Public School Forum, a group of education advocates. I suggested they have nothing to worry about in the coming legislature, since Republicans ran as Democrats, promising to raise teacher pay to the national average and improve the public schools. Tom Murry, who…
The would-be undertakers in the media and even within the Democratic Party need to cancel their burial plans. The patient’s charts show a strong pulse. North Carolina is the only state in the South – and one of few nationally – where Democrats gained legislative seats despite the national wave. Check out this chart…
After last Tuesday, Democrats need a psychiatrist as much as a political strategist. Here’s helpful advice from my old friend and pollster extraordinaire Harrison Hickman, titled “Top 10 Least Helpful Democratic Excuses.” Harrison, an NC native and CEO of Hickman Analytics, Inc. in Washington, says, “To learn from our landslide defeat, Democrats should avoid…
“Anybody who says they knew this was coming – Democrat or Republican, pundit or pollster – is lying,” a veteran campaign operative said Wednesday The polls all missed it. Close races turned into routs. Narrow Democratic wins turned into Republican wins. Turnout models missed the mark, Early-voting hype was misleading. Tillis consultant Paul…
North Carolina Democrats should push the pause, not panic, button. It was, as George Bush famously said after the 2006 midterm, “a thumpin’.” It hurts like hell, especially when the other team spikes the ball and strikes a pose in the end zone. The temptation is to form up the circular firing squad and…
The provost was heartbroken, the former faculty Chairwoman felt betrayed, and the poor tenured lambs on the faculty felt humiliated which, at the faculty meeting, bred a fervor not unlike a foot-washing Baptist in pursuit of the Devil which, of course, led to the demand the sinners – who’d caused the heartbreak and humiliation –…
When you read breathless stories about sophisticated high-tech voter-turnout operations, be skeptical. I’ve been reading, with some concern, that Republicans are catching up with the vaunted Democratic ground operation. We’re told about canvassers fanning out 12 hours a day, seven days a week, armed with hand-held computers, linked in to a central brain that…
It’s hard to sort out: Kaci Hickox sees healing the ill in Africa as a noble calling but protecting Americans from Ebola as pure villainy. Ole Obama rides to Hickox’s rescue, saying Chris Christie’s a mean-hearted varmint stigmatizing heroes with his quarantine then, in his next breath, Obama announces the Army’s going to quarantine soldiers…
Some progressives groaned when Governor Josh Stein announced a bipartisan “Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education”…
North Carolina voters don’t like either the Democratic or Republican parties. But Independent voters – who…
How do you get your news? Our statewide poll asked North Carolina voters what their primary…