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Entries for 'Carter Wrenn'
Carter Wrenn posted on October 25, 2012 15:44
I’d just finished breakfast and opened the newspaper when a dyed-in-the-wool yellow dog Democrat crossed the restaurant, sat down across the table and said, ‘That new ad of Paul Newby’s makes him look like a fool.’
He was talking about the Newby Super PAC ad – which has hound dogs braying in hot pursuit of two thugs who dive into the back of a pickup truck to escape, all narrated by a fast talking banjo-picking actor singing ‘Paul Newby’s a tough ole judge.’
‘I reckon,’ the Republican sitting beside me said, ‘they figure come Election Day voters will remember ‘Paul Newby’s a tough ole judge’ but forget they heard it in that damn fool ad.’
‘So you figure,’ the Democrat snapped, ‘making Paul Newby a fool will get him elected?’
‘You’ve got to give them credit for one thing,’ the Republican said. ‘That ad sticks out. It’s not about to get buried under the clutter of Obama and Romney ads.’
That wasn’t the end of it.
Two days later on Sunday morning I was lying in bed peacefully reading the newspaper when Newby’s Super PAC ad came on TV and half-way through the banjo picking my wife’s voice echoed down the hallway from the kitchen.
‘That’s a tacky ad.’
That was the subtle language of marital diplomacy. Translated into plain southern English what she meant was: Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with that ad.
For once I was innocent – looking toward the doorway, I said, ‘Does that mean you’re not voting for Paul Newby?’
The hallway went silent a moment. Then my wife’s voice floated into the room again, a bit sharper, ‘Do you like that ad?’
‘They’re gambling.’
Then I explained the theory about the Newby Super PAC, figuring by Election Day voters would remember ‘Paul Newby’s a tough ole judge’ but forget the tacky ad.
That didn’t cut much mustard with my wife – or anyone else.
Every day someone – a lawyer, a campaign worker, a man in the locker room at the health club – cornered me about that ad. On Friday I spoke at a luncheon for two dozen Republicans and as soon as the time came to ask questions a grizzle-haired fellow’s hand shot up and he asked, ‘What about that Newby ad?’
I floated the theory again about voters just remembering ‘Paul Newby’s a tough ole judge’ but the words barely got out of my mouth before a voice from the back of the room rang out like a rifle shot saying, ‘My grandmother’s got a theory too – she says pretty is as pretty does and that ad says Paul Newby can’t tell the difference between common sense and plain fool politics.’
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 24, 2012 12:01
The election in North Carolina has moved from old fashioned elbow-throwing into a more interesting topic – sex.
When she lived in Pennsylvania Debra Goldman was a volunteer firefighter – then she moved to Raleigh, ran for School Board, won in the Republican sweep in 2009 and now she’s running for State Auditor.
The roots of Goldman’s problem go back to a year ago when her house in Cary was burglarized by a thief who made off with $100,000 in jewelry and $30,000 in cash – which she had hidden in a backpack. The police came to investigate and asked, Do you have any idea who robbed you? Goldman had a lot of ideas. Names rolled off her tongue – the Democrat she ran against for School Board, her opponent’s consultant, three of her opponent’s friends, a group that supported her opponent, a Democratic County Commissioner – then a name rolled off her tongue that lit the fuse that just exploded: Chris Malone, her fellow Republican School Board member.
Why Malone? the detective asked.
The words started flowing again.
Malone, she said, had pursued her romantically and told her he loved her and when she rebuffed him he’d broken down and cried. Plus, she said, she knew two other facts: Malone was broke and her house key had been stolen out of her briefcase the same day Malone was sitting beside her at a School Board meeting.
The policeman wrote it all down then asked why Goldman kept $30,000 in a backpack. She rolled into another litany, saying she was a retired firefighter and a breast cancer survivor and when she was living in Pennsylvania after 9/11 she’d had a lot of trouble getting money out of her bank – so she kept $30,000 in her knapsack.
A few days after the burglary Goldman became even more suspicious of Malone when he showed up at the School Board meeting driving a new pickup truck;---so the police detective put in a call to Mr. Malone and ran head-on into not one but three lawyers. He got a call back from the prominent Republican attorney Kieran Shanahan and when the detective sat down with Malone, Malone had two more lawyers with him.
Malone outdid Goldman when it came to pure salacious detail. He and Goldman, he said, had become friends during the School Board election then one thing had led to another until one night just before the election they found themselves alone on the rooftop of the Clarion Hotel in downtown Raleigh and stopped being just friends and, as he put it, started ‘kissing and making out.’ After that, he said, their relationship got more physical.
The detective asked if the relationship was over and Malone said, oh, yes, he knew there’d be no more quickies in the car and no more meetings at the Hampton Inn in Cary – they were just close personal friends and by the way, he added, they’d never actually had sexual intercourse.
By then I reckon Malone’s lawyers must have been lying passed out on the floor.
Next the detective asked Malone about his new pickup truck and Malone said his brother had loaned him the money to buy it and later Malone’s brother and lawyer Shanahan met with the detective and produced the bank records to prove it – so Malone was off the hook for stealing the $130,000 but probably not with his wife or Goldman’s husband.
Now the interesting thing about all this is Malone and Goldman’s reaction when the police reports landed on the front page of the newspaper.
At first Malone bobbed and weaved, dodging reporters then put out a statement saying he’s staying in the State House race because voters know the kind of man he really is.
Goldman was even more aggressive – she issued a statement peeling the paint off the walls, slamming the News and Observer for smearing her just before the election.
So now we’ve got a candidate who’s talking about ‘quickies’ in cars and running for State House based on his character, and a candidate for State Auditor who has trouble getting money out of the bank, and there’s not a word of contrition in sight anywhere.
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 23, 2012 16:54
It made all the newspapers: Last week Mitt Romney announced he’s pulling staffers out of North Carolina, where he now has a lead, to send them to Ohio where the race is closer.
It was perfectly rational. Romney has a little breathing room in North Carolina so he’s moving few people to another state he needs to win. So what was the Obama campaign’s reaction? It said, ‘The Romney campaign is turning its back on hard working North Carolinians.’
Sometimes you have to wonder who comes up with the ‘spin’ that comes out of political campaigns – and if they might not be third graders?
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 23, 2012 10:17
The other day Gary and I spoke at a luncheon and when Gary finished speaking he opened the floor for questions and, right off, a fellow stood up and asked, ‘So who’s going to win the election?’
It’s the question everyone’s asking and Gary gave him a great answer. He explained how in politics the unexpected happens and turns campaigns upside down – then gave an example.
'After all,' he said, 'who would have dreamed six weeks ago that the ambassador to Libya would be a crucial issue in the Presidential Election?'
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 15, 2012 10:06
The Associated Press reported a pair of odd facts the other day.
In a headline the AP reported, “Obama using voter registration to stay close in NC” – then told how President Obama’s massive voter registration drive is helping him win North Carolina – by registering 250,000 new Obama voters.
So far, that sounds logical.
But, then, further down in the story the AP reported another fact – it said that, according to the State Board of Elections, “Democratic registration has fallen by about 90,000 while unaffiliated voters have increased by more than 250,000. Republican registration stayed about the same, increasing by 5,000 during the same timeframe.”
Now, that creates a conundrum.
If there are 90,000 fewer Democrats, where on earth did those 250,000 new Obama voters go? Is President Obama’s campaign registering Independents instead of Democrats? Of course it’s possible, technically. President Obama’s campaign did, in fact, register 250,000 new Democrats and that Democratic registration dropped 90,000 – but it seems unlikely. And, even if it happened, the bottom line is still the same: Any way you look at it there are 90,000 fewer Democrats now – to vote for President Obama – than there were four years ago.
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Carter Wrenn posted on October 12, 2012 16:09
Candidates run for office for all kinds of reasons: Foibles. Vanity. A desire to serve.
But, whatever their reasons, after they announce they run head-on into an unpleasant fact: Running or office (even a local office like County Commissioner) costs a lot of money and raising money is plain old-fashioned hard work. It has none of the vicarious pleasures, say, of giving speeches.
And that’s where yard signs come in.
Because when a candidate decides to ignore the grind of raising money – he still wants to have a campaign. So he figures, When people see my yard signs they’ll see I have a lot of support and it’ll snowball into a bandwagon to elect me. Then he’ll spend a few hundred dollars and he’s on his way to victory.
Of course, it doesn’t work like that. If it did Obama and Romney would be spending $50 million (in North Carolina) on yard signs and we’d be buried beneath mountains of cardboard rather than TV ads.
There’re a couple of problems with yard signs. First, they don’t say much – there’s not much message. They don’t tell where a candidate stands. Second, as they’re driving down the road most people don’t study yard signs – they don’t pick one sign out of a cluster by an intersection and think, Wow, that’s a great sign! I have got to vote for that fellow on Election Day.
That said, there is a certain amount of glory in a yard sign – if you’re a candidate it makes driving down the road a pleasure.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 28, 2012 18:12
Amid the turmoil and hard times, when 47% of the Americans depend on government for support, it came as a surprise to open the newspaper and read Raleigh is spending $60 million on a train station.
Medicare is, with mathematical certainty, heading to bankruptcy. Social Security is not far behind. And the government in Washington can only continue to function as long as someone is willing to loan it 40 cents of every dollar it spends.
But the federal government, state government and city governments are uniting to build a train depot.
Does that make any sense at all?
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 28, 2012 17:59
There is a lot of sound and fury in the press – the latest storyline on the Presidential race reads: ‘Romney Stumbles,’ ‘Romney Sinks,’ ‘Romney Running Out of Time.’ Former Bush campaign aide Mark McKinnon wrote Romney ‘has dug his hole so deeply now, I don’t know if he can pull himself out.’
In fact, the last Gallop tracking poll (Wednesday night) showed Romney and Obama tied with 47% of the vote each.
So what’s going on here?
Tabloid journalism.
Whether it’s MSNBC, CNN or Fox News, tabloids – even the electronic version – feed on drama. Every night they need crisis and if a crisis doesn’t exist they’ll invent one. After all, they can’t report night after night that the polls didn’t change.
So watch the story line. I expect it may run: Romney Stumbles, Romney Falls, Romney Rallies, Polls Tied Again.
But don’t confuse that with the facts.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 26, 2012 17:17
If Mitt Romney feels like he’s up to his hips in alligators – he ought to consider the alligators that have chomped down on poor Tony Tata.
Two years ago, the newly elected Republican School Board made short shift of the old School Superintendent and hired Tata. Then the Democrats won the next election and their School Board set out to give Tata the boot.
Elections do have consequences.
Next, proclaiming it the “War at the School Board,” Wake County’s Republican Chairman Susan Bryant blasted the Democrats and emailed a call to arms to local Republicans, saying, ‘The radical extremists… are preparing to fire our great Superintendent, and we have to stop them.’
Unfortunately for Mrs. Bryant she ran head-on into a deadly foe: A sense of humor – which the News & Observer’s Barry Saunders has in abundance. Gently poking Mrs. Bryan in his column Saunders wrote: Chill, sisterwoman. ‘Radical extremists’ are those people who stormed our embassy and killed our ambassador and others in Libya…’
Anyway, it’s all over now. Yesterday the Democrats removed Tata.
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 26, 2012 15:26
It’s a fad: Paul Ryan put his mother on TV, then David Rouzer put his grandmother on TV, then Tom Murray (who’s running for State House) put his mother in a TV ad. So which will folks say, ‘No one knows him better than his mother’ – or – ‘Does that mean he couldn’t get anyone except his mother to say something good about him?
David Rouzer has also done another ad people might look at two ways.
Back in 2008 two white-haired gentlemen sat down on a porch in a pair of rocking chairs and made a TV ad for Kay Hagan that all but sunk Liddy Dole. Two years later, the same two white-haired gentlemen reappeared, rocking and saying they’d made a mistake last election and this time they were voting for Senator Richard Burr. It was clever – and humorous and it worked.
Now David Rouzer has put the same two gentlemen in an ad, rocking for him – so will the third time turn out to be a charm or too much of a good thing?
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