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North Carolina - Democrats
Gary Pearce posted on June 19, 2013 12:53
Looking at the Great Republican Rollback, Democrats are tempted to attack on every front: taxes, Medicaid, teacher pay, jetty ban, Jordan Lake, Child Fatality Task Force, Rural Center, Racial Justice, voter ID, jobless benefits, campaign financing, etc., etc.
Focus, people.
In politics, to say 10 things – or even two things – is to say nothing. It can also sound like just bigger government and more spending.
The sweet spot is education.
Education is the Democratic brand in North Carolina. A series of Democratic governors and legislators took control of that franchise. Some years back – in the era of Governors Holshouser and Martin – Republicans tried to take some of it. Now they are giving it all away.
Take the gift. Focus on public schools. The university system and the community colleges. The proven value of early childhood education. Common-sense solutions like better-paid teachers and smaller class sizes. Focus on education’s importance to economic growth. Remember that education is what matters most to the growing demographics: young people, families, Hispanics and well-educated people from around the country who come here and want good schools for their families.
Don’t overstate; understate. Ask voters: “Is the Republican school plan right? 46th in teacher pay? We were 21st! Eliminate teacher aides? Bigger class sizes? Cut early-childhood education? Eliminate teacher scholarships? No extra pay for teachers with graduate degrees? Cut teacher training? Tax money for private schools? If you think that’s right, vote Republican. If you don’t, vote Democratic.”
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 18, 2013 10:47
The newspaper set out to land a Democratic shark. And landed a Republican whale instead.
The roots of the News and Observer story run back 26 years – to when Jim Martin was Governor. Back then the Democrats in the legislature decided, instead of letting Martin pass out what’s euphemistically called ‘Economic Development Grants,’ they’d set up their own independent group and pass them out themselves. That gave birth to The Rural Center. Which ripened into a classic ‘good ole boy’ network that worked (for the politicians) like a charm:
* Democratic Legislators gave Billy Ray Hall – their choice to head The Rural Center – money.
* Legislators then ‘suggested’ who Hall give grants to.
* Then Hall trooped back to the legislature to ask for more money.
Legislators liked it so well they kept right on doing it after Jim Hunt was elected, and they set up more ‘good ole boy’ funds with high-sounding names like The Golden Leaf Foundation and The Clean Water Management Trust Funds.
It all rolled along fine for over two decades then two misfortunes occurred: Republicans took control of the legislature. And Billy Ray Hall landed on the front page of the News and Observer – alongside a picture of, of all people on earth, Art Pope.
After years of opposing pork barrel giveaways Art probably never dreamed he’d open the newspaper one morning and see his picture sitting beside headlines reading: “Spending in the Shadows” – “Politicians, powerful touch NC Rural Center cash” – and “Pope acknowledged his company may have been indirectly helped.”
My suspicion is Art got famoozled or just plain ambushed, but, anyway, his cutting (as Governor McCrory’s budget director) Billy Ray Hall’s funding by 60% is pretty good proof he isn’t lusting after state money.
That said, Art’s also the one Republican Democrats love to hate so the Democrats are going to holler bloody murder.
On the other hand, the News and Observer just handed Republicans a gift: A golden opportunity to drive a spike through the heart of ‘good ole boy’ politics and pork barrel spending.
For years Billy Ray Hall’s had an unusually happy job: He gives away money. Which is almost a sure fire way to make friends – and being no fool Billy Ray long ago figured that out. Over the years he’s given tens of millions of dollars in grants at the request of Lt. Governors, State Senators, State Senators and State Representatives.
The News & Observer told a story about one grant: A State Senator asked Hall to give a $300,000 grant to help a business in his district. Billy Ray waived a few rules and awarded the grant. And the Senator raised $6,500 from partners in the business for his campaign.
Hall’s Rural Center has also poured millions into companies that don’t seem to need help at all – like Wendy’s, Kohl’s, Krispy Kreme, Bojangles’ and Walmart (which benefited from $6 million in state subsidies). And funded grants to help a golf course near Southern Pines and a video sweepstakes company in Greenville – all dressed up in a figure-leaf of effusive love for rural North Carolina, or as Hall opined to the News and Observer, “I eat, sleep, and breathe rural North Carolina.”
It’s all ‘good ole boy’ pork barreling at its most glorious but there’s one problem: Letting legislators pick who gets state money probably isn’t the best way to create jobs.
Right now, Billy Ray Hall’s sitting on $69 million in unspent state cash in the Rural Center’s bank account. So what happens next matters.
In the Governor’s budget, Art Pope proposed cutting The Rural Center’s funding 60% this year – giving Hall another $6.6 million.
The State House went in the opposite direction – instead of cutting, it increased Hall’s funding – giving him another $36 million over two years.
The Senate cut Hall’s funding to zero. And didn’t give him another penny.
Which bring us back to the N&O’s gift: The problem here isn’t Billy Ray Hall or just Billy Ray Hall, it’s ‘good ole boy’ politics and legislators setting up pork barrel funds with high sounding names to dole out state money.
Some Republicans are naturally sort of intrigued by the idea of turning those ‘good ole boy’ Democratic funds into ‘good ole boy’ Republican funds. But this is no time to succumb to temptation. Instead Republicans ought to shut ‘em down and deal ‘good ole boy’ politics a lethal blow.
They can start with The Rural Center.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 18, 2013 10:14
They don’t make Republicans like Jim Holshouser anymore.
Big pay raises for teachers? Statewide kindergartens? Coastal Management Act? Rural health centers? Expansion of the state park system? More African-Americans and women in government? Help for black business enterprises?
They’d throw him out of the party today. Actually, they did in 1976. As Rob Christensen noted, Jesse Helms’ forces booed Holshouser at the state GOP convention and denied him a seat as a delegate to the national convention. Holshouser supported President Ford; Helms was for Ronald Reagan.
Holshouser was tougher than he looked. He beat two charismatic politicians in 1972: Jim Gardner in the primary (for which North Carolina owes Holshouser a debt of thanks) and Skipper Bowles in the fall (with George McGovern’s help).
About 10 days before the November election, the 38-year-old Holshouser told the 35-year-old Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor: “I think it’s going to be you and me.”
Holshouser and Lt. Governor Jim Hunt had their fights over the next four years, but they also worked together on education, health care and environmental issues. When I interviewed Holshouser for my biography of Hunt, he laughed, “Every month or so Jim would whack me publicly, but I knew he had to do that.”
Hunt, who was looking four years down the road, also helped him fight legislators’ efforts to strip powers from the governor. Holshouser was the last Governor who couldn’t succeed himself, so they weren’t going to run against each other.
Holshouser arguably had a tougher row to hoe than any Governor in the 20th Century. The Democratic bulls in the legislature didn’t want to give him anything. The Democratic-dominated bureaucracy resisted him. The media was tough on him; he got off to a bad start when several appointees flew around the state on a helicopter firing state employees. Then came Watergate, Nixon’s resignation and the 1974 elections, which left one Republican in the state Senate and nine in the House. Then came the Republican civil war in 1976.
Holshouser kept his sanity and balance through it all. He and Terry Sanford started a law firm together. He helped Republicans build a fortress in Moore County. He worked tirelessly for UNC. He and Hunt worked together on issues like campaign reform and against private school vouchers. He suffered through his wife’s death and his own health problems.
There is a tendency now to underplay the fierce political battles of 40 years ago. They were tough and brutal. But there was a time when Republicans and Democrats worked together in North Carolina. That time is gone now, never to return.
Republicans have gone farther right than even Jesse Helms and Jim Gardner dreamed. Let them go. Democrats should remember that elections in North Carolina are won in the middle, that powerful stream where Jim Holshouser spawned and swing voters swim.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 17, 2013 12:28
The Democrats have gotten plenty fired up about the ‘Moral Monday’ protests down at the state legislature – even an old war horse like Gary, catching a whiff of grapeshot in the air, rode to the sound of the guns, defending the protestors from a broadside by Governor McCrory.
But, in another way, all this consternation seems out of place – the protests may have ignited the imaginations of political insiders but they don’t really seem to have caught the imagination of the man on the street. Instead of protests filled with high drama – like fire hoses and clashes with police – every Monday the protestors politely line up, blocking the huge metal doors into the State House and State Senate, then the Capital Police politely carry them away one by one, book ‘em, then let ‘em go.
No harm’s done. No one suffers. And everyone goes on about their business.
In addition while the demonstrators are chanting away decrying the foibles of Republican politicians, the lead protestor (leading the chants) is the one of the most colorful demagogues to come down the pike in North Carolina in years – the Reverend William Barber. North Carolina’s answer to Al Sharpton.
As a firer of broadsides Reverend Barber is second to no one – but as the face and voice of a political movement he leaves something to be desired.
The Republican’s best response to the “Moral Monday” protests isn’t to start firing back – it’s simpler: Just go on being courteous.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 17, 2013 11:11
It took the critics no time to pounce on the news that John Edwards is opening a new law firm.
A Republican friend e-mailed: “Is it a coincidence that Edwards reactivated his license, set up a speaking engagement, and leaked the idea of a new firm all within weeks of Mark Sanford's return to Washington?”
That’s a good one. But it’s time to give Edwards a break.
Yes, he screwed up royally. And he still is paying the price. He blew a good chance to be President. He has been publicly shamed. He was hounded by federal prosecutors and tried by jury. Every time he pops up his head, he gets tabloid-bashed.
But he did right by staying out of sight for a year. He has a lot to offer, especially if he helps people who have no voice or other recourse. Edwards had the courage as a presidential candidate to talk about issues that no other presidential candidate has since Robert Kennedy in 1968: people in poverty, people without health care and people without jobs and hope.
Looking back, perhaps Edwards should have taken more time to absorb the death of his son Wade. Wade died in April 1996, and Edwards started running for the Senate in December. For 10 years, he ran for office. Maybe he tried to run away from grief. In the end, he ran into trouble.
Then he had to stop running. He had to walk the path of grief, suffering and reflection – on Wade’s loss, Elizabeth’s death and his own mistakes. Now life has given him a rare gift: a second chance.
I bet he’ll do well with it.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 14, 2013 15:18
Right now there’re three great powers in Republican politics in Raleigh: The Governor, the House, and the Senate.
Now the Governor’s pretty easygoing – the kind of fellow who, when he can, will go out of his way to avoid a fight. Even when he disagrees with folks, he’s not inclined to say much bad or unkind about the other fellow.
The State House, on the other hand, can get pretty obstreperous. But, most often, the Republicans in the House are aiming their barbs at each other. A couple of weeks ago a Republican legislator let fly at Speaker Thom Tillis calling him a liberal, then another Republican legislator let fly calling the Speaker a pay-to-play politician. Last week, Republican legislators scuttled the Speaker’s tax reform plan in the House Finance Committee one day, scuttled it again in the House Appropriations Committee the next day, then on the third day they passed the whole thing (just the way the Speaker wanted it) almost unanimously.
Compared to the House, the Senate is a study in order.
The Republican Senators take their conservative ideas seriously – and they’re not prone to sit on their hands and wait for someone else to come along and do something about them. In their budget they cut state spending more than the House or the Governor, and in their tax package they cut taxes more than the House or the Governor – which has left the other Republican powers in Raleigh in a quandary. Because no Republican State Representative wants to have to go home and explain to voters that, the way he saw it, the Republican Senate cut taxes and spending too much.
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Carter Wrenn posted on June 13, 2013 16:25
The other day the News & Observer wrote a long report comparing the State House and State Senate budgets – but who, other than a certified budget expert with a PhD, could figure out the welter of numbers?
The newspaper wrote – in great detail – about who spent money on what: How the House funded a non-profit with a high sounding name (the Rural Development Center) which the folks in the House appear to view as essential to the public good but the folks in the Senate appear to view as an old-fashioned political slush fund (they refuse to spend a penny on).
But, beyond this welter of numbers, in the end this debate may boil down to one simple number: Who spent the most – the House or the Senate?
Because once that’s clear folks who want less government will support the budget that spends the least – and folks who favor more government will come down on the other side.
So what’s the number? Who spent the most? The House or the Senate?
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Gary Pearce posted on June 11, 2013 11:36
Ah, the old “outsider” shibboleth rears its head. Shades of George Wallace’s “outside agitators.” But it’s not outsiders that Republicans should worry about; it’s the changing electorate inside North Carolina.
The Republican overreaction to Moral Mondays looks shaky and out of synch. Especially when you see this photo of a policeman hauling off a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman with her hands zip-tied behind her back. Thank goodness our government is now safe from her!
Here’s a good article that captures the tension developing across the South between hard-right Republicans in power in state capitals and an increasingly younger, darker and more progressive voting population.
It’s like pressure building up between tectonic plates. Eventually there’s an earthquake.
Governor McCrory sounded like he was standing on shaky ground when he warned the state Republican convention that "Outsiders are coming in and they're going to try to do to us what they did to Scott Walker in Wisconsin."
Senator Tom Goolsby sounded like he had fallen into a 1960s time warp when he railed: “Several hundred people – mostly white, angry, aged former hippies – appeared and screeched into microphones, talked about solidarity and chanted diatribes.”
Clearly, Democrats have a lot of work to do before they can turn this energy into victory at the polling place. But, one way or another, that energy will find an outlet.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 10, 2013 10:23
Governor McCrory's style reminds me of Mike Easley: as in, the exact opposite.
Easley was notoriously private. He hated being out in public and going to events. Which is bizarre in a politician.
But Easley had real beliefs and convictions that he stood up for: smaller class sizes, early-childhood education, economic development in rural areas and small towns, and equal opportunities for all.
McCrory’s style is clear after five months. Unlike Easley, he seems to have no core beliefs, except a fuzzy-minded version of jargon-filled conservatism.
And most unlike Easley, he LOVES going places. He’ll go anywhere, anytime. Having a press conference about Dix? He’s there. Announcing a new industry he had nothing to do with? Count on Pat. Walking down Main Street and eating at a diner? Shake hands with Pat.
In other words, he’s good at the show. But the work? Not so much. So that leaves the legislature to run things, which they’re happy to do. And it leaves McCrory’s political fate – and North Carolina’s future – in the hands of some Cabinet secretaries whose grip is questionable, like Secretary Wos with Medicaid and Secretary Skvarla with the environment.
Being Governor is hard work. It’s more than showing up. It takes studying and learning. It takes listening to people and managing people. It takes a vision and persuasion. Without that kind of governor, a state can get outworked – and left behind.
By the way, Thomas Mills had a good analysis of this dynamic in his blog. I forgive him for stealing my lead above after we talked last week. But that’s fair, because I’ve stolen a lot of lines from him. And his blog is consistently great.
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Gary Pearce posted on June 04, 2013 11:18
Moral Mondays show there is still passion on the Democratic side of North Carolina’s political wars. Away from the headlines, there are more strong signs for a Democratic comeback.
There’s a long, deep bench of future candidates. In no order, and no doubt leaving out many good ones, there are Roy Cooper, Janet Cowell, Josh Stein, Ken Lewis, Cal Cunningham, Deborah Ross, Caroline Sullivan, Grier Martin, Anthony Foxx, Eric Mansfield, Rachel Hunt Nilender.
There are groups filling the leadership vacuum left by the Democratic Party headquarters: Progress NC, Lillians List, the League of Conservation Voters, anti-gun violence groups, Bob Etheridge’s Old North State Caucus, Sam Spencer and the Young Democrats, William Barber and the NAACP, Yevonne Brannon and Great Schools in Wake. Others are bubbling up.
There are nonpartisan groups like Bob Phillips and Jane Pinsky at Common Cause and Bob Hall at Democracy South.
There is an impressive cohort of smart, seasoned operatives and consultants: Thomas Mills, Brad Crone, Reid Overcash, Tori Taylor and many more that I don’t know well enough yet, but will.
There is an army of committed, digitally connected young people that the late Jamie Kirk Hahn and Nation Hahn began organizing in the gay-marriage campaign. That fight could turn out to be to North Carolina Democrats what the 1964 Goldwater campaign was to the Republican Party in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
A party with this kind of talent – in a state with our history and today’s out-of-synch leadership – can mount an electoral revolution. Especially paired with the passion and commitment that thousands of people are showing on Mondays.
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Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The Charlotte Observer says: “Carter Wrenn and Gary Pearce don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But they both love North Carolina and know its politics inside and out.”
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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