newsobserver.com projects - Pete Brunstetter - Comments

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

alaskan1 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:05:43 -0400

Impeach everyone in office!

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

jesmyopinion — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:35:24 -0400

I bet a 2 year old can draw better lines than what we have now... And we would not have to pay them as much!

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

henrye — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:30:34 -0400

Politics will never let this happen unfortunatly. Redistricting should be done by Citzens who do not vote. It sounds absurd, But since we have so many who do not vote, It would be a fair way to do it. With no lobbying
allowed by anyone Since a lot of voting is done by racial lines, This would make the districts more evenly balanced

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

AmericanNationalist — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:28:31 -0400

Both parties should want districting to be fair. If this passes David Price and Brad Miller can kiss their offices good bye.

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

CitizenOpinionated — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:10:35 -0400

JNorris - part of the problem is the fact that Democrats have held a stranglehold on the NC General Assembly for years. I.E. Look at Brad Millers' district.

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

jnorris — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:55:00 -0400

The problem with these proposals is their source. The party out of power always wants to make redistricting fair. The party in power always wants to cement its grip.

If Brunstetter thought his bill had a chance, he wouldn't have named the redistricting commission for a Republican stalwart. That alone makes it clear his proposal isn't serious.

The legislature isn't going to make districting fair. North Carolina courts aren't going to force fair districting. Until or unless voters of all political stripes join forces to demand a rational districting system, we'll remain at the mercy of whichever partisan hacks currently hold sway.

Re: Bills would make redistricting blind

jesmyopinion — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:14:31 -0400

Gee - the legislators are so smart - I guess there is hope for them yet. How did they figure out the citizens of NC do not want to have the races determined even before the citizens get to vote? Who would have thunk the districts should be divided up into a fair proportion and not some crazy gerrymandering district as they are now set up??? They are so smart!!!

Re: Two challengers for GOP Senate leader

Prospero — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:49:43 -0500

Senator Brunstetter is correct about "what needs to happen in 2010," insofar as the next, very important, election is concerned. Meanwhile, there's the 2009 General Assembly and the difficult job of helping your Caucus, and preventing them from being the Senate Democrat's rodeo clowns, cannot be avoided. Phil Berger has done enough of a good job at the latter that his colleagues may have already forgotten that problem.

Senator Brunstetter's friend, the late Ham Horton, knew well the shortage of "institutional memory" there is among the Members of the General Assembly.

Among thousands upon thousands of possibilities, as just one example, the decision in the Pender/Stephenson case may be coming your way, requiring the redrawing of legislative districts, possibly just in the Pender-New Hanover House county cluster. Possibly the whole ball of wax.

Should the Majority be required to use the Census data they used in November 2003 or the corrected data they had the previous September and should have used but didn't, the data they didn't tell the Republicans they had...the data that didn't over-populate Orange County.

Court precedent required them to use the corrected data.

Will Brunstetter base a decision on whether Forsyth County becomes a fraction too small to support two Senate Districts? Which decision will be in his best interests as opposed to doing the right thing?

That's just one example. While the next election is underway, and te filing deadline for 2010 is already only 14 months away, there is a lot needs doing on Jones Street, too. It is a good thing to hold on to one thing without losing track of the other.

Cracking the greater than ten to one fundraising advantage held by the Senate Democrats, cracking what Rob Christensen calls the Democrat coalition with "progressive business" will take more than determination. It will take boldness and skill.

The likely voters know that a delayed sunset of a temporary tax is "a tax increase," which came as a surprise to Mike Easley and Tony Rand most of all.

And yet those same polls show a plurality believes Jim Black was a Republican, and that the Republicans control the General Assembly.

Just what will any leader of the Senate or House Republicans do to change that one, persistant perception? Yes, the last election is history, but elections have consequences, and the difference between a loyal opposition respected from fear or collaboration, and a bunch of rodeo clowns is a tough row to hoe.