Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
General Tata better bring his helmet. The new WakeCounty schools superintendent is already taking incoming. He might be starting the job with half of WakeCounty mad at him. People who don’t like the board’s (sometime) majority welcome his selection like a poke in the eye with a stick: a Fox-commentating, Sarah Palin-admiring, conservative-blogging…
North Carolina’s own Senator Kay Hagan climbed up on her high horse in the Charlotte Observer the other day and denounced the fiscal irresponsibility of the $858 billion tax-cut bill – which she voted against. In her op-ed lambasting government spending Hagan thundered: “On Dec. 1, the bipartisan debt commission released its…
One of my favorite questions to ask people when I’m speaking about my Jim Hunt book is: “How many of you were living in North Carolina in 1960?” I use 1960 because it was a seminal year in Hunt’s life – and North Carolina’s. It marks a neat half-century, for one thing. It was…
Floyd Brown’s a grown man who has the mental capacity of a seven year old boy; seventeen years ago he was arrested and confessed to an SBI Agent who wrote down his confession word for word, that he’d murdered an elderly woman in Anson County when he broke into her home. He was never…
Chrissy Pearson, Governor Perdue’s communications director, took me to task for my blog “Smile, Gov.” (But she did it nicely. Her email began: “Season’s greetings.”) I’m happy to oblige any elected official – or their representative – who reads my blog and wants to respond. So here is Chrissy’s full message: “I’m sorry…
Two stories on the N&O’s Page One Sunday struck me as related. One was the fight over a chicken processing plant in Nash County. The other was whether a state government “reset” can balance the budget. Like many things these days, the linkage hit me because of the work I’ve done on my Jim…
Off and running hard for reelection the other day Governor Perdue charged over to the legislature to confront the newly elected Republican Majority and right off she threw the gauntlet down challenging the Republicans to limit the legislative session to 45 days and to appoint an independent commission to handle redistricting both of which Republicans…
This quote by Governor Perdue on WRAL captured her fundamental political problem. “I’m going to make a lot of people unhappy, and I’m sorry.” First, let’s recall what people look for in leaders. It’s not just what they say, it’s how they say it. The most successful – Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Hunt…
I used to think the instant runoff was confusing. Now I know it is. There’s nothing instant about it. We still don’t know for sure who won the N.C. Court of Appeals race where it was used this year. The best analysis I’ve seen is by my friend Reid Overcash of Raleigh, who worked in…
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…