The power of that game back in 1957

I must be getting too old for this. It was hard to roll out of the rack this morning, much harder than I remember after the last four times the Tar Heels won the NCAA basketball championship. It's the toll of the years, no doubt, creaky joints and sore muscles from working in the yard, and staying up past bedtime again. And this time I didn't even spend much time celebrating. It's the memory of a game more than half a century ago that keeps me watching.

I keep remembering that night back in 1957 when I was 10, going on 11 years old and Carolina was playing Kansas in the first televised game I ever saw. Well, saw it through sleepy eyes, anyway. I kept falling asleep; Dad kept shaking me awake to catch the action, and telling me I'd be glad the rest of my life to stay up late and see a treat like this. I'd never forget it, he said.

He was right, though the picture sometimes was hard to make out. We hadn't had a television very long -- a Motorola, black and white, our course, and even on good nights our reception was awful, somewhere between a blizzard and a white out.

My father had rolled the set's rabbit-ear antenna with tin foil in hopes of improving the picture as we watched Tar Heel guard Tommy Kearns jump against Kansas' giant Wilt Chamberlain. The games that year were terrific, and the final featured a triple-overtime win by the Tar Heels and set off the Betts version of a wild celebration that must have lasted 10 minutes or so -- big doings in that staid household on Cornwallis Drive in Greensboro. We probably toasted the victory by splitting a 6 1/2 ounce Coke, or some such.

I wouldn't take anything for that memory now. My father watched two other UNC national championships -- 1982 and 1993 -- before he died, but we only saw the one together. In 2005 and again last night in the 2009 championship game I watched every move on a 32-inch TV my father would have been drop-jawed to see, these 52 years after that first snowy championship game, but today's screen doesn't even count as a big one today.

Last night's picture was clear as a bell and the only snow was some stuff swirling outside Ford Field, and as I watched the Tar Heels dominate Michigan State I was just a little sad to see a blowout instead of a closer contest that showed the best of both teams. But that's not a complaint. This is basketball country, and we like to win our games any way we can, especially when it means a fifth national championship -- and a chance to relive a special evening long ago watching the Heels work their magic and hooking a kid on ACC basketball forever.

Follow the dollar in NC politics

Candidates for state office in North Carolina raised more than $98 million for the 2008 campaign, according to the Web site Follow the Money.org. Here's a link to the N.C. part of that site.

In non-judicial races, candidates raised $26.3 million more than in the previous general election -- most of it in the governor's race last year.

Mike Wessler, communications director for the organization, passes along this information:

* Non-judicial state-level candidates in North Carolina raised $80.9 million in 2008, $26.3 million more than they raised in 2004

* Gubernatorial candidates received $22.9 million of the extra $26.3 million raised in 2008. Candidates for governor received $19.2 million in 2004, compared with $42.1 million in 2008

* Contributions to legislative and statewide candidates remained relatively level in 2008. Candidates for the House and Senate received $30 million in 2008, compared to $28.1 million in 2004. Candidates for other statewide offices received $8.1 million in 2008, compared with $7.4 million in 2004.

The site also notes that the largest contributor was the N.C. Democratic Party with $6.6 million in contributions.

But the largest single contributors were former state Sen. Robert Pittenger, R-Mecklenburg, an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor last year, with nearly $3.3 million in contributions, followed by former Sen. Fred Smith, R-Johnston, an unsuccessful candidate for governor, with more than $2.9 million in contributions.

There's a lot of information on that site. Give it a look.

Triangle key to Democrats' hold on federal elections

Triangle the state's important region for Democrats

This will surprise almost no one: The Triangle area of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill is the most influential in helping Democrats win federal office and making the state competitive in presidential politics. Without it, President Obama would not have won North Carolina. So says Public Policy Polling analyst Tom Jensen in this note:

How important is the Triangle to continued Democratic gains in federal elections in North Carolina?

It was the only media market made up mostly of North Carolina counties to vote for Barack Obama last fall.

Obama took the region 56-43, racking up a plurality of 186,000 votes.

His next best performances were in the Triad and greater Charlotte, each of which he lost 52-47. In the Triad his deficit was 43,000 votes and in Charlotte it was 66,000.

He lost 53-46 in Asheville, Greenville, and Wilmington. In Asheville it was a deficit of 22k votes, in Greenville 25k, and in Wilmington 16k.

Add up those losses in all of the other state's media markets and it comes to 172k, allowing that 186k margin in the Triangle to make up for losing everywhere else.

There's not much doubt what region's growth is contributing the most to North Carolina's increased competitiveness in Presidential politics.
This analysis is also available on our blog:

'Unusual' unity on smoking ban bill

Polling analyst Tom Jensen notes some interesting things about today's House vote approving a smoking ban in restaurants and public places by a 72-45 vote. It wasn't a strictly party-line vote. He says:

-Although it was largely a party line vote with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed, almost a quarter of the votes did not fit that trend with 18 Republicans voting in favor of the bill and 11 Democrats voting against it. That unusual level of non-party unity may be a reflection of the fact that public opinion about the smoking ban is actually not particularly polarized along party lines. When we polled it in February 68% of Democratic voters and 62% of Republicans expressed support for it, not a particularly large disparity. This was not an issue where GOP representatives needed to vote against it to keep the base happy.

-Most of the Democrats voting against the bill represent districts in the tobacco growing country of eastern North Carolina, but our survey actually found a level of support for the smoking ban in that region equal to the statewide support of the bill. 64% of North Carolinians overall expressed approval for the proposal and so did 64% in the east. The place where we found voters much less supportive than overall was the Triad where it earned just 52% favorability.

This analysis is available on Public Policy Polling's blog at
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/04/smoking-ban-and-public-opinion.html

Alcoa responds on Yadkin River request

Alcoa responds to Gov. Bev Perdue's request to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to 'recapture' Yadkin River projects in this news release from a spokesman:

APRIL 1, 2009 – Alcoa Power Generating Inc. issued the following statement in response to a motion filed by N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue today to intervene in the federal relicensing of the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project in central North Carolina:
The State of North Carolina took an unprecedented step today by pursuing the takeover of a privately-owned business that has roots in North Carolina dating back to 1915. It’s a move that could ultimately cost North Carolina taxpayers more than $500 million.
Alcoa does business in 34 countries around the world and it’s extremely rare to be faced with a situation where a state government wants to seize one of our businesses and operate it for its own benefit. Every other business owner in North Carolina should be concerned about the dangerous precedent this action sets.
Gov. Perdue’s motion to intervene in the federal relicensing of the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project comes more than six years after the federal relicensing process began. Throughout this process, agencies representing the State of North Carolina have been actively involved and the State’s interests have been well protected.
Alcoa has invested heavily in the Yadkin Project and will fight to ensure that it receives full value for its property if the State of North Carolina moves forward with this ill-conceived policy.

Perdue wants to 'recapture' Yadkin project

When Gov. Bev Perdue asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today to halt its consideration of a license renewal for Alcoa Power Generating's hydroelectric facilities on the Yadkin River and ask Congress to "recapture" the projects for the benefit of the state of North Carolina, the motion filed by the state attorney general's office noted that the original reasons for Alcoa to have the license -- the smelter at Badin and local employment -- have evaporated. The state's argument turns on the fact that Alcoa no longer has a workforce that would justify granting a license for control of a public trust resource such as the waters of the Yadkin:

"Fifty years later, the smelting works are no longer operational and the jobs and economic activities associated with them are gone. A skeleton crew of employees remains to look after the shuttered works and to operate the hydropower facilities. While the state and the surrounding communities have largely lost their stake in the original arrangement, APGI continues to operate the dams and generate and sell power at a significant profit. The state therefore moves to intervene to curtail APGI's vestigial private control of this segment of the Yadkin River and to rededicate this valuable resource to significant public use."

And in a footnote, the filing notes that this case is unique. "The licensee is not regulated by the state as a public utility. Nor is the state aware of any other instance in the state where a licensee has secured a license, with the state's active support, expressly to support the local community, then abandoned the activity that brought that benefit."

The motion notes that "never has so compelling an economic case been presented" supporting the nation's first "recapture" of a hydroelectric project from a former federal licensee. The project "now provides only the most minimal public benefits, e.g., payment of taxes, provision of power (albeit for private use and not for the public convenience.)… This contrasts markedly with the express purpose for the initial investment in the project, which was to maintain and enhance the local Badin works."

The 'scary' mile-high, swinging bridge

When Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law the bill authorizing the Grandfather Mountain State Park Tuesday, a sizable crowd assembled to witness the signature that would convert much of the late Hugh Morton's favorite mountain into a park that will preserve its glories forever -- nearly 2,500 acres, in fact. Morton was the photographer, developer, promoter, Tar Heel fan and loving devotee of all things related to North Carolina. He is probably responsible for the fact that the Blue Ridge Parkway has no entrance fees, and that the parkway built the Linn Cove Viaduct around Grandfather Mountain, a roadway many of us believe is among the wonders of the modern world. It was Hugh's idea to bring the Battleship North Carolina home to Wilmington.

Among a great many other things, Morton photographed and promoted Mildred the Bear, and urged visitors to walk across the Mile-High Swinging Bridge.

Dee Freeman, the state's new secretary of environment and natural resources, spoke at the bill-signing session and recalled that when he was a boy, he had "always heard about the mile-high swinging bridge and it scared me to death."

It was a scary notion -- a pedestrian bridge that, any reasonable youngster might imagine, meant a mile-deep fall for those pedestrians unwary enough to lose hold.

But the bridge was nothing of the sort. It was well over a mile high in altitude, to be sure, but it was less than 100 feet above the ground below. And it didn't swing all that much, either, because periodic high winds on Grandfather Mountain required the use of guy wires to steady the bridge in a blow.

The late CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, a close friend of Morton, once spoke at a North Caroliniana Society dinner honoring Morton. Kuralt poked fun at Morton, referring to his bridge not as mile-high, or swinging, either, but as "the eighty-foot-high tethered bridge" at Grandfather Mountain, a line that provoked a roar of laughter from the crowd -- and a tight smile from its creator who was gracious enough to let his friends kid him a little now and then.

I miss Hugh, and his friendship, encouragement and ideas, a lot. But we'll have Grandfather Mountain State Park to remember him, and his example, all our days.