Co-opted
The debate over teacher pay raises is over, at least as far as the general public is concerned. The Republicans announced they would roll out a plan next week and now the N.C. Chamber, the advocacy arm of the GOP, has laid out their vision. In a full-page ad in the...
Dissing Tillis
CORRECTION: This piece originally said that Tillis was not recognized as a Defender of Liberty by the American Conservative Union. In fact, he was. Conservative Republicans and their allies are continuing to punish North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis. Tillis has...
North Carolina Democrats: From tobacco fields to cul-de-sacs
For the past few months, I’ve been writing about the civil war within the Republican Party between the establishment and true believers. Now, we’re seeing a different kind of split play out in the Democratic Party. It’s less about ideology than it is about the...
Clay Aiken, for real
Hats off to Clay Aiken and his political team. In a few short hours, they took a campaign that could have easily become little more than the butt of late night jokes and made it a contender, at least for the Democratic nomination for Congress in North Carolina’s 2nd...
Delusions of grandeur
Conventional wisdom has it that Mark Harris is Thom Tillis’s chief opponent. However, Greg Brannon keeps making inroads. Yesterday, FreedomWorks, the conservative grassroots operation that helped turn the Tea Party into an organized political force, endorsed the Cary...
More unsolicited advice for Democrats
Democrats and their allies need to take a step back and look at their situation. At the state level, they are the minority party with very little influence over legislation. In the upcoming election, the Hagan re-election campaign will likely have as much impact on...
Putting the poll thing together
Yesterday, Civitas released a poll that indicates the GOP attacks on Kay Hagan are working. Hagan’s favorability and job performance rating are both upside down. In addition, the percentage of people who say they will definitely vote for someone else is also up....
Thom Tillis and his Tea Party problem
No wonder Thom Tillis is avoiding all those forums. While he may be angering his base, he’s avoiding the crazy topics like whether or not to impeach Obama. Tillis understands that taking a stand to impeach the president makes him unelectable in the general election...
The perils of the GOP Obamacare strategy
Earlier this week, U.S. Senator Richard Burr and a couple of his fellow Senators rolled out a new plan to replace Obamacare. They claimed it would take the best of health care reform while scrapping all the bad parts. Now, just a few days later, the Senator and his...
Welcome to the fray
Roy Cooper released a video yesterday that some are heralding as the first ad of the 2016 race for governor in North Carolina. However, it's not as much about 2016 as it is about 2014. The spot starts out pounding on the GOP for its embarrassing record during the 2013...
