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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The Past, Never Past, Just Keeps Repeating Itself

By Carter Wrenn January 10, 2025

The Past, Never Past, Just Keeps Repeating Itself Off and running, campaign racing down the road, Thom Tillis ran head on into two threats: Can he beat Roy Cooper in a General Election? Can he win a primary if Trump opposes him? Three years ago, flailing in the primary, running for Senate, Congressman Ted Budd…

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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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Risky Business

By Carter Wrenn July 3, 2024

Born in Moscow, Boris Epshteyn came to America when he was 11 years old, settled in…

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Biden Politics

By Carter Wrenn July 2, 2024

Biden opened the border, plummeted in polls, trailed Trump – about facing got tougher on the…

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Signs

By Carter Wrenn July 1, 2024

Out to save the world from climate change, crossing a green field carrying canisters, a troupe…

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