Get 'er Done!

Mark Binker tweeted a few minutes ago that "Five Democratic members of the Council of State have just called for NCDP chairman David Parker to resign."

Obviously.

Gov. Perdue: "Take That, Dickheads!"

The news broke while we were driving a Meals-on-Wheels route this morning, but we got home to find this e-mail from David Parker in our in-box:

Bev Perdue stunned the GOP leadership today by issuing an Executive Order for the immediate release of federal unemployment benefits to 47,000 out of work North Carolinians.

The order ends nearly two months of deadlock during which Republican legislators employed the jobless as pawns in budget negotiations with her office. Finally, these unemployed – our friends, family and neighbors – will have help paying bills, mortgages and putting food on their tables.

In a statement moments ago, the Governor explained that she had finally had enough of the GOP's petty political games and the very real suffering they were causing:

"Just yesterday, they voted down a measure to separate this issue from their budget. Enough is enough. They continue to use desperate people as leverage to extort my support for an ideologically-driven budget that needlessly cuts millions from our public schools and inflicts millions of dollars more in damage to our universities, pre-school programs, community colleges, job creation efforts and vital health care services. I will not stand for it and I will not sit by idly as the legislature continues to play these games and deny the jobless the unemployment benefits they need."

There will be howls from the offices of the Republican leadership over the next few days, but I think that what our Governor did today is nothing short of heroic....

Couldn't agree more with that "heroic" adjective used in this context. I would have added "gutsy."

What no one talks about is what the unemployed do with those federal jobless benefits. They pay their rent. They pay their bills. They put food on the table. The Republican dickishness in withholding their benefits, in a game of ideological one-upmanship, was actually hurting the economy of North Carolina.

Wednesday Smorgasbord

1. Union County: "There'll be no memorial to 'loyal slaves' on our courthouse lawn." Decision NOT "based on race." No, never.

2. Sen. Kay Hagan pleased to join the pro-business Washington think tank, ThirdWay.

3. Democratic Party Chairman David Parker wants the Republican Speaker of the NC House to investigate a possible conflict of interest by Rep. Mike Stone of Lee County, who set the agenda for a closed-door meeting featuring presentations by video-gambling interests while profiting personally in his own grocery store from video gambling.

4. State government employees: We're working people, too!

David Parker Elected Chair of NCDP

Faison -262
Montgomery -15
Parker -355

The Fight for the NC Democratic Party

As soon as current Chair David Young announced that he would not be seeking another term as titular head of the NC Democratic Party, Iredell County attorney David Parker, who's a member of the Democratic National Committee and was a "super-delegate" to the 2008 nominating convention, jumped out as the first announced candidate.

That news was first posted on the News&Observer site at 2 a.m. Thursday morning. Before the Parker announcement had time to circulate far and wide, party activist and consultant Chris Church posted on his Facebook page at 4:07 a.m. that morning that he thought David Parker "would make a great chairman." At 8:32 a.m. former state party Chair Jerry Meek came back at Church with this comment: "I think he would be a disaster. All talk and no action."

Whoa.

Since Jerry Meek was the most effective chair of the state party that we've personally had any experience with, his opinion carries considerable weight in our immediate vicinity. He turned "Party Dead-Quarters" in Raleigh into a happening place, implementing Howard Dean's 50-state strategy on the state level with remarkable results in 2006. He was unfailingly available to county parties, and he was out there in the public press every time the Republicans did something stupid, which was pretty much every day. He also stood up to Gov. Easley and pissed the guv off, which in hindsight may have been the smartest political move of his tenure.

If we don't get another Jerry Meek, Party Dead-Quarters is going to become Zombieland indeed.

Change Coming in the NC Democratic Party

NC Democratic Party Chair David Young, finishing his two-year term, says he'll be gone in January when the state Executive Committee is scheduled to meet.

David Parker of Iredell County is the first to step forward and say he wants Young's job. Parker ran for it in 2009. He's a member of the Democratic National Committee and has a long history of activism in the state.