The Assembly: “Mike Easley lives near the mouth of the Cape Fear River in the small town of Southport, where he can look out his back window and watch giant cargo ships piled with containers ply their way upriver toward Wilmington.
I stopped by on a sunny morning this summer. Though waterfront restaurants just a mile away were crowded with vacationers, Easley’s riverfront neighborhood was quiet. Cars were parked in his driveway. The trash can was at the curb.
I knocked on the door.
I’d been trying to get up with Easley for a couple months. The Assembly asked me to catch up with the former North Carolina governor, who, after keeping a generally low profile since leaving office in January 2009, seemed to be reemerging in the public eye.
He’d been quoted in stories about a new study on the NC Education Lottery, which he’d championed. He’d invited Spectrum News into his garage workshop. There, amid the sawdust and furniture oil, he stood in bib overalls in front of his lathe, talking about the hobby he started at a time when he couldn’t afford store-bought furniture.
But it’s not easy catching up with Easley, who’s always been elusive. He told Spectrum’s Tim Boyum that he would “jump the fence” at the governor’s mansion in order to shake off his security detail and just be alone.
“You know, you get the heebie-jeebies and you got to get away,” he told Boyum.
As a politician, Easley was a paradox. Outgoing yet aloof. Engaging but confounding. A Democrat who often had little time for party functions. A former prosecutor who ran afoul of the law. A gifted storyteller who lost control of his own.
He’s probably the most idiosyncratic governor the state has ever had, right down to his once-secret email account under the name of fictional detective Nick Danger—spelled backward.”