Well, that was brief. And short on news.
The Uptown paper of record today does nail down two things, I suppose.
One, that there will be a Friends of Wake County-type campaign for the CMS bond just as predicted here last week. And two, the Charlotte Chamber is, in fact, out polling — trolling, really — for issues to get behind the bonds and oppose the half-cent transit tax repeal.
Oh, and poor Jim Woodward. No one bothered to tell the former UNCC chancellor what his Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education was supposed to do, which was get the Chamber out of the shilling for CMS biz. Suppose there is a some news there.
Now for some real fun.
Ed McMahan relates that no one asked him about testing his name in the Chamber’s survey. In fact, the former Republican state lawmaker says he had never heard of the polling effort until Meck Deck told him about it. This is some odd stuff. Chamber President Bob Morgan is ducking ownership of the poll and people mentioned in the poll never knew about it.
Did someone in the Chamber policy shop jump the gun here? More to the point, was there any debate — at all — inside the Chamber about opposing the half-cent repeal? Backing the bond without a firm bond number? Or was this all done on automatic pilot, without much input from Morgan?
I, for one, cannot wait to hear the defense of CATS the Chamber cobbles together as a result of this polling effort. It will be long on scare tactics and “vision” and short actual facts and reality.
And that is tomorrow’s news today.
Bonus Observation: Here was a concrete example of Meck Deck breaking a story — two, really — and getting absolutely no credit for doing so. That practice will probably continue for some time, the fear level being what it is inside McClatchy World. As long as actual news gets out, it is all good. The Intertubes know the score, and that’s what counts.
