News-Record.com

As Mark Binker reported at his place, he and I chatted with Richard Moore yesterday. The state treasurer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate dropped by the N&R for a brief visit.

Moore has a lot going for him as he contends with his strongest likely opponent for his party's nomination, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue. Check the resume. He's got strong academic training and lots of public service experience in several different capacities.

Personally, he makes a good impression. He has sort of John Edwards-type youthful good looks, and he reminds me a little of Edwards in his speech. But he also strikes me as more easygoing and genuine.

Moore attracted media attention in the last six months or so for pushing for a higher minimum wage and for accepting lots of campaign contributions from money managers entrusted with investing the state's pension funds. In talking about the latter issue, he says he's obeyed all the rules and met all reporting requirements. That's true, but I still think it poses a problem for him given the attention on North Carolina's pay-to-play political culture. The next governor needs to be a lot more aggressive than the current governor in trying to fix the damage caused by the Jim Black and other scandals.

Anyway, Moore presents himself as an innovative thinker. For example, he said he'd take a very different approach to economic development. He cited the Google deal as an example of the current approach -- not to criticize anyone, he quickly added, but what Google really needed was the cheap electricity Duke Energy provides in western North Carolina. The state should have identified other companies that similarly rely on cheap power and brought some of them to the table with Google, bargaining from strength, "not begging for anything."

Certainly that's a smart strategy, to leverage your assets. With Google, the state bargained from a position of weakness -- the high unemployment rate and sluggish economy in Caldwell County -- and figured it had to offer huge incentives. Taking advantage of a strength -- cheap power -- might have led to a better outcome.

Ironically, our two largest power providers, Duke and Progress Energy, are going to be raising their rates as they're pressured to scale back plans for new generating facilities and limit production. Let's hope we don't undercut our ability to attract new industries.

Anyway, Moore seems to have plenty of ideas and should contribute to a healthy discussion of North Carolina's issues during the 2008 gubernatorial campaign. I look forward to hearing more from Moore.