Tag: Inner Banks

It could be worse, Alabama. We could be North Carolina. No, we could be this North Carolina. “Contrast (ethical North Carolina Republicans) with the paid political mercenaries working in Bladen and Robeson counties. The Board of Elections should start the election over.” To recap, that’s a collection of current opinions from, in order, Andrew Reynolds, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina; Robin Hayes, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party and a former member of Congress; Charles P. Pierce, a veteran columnist at Esquire; and the editorial board of The Charlotte Observer. That’s why longtime watchers of Tar Heel politics are pointing their fingers directly at Southern Republicans who are devoted to “the principle of clinging to power.” I don’t blame them, but let’s be fair. North Carolina doesn’t own the patent on political corruption and electoral mayhem. At Illinois State University, the Institute for Corruption Studies says this: “It is all bad news for such states as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey and New York” because they rank so highly in most forms of corruption. And that doesn’t include the stench of the 2011-12 corruption trials of legislators accused of shenanigans with a gambling bill in the Alabama Legislature. For Alabama, that’s the lesson trickling down from the Carolina mountains.