Rep. Bill Faison

Took some time off, so the old blog is bare and needs a quick transfusion. So thank you, Rep. Bill Faison, for supplying me with something simple and quick to say. Which is, if you want to run for governor in a Democratic primary against Bev Perdue, by all means, jump right in. Faison vs. Perdue? Seems like you’d get hammered — you’re going to run against her from the right? — but you never know.

But you sound a little silly telling the governor she should step aside so you can take her place.

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I’ll add that Faison, an Orange County Democrat, has done good work of late with his creation of a jobs caucus among House Democrats. This allows him, whenever the Republicans call a legislative session to mess with stuff that has nothing to do with creating jobs, to say they’re wasting our time and tax dollars with sideshows.

And maybe the indictment yesterday of some of Perdue’s 2008 campaign supporters is the tip of a bad scandal coming for Perdue herself (though it looks like a lot less than that from here).

Our friend Rob Schofield at N.C. Policy Watch thinks Perdue is on her last legs because she’s too conservative, and he may be right that she should be more expressly progressive, though I’d say she’s been decently progressive so far. How this opens the door to an even more pro-bidness Dem like Faison, I dunno.

Then there’s the fact that the anti-gay “DOMA” amendment to the state constitution is slated for a vote in the 2012 primaries, and so far the Republicans have the big primary battles (president, possible governor, lieutenant governor) and Dems have none … so a Perdue-Faison primary might help to turn out more of the pro-gay rights, anti-DOMA discrimination voters.

But again, that’s a reason to mount a primary challenge. It’s not a reason to kneecap your party’s sitting governor while the Republicans take notes.

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By the way, when I said get off the pot above, I didn’t mean to imply anything about your smoking.