A recent Business North Carolina profile of state Transportation Secretary Gene Conti featured comments from Carolina Journal Executive Editor Don Carrington about one dubious aspect of Conti’s past. (Gov. Mike Easley asked him to join DOT as deputy secretary. Conti cut a deal: He needed another year to qualify for federal retirement and other benefits, so he would work for DOT at 80% of his salary and work part time for Rep. Brad Miller, a Democratic congressman from Raleigh. Political watchdogs pounced. “It should have been absolutely embarrassing for him,” says Don Carrington, an editor with the conservative John Locke Foundation. “From an ethical standpoint, it was one of the worst things he’s ever been involved in.”)
Carrington also offered the Dunn Daily Record insight about the facts behind a flier used to trash Republican state Senate candidate Don Davis. (Don Carrington, executive editor of Carolina Journal, co-wrote the article which exposed what turned out to be a pork barrel scheme. “I think it’s fair to say very few members of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party knew what was going on with the slush funds,” Mr. Carrington told The Daily Record Tuesday. “I fully believe most members did not know they had carved money aside.”)
In other CJ news, the Beaufort Observer promoted contributor Sara Burrows‘ recent article about a feud involving the Martin County school board and a new charter school operator. N.C. Senate Republicans cited Associate Editor Dan Way‘s article about an Orange County legislator’s health care legislation predictions and contributor Karen McMahan‘s report comparing two national groups that work with state legislatures.
The Thomasville Times published N.C. History Project Director Troy Kickler‘s CJ column about the philosophical meaning of the country song “Home.”
