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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TV Alert

By Gary Pearce August 5, 2011

For those of you who don’t have a date Saturday night, Carter and I will be on WRAL’s “On the Record” show at 7 pm. If you have something better to do, you can watch the 30-minute program online.   We’re talking about politics, of course: veto overrides, redistricting and the 2012 elections.

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Outlook for Obama

By Gary Pearce August 5, 2011

Public Policy Polling is bullish on President Obama’s reelection prospects. I’m not.   Tom Jensen at PPP wrote this week:   “A broad theme has been emerging in our state by state Presidential polling over the last couple months: if the Republicans nominate Mitt Romney it’s a tossup. And if they nominate anyone else it’s…

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Bad Outcome for Democrats

By Gary Pearce August 4, 2011

Democrats hoped the debt-ceiling narrative would play out like this: Tea Party extremists nearly drive America over the cliff.   Instead, it went like this: Government is broken and doesn’t work.   That’s a big problem for Democrats. Because voters see them as the government party and Republicans as the anti-government party.   Democrats always…

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Battling Extremism

By Gary Pearce August 3, 2011

The headline and teaser on Politico today read: “W.H. counter-radicalization plan due: The administration plans to roll out its new strategy for countering extremism in the U.S. Wednesday.”   Given how the debt-ceiling fight turned out, it’s about time the White House came up with a strategy for combating the Tea Party.

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Holden On

By Gary Pearce August 3, 2011

Can Holden Thorp escape being sacked by an all-out Rams Club blitz?   Even worse, he’s catching hell both ways: from people mad he fired Butch Davis and from people mad he didn’t fire Davis earlier.   No good deed goes unpunished.   Here’s the story I hear: Davis’ firing was Thorp’s doing, not new…

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Moody’s and the Meltdown

By Carter Wrenn August 2, 2011

Barney Frank may be more liberal than Harry Reid or Obama combined but he doesn’t mind marching right into the lion’s den at Fox News and taking on any anchorman in sight.   The other day in an interview Neil Cavuto put Frank on the spot, asking if the Democrats’ brinksmanship on the debt ceiling…

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Chickens**t

By Gary Pearce August 2, 2011

Front-page headlines and much gnashing of teeth greeted the news that a Ukrainian billionaire pulled the plug on the jobs of 1,000 North Carolina chicken plant workers last week.   But the stories missed the irony that a TAPster caught:   “If, instead, a Ukrainian billionaire announced he was building poultry processing plants in central…

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The Glass Debt Ceiling

By Gary Pearce August 2, 2011

A TAPster passes along a link raising the question: What if Congress was more than 13 percent women?   A NPR commentator is quoted as saying: “In experiments, when men feel there are lots of other men around, they tend to pose more, they tend to talk tough, they become shortsighted, they take bigger bets.…

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Super Power

By Gary Pearce August 1, 2011

If reincarnation is real, I want to come back as a credit-rating agency. They apparently are the most powerful beings on the planet.     They even forced Congress to act!

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Education Governor

By Gary Pearce March 13, 2025

With a better General Assembly, Josh Stein could join Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford on North…

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The N&O Story

By Gary Pearce March 12, 2025

Once upon a time, there was a great and powerful newspaper: The News & Observer. Everybody…

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How Democrats Win Again

By Gary Pearce March 10, 2025

The shouting, sign-waving and cane-wielding by congressional Democrats at the State of the Union isn’t a…

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