Whatever you’re calling about, the thing people in Raleigh really have on their minds is Gov.-elect Mike Easley’s transition. Who’s in? Who’s out? And the number-one question, Who’s Easley going to make secretary of transportation? Traditionally, if that word can be used to introduce a sentence about political corruption, the transportation boss is the governor’s […]
Bob Geary
Posted inGuides
Plugging Away
In the last year, Bill Towe’s been to The Hague for an international peace conference and to the State Fair with a giant inflatable missile. Over a lifetime of political activism, he’s worked for the voting rights of African Americans, against nuclear proliferation, and in support of just about every good cause you can think […]
Posted inGuides
Farm Fighters
Pittsboro isn’t the first place you’d look to find an organization with international clout, but then the whole point of the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA, as executive director Betty Bailey says, “is that we work from the local to the global level” for sustainable agriculture and the preservation of family farms. RAFI-USA staffers get their […]
Posted inNews
Now or never
Was it a mistake for the Wake County commissioners to put a $15 million bond issue for open-space preservation on the ballot this year? I ask only because folks in the county are being asked to support $500 million for schools, not to mention $3.1 billion for colleges and universities, and then Raleigh’s got its […]
Posted inNews
Psst: Beverly Lake Is Not a Woman
For history’s sake, the most important election in North Carolina this year may be way down the ballot where the judges are. It’s the race for chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and it pits the incumbent, Henry Frye, against his friend and sometime golfing buddy, Associate Justice I. Beverly Lake. Frye and Lake […]
Posted inNews
Ambushed and gored
Ashley Mattison’s been agonizing about whether to hold her nose and vote for Al Gore or cast a bracing, if quixotic vote for Ralph Nader. She was aware that Nader won’t be on the North Carolina ballot. But until recently, she did not know that if she casts a write-in vote for Nader, it won’t […]
Posted inNews
Good Housekeeping
Saturday morning at the flea market in Southern Durham’s Parkwood community, and state Rep. Jennifer Weiss is happy to see a friend. Fran Muse, the PTA president at Parkwood Elementary School and a fellow lawyer, is talking up Weiss’ candidacy in the neighborhood, unlike the woman who just confronted Weiss over her position in favor […]
Posted inNews
Soft on Big Money
For more than an hour, Bob Hall held the state Board of Elections members spellbound, describing in excruciating detail how North Carolina’s limits on campaign contributions to political candidates have been obliterated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Page by page, he tracked aloud, from party records, the way cash tossed into the national committee […]
Posted inNews
Crying foul
Were Mike Easley’s public service ads political? Of course they were. But can Richard Vinroot get the voters to care? Easley, as attorney general, starred for three years in a series of TV and radio advertising campaigns warning the public about telemarketing frauds and “predatory lenders”–finance companies that lure borrowers into mortgage loans on lousy […]
Posted inNews
Which Way Now?
Show up in Charlotte at the Vinroot for Governor campaign headquarters, and they’ll be happy to take you over to the Sugar Creek Charter School, founded by a number of the Queen City’s leading citizens, including corporate lawyer and former mayor Richard Vinroot. The school used to be a KMart–the all-purpose room and gym was […]