The news keeps getting worse for North Carolina Democrats, who face an electoral map stacked heavily in favor of the GOP, the drag of President Obama’s unpopular policies and retirement of incumbents.
A sex scandal in the state party headquarters has forced top elected leaders all the way up to Gov. Bev Perdue to call for state party chairman David Parker of Statesville to resign. A report in today’s News&Observer highlights the Democrats’ bleak prospects in November, noting that the election might very well flip the NC delegation from 7-6 Democratic to a dominating 10-3 Republican majority. http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/04/18/2008246/gop-likes-chances-in-nc-congress.html
But as is often the case in state media coverage of NC politics, the mountains gets short shrift. The 11th congressional district is every bit as ripe a Republican takeover as the seats in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain that the N&O story reports on (in part because that is the N&O’s coverage area). Yet the 11th gets only a one-sentence nod.
U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, better at reading polls than he was at reading NFL defenses, has declined to run for a third term, even though he voted against TARP, stimulus voting and ObamaCare. Shuler’s chief of staff, Hayden Rogers, has signed on to try and win the seat, along with liberal Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell.
Meanwhile, eight Republicans are competing for the Republican nomination including Highlands businessman Mark Meadows, Henderson-Transylvania-Polk District Attorney Jeff Hunt and Asheville financial adviser Ethan Wingfield.