Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Will Governor McCrory stand up to the rising Republican revolt against Common Core (they call it “Obamacore”)? Rushing to pander to the Tea Party, Republican legislators who once embraced the standards now denounce them. The philosophy seems to be: “Everybody should be as dumb as us.” Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch summed…
Thom Tillis is already vulnerable over the sex scandal in his office, and he will invite more scandals if he remains Speaker in the short session. Those scandals will be about legislation, campaign contributions and pay-to-play. It’s obvious why he wants to stay as Speaker: So he can raise money – either for a…
Watching the Republican Senate debate, it would not have been surprising if all four candidates had sworn that the earth is flat. Because they went right over the edge. You saw four candidates who would pay any price, bear any burden, destroy any branch of government, defend any outlandish right to have a gun…
UNC-Chapel Hill just can’t get out of the academic fraud tar pit. The harder the school struggles, the stickier it gets. First UNC got a new chancellor. Then a new vice chancellor for communications and public affairs, whose charge is clearly to get the school past this mess. They said all the right things,…
Democrats are no doubt playing in the GOP Senate primary, but some of the parallels being drawn may be exaggerated. Rob Christensen compared Democrats’ strategy against Thom Tillis to what Democrats did in Missouri in 2012 to help re-elect Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. There, Republicans nominated a Tea Party nut who promptly…
When hundreds of teachers leave in the middle of the school year – in one of the nation’s best places to live and one of its best school systems – we have a crisis. But Republicans are in denial, and Democrats have a winning issue for this fall. About one out of every 15…
Harry Reid’s new ad is hardball with a thud. Here’s Reid’s story in a nutshell: He says Thom Tillis shared an apartment with his Chief of Staff, who had an affair with a married lobbyist, and then resigned. And Tillis said he knew nothing. Then, a week later, another Tillis staffer resigned after having had…
While Governor McCrory and his patrons at the John Locke Foundation were bragging about tax cuts on Tax Day, Republicans in the Legislative Building were digging an even deeper teacher-pay hole for themselves and McCrory. The N&O’s page one headline said: “Broad teacher raises unlikely.” McCrory proclaimed, “we’re leaving a little extra money in…
Thom Tillis is a lot like Mitt Romney, and he learned one big thing from Romney’s 2012 campaign: Don’t get on the same stage and same page with the nuts in his party. So Tillis may be making the right strategic decision by ducking the WRAL debate. It’s better to look chicken than to…
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…