Graham: Focus on home-grown Ph.D.s

It would be easier to "keep it brief" of The News & Observer would get out there and open up its news columns to report on some of this political intimidation being unleashed upon the people of the Triangle area rather than making us readers do your reporting for you.

You're just not getting the story about the way some activists in the Democratic Party really operate in the two North Carolina counties--Durham and Orange--which give it the top two vote margins in general elections each two years.

You have people being given food and beverages in restaurants that have been tampered with, all at the request of these Democratic super-interest groups with no investigation or intervention by state government offices in Raleigh. You have people being thrown to the floor of municipal buses by intentional sudden-braking schemes ordered up by over-zealous Democratic activists. You have people being being thrown off the campuses of their own alma maters--people who want to get master's and Ph.D.'s to be able to teach in North Carolina--not by academic deans but by political factions.

But all you want to do is check the quarterly campaign finance reports to see if some campaign forgot to list the expenses of a meet-and-greet barbecue. You just want to use your large and able news staff to see if you can catch the struggling shoestrings political campaigns in some campaign reporting error.

And now people are finally taking notice--you're losing prospects for ACC basketball programs because the country is finding out that in the Triangle, anything goes in politics, because the news media isn't going to get out there and get the story. Well, student-athletes from around the country don't want to go to universities caught up in a political envifronment of raid-and-run.

The conference that for so long was known for "academics first" runs the risk, in teh Triangle at least, of beign known for political harassment first, all because The N&O is unwilling to take a stand like the Daniels would do when academic freedom was threatened by political operatives.

So wake up, Rip Van N&O, and get involved with what's really happening in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Then we can take an autumntime pass on writing in to the newspaper abotu this and that.

Anglico--

Thanks for your query. I am going to sound like one of these raving conservatives with this response, but don't forget that one of my political heroes was Hubert H. Humphrey, Ph.D., of the great state of Minnesota.

We have in the Triangle area teams of Democratic Party activists who are not like your regular rank-and-file party supporters who roll up their sleeves and do the unselfish work of helping their local county and statewide party slates get out the vote every two years but rather seem intent on exercising considerable "group power" over individual North Carolinians who happen to be interested in the policies and candidates of the Democratic Party.

In my view, these blitzing Democratic linebackers, whose signal-calling comes from coaches both in other regions of the country and here in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, seem to think that the only worthwhile graduate or professional degree programs in our universities are law and business. So anybody else who may be interested in pursuing the routes chosen by Humphrey and others--for example, to study political science, history, literature or philosophy at the graduate level and then be able to teach on a university campus in the general liberal arts field--should be knocked off-balance whenever the opportunity comes.

I have tried to notify major press institutions in Raleigh, Durham, Fayettevile, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Charlotte and Asheville, of the extraordinary steps these groups will take to maintain domination over the entire realm of "national-state" relations which is so important in North Carolina counties such as Durham and Orange, which are first and second in the state in terms of providing favorable vote margins for Democratic Party candidates in general elections.

These n'er-do-wells know that someone running for President or U.S. senator on the Democratic ticket in the state of North Carolina is most likely going to get his or her largest vote margin in Durham County and the second largest vote margin in Orange County not only because of the demographics of these strong bases of Democratic support but also because of the many outstanding local and state Democratic leaders who call Durham and Orange counties home.

The problem comes when these groups encounter some bit of "independent thinking" within the Democratic Party which might turn the attention of Triangle Democratic voters--especially during the primary elections--to other issues or other candidates besides the ones previously annointed as most preferred by these activists.

It is all quite paradoxical because it does not fit the pattern of "a local or state machine" applying pressure on voters to support one campaign or the other or one issue or the other. No, these are not the regular state or local Democratic Party organizations at work in these episodes of citizen harassment but rather teams--I keep using that term--of activists owing their primary allegiance to regional Democratic groups elsewhere in the country--say, the Northeast, Chicago, Texas and California.

So it's not like these people are for or against North Carolina's presidential candidate, John Edwards, or for or against some of the leading Democratic presidential candidates around the country such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich or Bill Richardson.

I have even sought to confront some of these supposedly "national-state" Democrats with the question: Are you supporting a particular candidate for President in the Democratic caucuses and primaries? Or how about for governor or U.S. senator?

No, they don't have an answer to this and, in my review of the presidential field's attitudes toward North Carolina, I have come to the conclusion that not a single Democratic candidate for president in the 2008 field wants activites like these occurring in North Carolina under the auspices of their respective campaigns. These are good and well-qualified presidential candidates in both the Democratic and Republican parties, and naturally they are competing for votes in North Carolina along with former Sen. John Edwards, whose home-state campaign in my opinion has been hurt by these out-of-state, in-state raids upon the philosophical independence of the North Carolina voter.

I have even sought to check with the home-state Democratic parties of some of these Triangle troublemakers to see if they approve of such disruptive tactics in this state. But whether the individuals happen to be from New York, Illinois, Texas or Massachusetts, you find that the Democratic organizations of those states do not favor this sort of snooping and sniping by Democrats from their states in North Carolina's own state political affairs. Besides, these good Democrats back in New York and Texas know that North Carolina hasn't gone Democratic for President since 1976, so why make matters even worse for the next Democratic presidential nominee by disrupting the political dialogue and creating hard feelings among thoughtful, independent-minded Democrats here in North Carolina?

So inevitably you begin to see these groups as simply attaches of political interest groups in this state and elsewhere--not in the better traditional sense of folks organizing themselves around certain issues and concerns but in the narrow, politically selfish connection of the strictest maintenance of out-of-state and in-state interest-group power leverage over large groups of the electorate here in North Carolina in order to keep the Triangle from attending to one of its more important civic, educational, journalistic and political tasks--communicating with the people of the other 97 counties in North Carolina about their perceptions of the issues as viewed across the state.

This is the part of it that these Triangle Democratic cliques don't like--that state politics will reflect the judgments, concerns and sensibilities of North Carolinians from the mountains to the coast and not just those who reside in the three primary counties of the Research Triangle Park region--Wake, Durham and Orange.

There's more to this than I should attempt to describe here, but one thing should be mentioned. One reason you see such extraordinary activism by the Republican Party at the local level in Wake County is that they do not wish to see Wake transformed into the kind of Democratic bastions which have dominated Durham and Orange counties in recent years. That's why you see Wake Republicans making all sorts of alliances with nearly every group in the political spectrum--they want to see one of the three Reseach Triangle counties stay Republican or "even."

But they have little to worry about because for decades, Wake County voters have demonstated that they will go Republican or Democratic in races from the courthouse to the White House depending on how they view the candidates and issues each year.

So the Democratic interest groups I am taking issue with--and as a person who ran for Congress as a Democrat in the Piedmont region of the state as well as in one statewide Democratic senatorial primary 30 years ago--are these combinations of "super-activists" with strong out-of-state ties who seem determined to separate the Triangle politically from the rest of North Carolina in the Democfratic Party at least and make it dependent upon the prevailing ideological views of major national political interest groups in the Northeast, the Midwest, Texas and California.

I mean, it gets worse and worse when you look more deeply into the problem. The Northeast activists just love to set Texas Democrats up as our Southeastern "supervisors" in everything from politics to the arts. Chances are, your music band has to get "clearance" from the Austin singer-songwriter community to get a gig in certain places right here in North Carolina! Meanwhile, there's no problem seeing "Austin City Limits" on WUNC television, and I like the program as much as the next person because I have played a lot of music in the Lone Star State over the years.

But we in North Carolina don't try to tell the University of Texas who should be invited to appear on "Austin City Limits," do we?

Then the Chicago activists--you can't tell what they want. I tell them my first Democratic political hero was Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, and so are they either for Sen. Obama of Illinois, or Sen. Clinton of New York, herslef a native of the Prairie State? No answer. Well then, are they for Johnny Edwards? No answer. Just a glowering expression that we'd better do just what they want or else.

And there's the crux of it: in Cook County and Chicago, they have roughly half the population of the state of Illinois. But it's different here in North Carolina. My native county of Mecklenburg and the second-largest N.C. county, Wake, which will soon pass Mecklenburg in population, each have less than 10 per cent of the overall population of North Carolina. So our urban counites--such as Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Cumberland, Gaston and others--have learned to "listen to one another" for the good of the people of the entire state of North Carolina. Smaller counties in this state can still be very infleuntial in state politics--Dare, Gates, Greene, Hoke, Davie, Stanly, Alexander, Ashe and Madison are some good examples.

So this is the battle as I see it early in the 21st Century in politics, education, journalism, business and the arts here in North Carolina. How can we make welcome the savvy, sharp and politically active people who learned their politics in states with large dominating counties (Michigan and Wayne County, Texas and Harris County, Florida and Dade County, for example) yet still educate them to the fact that we have a special geography and a special nexus of intrastate--not just interstate but intrastate--threads and connectiosn here in North Carolina that add considerably to the material, cultural and spiritual wealth and well-being of the Old North State?

And the more we advance in communications and technology, the more we cherish our "neighborly connections" from town to town, city to city, county to county and region to region across the entire state of North Carolina. We simply cannot let certain aggressive squads of dominating political players--whether in the Democratic Party or otherwise--use the Research Triangle region to split apart or sever "the ties that bind" North Carolinians together, from Murphy to Manteo. We cannot turn the editorial control of our newspapers, radio and television stations over to media managers in New York or California.

We must insist that every North Carolinian, whether he or she has been here three weeks or a lifetime, be afforded an equal opportunity to chart out a chosen life course here in this state and in this region of the country.

The intrusive activities of overzealous political interest groups which are trying to use Durham and Orange counties as a local geographic and ideological base to throw other North Carolina citizens off their natural track ought to have to see these disruptive activities duly reported in the major daily newspapers of this state so that they can "read 'em and weep" before trying to make life more difficult for the honest, hard-working, rank-and-file North Carolina citizen.

--DAVID McKNIGHT

I like the emphasis here on helping North Carolinians advance their educational goals and objectives after graduation. It is good that we have strong enrollment figures for international scholars and teachers participating in our public and private university Ph.D. programs, but we certainly do seem adept at putting up unneeded obstacles tending to delay or stop altogether the efforts by those schooled in North Carolina to add master's and doctoral degrees to their educational training portfolios.

There is also way too much sheer political mischief in the Triangle by teams of out-of-state and in-state groups, especially within the supposedly progressive ranks of the Democratic Party, to try to trip people up on their way to a master's or a Ph.D., as if their being able to enter the public school and collegiate teaching ranks poses some sort of dire threat to the future of the Democratic Party and the State of North Carolina.

Maybe this explains why so many Democratic Party "activists" are resentful at the extraordinary role of N.C. governors from Charles Brantley Aycock to Terry Sanford and beyond to add to the storehouse of educational capability in the Old North State, "where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great."

Let us make sure that our gifted and talented international graduate students, scholars and teachers feel welcome and appreciated within our 16-campus UNC System as well as within our network of outstanding private institutions of higher learning. But let us re-double our efforts to make sure that any qualified individuals who received their foundation-level academic schooling here in North Carolina have "open skies" access to the next plateau of higher educational degree attainment.

There are just so many well-educated individuals who grew up in North Carolina or moved to the state in more recent years who have just what it takes to go into the schools and into our colleges and universities to be accomplished teachers in certain academic subjects and disciplines but who through personal circumstances or occasional outright political harassment from the jealous guardians of political fencepost markers have been unable to see their way clear to get that master's degree or Ph.D. that they need to qualify for the endeavor at hand.

A tip of the hat to Bill Graham for raising these educational issues for further discussion on the gubernatorial campaign trail and in the editorial and opinion corridors of the North Carolina press.

David McKnight