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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Devil’s Whispers

By Carter Wrenn January 9, 2025

One voice roared the man who killed fourteen people in New Orleans was angry because he was broke; nodding, another pointed out he’d also lost his job. The man in Las Vegas, another said, blew up a bomb in front of a hotel because he suffered from PTSD. Psychologists, sociologists, professors, wizards in newspapers pointing…

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Burying Dignity

By Gary Pearce January 9, 2025

America inters a decent, honest President and inaugurates a dishonest, indecent President. Jimmy Carter called on the best in us. Donald Trump calls up the worst in us. Carter had humility, empathy and compassion. Trump calls that “weak” and “woke.” Carter called it living his Christian faith. When he was running for President in 1976,…

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Inaugural Punch

By Gary Pearce January 7, 2025

Governor Josh Stein likely will seek common ground with Republicans in his inaugural speech Saturday. Instead, I wish he’d punch them in the nose from the get-go and pummel them across the stage until he sits down. I wish he’d say, “The greatest threat to North Carolina’s strength, growth and progress in the coming four…

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A Price?

By Carter Wrenn January 6, 2025

Before the election, looking from Trump to Harris, a lot of my friends without hesitation thought, Trump, amen. Trump fit their political world – he’d avoid foreign wars, cure the economy But hardly a soul asked, ‘What’s more important in a president: Politics or Character?’ Sitting in the White House, how does a president’s character…

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Finding a Genius

By Carter Wrenn January 3, 2025

Happy, naming cabinet members, on his way back to the White House, Trump says he sees phenomenal days ahead. Oddly, there’s one word you hardly ever hear these days: Covid. People like to forget hard times. But Covid was Trump’s toughest challenge. How’d he do? When the plague first reared its head he told us…

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Governor Stein

By Gary Pearce January 2, 2025

Because he grew up in Chapel Hill and went to Ivy League colleges, Josh Stein sometimes is portrayed as a departure from past Democratic governors in North Carolina. He’s actually the latest in a political bloodline that goes back to Terry Sanford in 1960 and runs through Jim Hunt, Mike Easley and Roy Cooper: a…

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Strange Times

By Carter Wrenn January 1, 2025

He married, divorced, married again, divorced again, married his second wife again (his third marriage), divorced her again, had children with 2 women he didn’t marry, had 12 children in all. When a Twitter post rapped him, angry he tweeted back, Take a step back and F*%# YOURSELF in the face. Answering that angry tweet,…

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Jimmy Carter

By Gary Pearce December 31, 2024

The peanut farmer from Plains was a blessing to North Carolina Democrats in 1976. In 1972, we had suffered our worst losses ever, thanks to President Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection over George McGovern. The tide swept in Jesse Helms as the state’s first Republican Senator and Jim Holshouser as the first Republican governor in the…

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Hitting the Nail on the Head

By Carter Wrenn December 27, 2024

Staring at a title, tempted by two words, I clicked – it looked like a knife fight was coming. Between an atheist and an evangelical Christian. Growing up in Kentucky, David French went to a small Christian college, went on to Harvard Law School, served in the army during the Iraq War, came home with…

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1984 in Raleigh

By Gary Pearce March 24, 2006

If you haven’t seen the hilariously clumsy censorship job that the North Carolina Department of Labor…

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The Election System is Rigged – Against the Voters

By Gary Pearce March 23, 2006

Apparently we Democrats have lost our best hope of beating Congressman Robin Hayes. Iraq war vet…

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Will Jim Black Survive?

By Carter Wrenn March 23, 2006

There are two words that strike fear in a politician’s heart: Grand Jury. Especially when they…

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