News-Record.com

Sixth-district challenger Will Jordan says that U.S. Rep. Howard Coble has been silent in standing up to the Bush Administration's handling of the war in Iraq.

"The war in Iraq has weakened us internationally," Jordan said, adding that the U.S. hasn't finished the job it started in Afghanistan. "I think we have to devise an exit strategy and figure out how to get out."

For his part, Coble said he agreed that the post-invasion strategy was inadequate but defended the decision to go to war.

Democrat Mel Watt, who is running again in the 12th district, voted against the war and sticks by the decision.

"I continue to believe that we made a bad decision as if we're the lone ranger going in without world support," Watt said. "There was certainly no imminent threat to the U.S."

Inside Scoop has been unable to reach Watt's Republican challenger, Ada Fisher. Her web site includes no mention of the war in Iraq.

From education reporter Jennifer Fernandez:

It looks like abcouttahere.com is, well, out of here.

The site, which was constructed in May by the anonymous "Kernal Corn," has not been active since July 13, according to records at networksolutions.com. An e-mail sent Thursday to Mr. Corn (or Mrs. Corn, Scoop isn't quite sure which it is) was not answered.

The Web site cropped up as opposition to ABC of Guilford County, the group opposed to the reassignment plan that shuffles students among Andrews, High Point Central and Southwest high schools.

Chief among ABC's concerns is the way students are assigned - via a lottery instead of where they live, which is traditional.

This year's "Best and Worst of Congress" article from Washingtonian magazine could have tar heel voters bursting with pride, or at least mildly interested that some of their home town politicians made the list.

According to the magazine, the rankings are based on interviews with "top Capitol Hill staff." On the list:

* Republican Elizabeth Dole tied for third as best dressed Senator. Dole also was mentioned among those who aides would like to see run for president in 2012.

* Democratic Senator John Edwards also got a nod from staffers as someone who should make a presidential bid in 2012. He got an honorable mention in the "Looks good in a bathing suit" category.

* Edwards ranks third in the "Show horse" category for Senators, a less than flattering nomination perhaps related to the fact he hasn't put in a lot of hours in the Capitol this year. (Edwards is running for vice president, in case you've been living under a rock or hit in the head with one.)

* Democratic Rep. Frank Ballance is tagged as the number-two "Worst Newcomer" in the House. Ballance resigned from the House in June for health reasons. Since then he has been indicted on a charge of mail fraud and money laundering for actions he took while he was a state senator.

* Republican Rep. Walter Jones took top honors for being "Just Plain Nice."

Read the whole thing here.

I have a story in Sunday's paper regarding the Guilford County commissioners discussing school violence issues. The premise is that the commissioners have begun talking about whether they need to offer a helping hand to the schools in light of three recent incidents during which principals were injured breaking up fights.

You can find that story by clicking here. (Update: link is fixed at 7:20 a.m. on 10/03/04.)

In part, the stories were spurred by two recent letters from Commissioner Mike Barber to School Board Chairman Alan Duncan and Superintendent Terry Grier. Click here to read those letters.

A couple of thoughts about this story:

* Yes, we did consider the fact that Mike Barber is running for re-election and that talking about the high profile issue of the moment could just be a tactic to get his name in the paper. (We mention this in the story.) However, the currency and importance of the school violence issue made this something that we felt should not be ignored.

* You can read in the story that there are some commissioners who say the county doesn't have money to throw at the problem. And it is true that this has been a very tight budget year. But as I point out in the story, in the past when the commissioners have had the political will to pay for something unexpected, their staff members have found ways to come up with the dough.

A frequent refrain among commissioners is "count to six," a reference to the number of votes needed to pass something by the 11-member board. Barber doesn't have his six votes, but might be able to take advantage of the impending election and elevated public profile of the school violence issue to change that.

...That's according to Elections Director George Gilbert. By comparison, between 8 and 9 thousand new registrations were processed between July 1 and Sept. 30 in the last presidential election year. There were 275,447 registered voters in the county as of the July primary runoff (48.4% Democrat, 33.9% Republican, 17.3% unaffiliated, and .2% Libertarian).

In addition, Gilbert said 18,000 voters had a change of address or information. The voter registration period ends Friday, so if you or someone you know wants to sign up, you can download the form here and send it in.

Members of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and the county's Board of Education will meet Thursday, according to a notice issued by the county clerk's office.

Although the notice did not say what the meeting would be about, commissioners have in recent weeks expressed concern about escalating school violence, especially three recent incidents during which principals have been injured breaking up fights.

According to the notice, the meeting will be held at 7:30 a.m. at the school's administrative office building located at 712 N. Eugene St.

A couple of events in Davidson County Wednesday and Thursday offer a new twist to political things:
A free "Rock-The-Vote" concert will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Davidson County Community College in Lexington, featuring the band Thornbird from Los Angeles.
The concert will be a prelude to Debate Watch, a voter education program being held 2 to 4:30 p.m.
The Davidson County Democratic Party will host "Voting: How Sweet It Is!" 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at 101 S. Main St., Lexington.
This will be a voter registration party, featuring live music by Ken Davis.

From our education team:

Undecided about who to vote for in the at-large race for Guilford County Board of Education?

The Summerfield-Laughlin PTA wants to help voters decide. The group has invited incumbent Dot Kearns and candidate Jim Kirkpatrick to a "Candidates Coffee" at 8 a.m. Wednesday at Summerfield Elementary, 7515 Trainer Drive.

Two other board candidates are also planning to attend:

Tuesday night's city council meeting ran a bit late for our presses to catch up, so here's some of what you didn't read in today's paper. (If you want to read along, the agenda is online here.);

No, Scoop hasn't gotten a good deal on car insurance. Our education team reports:

Guilford County Schools recently received some good news, although somewhat belated, about student academic performance.

The state Department of Public Instruction released results of the 2002-03 eighth-grade Computer Skills Exam this week. Eighty-five percent of Guilford County students passed the exam, compared to 80 percent state-wide.

In order to pass the test, students must answer multiple-choice questions and demonstrate that they can use a computer to perform certain tasks, such as look up information in a database.

Local students also outperformed their peers in the state’s other urban districts, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Wake County (Raleigh), Durham, Cumberland County (Fayetteville) and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County.

State officials hope to release 2003-04 results in January.

The County Commissioners had a relatively easy evening last night, even though their 3-and-a-half hour session looked testy at times. Read our full story here. (Update: Link working as of 8:20 a.m.)

Now for a few final notes:

(Actual e-mail from city government)

From: Lindemeyer, Nancy

Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 4:16 PM

To: Johnson, Mitchell

Subject: Fox 8 News

Mitchell, Fox 8 Assignment Editor Robert Murray found the billboard information on their web site and apologized for the incorrect information. He will remove it immediately. Fox 8 sent a photojournalist, Eddie Hughes, to the Council meeting and he thought that Item #7 (annexation issue) concerned the Urban Loop (can't explain why). They will put the correct information about Item 7 up, but it really doesn't have to do with billboards.

Here's what they had:

Greensboro Urban Loop billboards

The Greensboro City Council has voted unanimously to allow billboards along Greensboro's Urban Loop. The vote will now allow advertisers to put billboards up along the loop, which is the new interstate that will one day circle Greensboro. In November of 2002, the city voted to create a scenic corridor banning billboards along the Urban Loop. But this vote means the scenic corridor is no longer a reality.

Nancy Lindemeyer, Communications Manager

Organizational Development & Communications

City of Greensboro

P.O. Box 3136, Greensboro, NC 27402

Phone: 336.373.2105 Fax: 336.373.4656

http://www.greensboro-nc.gov

Two years after a proposal to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. was rejected by city leaders. On Monday, one councilwoman tried to revive efforts to honor the civil rights activist.

High Point Councilwoman Bernita Sims encouraged the council to "step outside the box" and resolve a controversial issue that has floated around the community for nearly 13 years.

Read Sims' written statement by clicking here.

From our intrepid education reporter Bruce Buchanan:

The Roman poet Juneval asked, "Who watches the watchmen?"

The answer, apparently, is the U.S. Department of Education.

On Monday, former News & Record staffer Ben Feller, now the national education reporter for the Associated Press, broke the story that the Department of Education paid a private company to grade news stories written about the No Child Left Behind school reform act.

For example, stories receive five points for pointing out that "NCLB ensures that teacher quality is a high priority." But newspapers were docked five points if they mention "NCLB is not sufficiently funded."

Individual reporters also received evaluations, based on whether or not their coverage was deemed favorable to the Department of Education. No News & Record stories or reporters were graded in the report. However, the Ketchum public relations firm did evaluate stories from nearly 20 daily newspapers.

The Associated Press also reported that the Department of Education commissioned a pro-No Child Left Behind video that gives the appearance that it was produced by an independent news agency.

Both the Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners will be meeting next week.

Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow is worried the paperwork in the county's Environmental Health section is not getting to where it's supposed to be. Yow runs a well-drilling company and many of those environmental health files have to do with inspecting and permitting new well and septic systems.

The county commissioner's inmate welfare fund committee met on Monday, Oct. 11. The committee is meant to resolve one of the hot-topics that has occupied large chunks of the commissioners' time over the past few years: how to spend profits from the money inmates spend on phone calls and in the jail's commissary.

Sheriff BJ Barnes has run into trouble with the commissioners when he has asked to use the money to pay for repairs to the county's two jails. The most recent tussle, for example, was over repairs to the Greensboro jail's elevators.

Some commissioners argue that the money should only be spent on things that more directly benefit the inmates. Barnes argues that he has no other source of money to pay for emergency repairs.

So how did the inmate welfare fund get established in the first place? We've uploaded a series of memos (into separate files so they'd be easier to access over dial-up connections) that may explain. Read them:

If you haven't already voted and want to learn more about some the candidates on the Nov. 2 ballot, you may want to consider attending the following events:

Education Reporters Jennifer Fernandez and Bruce Buchanan have been occasional contributors here at the Scoop blog. But those crazy kids have moved out of our house and have shuffled on over to their own blog.

Check them out at The Chalkboard: http://blog.news-record.com/chalkboard/ .

From WMFY late last week, we learned that renovations to War Memorial stadium "will most likely be funded with bond money."

The report, filed by Frank Mickens, expressed this news with a sense of certitude that surprised us and residents in the nearby Aycock neighborhood. We knew that a bond referendum was a possible way to pay for the repairs to the historic structure, but the city council hasn't yet discussed any specifics, pending the results of an architectural study that would tell them what needs to be done and how much it will cost.

Mickens' source for the story, Deputy City Manager Mitch Johnson, said this morning that he never implied that a bond referendum is likely, only that it is a possibility. He said that neither the council nor City Manager Ed Kitchen has instructed the staff to prepare for a bond offering. But he did say that borrowing money with voter say-so would be an option if the council voted to go that route.

"Obviously, if we're talking about a significant amount of money, it would require a bond referendum," Johnson said.

One of the key factors, he said, was whether the economy recovered by the fall of 2006, the earliest that a referendum could be organized. The city has a lot of needs, but if the economy is bad, bond votes might have to be delayed.

"We know there's things that the community would want to do, but can the commmunity support it? That's the question," he said.

When Inside Scoop called Mickens for his side of the story, the WFMY reporter said that Johnson told him Friday that a bond vote is the "most likely" scenario by which the repairs are paid for. Mickens suggested that Johnson may be backing down from that assessment after catching flak from folks in the city.

"He's changing his story," Mickens said.

Meanwhile, council member Sandy Carmany responded to a blog post by Aycocker David Hoggard saying a bond referendum was only a possibility not a certainty.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Patrick Ballantine is scheduled to visit with volunteers at Guilford County's GOP headquarters at about 6 p.m. this evening, according to county party chairman Marcus Kindley. The headquarters office is at 1029 East Wendover Avenue, between Summit Avenue and U.S. 29.

We here at Inside Scoop have a little mystery and are hoping someone out there in the online scoopsphere might be able to lend us a hand.

Starting this week, signs with the following message began popping up around town:

"VOTE OUT PRO-BILLBOARD COMMISSIONERS on NOVEMBER 2nd."

That's it. They have no attribution, no contact information and no hint who the writer might consider a "pro-billboard commissioner." Scoop has spied them at many locations all over town, including at the sign farm in front of the Old County Courthouse in downtown Greensboro.

The signs strike us as a bit strange, especially since the two arguably most pro-billboard commissioners, Republican Billy Yow and Democrat Melvin "Skip" Alston, have already been assured re-election because they face no general election opposition.

We'd love to talk with whoever is putting up those signs and see what's on their minds.

Alright scooper sleuths, get on the case. If you're behind the signs or know who might be, report back here via the comments link on this post or drop a dime to: mbinker@news-record.com.

(More on yard signs from our Meredith Barkley)

Charles and Mary Elizabeth Irvin thought all the political signs in their West Market Street yard - 28 of them at last count - were a public service. They felt the signs helped voters begin to recognize names they'll find on the long Nov. 2 ballot.

To the city of Greensboro and one anonymous caller, though, there were way too many of them. In response to the caller's complaint, city zoning enforcement officers sent the Irvin's a certified letter last week and paid them a visit earlier this week.

The Irvins' signs, they say, are violating a city ordinance which prohibits more than six political signs per yard.

Mary Elizabeth Irvin didn't know about the ordinance. But she has a definite opinion of it.

"I feel like when you buy property you own it from hell to heaven and I don't think you have a right to tell me what I can do with it, as long as I'm not hurting anybody, and those signs aren't hurting anybody," she said. "They're taking my property rights away and also my freedom of speech."

Since all her signs - except one - are for Republican candidates, she figures a die hard Democrat must have been the complaintant.

While the Irvins are the only homeowners cited so far for too many signs, several property owners have gotten letters because their signs are too big. They can't more than six square feet and more than six feet high.

But the biggest problem, city zoning officials say, are the signs that have gone up in public right-of-ways all over town.

"They end up trashing up the landscape," said Bill Ruska, the city's zoning administrator. "It's a headache."

Every now and then zoning officers go through an area and confiscate those in right of ways.

Property owners can be fined $50 and up for not complying with an order to take signs down. But as a practical matter it is unlikely a homeowner cited this close to the election would be fined.

For one thing few, if any, ever have been. For another, they could appeal to the city Board of Adjustment, and the earliest meeting they could get on the agenda would be late November. Once appealed, the zoning department could do nothing until then.

The George C. Simkins Jr. Memorial Political Action Committee has put out its endorsements for the Nov. 2 general election.

Read the letter from the group that has been handed out at the polls this week by clicking on this link.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Simkins PAC is named after its founder, a dentist and longtime civil rights activist. Today, it is made up of prominent African American business and political leaders.

Among its most interesting endorsements this year, the PAC chose to back Republican Mike Winstead in the District 7 County Commissioner race against Democrat Mike Barber, who is currently an at-large commissioner, and Libertarian Jim Capo. The PAC letter urges voters to pull a straight Democratic ticket in partisan races with that exception.

(From our state government reporter, Eric Dyer)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Patrick Ballantine will be campaigning in the Piedmont Triad this weekend.
Ballantine plans to attend the barbecue festival in uptown Lexington around 4 p.m. Saturday. That will follow stops in Charlotte, Gastonia, Statesville and Salisbury with Richard Burr, who is the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate.
Ballantine is running against Democratic Gov. Mike Easley and Libertarian Barbara Howe.

You do it when you take cold medicine, you do it when you set up the family VCR, and you even do it when you use the self-serve pump at the gas station. Is it too much to ask that you READ THE DIRECTIONS when you go to exercise your right to vote?

What is Scoop ranting about?

North Carolina ballots give voters the option of voting for all Democrats or all Republicans or all Libertarians to save voters the time and fuss of thinking for themselves and choosing candidates one by one.

But punching the straight party button (or pulling the lever, or doing whatever it is your local county does to record votes) does not cast a vote for President of the United States, nor does it cast votes for the nonpartisan judicial or school board races. And a straight party vote doesn't cast a vote in referenda for bonds and constitutional amendments.

There are clear instructions to this effect at the top of the ballot. But apparently voters are a busy lot and some of them just don't have time to spend the extra 20 seconds to process this information. They do, however, have the time to complain vociferously after realizing they've screwed up.

Election officials and government wonks call the difference between the total number of people who cast ballots and the number of people who cast ballots in presidential election an under-vote. In fact, our faith in voters' ability to screw up (or just not care) is so great, that an under-vote that is too small is considered suspicious.

But if, by chance, you're bound and determined to fully exercise your franchise, we'll spell it out for you: if you mark the box for a straight party ticket you have not voted for president, judgeships, school board or any referenda. You need to mark the boxes for those races separately before recording your ballot.

Ask your friendly local poll worker if you have a question about all this when you go to vote.

The Political Science Club at Guilford Technical Community College will host a Congressional candidates' forum on Monday, Oct. 25. It will be in the Percy H. Sears Applied Technologies Auditorium on the Jamestown Campus from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Expected to attend are 6th District candidates Howard Coble (Rep) and William Jordan (Dem); 12th District candidates Ada Fisher (Rep) and Mel Watt (Dem); and 13th District candidates Brad Miller (Dem) and Virginia Johnson (Rep).

For more information, call Barbara Walls at 334-4822 ext. 2947 or Sari Goldberg at 392-6300 or Matthew McCauley at 314-0367.

Although the Guilford County Commissioners didn't end their meeting until about 10:30 p.m. Thursday, there was not a whole lot of - um - extra curricular activity for which the group has become infamous. Check Friday's paper or online for a full report.

Most of the time Thursday was chewed up by a zoning hearing and a hearing over whether to install water and sewer lines in the Kingsburry Estates neighborhood.

The county did not discuss plans to reorganize how they make appointments to the Planning Board, although did fill the remaining vacant seats. And aside from one of those appointments, there were no issues that prompted a great deal of disagreement between the commissioners.

For those of you keeping track of this sort of stuff, this was the commissioner's last meeting before the Nov. 2 election. The next meeting isn't scheduled until Nov. 18 and is one of two scheduled "lame duck" sessions where commissioners who are leaving the board in December will still be in power and casting votes. Those will include Mary Rakestraw, who lost her primary this summer, and Bob Landreth, who did not run for re-election.

That Nov. 18 meeting is scheduled to cover a lot of ground, including four requests for economic incentive packages, the controversial scenic corridor ordinance and possibly the evaluation of certain high-ranking county officials.

So we here at Scoop were having a leisurely morning drinking coffee, reading the papers and mocking the Sunday morning news shows before we decided to check on our e-mail and the blogsphere. And then: holy RSS-reader Batman!

It seems certain parts of the blogspher - namely Cone and Hoggard and Capo (Update: Cone didn't like the honorific used originally in this sentence, so I took it out.) - were all in a tizzy over this link, which doesn't seem to be working any more but has been preserved by Cone here. Google captured the page in early October, though there were fewer votes counted then.

We at Scoop have seen this page before. In fact, it pops up (and disappears) on a fairly regular basis in advance of elections. You can argue with the technological savvy at work here or whether the following explanation should/does hold water. But in the past, the explanation we've gotten from the folks who run the BOE web pages goes something like this:

The Board of Elections wants to make sure everything is going to run nice and smooth election night so they test out their results posting system. They do so with numbers that are way below normal so they won't be mistaken for real results and they don't post a link to the summary pages, so only someone really hunting for them would find them. Obviously, people do find them from time to time.

Scoop will re-inquire on Monday and ask whether a week in advance of an election like this one it's such a good thing to risk getting folks all upset and brewing the conspiracy coffee.

You may remember that last week we here at Scoop were working on a little mystery and asked for your help.

We were trying to find out who was putting up signs around town urging folks to vote against pro-billboard commissioners and who, among those running, might be considered "pro-billboard."

Well, mystery solved, no thanks to you cyber-slackers. In fact, Scoop's usually reliable networks of spies, wonks, pols, ne'er-do-wells and other various government types came up dry most of the week.

Oddly enough, it was a clue on the News & Record's letters page that led us to the source.

Marsh Prause, a lawyer who lives in the Westerwood neighborhood, wrote a letter (second one down, while the link lasts) that mirrored the sentiment on the sign.

Prause isn't the sign-maker, but knew who was.

For the answer, check out the second item in Monday's Inside Scoop column in the paper.

Can't wait? Fine. Here's an early draft of the item in question:

Guilford County Elections Director George Gilbert tells the Inside Scoop that an election results page (captured here by Ed Cone) is just the result of a scripted test vote of all the precincts in the county.

Alert bloggers Mssrs. Cone, Hoggard and Capo found the page on the county's elections web site showing victories across the board for Republicans with only a couple hundred votes cast.

Gilbert said before every election, elections workers are sent out to every precinct to cast a predetermined test pattern of votes which are sent through the system and tallied as if it were election night. Afterwards, Gilbert checks to make sure the correct number of votes are in the right place. It just happened that those results made it onto the web.

Gilbert said the votes cast in the test will be erased, and all the electronic machines must show zero votes cast before they're opened on Nov. 2. He said there are strict safeguards in place to prevent outright fraud, but conceded that nothing is foolproof.

"If you've got dishonest people, I suppose it can be done," he said.

As for the GOP wins in the test ballot, Gilbert promised to spread the love next time around.

"Tell them to look next time and the Libertarians will win them all," Gilbert said.

This morning, we hear from Joya Wesley of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project that there are a bunch of events planned to mark the 25th anniversary of the shootout at Morningside Homes that killed five people taking part in a protest march. The highest profile event is a march on Saturday, Nov. 13 from the site of the 1979 shooting to the downtown government plaza.

Here's the full press release.

From Eric Dyer in our Raleigh bureau:

Vice Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards is coming back to North Carolina for a final campaign event before the next week's election.

Edwards; his wife, Elizabeth; and their oldest child, Cate, are holding a rally Friday on the N.C. State Fairgrounds in Raleigh.

Gates open at 5:30 p.m., according to the campaign of Edwards and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Free tickets are needed to enter the event. In the Piedmont Triad, pick them up at the Guilford County Democratic Party headquarters at 7 Battleground Court in Greensboro. Call the office at 275-4918.

This morning, we have a story about Brad Miller and Virginia Johnson's fight for the 13th Congressional district, a race that until recently was pretty low key. This is partially because neither side, especially Johnson, has raised a whole lot of money, so the campaigns probably didn't want to blow all of their ad-buy money early.

For those who haven't seen the ads mentioned in the story, we have them posted here at the Inside Scoop: