
With the city and town elections now just a handful of hours in the rearview mirror there’s only one thing left to do.
Start speculating about the 2010 races.
Yes, candidates on the local and state levels are already positioning themselves for 2010. In fact, there was more buzz about elections still a year away than the odd-year races at hand. Turnout in Burlington and elsewhere met historically low expectations.
But over the past few weeks, most of the talk has been about races candidates won’t begin filing for until February. Consider:
Alamance-Burlington Board of Education chairman Tom Manning announced that he was handing over the gavel — but not his seat — to concentrate on another bid for the Alamance County Board of Commissioners. It was the right thing to do, by the way. He avoids the potential for political conflict of interest and removes himself from a potential hot seat.
Robert Sharpe stepped up in October and said he would be pursing the Republican nomination to run for the position of district attorney now held by Democrat Rob Johnson. Johnson, meanwhile, will be leaving that position early to become a superior court judge as appointed by Gov. Bev Perdue. It’s a job he will have to run for as well. He could face a load of opposition there.
A massive pileup of Democrats has collected as possible replacements for Johnson. That position is also appointed by the governor. The winner of the appointment would hold the job but still face a primary in May and potentially a November general election.
Donnie Compton, who ran unsuccessfully against Sheriff Terry Johnson in 2006 said at the end of 2008 that he intends to run for that job again in 2010. Other Democrats may join him. I don’t see any Republicans challenging Johnson at this point — but you never know.
And Cary Allred called me last week and mentioned that he would be seriously considering a bid to serve on the Alamance County Board of Commissioners — a position he held in the late 1980s and early 1990s before becoming a state representative. He resigned that post this year under inquiry over his conduct during a Monday night session. He said he would not run for the General Assembly again.
Allred’s Republican House replacement Dan Ingle is up for election, though as is Democratic Rep. Alice Bordsen and Democratic Sen. Tony Foriest. Look for Rick Gunn, who lost to Foriest in 2008, to perhaps lock horns again.
A poll conducted by Elon University last week indicated that incumbent U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of Winston-Salem could face an uphill battle in a bid in 2010 to keep his seat. The same poll also showed his Democratic counterpart, U.S. Sen Kay Hagan, is also pretty unpopular with voters but she won’t face the electorate again until 2014.
And the election wheel keeps spinning …





My print column for Sunday’s Times-News, or, what if they held an election and nobody came?
His name is Paul Trap, a freelance artist and house husband who now lives in New England. He’s a Michigan State grad, penned a a sports cartoon called Fourth and Inches, loves baseball in particular and during one stretch traveled the country in a purple Gremlin. Once as a souvenir from his travels west he brought me back a piece of fossilized mammal dung. I treasured it up until the day it vanished.

When I landed there, frankly, I was appalled. The photos from the game were fuzzy beyond belief. In fact, it looked as if the photos were taken by someone with no working knowledge of a camera or flash — some boob like me. The writing was equally hard to read. I could follow what happened in the game, but just barely.
A caller today posed an interesting question. Is it copyright infringement for someone to read the newspaper and then make nasty remarks about it?
