Alright, what's the news?

7/18/2005 9:23:23 AM

The GOP is going to get shellacked.

7/18/2005 9:47:49 AM

thats an awesome word.

7/18/2005 10:00:58 AM

Quote :

"TGD: The GOP is going to get shellacked."

Well, that's good news...but I was looking for some more specifics

Who are the candidates? Any incumbents vunerable?

7/18/2005 11:28:24 AM

As far as Raleigh goes:

District A will have Tommy Craven (developer, currently in the at-large seat) vs Paul Anderson (IIRC a black minister at Baptist Grove Church) and a potential 3rd candidate rumored. Mike Regan will not be running for re-election to anything. Tommy is vulnerable, but I just don't see any non-white Democrats ever getting elected in District A.

District B will have Jessie Taliaferro (incumbent), likely running without opposition. The GOP has no one to even potentially recruit to be a candidate here.

District C will have James West (incumbent), also likely running without opposition for the same reason.

District D will have Thomas Crowder (incumbent), also likely running without opposition for the same reason.

District E will have Philip Isley (incumbent), possibly running without opposition. A Democrat wouldn't have a chance against him without a boatload of $texas.

The At-Large Races will be a free-for-all, with Joyce Kekas and Russell Stephenson running for teh L3ft, John Odom running for teh R1ght, and Ed Carson and miscellaneous other people throwing their names in for the hell of it. I expect Kekas to win outright with Odom and Stephenson vying for second place.

The big question mark is The Mayor's Race. It's expected at this point that Meeker will have no opposition, because the GOP would need a stellar candidate to even have a shot. Paul Coble could pull it off, but word is privately he's shrugging off suggestions he'll jump in b/c even he would be facing steep odds trying to knock off a well-financed, politically-savvy two-term incumbent.

At the end of the day, the final analysis is that the WakeGOP has become a complete and total embarassment as far as finding, recruiting and training anything even remotely resembling a farm team of future candidates. Something is seriously wrong when the same names have been mentioned for 6 years now...


[Edited on July 18, 2005 at 12:01 PM. Reason : ---]

7/18/2005 11:57:45 AM

Quote :

"TGD: District D will have Thomas Crowder (incumbent), also likely running without opposition for the same reason...."

It's crazy that Crowder'd be running without opposition. I had heard earlier that a few people (Democrats, not Republicans) were at least considering it.

7/18/2005 1:08:01 PM

Quote :

"At the end of the day, the final analysis is that the WakeGOP has become a complete and total embarassment as far as finding, recruiting and training anything even remotely resembling a farm team of future candidates. Something is seriously wrong when the same names have been mentioned for 6 years now..."

WakeGOP is t-u-double r-i-b-l-e

7/18/2005 1:40:06 PM

I voted for Meeker once, and I'll happily do it again.

7/18/2005 1:51:51 PM

^
Why? Have you ever talked with the guy in private? It's unreal, the guy's like Friedrich Engels reborn...

I give him credit where it's due, though: he's incredibly intelligent and a strong politician. That makes him all the more dangerous from a public policy standpoint, but I respect it nonetheless.

---

Quote :

"Kay_Yow: I had heard earlier that a few people (Democrats, not Republicans) were at least considering it."

I have too, but the last I got from my sources on teh L3ft was that he'll be well-financed from the University Park folks who love is "OMF all students and developers are evil!!1" rhetoric

[Edited on July 18, 2005 at 2:11 PM. Reason : ---]

7/18/2005 2:05:12 PM

I like Meeker because:

1) I'm from Greensboro, which is a pretty spectacular city government clusterfuck. I moved to Raleigh and there wasn't a clusterfuck. Compared to what I've experienced, Raleigh is running incredibly well, and I don't want to potentially fuck that up.
2) I tend to agree on many levels that students, and to a lesser extent, developers, are evil.
3) The Republican party within North Carolina has consistently impressed me with its incompetence, lack of vision, and slavish devotion to the worst things NC has to offer, and I don't intend to reward these traits simply out of an equally slavish devotion to the party.

7/18/2005 2:29:32 PM

Benson's running again.

7/18/2005 2:47:30 PM

^ At-large, right?

7/18/2005 3:18:47 PM

^
Is he going to go ahead and jump in?

I had heard at the Board of Adjustment meeting last Monday that he was considering it but changed his mind.

---

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: 1) I'm from Greensboro, which is a pretty spectacular city government clusterfuck. I moved to Raleigh and there wasn't a clusterfuck. Compared to what I've experienced, Raleigh is running incredibly well, and I don't want to potentially fuck that up."

How's that new modification of the old saying go? "Even Saddam had the trains running on time"?

---

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: 3) The Republican party within North Carolina has consistently impressed me with its incompetence, lack of vision, and slavish devotion to the worst things NC has to offer, and I don't intend to reward these traits simply out of an equally slavish devotion to the party."

I'll think you'll find we're in wholesale agreement on this point. But I'm not going to vote for a Communist simply out of an equally slavish devotion to stick it to the GOP...

(this is one of those instances where I'm all for voting a blank ballot)

[Edited on July 18, 2005 at 3:36 PM. Reason : ---]

7/18/2005 3:35:38 PM

Only 1 day left. Filing closes tomorrow at 5:30pm.

Thus far no big surprises: the aforementioned 4 folks are running at-large, there's the head-to-head challenge in District A, and all 4 other District incumbents are running without opposition.

The Mayor will be challanged by Steve Martin (a libertarian) and perennial J.H. Ross (the Republican choice, who lost races for NC House in 2002 and 2004).

It'll be interesting to see if any new names pop up today...

8/4/2005 12:45:11 PM

Quote :

"How's that new modification of the old saying go? "Even Saddam had the trains running on time"? "

And he killed less civilians than Americans.
And they had electricity up and running as opposed to now under Americans.
And the list goes on.

I guess the saying goes very well. Sometimes (in the presence of an obviously worse alternative) you gotta vote for Saddam.

8/4/2005 1:41:40 PM

^

Quote :

"MathFreak: I guess the saying goes very well. Sometimes (in the presence of an obviously worse alternative) you gotta vote for Saddam."

All 100.0% of Iraqis, in fact. With 100.0% turnout.

Let's see Charles Meeker top that...

8/4/2005 1:44:18 PM

Dont see why not. In some regions of Ukraine people voted for "orange revolution" with the turnout of 98+%. Americans didn't have a problem to praise teh marching freedom over there. The first thing the freedom lovers did was introducing government regulated prices for gas and meat. Then came nationalization of HUNDREDS of previously privatized companies. But hey, whatever it takes to support teh freedom.

[Edited on August 4, 2005 at 1:55 PM. Reason : ..]

8/4/2005 1:55:08 PM

I'm not a big fan of fish MathFreak. But by all means, do carry on.

8/4/2005 2:22:10 PM

^^ There were some polling stations that turned out absurdly high voter turnouts but through the first two rounds, a vast majority of these were in favor of Yanukovich. When I was in pro-yuschenko areas, I documented, investigated, and reported ALL polling discrepancies regardless of who gained from the fraud. It just so happened that the yanukovich camp was doing it a bit more in my region.

8/4/2005 2:26:24 PM

^^ Whatever that means...

8/4/2005 2:59:01 PM

[Edited on August 4, 2005 at 4:30 PM. Reason : wasn't interested in the bait, my friend]

8/4/2005 4:21:33 PM

I understood you meant "red herring". I didn't understand where you'd found it. My point was that yeah, you can argue someone is bad. But if you actually look at the whole picture, most importantly including the realistic alternative, the bad all of a sudden becomes pretty good.

That being said, I don't really care who's gonna be in charge of this shithole. I got only 8 days left here!!1

8/4/2005 6:16:46 PM

^
was it Colorado? Somewhere out near the Sierras IIRC...

8/4/2005 7:00:11 PM

Denver... basically.

8/4/2005 7:32:40 PM