This is the first debate that Beverly Perdue is allowing to be broadcast statewide. Two of us are blogging this live, your blogger (left), is working alongside Melissa Westmoreland, of NCPoliticalNerd.com Please forgive the informality of this post, but we are blogging this as the debators speak.
Jobs
Beverly says there is a job crisis and the answer is education. Pat McCrory agrees that you must have qualified workers and he's hearing that employers can't find qualified workers and that makes recruiting for jobs harder. He would also get NC in the energy business. That includes offshore drilling for natural gas and oil production. This would fill the void of the incredible manufacturing job loss.
Pat would reduce the corporate tax and the income tax first off. As the mayor of Charlotte, his city is losing jobs to cities right across the border due to NC's high tax rate.
Perdue says she is for offshore drilling but only where there are existing leases. She fails to say that these existing leases are in the Gulf of Mexico and not off the Atlantic coast or off NC. Beverly is not telling the entire truth as usual!
She thinks it is unfair for us to look "just off the coast the coast of NC". She calls on other governors to step up. McCrory says he doesn't understand what she is for. He points out that she is only for offshore drilling "somewhere else". He adds "I was in the room when you said 'it wouldn't happen on my watch.'"
She says her original statement, 3 weeks ago, was based on the technology of the time. (Yikes! Go get her Pat!)
She now says she will drill if we "can do it safely in the graveyard of the Atlantic." (Sorry but isn't the graveyard line about ships? ) She keeps bringing up the name, Govenor Martin, a Republican govenor. (Mac McCorkle told her to say that. Nice try, Perdue.)
Pat McCrory says that people are cold in winter because they cannot afford the natural gas bills. If we drilled for natural gas offshore, we could cut their bills so the poor would not have to suffer.
Perdue says "all this drill now, drill today" won't cut prices today. It will still take 8 years to cut prices. Pat argued that all the more reason to start drilling today.
Education
Pat: Must get back to basics. Must throw the calculators in first and second grades so kids can learn basic math. He also wants to reintroduce vocational educational and stop focusing on every kid going to get a four year degree. Not all kids need that.
Beverly: Don't help education by taking dollars from public schools and doesn't support vouchers. She says that vocational education harkens back to the low expectation days. She likes Community Colleges, GEDs for dropouts, Vocational Technical, and College prep.
Pat: Laughing that Perdue calls him a real danger to the middle class in her ads. Beverly Perdue is the only one among the four of us sitting in this room who has voted for vouchers in budget votes.
Beverly: The voucher the mayor is discussing isn't a voucher....(?) Our governor is constitutionally mandated to provide a free education to every child. She does not like vouchers as she feels that they will take away from public education.
Pat McCrory: Do the math for me, Beverly?
Beverly: Thinks that if we give kids scholarships (i.e. vouchers) to attend private school, the public schools will suffer. She oddly named the schools in New Bern. As a product of the New Bern/Craven County schools, your blogger got a terrible public education and had to have tutors her first year at Meredith College so she could catch up. Her professors all said that eastern NC had a terrible reputation for education, yet Perdue is bragging on it.
Pat: He says that Perdue is elitist and he is proud to be friends with plumbers, and such. "They make more money than I do", he added.
Poverty
Pat: I've gotten letters that say my school is not fulfilling my needs. "She would deny that student an opportunity for chance to go to a different school just because they are poor." KCC agrees that indeed sounds elitist!
Perdue: Programs like More at Four help. Government can help people learn to parent better and help their kids at home. She seems very reliant on government to provide day care and afterschool care for the kids. This is government raising your children, something that your blogger would never accept for her son!
Question:
How do we keep the existing industries we have in NC? Is economic incentives a useful tool?
Pat McCrory: If we keep using incentives, we will go bankrupt. He does have a bias for giving incentives for manufacturing companies when they are making a product and keeping North Carolinians employed. He prefers lowering taxes. Small business owners are also manufacturers and make a product and employ the most workers. He wants to cut their taxes, too.
Beverly Perdue: Says small businesses need tax credit and other tax advantages. Says small business are taxes to the personal income tax formula. The opportunities with the Green Business fund that she launched is helpful she says. She says it helps companies through the first year. She wants to help keep main streets vital and healthy.
The Arts
Beverly says NC has the tremendous legacy in the arts with the School of the Arts, the NC Art Muesum, our wonderful track record in investment in the arts and she feels that government should keep "investing" in the arts by giving more money to the arts program.
Pat says arts do play a part of our quality of life but we won't survive if we don't have jobs. He's more worried about the farmer who cannot afford the grain prices. If he can't do that, then those types of folks can't afford to pay to help fund the arts.
Illegal Immigration
Perdue: the system in America is broken and will work with Congress to push for action. Calls them "undocumented originally" and said none of us were born here originally. Okay, so your blogger was born in Tennessee, but has loads of friends who were born in NOrth Carolina! What is she thinking! She thinks the answer is for Congress to act.
McCrory: Will demand from the new presdient that we have an immigrant court and detention facily close by in NC. Currently the closest is in Atlanta. Our county jails are being filled with illegal immigrants. So many of them have false documents and when we don't know the real identiy, we are put at harm.
Pam Salisbury accuses the immigrants of generating hatred. She clearly doesn't like Steve Bizzell, who is one of your blogger's favorite people. (Watch for an article on him soon.) McCrory defended him, saying that he is an elected official and his constituents will deal with him. 80-85% support him.
Perdue agrees that we need to help sheriffs all over the state. We do want people who are not here legally to either have proper documentation or to leave the state. (How about the country, Bev?)
Bev blames Congress for all the problems with immigration. "They should have acted on immigration reform."
Third Party Ads
Each candidate is benefitting. Beverly's ad directed a bunch of calls to the mayor's office, which Pat says is very inappropriate. He says he has never run a negative ad in his campaign. Says Beverly said "can't we stop the negative campaigning? Win or lose, it's the right thing for North Carolina" yet calls Pat too extreme, etc.
Beverly is backpeddling now on the anti-negative campaigning ad. She says that was only during the primary. Pat called on Beverly to pull her own ad that calls Pat a "real danger" which he calls personal.
Beverly says this is not personal, it's about Pat being a real danger to the middle class with his voucher programs. She cannot pull them. She is not being truthful by saying that Pat is to extreme for North Carolina. Pat is not a real danger to the middle class.
How would you be different than Mike Easley?
Beverly: I would be much more hands on than Mike Easley. (She basically threw him under the bus.) Says there are MANY things she would do differently and the first thing would be more day to day management.
Mental Health:
Pat: We are about to close Dorethea Dix hospital when we already have a shortage of beds. This is one example of a power elite that must be broken! The Lt Governor should have fixed this.
Beverly: The Lt. Governor is not part of the power elite as "I was elected independently." (Don't know how that answered the question."
Lower drinking age
Pat Opposes: Would cause too many accidents
Beverly opposed: She had two teenage sons and she knows what goes on. Yeah, those boys were in constant trouble and their girlfriends were hurt in accidents when everyone was drunk. Yeah, ole Bev outta know!
Pat is proud to not be endorsed by the unions. Bev is proud to be endorsed by the teachers and state employees unions.
Pat thinks we should pay good math and science teachers more as we have the most trouble retaining them. Beverly wants teachers to have a higher pay raise across the board.
The lottery:
What would you change about the lottery?
She wants to work to pass a Constitutional amendment to create a lock box so the money will always go to schools.
How would you restructure the NC Lottery?
Pat: Don't pay the lottery director so much. I would revamp the reallocation of how we do the lottery dollars.
Illegal Immigrants Enroll in Community Colleges
Both, not
Death penalty
Bev no
Pat yes
Will you campaign with your presidental ticket?
Pat: I'm proud to
Bev, yes, but my priority is running for governor (so I'll run away from Obama because no one likes him here! ha)
Pat is running for governor because he wants to change the culture of state govenor so he can break this power elite that runs things. NC deserves a strong leader and he has 13 years experience in leading a successful, large city.
Update: Poll Alert: Pat is ahead by eight points over Perdue. More info coming tomorrow. Watch this space for updates!
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