Minority Voters Sought In North Carolina Senate Race

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis has been monitoring the NC senate race and says candidates Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan are looking to attract minority voters. She looks at one of the largest minority voting blocks in the state.

 

Rep. James Clyburn: ‘The country has topped out to the right’

If anyone can take the long view of history, it’s U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.). The assistant minority leader of the House has lived it, from his childhood in segregated Sumter, S.C., through the civil rights movement that benefited him, sometimes in unexpected ways — he met wife-to-be Emily in jail after both were arrested for protesting for civil rights — to his election to Congress in 1992.

Clyburn, 74, tells his story in “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black.” He and Emily recently spent an evening at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, greeting admirers, posing for photos and adding signatures to personal copies of the book.

At the Gantt Center, he shared his thoughts on the pace of change in America: “The country from its inception is like the pendulum on a clock. It goes back and forward. It tops out to the right and starts back to the left — it tops out to the left and starts back to the right. I can tell you the country has topped out to the right, and the country is moving back to the left.” And remember, he said, it “spends twice as much time in the center.”

Highlights & Low Blows of First Senate Debate: Hagan v. Tillis


CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The first of three senate debates between candidates Senator Kay Hagan and House Speaker Thom Tillis is in the books. As with all debates, there were highlights and low blows. So, did their arguments give them enough momentum? Our WCCB Polticial Contributor Mary C. Curtis breaks down what worked and what didn’t. Hagan and Tillis weren’t at odds over everything – they agreed that President Obama needs to take action against ISIS.

Obama visit adds heat to contentious and crucial North Carolina Senate race

About the only thing that’s certain about North Carolina’s crucial Senate race is that it’s close. Polls show a tight contest, with Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and her Republican opponent Thom Tillis exchanging slim leads. It’s not even clear what the November midterm will be about.

Is it a nationalized election, with Hagan tied to a president with low approval numbers? Will Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House, be weighed down with dissatisfaction over a sometimes dysfunctional state legislature? Will the economy be the ruling issue or will education, health care and the environment, major North Carolina concerns, rise in importance? What role will social issues — abortion and same-sex marriage — play in turning out the base in both parties?

If this past week was an indication, the answer is maybe – or perhaps, all of the above.

North Carolina Republicans try — despite themselves — to win minority voters

In North Carolina, Republicans see a prime opportunity for a U.S. Senate win in November. So national and state party leaders, anxious to broaden the base, are again turning to African American voters. The latest effort is a North Carolina Black Advisory Board “to strengthen the party’s ties with diverse communities and expand engagement efforts across the state,” the Republican National Committee said in a statement Thursday.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said of the 11 board members, “Their knowledge and roots in black communities across the state will be invaluable as we share our message of empowerment and expanding access to the American Dream.”

They have their work cut out for them.

VA problems a political issue in military-rich North Carolina

Very few issues can bring contentious Democrats and Republicans in the North Carolina general assembly together. But this week, marking national military appreciation month, a joint resolution expressing gratitude and appreciation for “the men and women of the United States armed forces” won unanimous support.

Those men and women and their families are important constituents and the military ranks as a major economic driver in a state with, as the resolution mentioned, six major military bases, nearly 800,000 veterans, and the third largest military force in the country, with close to 120,000 active duty personnel and another 12,000 members of the North Carolina National Guard.

So the current investigation of allegations of slow wait times and false record-keeping at the VA that is being closely watched all over is of special interest in North Carolina. In the midst of a tight U.S. Senate race, it’s inevitable politics as well as concern would be part of the reaction.

Insight in the Race Between Hagan and Tillis


 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — WCCB’s political contributor, Mary C. Curtis, has been watching the race develop between Senator Kay Hagan and State House Speaker Thom Tills.

The Republican effort to unseat Senator Hagan will kick into overdrive leading up to the November election.

Tillis is the man the party hopes can make it happen. Curtis gives us some insight on the race.

Will more ‘Moral Monday’ protests affect the North Carolina Senate race?

an anything upset the script of the 2014 U.S. Senate election in North Carolina, as it’s now being written? It may depend on whether a 2014 renewal of the “Moral Monday” coalition and an accompanying voter registration effort will increase dissatisfaction with the state’s rightward legislative shift and motivate enthusiasm for the Democratic incumbent.

Because of diverse opposition to issues that range from a refusal of the Medicaid expansion to education cuts to limits on unemployment benefits to new voting rules now being fought in the courts, the nationalized partisan voting trends hardening in a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll may not be as firm in North Carolina.

Olympia Snowe, on compromise, Citizens United and former colleague Kay Hagan

CHARLOTTE – Olympia Snowe made her case for a return to governing from the “sensible center,” and she did it with conviction. But while the audience was both loud and supportive at a women’s summit in Charlotte, no one – and that includes the former Republican U.S. senator from Maine — thought it would be easy.

Snowe was considered moderate in her approach and her politics when she decided not to run for a fourth term in the Senate in 2012. How bad had it gotten? Republicans and Democrats honored her at separate celebrations, a departure from the past. “It’s not even bipartisan today to say goodbye,” she said. Snowe lamented as a “tragedy” elected officials “surrounded by all this history but not inspired by it.”

A bipartisan time-out? Women honor women in North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Perhaps it was the spirit of Liz Hair presiding over the mix of good will and determination Wednesday evening at the annual A Woman’s Place program that has honored the achievements of Charlotte women since 1955. Hair, a pioneer for women in politics and community activism, died at her home earlier that day at the age of 94, and her life – as well as her mantra “let’s make policy, not coffee” — was mentioned as inspiration by many in the bipartisan group of women.

Honored as 2013 Charlotte Woman of the Year was Patsy Kinsey, a Democratic city council member elected by her colleagues to complete the term of Anthony Foxx when he became U.S secretary of transportation. Delivering the keynote was Sharon Allred Decker – a 1998 Woman of the Year – the state’s secretary of commerce for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Hair was honored in 1975.

Problem solving, not party difference, was the evening’s theme — not that you can take politics completely out of the conversation. This is North Carolina, where incumbent U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, is working on a variety of economic, military and other issues, while shoring up a coalition that will need to include women of all parties if she is to win re-election.