Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Everyone is watching N.C. today

If you haven't heard, North Carolina's U.S. Senate race - particularly the Republican primary today - is kind of a big deal. So says just about every national media outlet writing on politics this week. 

Our Jim Morrill explains what's at stake today as well as anyone (as usual) but other pundits and politicos are weighing in on the Senate race - and one other N.C. race. 

The Atlantic's Josh Kraushaar and James Oliphant say electability is trumping purity in North Carolina, which is exactly what the GOP establishment hoped for with its backing of N.C. House speaker Thom Tillis: 

Tillis is the prototype of an establishment candidate. The onetime PricewaterhouseCoopers partner-turned-ladder-climbing-state-legislative-leader is a Republican donor's dream, and he's got the fundraising results to prove it. He has ties to Wall Street and the business community, political experience, and a strategist's sensibility: He led the successful GOP effort to retake the General Assembly in 2010, giving Republicans unified control of state government for the first time in more than a century. And Tillis is disciplined. He is consistently on message, never straying into dangerous waters. In short, Tillis, with his pragmatic streak and country-club credentials, represents just about everything Tea Partiers rose up to oppose.

Politico, which also has its eye on N.C., wonders about the viability of the tea party after today. NBC, in this video segment, calls it a "proxy fight in North Carolina." The Washington Post confidently says it has everything you need to know about N.C. races.
Roll Call looks at the N.C. Senate race from a slightly wider angle - what the outcome might say about potential presidential hopefuls in 2016. Alexis Levinson and Emily Cahn write:
All three of the major candidates in the North Carolina Senate race have been endorsed by Republicans openly mulling 2016 presidential bids: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush backed Tillis, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee supported Harris, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., endorsed Brannon.
Of course, none of their presidential ambitions will be destroyed because they backed a losing candidate in a Senate primary. But the results are an indicator of their influence — especially for Paul, who made a last minute trip to the Tar Heel State on Monday to boost Brannon. If Harris beats Brannon for second place, that doesn’t look great for Paul. But if Brannon makes the runoff and spends the next two months bashing Tillis, Paul could get blame if Tillis — who will likely emerge victorious in a runoff — is weakened from those attacks before the general election.

The New York Times, which joins the others in glancing at our U.S. Senate race, also is interested in the race for N.C. Supreme Court. Specifically, the NYT's Erik Eckholm looks at the impact of outside money and the abhorrent political ad running against Justice Robin Hudson.
Writes Eckholm: 
As notable as the ad’s content and frequency, though, is its source. It was created and aired not by one of Justice Hudson’s two opponents in Tuesday’s primary election, but by a group that had just received $650,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee in Washington, which pools donations from corporations and individuals to promote conservatives in state politics and is now broadening its scope to target judicial races...
The costly and fierce primary shows how the revolution in financing political campaigns, with the surging role of “super PACs” and other groups financed by corporations, unions and other interests, has entered what was the quieter arena of judicial elections.

That's not a good thing, we think.



6 comments:

Larry said...

That is not a good thing says the observer who failed to print the story how Charter Schools are getting around two thousand less per Student over systems like CMS.

Great you want fairness, now prove it with your Editorial Board being peppered with some Conservative Writers.

Garth Vader said...

How did these "pundits" get their jobs when they are ignoring the facts that:

1. Constitutional conservative Mike Lee displaced entrenched legacy GOP hack Bob Bennett to WIN

2. Constitutional conservative Rand Paul dispatched establishment GOP hack Trey Grayson to WIN the primary

3. Constitutional conservative Ted Cruz thumped old-school GOP hack David Dewhurst to WIN the runoff

Yesterday's NY Times stated that "for more than a year, Rand Paul has been the most interesting man in Republican politics" and called him "the hottest ticket in politics".

But the narrow-minded fools at the Disturber's Editorial Board want desperately to skew the vote to legacy establishment hack Thom Tillis.

Bill said...

Garth: If Rand and the Tea Party are "the hottest ticket in politics", why did only a few dozen people show up to hear him speak on Monday?

todd said...

Dims are dying a slow death and it will be fun to watch this editorial board make excuses for the next two yrs...

Garth Vader said...

Bill,

You must have gotten your math education via Common Core. Both the Observer and Politico estimated the crowd at 250.

Carol Justus said...

If we send a out of state bought so called "conservative to represent this state to congress, then we can forget the middle class and especially the poor.

Tillis would not even fight for the Medicaid portion of the affordable health care act so the poorest most vulnerable or citizens would be able to obtain proper medical care while in the state legislature!!!