Category Archives: Politics

Youth is Served in Winston-Salem

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Looks like the east side of Winston-Salem is going to have a city council member who's barely old enough to drink legally:

Derwin Montgomery, a 21-year-old Winston-Salem State University senior, defeated Democratic incumbent Joycelyn Johnson for the East Ward seat on the Winston-Salem City Council during the Democratic primary Tuesday.

Montgomery garnered 530 votes or 57 percent of the votes cast in the East Ward. Johnson received 228 votes or 24 percent of the votes cast in the municipal primary. With no Republican challenger, Montgomery becomes one of the youngest city council members in recent history.

Montgomery attributed his success to the more than 400 Winston-Salem State students who supported his candidacy and participated in early voting, which concluded on Saturday, Sept. 12.

He sounds like an impressive young man: Deans Scholar, Youth Minister at Calvary Baptist, first VP for NAACP's Youth & College Division and he's planning on enrolling at Wake Forest U next fall in the dual degree program for law school and divinity school. 

Let's see, what was I doing at 21?  Well, on any given day I could find the best happy hour in town based on the criteria that buying one beer for $1 could get you access to an all you can eat taco bar.  That's huge when you're 21 and broke, or 23 and broke for that matter.  Other than that I was pretty much worthless.

Congrats to Mr. Montgomery and here's hoping he lives up to his potential.

The Week That Was

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This has been an interesting week.  I spent a couple of days in Raleigh for the day job and had my first opportunity to get a first hand look at the NC legislature in action.  Here's my takeaways from the experience:

  • Compared to the US Capitol the state legislature is very casual.  It's nothing special to bump into a state rep or senator and give them your two cents while walking to a meeting or getting on an elevator.  Heck, it's expected.
  • There's no security to speak of;  no line to go through a metal detector and no one standing at the door to wand you.  Of course there are security guards but I've seen tighter security at a day care center.
  • With some exceptions their offices are tiny. I'm talking room for a desk and two chairs.
  • The legislators, and their staffs, were very responsive.  When I contacted them last week to try and schedule appointments I heard back from most in a matter of hours, which I found pretty impressive given the amount of work they're doing right now.

The other thing that made this week interesting was the hometown drama known as the downtown baseball stadium.  While I could probably write dozens of pages of thoughts on the whole situation, I'd rather just ask the leaders of Winston-Salem some questions:

  • What the heck were you thinking when you broke the multi-million dollar news on Friday and told the public they had a whole weekend to share their thoughts and give you their feedback before a probable vote at a special city council meeting on Monday night? 
  • Were you trying to make it look like you were railroading the thing? 
  • Were you trying to make people even more suspicious than they already were? 
  • In short, were you trying to be obtuse?

Seriously, the city's leadership couldn't have tried to make this deal look any worse.  I'm really not sure what the motivation could have been to handle it this way, but whatever it was I can't imagine that it balances out the negative taste that this left in the public's mouth.  Put it this way: Mayor Joines and the city council spent a whole lot of their political capital to get this done and while they were going to take a hit no matter how they handled this, I think they at least doubled the damage by handling it in the manner that they did.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the next economic development deal that comes along.

Mayor Joines’ Status on Facebook

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Winston-Salem's mayor Allen Joines, or someone on his staff, just posted this status on Facebook:

Allen Joines Doing what is responsible for our future Sometimes doing what is right is not the easiest or most popular course to take. But the plan we have come up with to get our baseball stadium completed is responsible and will not cost our taxpayers any additional money. For more discussion please go to my blog page at AllenJoinesForMayor.com – Thanks

He's referring to the story that broke today that the city is going to have to pony up a BIG loan to Billy Prim to get the downtown baseball stadium finished.  They're giving citizens today and the weekend to share their comments with the mayor and the city council before a special meeting next Monday night.  More on that later.  Anyhoo, head on over to the mayor's site and give him an eareyeful.

BTW, props to the mayor for using Facebook.  I can tell you that there are LOTS of constituents there, no matter what the Luddites and old codgers say.  Not sure why he's only asking for comments on his website since Facebook is also an ideal environment for online discussion, but at this point let's just say that something's better than nothing.

Foot, Meet Mouth

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Whoever said, "Bad press is better than no press", was obviously never a CongressCritter who completely mischaracterized a murder while speaking from the House floor with the murder victim's mother in attendance.  Even in uber-conservative NC-5 (the district in which I reside, BTW) where it's normally safe for a politician to take any anti-gay/lesbian stance, Rep. Foxx clearly stepped over the line when she said what she said on the floor yesterday. She's paying for it in the press and she's also getting smacked around on Twitter.  I don't think this will hurt her in the next election because, first, no one will remember it next year, and second, this is a very conservative district and while most of her constituents may feel she made a mistake they won't think it's that big a mistake.  On the other hand this won't do her much good in building a leadership position for herself in the House.

Advice for Republicans

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Over in Guilford County, where I now spend my days toiling, they have some, uh, interesting politics.  That's why it doesn't go un-noticed when the local Democrats or Republicans announce their party leaders, and that's also why I noticed when Fec wrote the following in reference to the Guilford Republicans' choice of Tony Wilkins as their leader: "I particularly like that he isn’t illiterate, pompous and beating us over the head with Jesus."

From Fec's keyboard to the RNC's eyes…if only.

In One Word

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The Sunlight Foundation has released a funny yet meaningless report about CongressCritters' favorite words.  Their Capitol Words project takes speeches recorded in the Congressional Record to calculate the frequency of specific words used by each member of Congress.  When I clicked on North Carolina on their interactive map I found out the following:

  • Over the last year (April 22, 2008 – April 21, 2009) Rep. Virginia Foxx was the biggest chatter box from NC.  She uttered 6,021 words.  Sen. Richard Burr came in second with 3,083 so you can see that Rep. Foxx took the talking title by a mile.  
  • Rep. Foxx's favorite word was "democrats" which she uttered 428 times, followed by "energy" at 373 times, "country" at 316 times and "oil" at 229 times. 
  • Sen. Kay Hagan apparently lost her voice with each only uttering 242 words over the last year.  Well, since she's only been there since January I guess we can cut her some slack.  Or maybe she's just a "walk softly and carry a big stick" kind of gal.

H/T to Ed Cone for the link. 

Followed by a Foxx

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My Blackberry beeped.  I looked at it.  The message from Twitter: "Virginia Foxx (virginiafoxx) is now following your updates on Twitter."  As much as I've written about disagreeing with my Congresswoman I have to say that I'm flattered that she'd bother to follow me.  If I was in her shoes I'd have completely ignored me.  Welcome Congresswoman Foxx, and whether or not we agree on anything I'm glad to know you're listening. Now about that stimulus bill…

Bipartisan Sleaze

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Have you heard about the latest high-end scam artist?  No, not Madoff, but this joker Sir Allen Stanford who is accused of running an $8 billion fraud that on the surface sounds an awful lot like Madoff's scandal. Part of the emerging Stanford story is his soft money donations back in 2000 to prominent Democrats, and I think it's an important reminder because it reminds us that the sleaze in Washington is bipartisan.  The next time you hear someone slamming all Republicans or all Democrats but giving their side a free pass please remind them that the problem isn't the parties it's the politicians.  As a breed they make ambulance chasers look good by comparison.   

So Who’d You Vote for In the Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor Race?

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One of the adjustments you have to make when you move to North Carolina is dealing with a ballot that seems like it's 100 pages long when you vote.  I mean we vote for positions that are appointed in most other states, and to think that we citizens actually know who every joker on the ballot is is just plain ludicrous.

That's why it's not entirely shocking that a guy who ran for and won a Guilford County Soil and Conservation District Supervisor seat used a false name on the ballot and was actually a transient. The Rhino Times has the full story here.  

If you read the story you'll find that the alleged election fraudster had a landlord/roommate who was also his campaign manager until the two had a falling out.  Where'd the two meet?  Why at the Forsyth County Central Library in Winston-Salem.  I knew there was something fishy about that place, what with all those books.

Thanks to Ed Cone for the tip.  I'd also like to say that I agree with him that we have entirely too many positions on the ballot.