Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The real news in The News & Observer/Charlotte Observer poll is that Hillary Clinton could pull an upset in North Carolina. You are forgiven if you missed it, because the N&O’s coverage obscured the head-to-head: Obama 32, Clinton 26 and undecided 39. The 22-paragraph story made only one mention – and that in the first…
Read MoreSpeaking of polls, a pollster with North Carolina experience – Geoff Garin – is now one of two message czars for the Clinton campaign. Garin – with old Clinton hand Howard Wolfson – replaces the disgraced and conflicted Mark Penn Garin knows North Carolina. He goes back to Jim Hunt’s 1984 race against Jesse Helms,…
Read MoreFor Democrats, this is supposed to be our can’t-lose year – in North Carolina and nationally. But the bad news keeps piling up in Raleigh. You can just see the Republican ads this fall. First there was the mental-health debacle. Now it’s the probation system’s inability to keep up with dangerous criminals. We have the…
Read MoreThe most ludicrous assertion made in Raleigh this week (no mean feat) was the suggestion by disgraced Rep. Thomas Wright’s attorney that avenging blogger Joe (the Sledgehammer) Sinsheimer targeted Wright because Wright fell “out of favor with the power structure in the North Carolina House.” Ludicrous because Sinsheimer’s crusade against corruption was about as welcome…
Read MoreRob Christensen may be right that the Bubba vote – male and female – will decide North Carolina for Clinton or Obama. That’s why the two old Bubba Buddies from their days together as attorneys general – Bill Clinton and Rufus Edmisten – have been campaigning together (a thought that gives one pause). But black…
Read MoreWhen we last visited The Case of the Missing Emails it was a tangled web. It all started when The News and Observer reported the Department of Health had wasted $400 million – it was supposed to spend to provide health care to the mentally ill. Next, the Department of Health’s spokeswoman told The News…
Read MoreGovernor Easley doesn’t need – and can’t win – this fight with The News & Observer over whether PIOs were told to delete emails. The paper all but called the Governor’s lawyer a liar – on the front page and in a news story, not an editorial. The PIOs’ notes seem clear: “Public records request…
Read MoreWhen it comes to managing North Carolina’s state government, the Easley Administration is beginning to sound like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. There’s been one mishap after another. The Department of Transportation wasted $30,000 on a ferry junket to watch the tall ships sail around Beaufort Harbor. The Department of Health and Human Service…
Read MoreIt looked for awhile like Fred Smith was doing some adroit foot work in the Republican primary, moving to Pat McCrory’s right. (Or, conversely, and more lethally, moving Mayor McCrory to the left). But, now, McCrory is doing some footwork of his own – moving just where Smith doesn’t want him on an issue Smith…
Read More
Fifty-four years ago this week, on May 8, 1970, 4,500 students from nearly a dozen colleges…
Read More
A peasant’s son Martin Luther never knew the year he was born. Believing children were wicked…
Read More
After Rodrigo Borgia died, soft-spoken but cunning Leo de Medici became pope, after bribing cardinals ended…
Read More