Month: December 2022

Longleaf Politics: “North Carolina is used to high-dollar U.S. Senate races. The governor’s race could soon join that club. As Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson continues to lay the groundwork for a 2024 run for governor, his campaign is signaling that it will take an unprecedented amount of money to win. In a fundraising email, the…

AR Times: “Federal Judge Kristine Baker last week set one of the long-awaited sentencing hearings for former Republican Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, who’s pleaded guilty to federal crimes in three different jurisdictions. One other former legislator — former Sen. Henry “Hank” Wilkins IV of Pine Bluff, who was charged, like Hutchinson, in the sprawling Preferred Family Healthcare bribery/kickback public corruption case, also is to…

WaPo: “Reps. Bennie G. Thompson and Liz Cheney have radically different political philosophies and life experiences. But with Thompson as its leader and Cheney as his second-in-command, the House Jan. 6 committee has conducted one of the most impressive congressional investigations the nation has ever seen. Thompson, 74, is a Black liberal Democrat from Mississippi who grew…

WUNC: “State regulators face a year-end deadline to decide how Duke Energy will eliminate carbon emissions at power plants to meet the state’s climate goals. After a year of debate, the North Carolina Utilities Commission is expected to issue an order next week. Power plants are the state’s second-largest source of the heat-trapping pollutants that…

VA Democratic Party: “…the Democratic Party of Virginia concluded its tabulation of the results of the Firehouse Primary held on Tuesday, December 20, 2022 to elect a Democratic nominee for the Special Election to succeed the late Congressman A. Donald McEachin. Tuesday’s party-run process saw historic turnout with 27,900 votes cast, making it the largest…

Political Wire: “At least six local political news websites across Alabama and Florida have been secretly taking payments from power companies to run stories attacking clean energy, NPR reports. Emily Atkin: “This is a high-stakes story for both the climate and democracy. It shows fossil fuel interests taking advantage of a struggling local news environment to push…

NC Policy Watch: “Rev. William Barber, former head of the N.C. NAACP, will lead a new center at the Yale Divinity School. Barber announced the creation of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy in a Twitter post Monday, saying it will “prepare a new generation of moral leaders to be active participants in creating a just…

WUNC: “Overman is one of around 40 practicing abortion doulas in North Carolina, according to an estimate from local abortion rights groups — a number that could soon grow. North Carolina groups that train doulas say they’ve seen an uptick in people wanting to become abortion doulas in the months since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Every…

TX Tribune: “Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was neither widespread voter fraud nor other serious issues in Texas’ 2020 elections, according to an audit of four of Texas’ largest counties released Monday evening by Secretary of State John Scott’s office. While the 359-page report did find some “irregularities,” it nonetheless reinforced what election experts…

WUNC: “A Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina only once since 1976, when Barack Obama defeated Republican John McCain by less than half a percentage point in 2008. Democrats have lost U.S. Senate races in 2010, 2014, 2016, 2020 and 2022. To understand why North Carolina Democrats keep falling short, WFAE reporters traveled U.S….