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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Déjà vu All Over Again

By Carter Wrenn June 5, 2023

DeSantis announced he’d fire Christopher Wray – who Trump made head of the FBI; Trump War Room shot back tweeting, ‘DeSantis voted to confirm Wray in 2017.’ DeSantis War Room pounced: ‘Wray was confirmed by the Senate’ – in other words DeSantis was in the House so he never voted on Wray’s confirmation. Trump popped…

Fall In

By Gary Pearce June 5, 2023

Like President Biden, I fell this weekend. And I’m only 74. He tripped on an ill-placed sandbag. I slipped on a slick boardwalk in Manteo. He fell more gracefully than I did. My feet went out from under me, and I ended up flat on my back. No damage done, except for some soreness and…

Forgotten Stories from our Past: Churchill Didn’t say a Word

By Carter Wrenn June 1, 2023

Descending a flight of stairs wearing a pair of Italian high heels, Winston Churchill’s sixty-seven-year-old mother fell, broke her ankle, gangrene set in, her leg was amputated above the knee, a vein in her thigh hemorrhaged, she died. Two months later Churchill’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Marigold, throat infected, inflamed with tonsilitis, sighed, ‘So tired, so tired’…

Freedom Versus Control

By Gary Pearce June 1, 2023

Ron DeSantis may be more dangerous to America than Trump. On Memorial Day, when we honored the men and women who died protecting our freedom and liberty, DeSantis told Fox News that as President, “I will be able to destroy leftism in this country.” “Destroy” leftism? DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric reflects his record in Florida: banning…

Revisiting Evil

By Gary Pearce May 31, 2023

Since our Danube cruise, my thoughts keep going back to three Holocaust memorials – and the line between good and evil in people. In Budapest, we saw the “Shoes on the Danube Bank,” (pictured) a memorial to 20,000 Jews who were rounded up and executed beside the river in 1944-45. They were ordered to take…

Selling NC ‘24

By Gary Pearce May 30, 2023

North Carolina Democrats have a big selling job to do for 2024, and Anderson Clayton is selling hard. The state party chair was on ABC News’ GMA3 last week (link below) selling the idea that President Biden and other Democrats can win her state next year – and telling how to do it: “I really…

Forgotten Stories from our Past: Franklin Roosevelt’s Prayer

By Carter Wrenn May 30, 2023

After twenty-four hours in labor his mother was given an overdose of chloroform – Franklin Roosevelt was born blue, limp, lifeless. A doctor gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Prey to illness as a child, he suffered diseases throughout his life. He married a shy awkward girl, his cousin Eleanor, who saw sex “an ordeal devoid of…

Shut up, Gene?

By Gary Pearce May 27, 2023

Some North Carolina Democrats agree with Republican legislators on one thing: Gene Nichol should shut up. Or at least tone it down and turn down the volume. Ted Vaden writes in The Assembly that Nichol is “back in the spotlight, hurling his supercharged invective in a new book that surveys the changes that have occurred…

GOP Control Freaks

By Gary Pearce May 25, 2023

How did the party of freedom, individual responsibility and limited government become the party of censorship, Big Brother and government control? Republican legislators in North Carolina, like their colleagues in other states and like Republican governors Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, want to control many things in our lives. Control what…

Getting the News

By Gary Pearce March 13, 2026

How do you get your news? Our statewide poll asked North Carolina voters what their primary…

MAGA-gator

By Gary Pearce March 12, 2026

Thom Tillis and Phil Berger fed the MAGA alligator. Then it ate them. Thomas Mills wrote…

Enough is Enough

By Gary Pearce March 11, 2026

Exactly 80 years ago, in 1946, Republicans took control of Congress with a simple message: “Had…