The notorious 'hands' ad is back

Like the 17-year locust, a version of North Carolina’s notorious “hands” ad is back on television. It was last seen here in the 1990 U.S. Senate campaign between Republican incumbent Jesse Helms and former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, who was bidding to become the first black U.S. senator from this state.
Shortly before the election, the Helms campaign aired the “hands” ad, showing a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter while the announcer intoned, “You needed that job. And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.”
That ad (click here for a look and more analysis)played to the worst racial fears of white voters and was one of a number of reasons why Helms won his fourth term that election. Helms’ staff later said it ran only a few times, but it was heavily reported in the news media and no doubt was a factor.
Since the 1990 election, versions of the hands ad have appeared in other states, including Oklahoma’s 2004 Senate race when an ad showed Hispanic workers and a set of black hands counting money while an announcer criticized a Democratic congressman’s immigration record.
Now the ad is back in this state. Republican congressional nominee Vernon Robinson of Winston-Salem is using a version of the ad to attack the immigration record of incumbent Democrat Brad Miller of Raleigh in the 13th District. Mr. Robinson, an African American running on his conservative credentials, ran for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 5th District in 2004, boasting that “Jesse Helms is back – and this time he is black.”
In the newest reincarnation of the ad, the hands crumpling the rejection letter are black – suggesting that illegal immigrants take jobs away from black citizens.
“You needed that job,” the ad says. “And you were the best qualified. But they gave it to an illegal alien so they could pay him under the table.”
Mr. Robinson says he’s only trying to campaign on the hot button issue of immigration. But those who remember the notorious race-baiting campaigns in North Carolina history know exactly was he’s doing. He’s making the same sort of racial appeal that has tainted N.C. politics since Reconstruction days.

The fight for the N.C. House

Twelve years ago, Republican legislators adopted a contract with voters that helped them win the state House in the 1994 elections and allowed them to elect the first Republican House speaker – Harold Brubaker of Randolph County – in modern times in the 1995 and ’97 sessions.
Now, with House Democrats on the defensive over allegations of corruption related to passage of the lottery last year and campaign contributions from video poker and optometric interests, Republicans once again hope to win the House with a contract of sorts. It’s not as extensive as the plan the GOP adopted in 1994, but it tells voters what Republican candidates aim to do. House Republican leader Joe Kiser of Lincoln County released the policy statement the other day – with the help of former Speaker Brubaker. Here’s what it says:
North Carolina House Republican Caucus 2006 Position Statements
Policy statement
It is the policy of the North Carolina House Republican Caucus to work as a collective, unified body to implement these position statements and by providing jobs with the overall effect of bettering the lives of all North Carolinians.
Ethics
The House Republican Caucus supports and is committed to making real, meaningful changes to the ethical code that must be adhered to by all members of the General Assembly as well as the Executive Branch of State Government.
Illegal Immigration
The Republican House Caucus supports and is committed to attacking the issue of Illegal Immigration in the name of public safety, especially in regards to the issuance of North Carolina driver’s licenses and the impact on our State budget with increasing costs to public education, healthcare, law enforcement, and the judiciary.
Eminent Domain
The House Republican Caucus supports and is committed to passing a constitutional amendment to protect individual property rights to prohibit the government from seizing private property for commercial use.
Marriage
The House Republican Caucus supports and is committed to defend marriage by a constitutional amendment recognizing only marriages between one woman and one man.
Budget Reform
The House Republican Caucus supports and is committed to utilizing zero-based budgeting to effectively estimate, justify, and prioritize North Carolina’s spending plan.
Taxation
The House Republican Caucus supports and is committed to reducing the personal income tax burden on working families through responsible budgeting and government efficiencies.
Medicaid
North Carolina is the ONLY state that forces counties to help fund Medicaid benefits. The House Republican Caucus supports and is committed to relief in the country funding of Medicaid, which will in turn provide property owners tax relief and more local revenue to be used for school construction, police, fire, emergency, medical services and waste/sewer infrastructure.

Republicans trail Democrats 63-57 in the House and hope their position statements draw clear comparisons between them and Democratic candidates. But as House Democratic leader Joe Hackney of Orange County has pointed out, the House Democratic caucus announced its own policy agenda at the start of the legislative session and addressed each issue before the House adjourned.
Republicans may be a bit tardy releasing their own position statement, but at least they’re doing it now. As former state Sen. Patrick Ballantine emphasized in the 2004 governor’s race, Republicans must demonstrate what they’re for, not just what they oppose, and Kiser and his colleagues clearly understand that.
But there are some unknowns that will also affect this race. One of them is the Republican disarray in Congress and President Bush’s low numbers in the polls. Another is a current campaign within the state Republican Party to drum out some lawmakers who cooperated with House Speaker Jim Black, a Democrat, and Republican Richard Morgan in the 2003 and ’05 sessions. That came about after then-Republican Rep. Mike Decker switched parties, helped keep Black in power and produced a deadlock that led to the first co-speakership in state history with Black and Morgan in the 2003-05 session.
Democrats have their own problems to contend with, of course, and the rumor mill in Raleigh has run wild the past six months over who was about to be charged with this or that. Some of these shoes may fall before the election, and they, too, would have an effect on voters.

Do you remember Hurricane Hazel?

Ten years ago today Hurricane Fran came ashore at Cape Fear and ripped a wide swath of destruction up through Raleigh and across the Virginia border in a rampage that left distinctive marks on Raleigh. This city, once called the City of Oaks, could have been known for a while as the City of Blue Tarp Roofs; some of our neighbors in north Raleigh still had blue tarps showing as late as a couple of years ago. The morning after Fran came through, I spent more than an hour trying to find passable routes to work – and wound up getting guidance via cell phone from John Drescher, then an Observer editor in Charlotte who had recently moved from his west Raleigh home and had some suggestions for streets to try.
The Capital City’s trees were ruined in many places, just as Charlotte’s had been on Sept. 21-22, 1989 when Hugo came up through South Carolina and tore up much of the city.
We’re all a product of our experiences, I guess, and we probably rank hurricanes according to what we remember about the storms we lived through. Lots of folks will remember Fran or Hugo or Floyd (1999) as the worst; I expect folks on the upper Cape Fear River, dealing with flooding today from Ernesto, will remember this storm as the worst.
Count me among those who think Hazel in 1954 was the worst. It was a Category Four storm that took roughly the same path Fran would 42 years later. The Oct. 15, 1954 storm was hardly mentioned in local news reports here before it hit; I was in third grade at Irving Park Elementary School in Greensboro when the storm passed by well to the east and the weather was so awful they wouldn’t let students leave – even for my two-block walk home. We were spared the worst in Guilford, but the next summer my parents drove us to the coast and pointed out the houses awash in the sounds and waterways. Long Beach was just about scraped clean of cottages.
There were nine big storms that hit North Carolina in the 1950s, including seven in two years that gave our coastline the nickname “Hurricane Alley,” writes Jay Barnes in his book “North Carolina Hurricane History.”
What was the worst hurricane you endured? Were you on the coast when Hazel hit?

Night out at the Bulls

Somewhere along in the middle innings, when the Durham Bulls were well on their way to a 16-hit, 11-run hammering of the Charlotte Knights in their final game of the regular season Sunday, I wondered once again why there wasn’t more interest in a downtown baseball park in the Queen City.
True: I like baseball and love going to minor league parks all over the state. I grew up watching games in Greensboro’s old War Memorial Stadium, Winston-Salem’s Earnie Shore Field and Burlington’s Fairchild Park. I never saw a game in Raleigh’s old Devereaux Meadow, now the site of a city maintenance yard, but remember its dark green bleachers and the tall hemlocks beyond the outfield wall.
When we moved to Raleigh in the late 1970s and Miles Wolfe revived the old Durham Bulls franchise at the lovely old Durham Athletic Park, we became regulars. When Raleigh businessman Jim Goodmon bought the Bulls and moved them into a new brick stadium a few blocks away, we continued to go to a few games each year.
Here’s why: It’s a deal. The Bulls, like the Knights, play in the International League. It’s AAA ball, which means you see players who may be in the majors next week, and big leaguers who have been sent down from some rehabilitation after a slump. So it’s good baseball with fast pitching and decent hitters.
And ordinary folks can afford to go, take the kids and have a big time. Parking is $3 a couple of hundred feet away, free if you walk a few blocks. You can get good seats for $8 and a foot-long hotdog for $4. A family of four can have a night out without blowing the monthly rent. It cannot do that at a Panthers game in Charlotte or a Hurricanes game in Raleigh. Those are big league teams with big league prices. They charge what the market allows.
Minor league baseball, even at the AAA level, is still about getting good value for the money. There’s a different promotion every night. The kids love the Bulls mascot, Wool E. Bull, and the team dog, Lucky the Wonder Dog, who stands 2-foot-four and runs the bases to celebrate Bulls victories.
Saturday night the Bulls-Knights game drew more than 10,000 fans. Sunday night – a school night here, mind you – the final game in their series drew more than 8,600 in an 11-6 Bulls victory.
But the Knights don’t draw so well at their stadium in Fort Mill. According to stats on the International League website, Charlotte leads the International League’s South Division in the standings with a 13 1/2 game lead over the second-place Bulls.
But Charlotte has the league’s third-worst attendance, drawing an average of 4,755 fans per home game, while Durham has the league’s seventh best attendance with 7,389. No doubt the Knights are hampered by a stadium that is, after all, a bit of a trek from Charlotte. And consumers in both Durham and Charlotte have a lot of entertainment choices competing for their dollar.
But the Knights surely would be drawing more fans in a Charlotte stadium as the Knights compete for another International League Governor’s Cup Championship. The Knights won it in 1999, and clinched their division and a spot in the playoffs Monday night even as they lost to Columbus 8-4 – and drew just 2,178 fans. That is pretty sad for a team that is, after all, one of the best in AAA ball.

Repubican moderates – threatened species?

Former state Rep. Maggie Keesee-Forrester of Greensboro died the other day, and a lot of folks remember her gentle, graceful style – and the iron backbone she must have had to deal with the criticism she took for taking a stand against paddling children in public schools.
In those days she was Margaret Keesee, at 27 the first woman elected to the N.C. House from Guilford County. She was a Republican, and when she went into office, there were just nine women in the entire General Assembly. She was elected the same year Richard Nixon won his second term, the year Jim Holshouser became the first Republican governor since the turn of the century and Jesse Helms the first Republican U.S. Senator.
It was a watershed moment for Republicans, who in the 1973 legislature had 50 members – nearly 30 percent. But Republicans were also divided.
Some of them were loyal to Jesse Helms and shared his strong, socially conservative stances.
Others, such as Rep. Kessee, then-state Rep. Howard Coble of Greensboro, Don Beason of Mt. Airy and George Little of Southern Pines, were more moderate. They aligned with Holshouser, a mountain Republican who was fiscally conservative but less motivated by strong social conservatism. It was Holshouser, remember, who helped win passage of the landmark Coastal Area Management Act, a key environmental protection law that has helped save our coastline from the kinds of development more familiar to Florida andNew Jersey.
Keesee, a former Head Start teacher who also taught 12 years in Greensboro schools, wanted to prohibit the paddling of children for classroom misbehavior. My colleague Mark Binker of the Greensboro News & Record dug up a quote from that session: “What this bill will say is that we can no long whip out the paddle just because the child says no – and this happens a lot,” she said.
Her bill didn’t pass, but it stirred a lot of controversy from folks who thought teachers ought not spare the rod when a student acted up. Other agreed with Keesee that parents should be the only ones to make that decision.
Keesee lost her first re-election bid, but it wasn’t just the paddling bill. In 1974, the Watergate scandal cost Republicans everywhere, and reduced the Republican caucus in the legislature to a scant 10 seats. The GOP would be a decade in recovering its 50 seats.
But Keesee, who in 1982 married Democrat Chuck Forrester, a Guilford County commissioner, was already back in the legislature, retaking her old seat in 1979. And she sponsored a bill that has transformed primary elections in North Carolina. The 1987 legislature approved her bill allowing the executive committees of either party to permit unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in their primary.
Republicans were much smarter about this than Democrats. They realized that the number of unaffiliated voters was growing rapidly. Getting them to vote in Republican primaries might become part of a habit that included voting for Republicans routinely and maybe even registering Republican. Democrats later caught on, and began allowing unaffiliated votes to vote in the Democratic primary, too.
Keesee-Forrester served six terms in the legislature, where her reputation as a moderate Republican grew in stature even as political divisions festered. She would have been uncomfortable with the current effort in the Republican Party to punish members such as Reps. Richard Morgan and Stephen LaRoque, who so willingly cooperated with Democrats in recent years. But I don’t think she would have gotten out her paddle to punish anyone.

Two-party politics in North Carolina?

My friend Burke Davis, the former Charlotte News editor and writer of scores of terrific books about the American Revolution and the Civil War, once provoked an indignant response from North Carolina Gov. R. Gregg Cherry of Gastonia when he asked whether this state would ever get a two-party system.
The story about Davis, who died Friday in Greensboro, is recorded in V.O. Key’s important 1949 book “Southern Politics In State and Nation” – which at one time was required reading for anyone who aspired to understand Southern politics.
The book was written at a time when Democrats still controlled the South. In many cases Democrats were the conservative party and Republicans were the reformers. Only a few Southern states had Republican strongholds, usually in mountain areas that had resisted the urge to secede at the outset of the Civil War nearly a century earlier.
“The principal concentrations of mountain Republicans are in southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee,” Key wrote. “...The strongest Republican state organization in the South is that of North Carolina.”
Key described Davis as a “whimsical reporter” for asking Cherry about a two-party system and reporting on Oct. 11, 1946 that the governor was “stunned by the subversive suggestion that North Carolina should have a two-party system.”
“What do you mean?” Cherry asked Davis. “We’ve got one. Why, there are 300,000 Republicans in North Carolina.... There are some counties where we have ding-dong fights every year, and the Republicans are really tough in presidential election years. Why, you know how strong they are west of Asheville. I’ll have to go up there a couple of times before November 5.”
The notion that a politician would have to go to western North Carolina only a couple of times to talk to voters is a quaint one, given the near-parity and honest-to-gosh two-party system now at work in this state.
But as Gov. Mike Easley has proved twice, you can be pretty choosy about where you campaign, if you’ve got a good television appeal and enough money to air ads where you want them.
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The big bird round-up at Pea Island

It’s hard to believe now, but at one time, conservation officials hoped to boost the resident population of Canada geese and somehow get them to stay in North Carolina year round. Now they’re trying to reverse that success.
Some Canada geese are migratory waterfowl – making annual pilgrimages from their summer homes to their winter feeding grounds. One of the remarkable attractions to Eastern North Carolina from around late fall to late winter is the huge visitation of tundra swans and snow geese that winter in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
These big birds are an astonishing sight for city dwellers who normally don’t see a bird any larger than the one that adorns the Thanksgiving table. Their presence is one reason folks are fighting the Navy’s plan to put a practice jet landing field near the Pocosin refuge.
In an era whengovernment agencies, academicians and conservationists work pretty hard and spend a lot of money to maintain wildlife habitat and promote a healthy population of animal and plant life, it’s hard to imagine too much success.
But that’s the case with the Branta canadensis – Canada geese. They’re wild geese with black heads bearing a white patch. Some are migratory but a great many are not – they’re here and intend to stay. Not only are there too many, they apparently make a mess and gobble up food that migratory waterfowl need to feed on when they arrive here.
For years, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has struggled to figure out what to do about them nationally. Most particularly they are “a serious problem” at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the N.C. Outer Banks.
A report issued by the service in June noted that a sharp increase in geese means that as many as 250 birds may be feeding in one place on a given day. “On occasion as many as 400 resident geese have been counted feeding in the impoundments during a time when the refuge is trying to produce food (submerged aquatic vegetation) for migratory birds,” the service says.
The Fish & Wildlife Service recently announced it plans to reduce the resident goosepopulation. It will allow a range of options, including Canada geese hunting seasons. It hopes to reduce the resident bird population by more than a million birds over the next decade to a population of 2.1 million nationally.
As a sign of how serious the service is about reducing the flock, it plans to allow the use of electronic calls and unplugged shotguns to for sport shooting of the birds.
But not at Pea Island. That’s an “inviolate refuge” for migratory waterfowl so the only time that hunters could distinguish between migratory waterfowl and resident waterfowl is during the summer and into September before the migrant waterfowl fly in. “Hunters don’t seem to be interested – they say it’s just too hot,” the service said in a news release in June.
That left the Fish & Wildlife Service with one effective alternative: gassing the birds to death. “Trapping and euthanizing the resident geese has been chosen as the most reasonable and prudent way to deal with the problem,” the service said Aug. 11. It will herd the geese into pens, load them into a trailer and take them to a remote site to be “euthanized in a carbon dioxide chamber – which is a humane process.” Their bodies will be buried or frozen as food for the red wolf, which federal officials are also trying to restore to a sizable population.
Unless the Fish & Wildlife Service succeeds in reducing the number of resident birds, it won’t be long before they consume all the food migratory waterfowl need, the agency says. So the euthanization process puts the service in the position of killing birds it once encouraged to live here in a refuge considered “inviolate sanctuary” – at least for migratory waterfowl.
One more example, no doubt, of the law of unintended consequences at work.