Neal on the stump in Guilford County
Like Kay Hagan, U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal was also on the hustings in Guilford County Tuesday. I caught up with him as he spoke to students at NCA&T.
Quick impressions:
- * Neal spoke to about 20 students, spending most of his time fielding questions.
- * Neal was asked how he could be incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole in the fall. "Sen. Dole is a very polarized figure," Neal said, explaining that he believed Dole's base to be among very conservative voters. "She is in a position to lose some of the more moderates." Neal said that he's in the better position to win over those moderates because of his experience in business.
- * While talking about bridging political differences, Neal seemed amazed at Dole's moral flexibility on basketball. Dole was photographed at the UNC-Clemson game this week sitting next to Erskine Bowles, opponent in the 2002 Senate race. "She sat next to Erskine Bowles and pulled for Carolina and she went to Duke - that's the most whack thing I've ever seen."
- * Neal got fired up when talking about economic inequities. He was talking to a room of mostly African American students, and noted that blacks were more likely to die earlier than whites and that an African American male was born with a 1 in 3 chance of winding up in jail. "You weren't born with a gene that says go to jail, die soon...We have failed a large segment of the population."
- * Neal was asked about the inequities between colleges in the UNC system, specifically those of the state's flagship campuses and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The differences, he said, were visually striking when he walked onto an HCBU campus like NCA&T.
"It doesn't look like Chapel Hill, it doesn't look like N.C. State does," he said. The problem, he said, had to do with the money and influence wielded by alumni. "Why don't we just have one endowment for the overall university system...It has everything to do with money and power and it's the same way in Raleigh as it is in Washington."