The decent choice

For all of my friends….if I seemed a bit pre-occupied this week, it’s because I was.

The North Carolina Black Publishers Association of newspapers had earlier contracted with me to do interviews with the leading candidates for governor. After a lot of back-and-forth with the campaigns of Democrats state Attorney General Josh Stein and retired N.C. Associate Justice Mike Morgan, last week we settled on Monday afternoon for me to so a 30-minute telephone interview with each candidate.

For the record, I also tried to get Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s Republican campaign to respond to my request for a 30-minute telephone interview, to no avail. They never responded. Why? I don’t know and I won’t speculate. All I do know is that my intention in doing the candidate interviews was to ask as many questions of the candidates as I could in that time frame to get answers to issues of importance to the African-American community that reads one of the eleven-member papers of the NCBPA so that those readers have what they need to make an informed decision for the March 5th primary.

Quite frankly, this is something I’ve been doing since I led the first N.C. candidate forums in 2008 of Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen Hillary Clinton of New York. Those sessions were historic ( I remember Sen Obama brought renowned scholar Dr. John Hope Franklin to his candidate’s forum with NCBPA publishers and editors in Winston-Salem, and just as the young senator started his campaign spiel before taking questions, I stood up, stopped him, and insisted that Dr. Franklin, a man of history we all respected, be allowed to speak first, out of respect.

I’ll never forget the look on Obama’s face when I interrupted him, but when he realized that all I was asking was that we give due respect to the elder in the room, the irritated look gave way to one of compliance. I’ll never forget it.

But anyway, I digress. 

The phone interviews I conducted Monday afternoon with Stein and Morgan were not as noteworthy as the candidate forums we conducted with Obama and Hillary 16 years ago, but those phone sessions served a vital service. 

They showed that the candidates respected the African-American community enough to speak with it, and ask for our vote.

In both cases with AG Stein and Justice Morgan, respect was given, and respect was returned. Each man trusted me to do my job in asking pertinent questions of them, and allowing them to answer unfettered.

After the sessions were all over, I started the task of reviewing what had been recorded, praising GOD that my little digital recorder got it all without a hitch (hey, I could tell you stories)

In listening to the recordings, and transcribing and editing the answers to my questions, I came away with the following impression of Josh Stein and Mike Morgan - both of these public servants love North Carolina and its people.

They both believe that improving education in our state is the house-on-fire issue. They both want to see every child get the benefit of what the North Carolina Constitution promises them, a “sound basic”education, and they both want to see teacher pay raised to at least the national level.

Both Stein and Morgan want to see crucial economic development happen in our rural areas, and urban areas of the state.

They both see Mark Robinson as an existential threat to North Carolina, saying that if elected, he would take North Carolina backwards (you see, this is where you missed your shot to counter what people are saying about you, Mr. Lt. Governor).

Finally, both promised to bring the Democratic Party back together after the primary, expressing the need for unity going into the November 5th general election.

Stein and Morgan are both passionate about our state, passionate to serve it as governor and want only good things for it.

I can’t tell folks who to vote for (though I’ve been accused of that in the past). But one thing I can say - I was impressed with the high level of decency from both men. Quite frankly, it was refreshing given the garbage we hear from MAGA man and his cohorts everyday.

North Carolinians will make a decent choice on March 5th, and again on November 5th.

All we have to do is vote!