Issues
Ambassador Atkinson
June Atkinson apparently has decided to spend her term as Superintendent of Public Instruction fighting to get back her office’s powers – either from the legislature or the courts. That’s understandable. But is it the best thing for the schools? And is there another strategy for Atkinson? When Governor Perdue named Bill Harrison schools CEO,…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Serenading Jim Hunt
The night after the debate Jesse figured there was no one to blame but himself but, by the next morning, he’d figured out that was wrong. He’d lost, he told me, because of the format (which, he added pointedly, was my and Tom Ellis’s doing). Then, having straightened out who was to blame he rolled…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Casper Milquetoast Whips King Kong
After a year of reading all our research files on Jim Hunt and watching Hunt on TV I’d come to the conclusion Hunt was kind of political Caspar Milquetoast – a politician who always had his finger to the wind and changed with the breeze. Well, Hunt had his finger to the wind but at…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Gays and Death Squads
One thing is like fate in political campaigns: The unexpected always happens. It happened to us three days after we caught Hunt in the polls. Bob Windsor was an aardvark. He must have been a farmer – once – because he wore bibbed overalls like a farmer but he’d decided his real calling was newspaperman…
Read MoreElon Calling
For three days running this week, The News & Observer ran stories about the latest Elon University poll. As did other newspapers and TV stations across the state. The poll got widespread coverage because the issues were timely: the federal stimulus bill, Obama’s popularity, ratings of Congress and state issues including taxes, budget cuts, smoking…
Read MorePolitical Stories: The New York Committee to Elect Jim Hunt
There comes a moment in a political campaign – if you’re fortunate – when for one moment the stars align and you can see with almost clairvoyant certainty exactly what the campaign is all about and how to win – that moment came for us in December of 1983: We knew Jesse’s campaign was about…
Read MoreBudget Lottery
Blame James Carville. Twenty years ago, the then-unknown Ragin’ Cajun got Democrat Wallace Wilkinson elected governor of Kentucky with a new campaign gimmick: an education lottery. The very next year, he got Zig-Zag Zell Miller elected Governor of George the same way. Miller used the lottery proceeds to create HOPE scholarships, which sends Georgia students…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Finding the Key to Beating Jim Hunt
When you start a campaign 25 points behind but have a lot of money you start running ads early and we did – 20 months before the election. Now the folks who worked at the Congressional Club were ideologues. True believers. We saw the world in black and white. Us versus Them. Light versus Darkness.…
Read MoreHead of the Class
Everybody agrees that North Carolina’s educational-governance system is dysfunctional. June Atkinson wants the legislature to give her real power. Some legislators want to do away with her job. Governor Perdue bypassed the whole byzantine system by creating her own schools CEO. You can’t blame Atkinson. She has been elected superintendent of public instruction twice.…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Jesse’s First Poll
Like Billy Flynn in a Chicago courtroom Obama’s speech to Congress was all razzle-dazzle. It takes a silver tongue to spend a trillion dollars then say you’re against big government and get away with it. I don’t know who else could have done it. Surely not Bobby Jindal. Politics is pretty discouraging these days –…
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