Opinion Roundup: How white voters are changing the Southern electorate

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018 -- A roundup of opinion, commentary and analysis on changes to the Southern electorate, a low moment for higher education, a lesson learned from visiting all 41 of N.C.'s state parks and more.

​DANNY HAYES: White voters are moving to the South — and making it more Democratic (Washington Post analysis) – White voters are just one slice of the Southern electorate, so changes to white voting behavior can tell only part of the story of the region’s politics. But the data does suggest that in addition to the importance of the African American vote for Democrats, an influx of nonnatives into the South has benefited the party. McKee and M.V. Hood III argue that Barack Obama’s narrow victory in North Carolina in 2008 was made possible by migration from outside the state.

​TRAVIS FAIN: Year 1 in the books for Cooper with mixed results (WRAL-TV analysis) -- With the limits a governor faces when the other party holds super majorities in both the House and Senate, WRAL approached his one year review with two questions in mind: Has he governed in line with his campaign promises? Has he helped set the stage for his party ahead of the 2018 legislative elections?

​ANNE BLYTHE: How far into 2018 before NC knows shape of election districts in gerrymander case? (Durham Herald-Sun analysis) -- As 2017 drew to a close, an often repeated phrase among observers of North Carolina politics was the only thing certain about the 2018 elections was uncertainty. With the filing period for candidates seeking state House and Senate seats set to open in mid-February, the lines for the election districts remain unclear. North Carolina lawmakers have canceled primaries for all judicial races and continue to weigh new options for how judges at all levels of state court get to the bench.

​Rabon’s bill will damage state’s courts (Wilmington Star-News) -- If Bill Rabon didn’t get coal in his Christmas stocking, then Santa must not have been paying attention. The state senator from Southport has been joining his Republican cronies in Raleigh with some very naughty behavior, sabotaging North Carolina’s court system for little better reason than partisan advantage. Rabon’s contribution to this fiasco was introducing Senate Bill 698.

​CINDY ELMORE: N.C. GOP is out of line on courts (Greensboro News & Record column) -- Imagine this: You decide to challenge your speeding ticket in court — or worse, you are falsely accused of a crime — and your case comes up before a brand new judge. Unlike this judge’s predecessor, who was duly elected by a majority of voters, the judge you appear before was appointed by our General Assembly majority. He owes his job to a conservative group of (mostly) white men. He owes nothing to you and your neighbors and your friends down the street, who, for their entire lives up until now had researched and voted upon their candidates for judgeships at local and state levels.

​GARY ROBERTSON: Angry at Trump, N.C. Democrats hope for 2018 gains (AP news analysis) – N.C. Democrats say they are beginning 2018 energized and intent on regaining their historical control of the state's General Assembly, harnessing anger over Republican Donald Trump's presidency and buoyed by Democratic victories elsewhere.

​10 Falsehoods From Trump’s Interview With The Times (New York Times analysis) -- President Trump, in an impromptu interview on Thursday with The New York Times, rattled off at least 10 false or misleading claims about the Russia investigation, wars abroad, health care, immigration and trade. Here’s an assessment.

​In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims (Washington Post Fact Checker) -- Here's a roundup of misleading claims made by the president in his interview, many of which we've fact-checked before.

​FACT CHECK: Trump's 'New York Times' Interview On Russia, Taxes, Health Care And More (NPR analysis) -- In an impromptu 30-minute interview with The New York Times on Thursday, President Trump said 16 different times that there has been "no collusion" proved in the Russia investigation. Trump also asserted he will win re-election in 2020 because the media need him for ratings and made inaccurate claims about his role in the Alabama Senate race, the state of the Affordable Care Act and more.​

​CELIA RIVENBARK: Close encounters of the Trump kind (Wilmington Star-News column) -- You never know who you’re going to run into in church, but I wasn’t expecting this.

​BYRON TAU: GOP, Democrats at Odds Over Congressional Russia Investigations (Wall Street Journal analysis) -- Democrats are pushing for more work in the congressional Russia investigations, while Republicans are seeking to bring the probes to an end. The chairmen of the two Republican-run investigations, including Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina —which are separately being conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees—have expressed confidence in recent interviews that they are in the home stretch of the inquiries, which both were announced last January.

​SUSAN PULLIAM & BRODY MULLINS: The Modern Campaign-Finance Loophole: Governors Associations (Wall Street Journal analysis) -- In many states, corporations can’t give large sums directly to campaigns, but they can funnel funds to groups that support Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates. The practice is called an open secret by political operatives.

​Release of prison reports benefits public, prisons (Elizabeth City Daily Advance) -- State Rep. Bob Steinburg is right: The N.C. Department of Public Safety needs to publicly release the findings of its investigations into the deaths of five prison workers, including four at Pasquotank Correctional Institution this fall.

​RICHARD CRAVER: New Year's Day minimum wage hikes again don't include N.C. (Winston-Salem Journal analysis) -- Workers in 12 blue and seven red states will receive a raise by virtue of a state-mandated increase in their respective minimum hourly wages. For the ninth consecutive year, North Carolina minimum-wage workers will not join them. They will remain at the federally mandated $7.25 an hour, along with workers in 18 other states.​

​A few resolutions for our elected leaders (Fayetteville Observer) -- And just like that, 2017 is gone and we’re living in 2018. Our world is filled with possibilities and opportunities. For many of us, it’s filled with resolutions, too — the things we’ll try to get right this year, quite likely in endeavors where we’ve fallen short in the past. (Did someone just whisper, “daily exercise”?) Each of us is likely to come up with a self-improvement list for the year, and we’ll be wise to stick with things that are truly achievable.

​TIM WHITE: It was a good, terrible, awful, wonderful year (Fayetteville Observer column) -- I’m not sorry to see 2017 go, even though it had some pretty good moments scattered about. But I’m pretty sure we can do better, and I’m hoping we’ll prove it in 2018. I’m not a New Year’s Eve party animal, so I’ll awake early tomorrow and greet the new year with a feeling of hope. I’ll put on my warmest running gear and take three of the dogs for my annual New Year run through the woods and down to the lake, celebrating 2018 as well as the extra safety in the woods that comes with the end of deer season. Some very good things happened in Fayetteville in 2017, though, and I hope we’re on a roll that will only get better.

​JOHN RAILEY: We’ll make it, brick by brick (Winston-Salem Journal column) -- During a recent cold sunset as demolition men took down the building where I cut my journalistic teeth, I scrambled to grab some bricks from the rubbish. I needed something to hold onto in the new year.

​CANDACE SWEAT: 'We have to stand up:' Poor People's Campaign rings in 2018 with renewed passion for issues (WRAL-TV analysis) -- The NAACP teamed up with the Poor People's Campaign at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church to ring in the new year with a renewed sense of passion for long-standing issues on their agenda.

​WILL DORAN: White supremacists took over a city – now NC is doing more to remember the deadly attack (Charlotte Observer analysis) – North Carolina government is officially recognizing what historians call the only successful coup d’etat in American history, when white supremacists overthrew the Reconstruction-era government in Wilmington in 1898. The state’s Highway Historical Marker Committee has approved a plaque to be installed in Wilmington in 2018 near a busy intersection, which will tell people about the racist attack that left dozens dead and heralded the start of the Jim Crow era here.

​D.G. MARTIN: Instead of taking down monuments, build ones to new heroes (Winston-Salem Journal column) -- Maybe, instead of taking down monuments to our past, we should be building new ones.

​MARTHA WAGGONER: In unusual step, Fayetteville victims told of destroyed rape kits (AP news analysis) -- When Veronica was raped more than 13 years ago, she says neither the police nor the hospital staff believed her story that a longtime friend attacked her while his mother was in the next room.

​DANIELLA BATTAGLIA: The final verdict for Rockingham County DA Craig Blitzer (Greensboro News & Record analysis) -- He was the district attorney of Rockingham County. But then he made a deal to break the law he was sworn to uphold. And now his political career is finished in a little more than two years.

​GINGER LIVINGSTON: Judge rules Hines' win should be certified (Greenville Daily Reflector analysis) -- A Wake County judge ordered the Pitt County Board of Elections to certify the election of Ricky Hines to the Winterville Town Council, saying the county board did not have the authority to revoke a certificate it had previously issued.

​N.C. government plans drone workshops for 2018 (AP news analysis) -- The North Carolina Department of Transportation is planning workshops in the new year on the use of drones.

​FRANK BRUNI: Higher Ed’s Low Moment (New York Times column) -- Margaret Spellings, education secretary in the George W. Bush administration and now president of the University of North Carolina system, said that colleges are plenty blemished and that this reckoning was years in the making. Too many of them had maintained too aloof a posture. Spellings told me that when she read the headline atop a mid-December article in Politico — “University presidents: We’ve been blindsided” — she thought, “Where have you been, girlfriend?” My conversations with Spellings, Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University and Hiram Chodosh, president of Claremont McKenna College, actually filled me with hope, because not one of them was baffled by the bind that colleges are in. All of them conceded some culpability. And all of them identified, and expressed a commitment to, necessary changes.

​ANITA BROWN-GRAHAM: Demographic drivers -- In diversity of N.C. students, the diversity of our future workforce (EdNC column) -- The nature of work is changing rapidly and dramatically. How we prepare for the who, when, where, and how work is done will challenge our state’s leaders and the institutions that support our workforce. To fully understand what lies before us, we must first examine the scale of the drivers of change. Our research at ncIMPACT suggests there are four primary drivers: demographics, disruptive technologies, new business models, and the rise of the individual. This article focuses on the first of these, and highlights some important demographic changes in North Carolina.

​JASON DEBRUYN: Disadvantaged Minorities Miss Health Benefits Of College, Finds UNC Study (WUNC-FM analysis) -- Upwardly mobile minorities enjoy improved mental health, but the daily stresses they face take a toll physically, according to new research from UNC-Chapel Hill. The study looked at black and Hispanic young adults from disadvantaged childhoods. It documented improved mental health, but worse physical health risk associated with college completion.​

​RICK SELTZER: Eluding the Endowment Tax (Inside Higher Ed analysis) -- Despite unknowns, colleges and universities are looking at investment and spending strategies to dodge a new tax on net investment earnings.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT​

​JUSTIN SMITH: I visited every N.C. state park in 2017. Here’s what I learned. (Charlotte Observer column) -- In 2017, I skipped the typical New Year’s resolutions – save more, eat less, etc. – and opted for something that is perhaps equally as challenging but much more fun. I vowed to visit each of North Carolina’s 41 state parks with my 5-year-old son. My wife – bless her – and our 2-year-old daughter accompanied us on many of the journeys.

​Safe drinking water (Winston-Salem Journal) -- We can’t take chances with our health or that of our children. We don’t want to wind up in a situation like that in Flint, Mich., where cost-cutting measures caused tainted drinking water that contained lead and other toxins. We’re sure our government regulators have that situation in mind, too. With a cry of “deregulation” gaining popularity in some areas of government, we need every precaution taken for the good of the public’s health.

​New testing finds chemical across river from Chemours plant (AP news analysis) -- North Carolina officials say elevated levels of an industrial chemical have been found on the opposite side of the Cape Fear River from the chemical plant.

​Judge vacates permit for mining water to be dumped into Blounts Creek (Greenville Daily Reflector analysis) -- A superior court judge has vacated a permit that would have allowed Martin Marietta to discharge millions of gallons of water a day from its mining operation into Blounts Creek, east of Chocowinity.

​Smokey Bear goes missing in N.C., then found (AP news analysis) -- Only YOU can recover Smokey Bear. That was the call issued by one North Carolina fire department with a $1,000 reward offer after a 6-foot (2-meter) tall sign of Smokey Bear went missing last week. Broad River Fire & Rescue in Buncombe County says the sign and an accompanying fire danger meter were snatched sometime in the final days of December from North Carolina Highway 9.

​PETER VANKEVICH: Birds of Ocracoke: The Snow Bunting (Coastal Review column) -- The habits of snow buntings, migratory birds most likely to be seen on the upper Outer Banks from late October into March.

​DEON ROBERTS: ‘Bigger is not better.’ Experts warn patient costs could rise after NC hospital deal. (Charlotte Observer analysis) -- Carolinas HealthCare System’s planned partnership with UNC Health Care is likely to raise health insurance premiums, experts say.

​MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ: Funding temporarily intact for area health centers (Greenville Daily Reflector analysis) -- The federal funding stopgap bill signed recently by President Trump will release funds that an eastern North Carolina health care program needs to continue operating at least until Jan. 19, but a long-term fix remains uncertain.

​Ask Roxane Gay: Is It Too Late to Follow My Dreams? (New York Times column) -- Dear Roxane: I’m a 47-year-old writer who lives in North Carolina. I have three children, a partner and a full-time job. My job recently reclassified me (demoted me), and I’ve taken it as a sign to get out of my profession and get my writing life started. I’m just getting my feet wet. I’ve written some essays and some blog pieces, but I haven’t been paid for them. I want that to change. I know I have a lot to say, but will anyone want to pay me to say it if I’m closer to 50 than I am to 35? Signed, Closer to 50 : … The older we get, the more culturally invisible we become, as writers, as people. But you have your words. Writing and publishing are two very different things. Other writers are not your measure. Try not to worry about what other people your age or younger have already accomplished because it will only make you sick with envy or grief. The only thing you can control is how you write and how hard you work.