Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
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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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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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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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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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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Roy Cooper could be just what the Democratic Party will need in 2028. A progressive with a Southern accent. A proven winner in a swing state. A two-term governor who leaves office even more popular than when he took office. A successful leader who – despite a gerrymandered Republican legislature – won healthcare for 600,000…
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Watergate sunk Nixon. Jimmy Carter was elected. Two years later Jesse Helms ran for reelection. In 1972, he’d been the only Republican to win a Senate election in North Carolina in the 20th century. After sweeping statewide elections in 1974 and 1976 Democrats were on a roll. Here’s a story about Jesse’s 1978 campaign from…
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We Americans are angry this Christmas. 77 million voters were so angry they elected Trump. 75 million are angry that Trump won. Many people are so angry at health-insurance companies they cheered the cold-blooded murder of a CEO on a Manhattan street. In North Carolina, Republican politicians are so angry about Democrats winning elections they…
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‘You tell a lot of good stories about Reagan, like his saying a prayer for the man who shot him,’ a friend reading my book said – then laughed, ‘But I wish you’d been kinder to Trump.’ He’s a conservative. Reagan was a conservative. Trump’s now head of the Republican Party. So he sees Trump…
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