Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
As CNN’s Jeff Greenfield said so memorably late on Election Night 2000, we have now left the gravitational pull of earth. This presidential race has defied all predictions. Especially the prediction that it would all be over after Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday. Instead, we now boldly go where no race has gone before – or…
Three recent developments in the Governor’s race sharpen the perception that Beverly Perdue’s campaign is not in the same league as Richard Moore’s. First was the Perdue debacle over Randy Parton. Then Moore came out against Duke’s Cliffside coal plant. Perdue panicked, then meekly took the same position. (But neither candidate, as The N&O pointed…
Bob Orr is a smart guy. Even though he’s a Republican. He may be right that North Carolina would be better off with an appointed Superintendent of Public Instruction. But it ain’t gonna happen. The problem is simple. And it simply cannot be overcome: Making the Superintendent appointed requires a constitutional amendment. That means a…
The fall of John Edwards and the rise of John McCain prove that issues don’t matter that much in primary elections. Character counts. Now that Edwards is out, everybody says he drove the Democratic policy debate: poverty, universal health care, global warming and Iraq. He did. And he lost. Look at McCain. On issues, he…
North Carolina stands to both lose and gain from John Edwards dropping out. We lose a front-row seat in an exciting presidential race. The biggest losers are reporters like Rob Christensen and Mark Johnson. Now they have to stay home and cover dull races like Senate and Governor. But maybe – if things work out…
Josh Stein managed John Edwards’ Senate campaign in 1998. This year Josh is running for State Senate in Wake County, and he learned the most important lesson in politics: the winner in the money race usually wins the vote race. Stein says he has outraised his opponent, Jack Nichols, $132,850 to $50,256, and has three…
Seven of eight members of the Raleigh City Council live south of the 440 Beltline. So, maybe, it’s no surprise their attention is less than riveted on North Raleigh. For the first time in 30 years, the city was poised to build a gym and community center in North East Raleigh on city owned property.…
Back in the early 1980s, Jim Hunt chaired a commission that changed the Democratic Party’s presidential-nomination process. What he did then may matter this year. Hunt’s commission – whose staff director was David Price, then executive director of the state party – created a class of “superdelegates.” These are elected officials (Senators, Congressmen and Governors)…
When Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, he announced it was a victory for change. If so, it appears while African-Americans were overwhelmingly for change, other Democrat voters were not – because 80% of the African-Americans voted for Obama, while 75% of the white Democrats voted for Edwards or Hillary. Given the first real…
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…
A reassuring lesson from our trip to Germany and Czechia is that dictators, despots and tyrants…