Governor Cooper Should Probably Sign the Budget
Republican legislative leaders have clearly been playing a double game with the state budget. On one side, they've finally extended the hand of cooperation to Governor Cooper, with whom they have otherwise spent the last five years in pitched battles. But at the same...
The GOP upheaval
Congressman Madison Cawthorn announced he’s switching district to run in the newly drawn 13th district that was assumed to have been drawn for House Speaker Tim Moore. Cleveland County, Moore’s home, is in the middle of the district that stretches from Charlotte to...
Thoughts on Veterans Day in a Moment of Racial Reckoning
Simeon Oxendine flew over 30 missions against the Nazis during World War II. A few years after he returned home to Robeson County, North Carolina, he and his people, the Lumbees, would be targeted for intimidation and a cross burning by the Ku Klux Klan. Oxendine went...
Let’s drop the mandates and let partisan approaches deliver partisan outcomes
The pandemic has broken down along partisan lines. In the post vaccine world, COVID is disproportionately harming Republican areas with the death rate in red states three times that of blue states. Two years of resisting any sort of mitigation efforts while casting...
It’s Time for North Carolina to Abolish the Death Penalty
When, after years of appeals filed by overworked lawyers and an isolated, violent existence in a gamut of brutal Texas prisons, Cameron Todd Willingham finally met his fate, the state of Texas listed his cause of death as "Homicide." Over 1,000 human beings have been...
Greed, Grifting, and Speaker Tim Moore
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore is hardly a beloved figure in Raleigh circles, but he commands the loyalty of his top lieutenants. Knowing that their maestro aspired to hold seat in Congress, top N.C. House mapmakers drew a juicy, ill-formed district in the...
The Evolution of the RINO
If Richard Burr is a RINO, it's hard to imagine what is an elephant. For the past 25 years Burr has been the definition of a rock-solid Southern conservative, voting uniformly right on economic, social and military issues. Facing a potential primary challenge in 2010,...
What Democrats should do next
Democrats had a roller coaster of a week. The began by having tough elections in Virginia and New Jersey and ended it by passing a historic infrastructure bill with bipartisan support. The warnings of the Virginia election still stand, but Biden can now claim that...
More thoughts on Virginia, part 1
The takes from Virginia keep coming and I've still got more. That said, I think we need to remember that an election, much like a poll, is a snapshot in time. Right now, Democrats are struggling with a difficult national environment, some of their own making and some...
Where is the Backlash Against NC REpublican Authoritarianism?
North Carolina's frontier origins bred a resistance to overweening authority. The earliest Euro-Americans to settle in the state were small farmers who could no longer afford land in the colony of Virginia, and so spilled across the border into the Albemarle region to...
Virginia Sends Tremors Through the Political Environment
Republican Glenn Youngkin broke his party's decade-long losing streak in Virginia last night by defeating Terry McAuliffe for governor. While his margin of victory was small, at two points, he overcame years of political trends and sealed an impressive victory....
Running the last campaign
PoliticsNC has offered several takes on the elections last night. Below is mine. Last night confirmed my belief that Democrats are really bad at politics. Not only did they lose the governor’s race in Virginia, they are barely hanging onto the governor’s race in...