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Entries for 'Carter Wrenn'
Carter Wrenn posted on April 11, 2013 14:52
Years ago some crafty Democratic gnome sitting cloistered in a cell pouring over reams of demographics (trying to figure out the political inclinations of people who didn’t vote) had a revelation: If those folks did vote, a lot more Democrats were going to get elected.
Now, in a way, that sounds odd (after all, How could he know?) but as far as political theory goes he was standing on rock-solid ground. Demographics seldom lie.
Of course there was no way to keep an earthshaking fact like that secret – word of the gnome’s discovery quickly reached Democratic legislators. About the kindest thing to say about what happened next is: Those legislators started passing laws to help themselves get elected – they passed a ‘motor-voter’ law so that every time anyone over eighteen years old applied for a driver’s license they were also handed a voter registration form. But, to the Democrats’ chagrin, while registration soared, most of the new voters never even bothered to go to the polls.
It was a setback but the Democrats legislators took it in stride. They went back to work and tackled the problem from a different direction, writing a whole new set of laws – they passed ‘early voting’ and ‘same-day registration’ and ‘Sunday voting’ and, suddenly, in 2008 what they’d been dreaming of actually happened: Those non-voters flocked to the polls and for the first time in forty-eight years – in the same election – the Democrats elected a Governor, a U.S. Senator and the Democratic candidate for President won North Carolina.
The Democrats must have felt the Promised Land was within reach but then the unexpected happened: Republicans won the next two elections. Suddenly, Republicans were in control of the State House and Senate, and – the way they saw it – if Democrats could pass laws to elect Democrats, they could repeal them, or better still, add a few new laws to elect Republicans. They rolled out bills to repeal Sunday voting, end same-day registration, end straight-party voting and curtail early voting. Then proposed laws to make it tougher for college students to vote and to make absentee voting easier (since Republicans vote more often by absentee than Democrats).
There’s a kind of rough justice in all that but looked another way it’s also proof of an unkind truth: One bad deed begets another and, after that, it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with no remorse anywhere.
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 10, 2013 11:10
My grandmother used to say, ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop’ – and while legislators are waiting for the Senate to introduce its budget over in the General Assembly, they’re making a strong case that temptation and too much time on your hands is as deadly a combination as ever:
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One legislator sponsored a bill to make teaching cursive handwriting mandatory in public schools, saying teaching cursive would develop brain activity in third graders and help them read historical documents like the Constitution – which a Google search shows, is available in print on the Internet in 123,000 places.
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Two legislators declared the 1st Amendment (and the Freedom of Religion Clause) of the Constitution doesn’t apply to North Carolina, and that under the 10th Amendment, the legislature can nullify federal laws they don’t like – but they missed one crucial fact: The last time the state legislature tried to nullify the Constitution it didn’t work out too well.
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A Senator filed a bill to prohibit male students and female students from rooming together in dormitories at UNC – it’s hard to argue with that, but a better question to ask might be how on earth UNC ended up with a Chancellor who could be gulled into believing it made common sense to allow gay men to room with straight women in UNC dormitories?
So, with the time they had on their hands, legislators wrote bills that enraged women, nullified the Constitution, stimulated brain activity, separated gay men and straight women at UNC, and threatened FBI agents – is it any wonder (according to the latest polls) only 23% of the voters approve of the way the state legislature is doing its job?
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 28, 2013 12:08
With much fanfare just before she left office Governor Perdue announced she’d made a grand deal to lease Raleigh all of the land at Dix Hospital for 99 years. When the deal landed in the newspapers, a friend, who’s spent a good part of his life buying and selling real estate, called, laughed and said, 325 acres of land in downtown Raleigh is worth a lot more than $500,000 a year. Then he added, How on earth do you reckon they got around the requirement the state has to get competitive bids when it sells land?
There was much celebrating in Raleigh – about the only person who had a discouraging word to say was Senate Leader Phil Berger who allowed Perdue’s deal just didn’t pass the smell test.
For the next three months peace reigned then with its usual delicacy the State Senate charged out of its corner swinging – it was like a blitzkrieg: Boom, boom, boom – a Senator filed a bill to kill the deal, held a hearing and the bill passed.
The fur flew: A line of prominent Raleigh business leaders (who liked Perdue’s deal) proclaimed they were horrified, just horrified, the state would break its word and renege on a contract – no honorable person, they said, would do that.
Of course, being called dishonorable (by folks who’d just cut a sweetheart deal with the state) didn’t sit too well with the folks in the Senate. When business leader Jim Goodman testified at the Senate hearing he said breaking that contract was “not honorable” so many times it rubbed Senator Tom Apodaca the wrong way, so Apodaca let fly with a broadside of his own declaring he didn’t appreciate being threatened or intimidated.
Now, Jim Goodman, who owns several hundred million dollars worth of television stations, sure would intimidate me but the Senators didn’t even blink.
On paper, the Dix lease certainly looks like a sweetheart deal and John Hood over at the Locke Foundation reports the land’s worth five times more than Raleigh paid. And even the folks who like Perdue’s deal aren’t disagreeing – instead, they’re arguing it’s a fine deal because creating a 325 acre park in downtown Raleigh will be a great boost for the economy.
On the other hand, there’s also no doubt our friends over in the State Senate have a gift for bellicosity – they can crank up and get rolling faster than a panzer tank when sometimes, especially when they’re right, a little finesse might accomplish the same goal with a bit more gentility. Anyhow, now, we’ve got a brawl on our hands with Raleigh’s most prominent business leaders hollering cancelling a sweetheart deal is a rotten thing to do and it’s not a pretty spectacle.
Before it was shuttered Dorothea Dix was the state’s mental hospital – maybe they ought to reopen it for one day and hold a ‘pacification therapy’ session to calm everybody down – before the House votes.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 25, 2013 10:36
There’s nothing political folks like better than a good Civil War – whether you happen to be a Republican or a Democrat it’s hard to find a pogrom more satisfying than purging the heretics in your own party, which is not necessarily an unproductive experience: After all, Reagan’s victory in 1980 was the result of a five year Republican Civil War.
The first sign that the everyday normal bumps and grinds of Republican politics might break into open warfare came when John McCain branded Rand Paul and Ted Cruz ‘Wacko Birds.’ That set the stage for Round 2 when the ‘Wacko Birds’ met the ‘Old Birds’ eye-to-eye at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
At forty-one Senator Marco Rubio is a pretty unusual standard bearer for the Old Birds. A Cuban immigrant’s son who needed an opportunity and got one, Senator Rubio pulled himself up by his bootstraps. At twenty-eight, he ran for the Florida Legislature and quickly became a ‘rising star.’ He walked onto the stage at CPAC and gave an earnest, smooth, passionate speech about American exceptionalism. He was articulate. But cautious. He crossed swords with no one.
Next a tousle-haired fifty-year-old wearing a dark blue jacket and blue jeans, looking like a college professor, walked onto the stage and he wasn’t smooth at all. Or cautious. With wry humor Rand Paul poked fun at Obama for saying he had to cancel White House tours for schoolchildren due to a lack of money but, then, three days later, sending $250 million to Egypt in foreign aid. After quoting Lincoln, Montesquieu and Lewis Carroll’s ‘White Queen,’ Paul turned his wit on the Old Birds, saying the Republican Establishment ‘has grown stale and covered with moss.’
Paul went on to win the straw poll at CPAC.
Now, that’s not a sure sign the Wacko Birds will pluck the Old Birds.
But it is a sure sign the Civil War has started.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 22, 2013 10:38
A pair of ‘grassroots organizers,’ Jessica Laurenz and Sean Kosofsky, took a poll, found three issues, and wrote a plan. Neither had ever run a major statewide campaign and they lacked money and a voice but they had passion and zeal and sailed into uncharted waters to breathe life back into the moribund Democratic Party – then some malevolent genie leaked their ‘secret plan’ to the Charlotte Observer and all hell broke loose.
Sean Kosofsky took the first hit – the newspapers reported his plan, then they said his group (Blueprint NC) could not legally spend money to elect Democrats, then a foundation (headed by a former Democratic legislator) that had given his group $400,000 blasted Kosofsky, then the State Republican Party filed complaints against Kosofsky with the IRS and the State Board of Elections for violating election laws.
Kosofsky was in hot water up to his chin when Jennifer Laurenz stepped in and saved him. She, she told the newspapers, had written the plan – she was to blame.
Then Laurenz fell prey to unforgiving politics too.
A longtime Democratic State Representative whose son works for Laurenz at America Votes NC, walked into a press conference and when a reporter asked him about Laurenz’s plan he could have said Laurenz was a well-meaning but inexperienced young woman. Or that young people sometimes get carried away by their passions and that’s unfortunate but it’s understandable. Instead, before the cock crowed thrice, he threw Laurenz under the bus – he said he knew nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing but what he’d read in the newspapers. It was like he’d never heard of the young woman his son works with.
Young Sean Kosofsky and Jessica Laurenz sailed into unchartered waters with more passion than prudence then the newspapers descended on them, then the Republicans descended on them, then their friends – the people they meant to help – abandoned them.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 20, 2013 12:40
Half-way through her plan Jessica Laurenz started to make a list of the building blocks she would need to build a campaign. She ticked off, ‘A brain trust, research, relentless media, year-round voter registration, a vibrant multi-racial organizing infrastructure and statewide field organizing.’
But, then, she missed a piece: Obama.
Four years ago, back in 2008, state Democrats ran with Obama and won but in 2010 and 2012 Obama turned toxic and Democrats lost. Now Obama’s popularity’s rising so Democrats face a choice: Next election they can stand with Obama or they can run from Obama but the one thing they can’t do is ignore Obama.
Rolling on with her plan, Laurenz ticked off more building blocks: Weekly meetings, video trackers, organizers – then missed another piece: Political movements are born from inarticulate soil but to flourish they need a Voice. Reagan was a Voice. Obama’s a Voice. Jessica Laurenz doesn’t have a Voice in her plan and a mute political movement with a thousand building blocks dies a quick death.
Ticking off more blocks Laurenz wrote: An Op-ed Program, Pay to Play Research, Private investigators – then missed the only piece as important as a Voice: Last election, President Obama raised a staggering $1.1 billion because he understood one simple fact – if no one heard his voice he was doomed.
Last year, Obama’s voice was everywhere: On the broadcast news, on primetime TV, on dozens of cable channels, on radio and all over the Internet from Facebook to Google – but Jessica Laurenz only mentioned fundraising one time – in the last line of her her plan.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 19, 2013 11:00
The poll young Sean Kosofsky and Jessica Laurenz took told them three stories:
- That President Obama’s mantra – ‘Democrats are for middle class families while Republicans are for the rich’ – had permeated the political atmosphere across North Carolina.
- That President Obama’s plan to expand Medicaid – the plan Republicans in the state legislature just voted down – was widely popular.
- And that the Republicans’ tax reform plan was not popular.
Jessica Laurenz then sat down to write a plan but, right off, took a wrong turn and started thinking like a lobbyist: She took a long hard look at the Republicans in Raleigh and saw, as she put it: ‘Tensions.’ Tensions between the Republican Governor and Republican legislators, tensions between Republican Senators and Republican Representatives – then while ambling down the wrong road, leading her into the thickets of lobbying, she unearthed a political nugget and wrote she sees tension between the Republicans’ base and the Republicans’ statewide political reality.
What Laurenz meant by ‘Republicans’ statewide political reality’ sounded obtuse – but, maybe without even knowing it, she had put her finger squarely on a throbbing nerve: Republican voters just naturally don’t like anything Obama’s for – like Obama’s Medicaid expansion. But Independents just naturally see things through different eyes. They see Obama’s Medicaid expansion as a pretty good idea and that one bit of political ‘tension’ (between Republicans and Independents) leads straight to a cold hard fact: A Republican legislator running in a swing district, say, in Raleigh, needs a lot more than Republican votes to win – he needs Independent votes. And every Republican who will be running in a swing district in two years just voted against President Obama’s Medicaid expansion.
To be continued…
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 18, 2013 10:09
In his novel Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner wrote if you have something outside the ordinary to do and it’s got to be done quickly, don’t waste time on the men – go get the women and children. Thirty-seven years ago, here in North Carolina, we built Ronald Reagan’s first Presidential campaign around women and young people, then landed at the Republican Convention where we learned politics’ adamantine heart devours youth and passion when a self-proclaimed conservative stalwart (who was also Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party) made a backroom deal and Reagan lost by a handful of votes.
This year, since the election last November, I’ve been watching and waiting for the old guard Democratic standard bearers in the General Assembly (like Martin Nesbit and Larry Hall) to breathe life back into their party but they seemed too stunned by the defeat to stir. They went through the motions like sleepwalkers. With barely a sign of a pulse.
Then some mischievous genie leaked the ‘Secret Not for Distribution Democratic Campaign Plan’ to the Charlotte Observer and, suddenly, there was a sign of a pulse – but it was coming from a pretty strange place. It wasn’t coming from the old guard or any of the long time Democratic standard bearers – it was coming from a young man and a young woman, a pair of ‘grassroots organizers.’
The young woman Jessica Laurenz, according to her biography, graduated from Vanderbilt with degrees in Women’s Studies then sailed into Democratic politics working for liberal groups to advance the rights of Southern women – which is sort of like advancing the rights of a Bengal tigress. It’s a fine sentiment. But the tigress (or maiden aunt or steel magnolia) is more than capable of defending herself not just against Southern men but most anything else that crosses her path.
The young man, Sean Kosofsky, had been a spokesman for LGBT groups in Michigan then came to North Carolina to head Blueprint NC.
Neither, according to their bios, had ever faced the terrors of a statewide campaign but Sean Kosofsky provided a poll and Jessica Laurenz wrote a plan for Democrats to, as she put it, ‘eviscerate’ Pat McCrory, Thom Tillis and Phil Berger.
To be continued…
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 13, 2013 10:54
Washington may be about to give us an answer on one of the longest running philosophical debates since Eve bit the apple: Are humans rational creatures?
For months, just about every politician in Washington – Republican Congressmen, Democratic Senators, President Obama, Speaker John Boehner – has been talking about how much they want to cut spending. They’re all for cuts.
Last month the Post Office weighed in, saying it was going to save taxpayers $2 billion by ending Saturday mail delivery – which, if you think about it, isn’t a terribly painful cut: No one will go hungry. The sick will still receive care. And, if worse comes to worst, you can always send an email on Saturday.
It all sounded sensible until Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid weighed in and said the Post Office was way out of line – that it couldn’t end Saturday mail delivery without Congress’s approval and, speaking for the Senate, he didn’t approve.
That riled up some House Republicans who, just naturally, pushed back – saying Reid was all wet and the Post Office could end weekend mail anytime it wanted.
Then an odd thing happened.
It’s a little-known fact, but it turns out, in budgets going back for thirty years, Congress has included a law that requires the Post Office to deliver mail on Saturday – and last week when the House passed the continuing budget resolution it included the same law.
As soon as the bill passed, a Democrat Congressman merrily hopped up and announced (in the New York Times) that Saturday mail delivery was safe for another year. Then an unhappy Republican Congressman hopped up and announced the Democratic Congressman was dead wrong: The wording of the law Congress had just passed, the Republican conceded, was a bit vague – but then he added adamantly he didn’t have one scintilla of doubt the Post Office can stop delivering the mail on Saturday. Period.
So, here’s the status of clarity in Washington: The Post Office says it can end Saturday mail. The Democratic Senate Leader says it can’t. The House passed a bill with a thirty-year-old law in it – which both a Democratic Congressman and a Republican Congressman voted for. The Democrat says the law means one thing. And the Republican says it means the opposite.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 12, 2013 15:13
Congressman Walter Jones is an old-fashioned soft-spoken Southerner – so when I saw he’d put a statement on Twitter, I thought, What the heck? I clicked and landed on a statement (Walter had made) that explained just about everything anyone needs to know about the Sequester in one-page.
Last month up in Washington President Obama made his case against the Sequester by telling everyone who’d listen that the $85 billion in cuts meant teachers would be laid off, children would go without vaccinations and abused women would go without care.
Then, five days after the Sequester, President Obama asked Congress to send $65 billion to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) – which has been busy bailing out troubled European countries like Greece.
The question is obvious: Whatever happened to the needs of those teachers and children and abused women? Are they less important than the IMF? Or was the President, maybe, exaggerating the pain of the Sequester cuts?
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