Ilario Pantano has had his primary, so he’s the official GOP candidate against Mike McIntyre. You probably remember him for (while serving in combat in Iraq) being falsely accused of murder – a statement that will hopefully infuriate quite a few antiwar types out there.
Ilario’s site is here.
Let me preface this by saying that I have nothing against Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: he’s a Democratic pollster, sure, but he doesn’t bury polls that are unhelpful to his side. Which is smart of him – it makes him more credible when he tells me things that I don’t particularly want to hear – but there’s nothing wrong with having a credible pragmatic reason for being virtuous. It’s sort of an added free bonus.
That being said, he really should have stuck a DOOM in here somewhere:
In both Bob Etheridge and Heath Shuler’s districts we asked whether voters would be more or less likely to vote for their representative if they supported the bill, then whether they would be more or less likely to vote for their representative if the bill passed regardless of how their actual representative voted.
In Etheridge’s district 47% of voters said they’d be less likely to vote for him this fall if he supported the bill. And 47% said they’d be less likely to vote for him this fall if the Democrats in Congress passed the bill, regardless of how Etheridge himself voted.
It’s a pretty similar story in Shuler’s district. 51% of voters said they’d be less likely to vote for him this fall if he was a ‘yes’ vote.’ But 46% also said they’d be less likely to vote for Shuler this fall if the bill passed, whether it did so with his support or not.
Continue reading PPP: Dems reshuffling deck chairs on HCR Titanic.
NC-08: R+2 district, flipped to D after a lot of effort by the national Democratic party, including redistricting. The former holder Robin Hayes barely won in ’06 and lost by quite a bit in ’08; since then Larry Kissell’s voted for the ‘stimulus‘, played duck-and-cover on the health care rationing bill and has cosponsored EFCA – even though North Carolina’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled in the last year.
As you might have gathered from the above links, the NC GOP is particularly interested in taking the seat back. Hayes has declined to run again, which clears the field for new challengers; the first one to declare is Colonel Lou Huddleston, a retired Afghanistan veteran and North Carolina businessman. He’s already picked up the support of potential candidate Linwood Faulk, but Huddleston is probably going to have at least one serious primary opponent. He’s got a good background (local, career military, and businessman); his major potential problem was that he ran and lost a state race last year (I call it ‘potential’ because I don’t know what he learned from it). Huddleston also seems to be already generating a bit of venom from North Carolina Democrats, if comments here are any indication. I, of course, will not scruple to speculate as to why.
Huddleston’s site is still in placeholder mode, so if you’re interested check back on it later. In the meantime, here’s the North Carolina GOP site (donations here).
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
The assault (from last Thursday) disturbs me. The casual mockery by pro-health care rationing supporters towards a man (who I haven’t even fully confirmed was a health care rationing protester) who’s just gotten punched in the face disturbs me a whole lot more. I don’t care what your stance is on this issue: your instinctive response to this sort of thing should not be to ask sarcastic questions about the victim’s health insurance.
Original video here News stories here and here. See also Gateway Pundit and Weasel Zippers.
Moe Lane Continue reading Getting in their faces – David Price’s (D, NC-04) town hall.
Who’s next?
Via Glenn Reynolds, it’s time for another round of Elections have Consequences!
Action: The North Carolinan legislature (run by Democrats) is about to provide legislation to the governor of North Carolina (Democrat) that allows North Carolina to collect sales tax from Internet transactions.
Reaction: Amazon has closed its Amazon Associates program to North Carolina residents.
To all North Carolinan bloggers and website owners out there – particularly the ones who helped to make sure that North Carolina kept its Democratic majority on the state level – my sincere sympathies; but I must note that this is what happens when you elect too many Democrats.
So stop doing that.
Moe Lane
PS: And before you think I’m being smug: I’m in a state (Maryland) dominated by the Democratic party myself. I’m pretty sure that they voted something like this down, but I trust them with fiscal policy about as far as I can throw them – and I can’t throw worth a darn.
So if you feel the need to buy something, well… here’s the site.
Crossposted to RedState.
Sunlight. Disinfectant. Not that I am suggesting anything, of course.
You may remember from Sunday about how the Democrats were quietly planning to remove a somewhat… inconvenient… US Attorney from his position before he was through investigating a former North Carolina Democratic governor. Now, via Geraghty, via Kaus, we find out that nothing of the sort is going to happen.
Now.
U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said today that the U.S. Attorney in Raleigh, George Holding, should stay on the job as top federal prosecutor until investigations of former Sen. John Edwards and former Gov. Mike Easley are completed.
Hagan said she has consulted with the White House on the process for replacing Holding — the decision on a replacement is ultimately up to President Barack Obama — and said it will go much slower.
“I don’t feel it’s in North Carolina’s best interest to replace someone who is investigating these two very high profile people,” said Hagan, a Democrat who plays a key role in the process because any replacement requires Senate confirmation. “I just think that with investigations going on, he ought to have the opportunity to complete the investigations.”
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to hear that neither the President nor Senator Hagan had any intention of shutting down a corruption investigation for crass political reasons. That’s such a relief, really. And I’m sure that the fact that this was announced mere days after the rather pointed article in the local paper that brought this up got national attention had nothing to do with the switch in focus. Of course not. Complete coincidence. Although I am curious: why did this Locke Clifford fellow leave the Governor’s replacement screening panel Tuesday? And why was he at former governor Easley’s house on the same day?
Golf game, perhaps?
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Elections have consequences.
(Via Instapundit) No, not Fitzgerald: Illinois is a little too prominent right now for that kind of shenanigans. North Carolina, on the other hand…
Democrats fix sights on GOP prosecutor
John Edwards admits federal investigators are asking him questions. Federal subpoenas were issued Friday related to Mike Easley.
As the separate federal probes into a former senator and the former governor are emerging, Democrats are taking steps to replace the Republican prosecutor who is spearheading the inquiries about the highest-profile North Carolina Democrats of the past decade.
All the nearly 100 top federal prosecutors across the country serve at the will of the president. Any replacement for U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding, a Bush appointee who has kept a priority on public corruption cases from Raleigh to the coast, will be subject to U.S. Senate confirmation.
The process gives a key role in the decision to U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat who was in the state Senate leadership for several years until she unseated Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole in November. Already, Hagan has formed a panel to screen candidates. It is led by Burley Mitchell, former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court who now works at the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm.
They’re claiming that this screening process is ‘coincidental’ to the investigations, of course.
Of course. Continue reading Democrats set to remove meddlesome anti-corruption prosecutor.
