A national pandemic. New minimum wage standards. Calls for a “New Deal.”If you didn’t know any better, you might think I was referring to early 20th Century America —when the flu ravaged the nation and President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed unprecedented progressive policies seemingly every day.
by John Hood North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has just been reelected. It’s an outcome his two immediate predecessors, Democrat Bev Perdue and Republican Pat McCrory, were unable to accomplish. A sweet as that victory must taste to the governor and his team, his ability to conver
by John Hood North Carolina Democrats thought the stars had finally aligned for smashing victories in 2020. A controversial Republican president was at the top of the GOP ticket. Gov. Roy Cooper was posting double-digit leads for re-election. Court-ordered redistricting created
By JOHN HOOD The day before the 2018 midterms, I posted a column about “what to do if you lose.” Without knowing the outcome, I urged those about to be disappointed not to react to their loss in ways that would make themselves, and everyone around them, miserable. “While mourning
By JOHN HOOD Campaigns for president, U.S. Senate and House, governor, and hundreds of other political races have spent staggering sums to market their candidates to North Carolina voters. But will all that spending really change anyone’s mind? If you look at empirical research, you’ll f
By JOHN HOOD There are about 300,000 fewer jobs in North Carolina today than there were in February, before the start of the COVID-19 recession. That’s a 7.5% drop in total employment — the biggest decline in the southern United States. Our labor market also compares poorly on other meas
By Kari Travis and Rick Henderson , Carolina Journal News Service RALEIGH — N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein is hiding something, say Senate Republicans challenging a back-room, Democrat-led deal to rewrite state election laws. Stein — a Democrat who’s running for re-election
By John Hood, Carolina Journal News Service For 16 years, former state Rep. Cherie Berry has served as North Carolina’s labor commissioner. Now she’s retiring, and another Republican state representative, Josh Dobson of McDowell County, is running to replace her. Dobson’s opponent is Dem
By JOHN HOOD RALEIGH — North Carolina, like most of the country, has become increasingly polarized in our political thinking and behavior. But what does that really mean? Well, we know it doesn’t mean that all North Carolinians are so rigidly partisan they support onl
By Rick Henderson Carolina Journal News Service Two lawsuits challenging the N.C. State Board of Elections’ plans for handling absentee ballots this fall head before a federal judge Thursday, Oct. 8, in Greensboro. A hearing on both suits is scheduled less than one day after the same
By JOHN HOOD Carolina Journal RALEIGH — In this seemingly endless year of disease, destruction, dissension, and despair, what’s an optimist to do? This is no hypothetical question for me. I’m a naturally optimistic person. As one of my favorite songs goes, “Grab your coat and get
by John Hood When Democrat Jen Mangrum and Republican Catherine Truitt first filed to run for state superintendent of public instruction, neither could have expected that the central issue of the 2020 race would be whether to allow public schools to provide in-person instruction to N
