Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
This year’s Republican presidential primaries haven’t been debates about issues. They’ve been about character. Not character as in honesty and integrity. But character as in biography. Who you are. Not where you stand. Mike Huckabee is an example. There are, roughly, three groups of voters in the Republican primaries: Evangelicals. Economic Conservatives. And Moderates. Huckabee…
Last week’s Republican debate started out as a sleeper. No controversial stands. No sparring. No real debate at all. Fred Smith said he was best qualified because of his life experience. Pat McCrory said he was the man to deal with a crisis. Bill Graham said he’d listen to the people. Bob Orr explained he’s…
The jinx was on Pat McCrory last week. When his campaign emailed out a press release and misspelled the word governor (spelling it governer) a little contrition would have solved the problem. But McCrory’s Campaign Manager, Victoria Smith, compounded the error with a second mistake, saying the misspelling was sabotage – they’d been ‘hacked.’ Then,…
Fred Smith didn’t waste any time welcoming Charlotte Mayer Pat McCrory to the governor’s race. His response to McCrory’s announcement: He called McCrory a “tax and spend liberal” who “probably ought to be in the other party.” There’s a point to Smith’s bluntness. Pat McCrory is largely known outside Charlotte. Smith means to correct that.…
Forty years ago, the Democratic Party blew up over race. Can it happen again? In 1968, Richard Nixon and George Wallace invited conservative whites to leave the Democratic Party. They did – in droves. Today, Democrats seem at risk of fracturing over race again. It got this bad: Some Democrats seriously suspect that Hillary Clinton…
Hold the mayo on the John Edwards Is Toast Special. It is unlikely that Edwards will win the Democratic nomination. But this race has already seen five unlikelies – the rises of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee and the resurrections of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Four reasons to watch Edwards: Money. His…
Dear Pat: Victoria Smith is doing a fine job as your campaign manager. Don’t let her go. You’re the Democrats’ biggest worry in the Governor’s race. You’re the only Republican who is moderate enough to give us a run in November. North Carolinians may elect Senators in the mold of Jesse Helms (Fred Smith) or…
Now Beverly Perdue’s new TV ad talks about her support for Smart Start. I take great pride in this. Not that I had anything to do with Governor Hunt developing the program. But I did come up with the name. I didn’t steal it from the cereal. Our Smart Start came first. In fact, I’m…
Jack Nichols, running for State Senate in Wake County, has an interesting strategy. He has been running TV ads on cable news during busy political times. His consultants, Mike Davis and Perry Woods, say the ads are aimed at high-information primary voters. The strategy makes sense. So does the message: Jack is a progressive who…
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…