Fred Smith

Fred "I've got my own damn plane" Smith repaves the road to Raleigh:

Fred Smith of Johnston County said Thursday he's planning to run next year for the seat currently held by first-term Wilson County GOP Sen. Buck Newton. Redistricting changed boundaries in the current 11th District to include a portion of Johnston County where Smith lives.

Well, Buck, I know you promised yourself you'd never sell drugs anymore, but Fred probably has more money in his swear jar than you've got in your entire stock portfolio, so...

Quick: What causes a politician's popularity to tank? A controversial vote, weak performance, general voter unrest ... all can cause poll numbers to drift downward. But for your approval ratings to really bottom out, it takes a scandal.

You might have missed it -- the media largely has -- but in the final hours of testimony yesterday at the N.C. State Board of Elections' hearings into former Gov. Michael Easley (D), Democratic attorneys unleashed an unexpected bombshell: Testimony from a former IRS criminal investigator that at least three Republican candidates for governor failed to disclose dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of campaign flights in 2004 and 2008, the very charge that helped launch the investigation into Easley.

How stupid does Myers Park Pat think North Carolina is? Judging from his comments in Kinston last week, the answer is: Pretty damn stupid.

Seriously, it looks like ol' Pat has truly slid off the deep end with more political pandering than you can shake a stick at. Besides promising to hand the keys to the governor's office to his pals at Duke Energy, McCrory wants to crank up the tax machine so he can pump millions into government programs for coastal communities:

Part of his solution (to the energy crisis) includes off-shore drilling, an issue he and his Democratic opponent Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue differ on. Perdue has said she wouldn't allow off-shore drilling if she is elected in November. McCrory said he would take part of the millions of dollars generated by the drilling and put it back into coastal communities to help with their particular concerns, such as dredging and infrastructure.

But that's just the beginning.

Or how the neoliberal tactics of Texanomics came to North Carolina.

NC GOP candidate for governor, Fred Smith, sent us a book. Right on the top is an endorsement from Rick Perry, Governor of Texas. And he's coming to the Oriental Shrine Club in Greensboro next Tuesday. Lee Greenwood's gonna sing that song. The thirty percenters will no doubt turn out in droves.

Via email from Americans for Prosperity:

RALEIGH – With tax bills on the minds of millions of North Carolina taxpayers, five of North Carolina’s gubernatorial candidates have signed a pledge to support spending restraint, the grassroots free-market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) announced today. Candidates Bill Graham, Pat McCrory, Michael Munger, Bob Orr, and Fred Smith have pledged to support a constitutional limit on state spending known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).

A few months ago, my dear sweet mother (devout Republican) told me in an excited and confident tone, "I've got something you really need to read." Since we're both avid readers of fiction, and more often than not can exchange books to our mutual enjoyment, I was mildly piqued. When she revealed who the author was, I went from piqued to pissed off pretty quickly.

My 48th birthday was on Monday, Feb. 25th. I work for a non-profit agency that gets most of its funding from the state, so budgets are tight. One year, we weren't able to give cost of living increases, so the board voted to give our birthdays as a personal holiday. What do you choose to do with a personal holiday? Get a manicure, a massage? Maybe some people would. Not me. I chose to haul my butt out of bed early, get stuck in construction, and fight traffic to get to a Forum on Mental Health so that I could listen to most of the candidates for Governor and Lt.Governor talk about the crisis in North Carolina's Mental Health System. As some of you might have realized by now, I am a political geek, but what you might not know is that I've had two family members struggle with mental illness and fall through cracks - one in NJ, and one in NC. So this was a very important day for me.

Laura Leslie has an interesting take on the relationship between the presidential and gubernatorial races.

Char-O’s Mark Johnson and the N&O’s Rob Christensen weighed in on how a meaningful national primary might influence NC’s state-level races. I think they both make good points, but I have to say - I think the two who stand to gain the most from activity in their respective party primaries are Bev Perdue and Fred Smith.