Tom Jensen

Good morning, Tom Jensen. Thanks for joining us for live-blogging this morning.

As many of you know, Tom writes a weekly column about state and local politics for the Chapel Hill Herald. Last fall, he started working as the head of the 'Cool Cities' campaign for the North Carolina Sierra Club. When he began work in November there were 5 Cool Cities in North Carolina. Now there are 19. Tom also instituted the Sierra Club blog.

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Here is my weekly column for the Chapel Hill Herald, which ran today and this week was about the PPP poll that came out on Wednesday.

Permanent Archive here

It’s hard to believe, but we’re now less than 16 months out from the next key election in North Carolina, the 2008 primary that will decide nominees for governor, Senate, and our share of the delegates in the presidential race. It’s never too early to start breaking down the political landscape.

Raleigh’s Public Policy Polling, which seemed to have the most accurate numbers of any firm in the state for the 2006 election cycle, released a comprehensive poll of the presidential and gubernatorial races this week.

On the Democratic side for governor, Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue has a 12-point lead over Treasurer Richard Moore. This is basically in line with what most polling has shown over the last year.

Tom Jensen, one of our occasional readers and a frequent poster at Orange Politics, sent me a column he wrote for the Chapel Hill Herald about why Joe Hackney should be Speaker of the House. Some good food for thought.

(Reprinted here in its entirety with the author's permission. The column ran on November 18th.)

With Democrats increasing their majority in the legislature and Jim Black's re-election status still unclear as a recount looms in Mecklenburg County, it seems pretty clear that a new speaker of the House will need to be selected. It's a decision not to be taken lightly for members of the Democratic caucus. I think hardly anyone is exactly sure what's been going on in Raleigh over the past few years but it sure doesn't smell right.