Name: Paul Norcross
Seat sought: N.C. General Assembly House District 61 (A High Point-based district currently held by Rep. Laura Wiley, who is not running for re-election.)
Part: Republican
Age: 44
Family: Married with two children
Education: BS in Finance from the University of San Fransisco
Occupation: Owner of Global Supply Solutions, a logistics management company.
Community Involvement: Co-founder of the Pheonix Academy charter school in High Point; Incoming board member of the High Point Rotary Club.
Political experience: none
Online: http://votepaulnorcross.com/
Campaign finance: Click here to link to filings.
Worth noting: Norcross has hired former Greensboro City Council member and numbers wizard Bill Burckley to help with his campaign. He also has a longtime Democrat, Chuck Greene, serving as campaign manager.

On education: Norcross said that education is key to recruiting businesses and has personally seen businesses refuse to relocate here based on over-crowded classrooms. Norcross said that her favors differential pay for teachers who perform better or teach subjects like math and science that are in high demand.

“If you’re able to have a performance-based system, then I think you’re maximizing your tax dollar,” Norcross said.

As the founder of a charter school, Norcross believes that the cap on charters ought to be lifted.

“There’s a perception that’s out there, and I don’t know why it keeps up, that charter schools are the enemies of traditional public schools. We’re all public schools,” Norcross said. Charter schools should be viewed as incubators for new concepts.

“I don’t know why it’s a partisan issue, it should not be a partisan issue,” he said. “It should be something that brings both sides together to center.”

Click on the player below to hear more from Norcross on education:

Norcross would like to see High Point invest more in its image as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” The city, he said, should encourage manufacturing of environmentally-friendly products and take advantage of its concentration of showrooms to become a design and conference Mecca for the furniture and textile industries.

He is also interested in working on transportation issues. In particular, he said the state needs to make sure railroads, airports, ports and roads can handle traffic created by supply chain and logistics businesses.

“You’ve got 60 percent of the (Gross Domestic Product) of our country within a day and a half drive,” Norcross said of North Carolina. That should be a big factor in selling businesses large and small on establishing both their logistics hubs here as well as their corporate headquarters.

High Point, he said, needs to do a better job of using its downtown showroom space, which is mainly active during the two big IHFM trade shows each year but not in between.

“You can’t just have it twice a year,” he said. “If you look at the design center in Los Angeles, and you to Chicago with the Merchandise Market, and you go to Florida – they have year round showrooms,” Norcross said. “If we brought this and turned it into a design center and an innovation and technology center, then I think we’d have more people here in full-time showrooms.”

Click below to listen to our conversation about business and transportation:

When asked about incentives: “I’ve never had anybody throw a check at me to start a company and go to work. It doesn’t make sense to me, frankly. From a business standpoint it doesn’t make sense to me.”

In today’s Washington Watch column (posted here) I give a quick rundown of remarks by U.S. Sec. of Education Arne Duncan at the Institute for Emerging Issues forum here in Raleigh. Duncan was snow-bound in Washington, D.C. so appeared by video conference.

On part of Duncan’s session caught my ear. He was asked whether North Carolina’s “Race to the Top” application (background) might be frustrated by the state’s charter school laws, which limit the number of charters in the state. The Obama administration has pointed to charters as a key way schools can innovate.

In a previous post (click here) I’ve noted that charter school advocates have gone so far as to say North Carolina’s Race to the Top application should be rejected. In response to a question, Duncan said that wasn’t so. From the column:

“I think your state has done a great job,” Duncan said. “Good charter schools are a piece of the answer, bad charter schools are a piece of the problem. What we want is more innovation. So charter schools are one way to innovate. You can have traditional schools that are highly innovative, magnet programs, gifted programs, you name it. Charters don’t begin to have the monopoly on innovation.”

Gov. Bev Perdue has been saying for months that the charter school law would not be an impediment. After giving her own talk at IEI Monday, Perdue had this to say:

“Charter schools (are) not the end all and be all. We have proven to the Dept of Education that where we now have 100-plus charters, many other states that have adopted charters in the last year have as few as 30 or 40. We also have had deep discussions with the secretary and his team about the innovations that go on in North Carolina and he’s been impressed with that … So, they have really adapted to the thinking that innovation does not necessarily go by the name of charters. And we are only state, I believe, in America … to have 100 percent collaborations between all of the universities, the community colleges and all the public schools leaders.”

NB: North Carolina does NOT have “100-plus” charter schools. The number of charters is capped at 100 and rarely, if ever, hits that mark due to the turnover in charters as some close and new ones take time to open.

Click below for Duncan’s 25 minutes at IEI, which includes both his prepared remarks and Q&A. The question about charters comes at the 12:30 mark.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota spoke to the Institute for Emerging Issues here in Raleigh today. The theme of this year's forum (the 25th annual) is “creativity,” specifically how creativity could be used to spark economic development.

Pawlenty is of interest because he’s one of a hand-full of Republicans seen as potentially serious contenders during the 2012 presidential campaign. And his theme this morning of “radical decentralization” sounded like it was based solidly in Republican ideas about the limitations of government.

Pawlenty’s idea is that technology and its ability to move intellectual commodities (lectures, computer programming work, etc...) outside of defined places and times will change how society operates, including education and other government services. After pointing to how the newspaper and television news industries was suffering the effects of having their virtual monopolies end, he said the same things could apply to government programs such as K-12 and college education.

“Right now in our K-12 system … you see a huge industrial model bureaucracy from the 1940s, and through no fault of their own, it was designed and envisioned in a different era. You’ve got a 1940s industrial model versus the i-Pod world. Those two things are going to collide,” Pawlenty said.

For the full audio from Pawlenty's talk (about 33 minutes) click on the player below:

After his talk, Pawlenty spoke with reporters. He was asked if he was going to run for president (doesn’t know) whether the tea parties would help or hinder Republicans (GOP in a better place to take advantage of the energy in the movement) and his thoughts on civility in politics (it’d be a good idea).

You can listen to that give and take below:

Last month, House and Senate Republicans held a news conference to say they wanted to protect health care. Specifically, they planned to file a bill to tell the federal government that North Carolina citizens wouldn't have to buy any kind of health insurance even if the president and Congress said so. (Click here and here.)

Well, the GOP must have figured their guys in ties - including Rockingham County Sen. Phil Berger - looked good speaking from the podium because they've put out a web ad featuring video of the news conference.

It's fine, I guess, but doesn't have quite the same panache as Demon Sheep (click here).

Monday marks the beginning of the three-week election filing period. Those who want to be judges, lawmakers and county commissioners have from Feb. 8 at noon until Feb. 26 at noon to declare themselves.

The Guilford County Board of Elections has a list of seats up for election this year online (click here). The summary:

• U.S. Sen. Richard Burr faces re-election as do all members of the U.S. House.
   
• Legislative seats in the House and Senate are all for election. They are all two year terms.
   
• Guilford County Sheriff, Clerk of Court and District Attorney all serve four year terms.
   
• Five county commissioner seats are up.
   
• Several different judicial posts will be on the ballot, including one Supreme Court seat and four Court of Appeals seats. In Guilford County, there are three superior court and three district court seats up for election this year. For more on the specific judicial seats, click here for a listing from the State Board of Elections.
   
• The Guilford County Board of Education has five seats up.
   
• All High Point City Council seats are up.
   
• There are two seats for the Soil and Water Conservation District up for election.

Having covered local House members in this post (click here), I’m moving on to the state Senate. As before, this is a first-blush look, not a deep scrubbing of the forms. And as before, I’m looking at incumbents right now, with challengers and newcomers getting their due when they actually file to run.

• Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican and his party’s leader in the senate, underwent a campaign finance audit and cleaned up a bunch of bookkeeping stuff at the end of last year. (For a summary of that, click here.) His end of year report (PDF here) starts from a clean slate.

  Berger reports raising $119,295 and spending $17,152.64. His committee reports starting the year with $103,696.27 on hand. I’ve got to think the strength of those fundraising numbers have something to do with the prospect that Republicans are seen as having a reasonable chance of taking a majority or near majority of seats in the state Senate during the 2010 elections. (Although its worth noting that Senate leader Marc Basnight has $309,00-plus in the campaign kitty as of January 1, and that's before we even talk about the financial shape of the two party machines.) Certainly Berger is pulling down donations from Cary, Holly Springs, Charlotte and other places that typically don’t have a rooting interest in a Rockingham-County-based district.

  Celebrity (for NC politics) names on Berger’s report include Luther Hodges Jr., a former bank CEO, Carter administration official who now is affiliated with UNC ($1,000) Thomas Foxx, husband of U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx ($100) Phillip J. Kirk Jr., a longtime player in public circles including a 16-year stint as head of NCCBI ($100) and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page ($100).

  A sampling of Berger’s PAC contributions includes: Abbot Laboratories, which has given to several Triad-area lawmakers ($500) ABC of the Carolinas, which are “Associated Builders and Contractors” not liquor or alphabet related ($1,000) Association for Home and Hospice care ($1,000) AT&T ($4,000) Bank of America ($4,000) Duke Energy ($4,000) North Carolina Medical Society ($4,000) Progress Energy ($4,000) and Blue Cross and Blue Shield ($2,000).

  The most interesting expense items are $2,063.22 in mileage costs, which shows Berger was racking up some time on the road while the legislature was out of session. Again, I would chalk that up to his efforts to build a Republican majority in the Senate.
   

• Sen. Katie Dorsett, a Greensboro Democrat, does the math wrong on her forms but reports receiving $2,000 in contributions and starting the year with $22,279.78 cash on hand. (PDF here.) The contributions came from three different PACs including Bank of America ($1,000). She reported $2,045 in contributions to other committees and causes and $1,595.24 in other expenses, mainly for travel.
   
• Sen. Don Vaughan, a Greensboro Democrat, reported $40,375 in contributions during the last half of 2009 and total expenditures of $8,208.78. His cash on hand to start the year was $44,300.06. (PDF here.)

  Celebrity (for NC Politics) names among individual donors include Maurice Jennings, president of Biscuitville ($250) Charles Hagan III, husband of U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, who held the seat before Vaughan ($100) Matt Brown, director of the Greensboro Coliseum ($100) Mark Craig, president of RH Barringer beer distributors ($2,000) Jim Melvin, a former Greensboro mayor ($100) along with the usual roundup of developers and lawyers who give to Greensboro campaigns.

  Among his PAC contributions, Vaughan counts: AT&T ($750) Parker, Poe, Adams & Bernstein, a law firm that does a lot of government relations work ($500) N.C. Advocates for Justice, or as we like to call ‘em, the trial lawyers ($1,000) REAP, a real-estate-related PAC ($1,000) RJ Reynolds ($1,000) Time Warner Cable ($1,000) Service Corp International, a Houston-based funeral service company ($1,000) and Bank of America ($1,000)

  Vaughan’s $8,208.78 went to his cell phone bill as well as fundraising costs and $1,000 to former city council member Bill Burckley’s political consulting firm Compulis.
   

• Sen. Stan Bingham, a Davidson County Republican whose district includes parts of Guilford County, reports raising $7,050 for the last six months and $35,715.75 on the year. He started 2010 with $20,076.53 cash on hand. (PDF here.)

  All of Bingham’s reported contributions came from PACs including Carolina Anesthesiology ($2,000) Duke Energy ($1,500) and Time Warner Cable ($1,000).

  Disbursements mainly went toward typical campaign costs such as mailing and printing. Bingham did make a $2,500 contribution to the N.C. Republican Senate committee for a total of $8,250 to date. That kind of financial support may indicate why Bingham, who sometimes sides with Democrats on certain issues, is still in the good graces of at least some of his GOP colleagues.
   

• Sen. Jerry Tillman, a Randolph County Republican whose district abuts Guilford County, reported raising $41,439 for the last six months of 2009 and starting the year with almost that much in the bank. (PDF here.) Of those contributions, $30,449 came from PACs including Duke Energy ($1,000) Rep. Harold Brubaker’s campaign committee ($1,000) and Progress Energy ($2,000).

I’ve already noted Rep. Earl Jones’ recent campaign finance filing in this post (click here). This post contains more from Greensboro-area House members. The caveats for this post: these are reports for incumbents only. I'm going to take a look at challengers as they actually file to run. Also, this is the quick, once-over version reading of their reports, not a deep scrubbing. That said, here's what I found:

• Rep. Alma Aadms reports raising $25,586.19 this election cycle (PDF of report), $3,155 of which came in checks $50 or smaller. Pretty much all of her other individual contributors donated less than $500. The exception was Mark Craig ($1,000), who is in the beer distribution business.

  Among the bigger donations from Political Action Committees were Progress Energy ($1,000), N.C. Association of Educators ($500), AT&T ($1,000), Anesthesiologists of the Triad ($4,000), N.C. Hospital Association PAC ($3,000) and Piedmont Radiologists ($3,000).

  Adams reported $14,247.90 in expenditures, which seemingly break down into four categories: travel costs, fundraising costs, newspaper/radio/sign costs and donations to other groups.
   

• Rep. Pricey Harrison reports raising $64,766.53 and having $108,368.75 on hand as of Jan. 1 (report PDF). That is a serious bankroll for a state legislative seat.

  Harrison’s reports are handwritten, making them tough to get through quickly. However, it’s clear that in addition to Greensboro addresses, Harrison is getting support from folks in Raleigh, elsewhere in North Carolina and even outside the state – Washington, D.C. and South Carolina addresses show up on the report. Former News & Record editor Bill Snider shows up ($4,000), as do other known names like Guilford College President Kent Chabotar ($100), former Greensboro Mayor Jim Melvin ($100), Greensboro civic leader Sally Cone ($500), Capitol Broadcasting President Jim Goodman ($3,000) and former UNC President Bill Friday ($100). Harrison reports exactly one contribution from a political action committee, the Democratic Women of Guilford County ($350).

  The $6,376.49 in expenditures she reported seem to break down between fundraising/fundraiser costs and contributions to other political organizations.
   

• Rep. Maggie Jeffus reports raising $750.89 for the last six months of 2009 and has $9,402.86 cash on hand as of Jan. 1 (report PDF). Her reports are handwritten, but Jeffus’ campaign treasurer gets an A for penmanship, which I guess you'd expect from someone working for a former school teacher.

  Her two Political Action Committee contributions came from Merck ($250) and Bank of America ($500).

  Jeffus reports spending $490 over the last six months of 2009, all to political action committees.
   

• Rep. Laura Wiley, a Republican who has announced she is not seeking re-election, reports raising no money over the last half of 2009 (report PDF). She has $10,508.50 in the bank and reports spending $750.
   
• Rep. John Blust, a Republican, reports raising no money over the last half of 2009 and started 2010 with $757.89 (report PDF).
   
• Rep. Nelson Cole, a Rockingham County Democrat whose district borders Guilford County, reported $5,345.99 in receipts, including from RJ Reynolds ($1,000), the N.C. Medical Society ($1,000) and Bank of America ($1,000) (report HTML). He reports earning a bunch of interest from his account at Home Savings Bank, including a $494.17 draft on Dec. 31.

  Cole’s reported cash on hand is $84,960.59.

  His $8,115.83 in expenditures seemingly break down between cell pone bills, donations to other candidates, donations to charities and miscellaneous costs like flags, stamps and such.
   

• Rep. Hugh Holliman is a Lexington Democrat whose district borders Guilford County and who currently serves as the House majority leader (report PDF). He reports raising $49,625 during the last half of 2009. You’ll see a lot of “legislative affairs” consultants on his report, like Brad Crone ($1,000), which is more an indication of his station in the House than anything else. The majority leader plays a role in deciding what legislation moves and what doesn’t. Aside from a lot of out-of-district ZIP codes, Holliman’s report has the usually litany of political givers, including AstraZeneca PAC ($1,200), Bank of America ($4,000 for the period, $8,000 for the cycle), Build PAC ($500 for the period, $3,000 for the cycle), McGuire Woods, a law and lobbying firm ($2,500), N.C. Chiropractic Association ($2,000), and the beat goes on …

  His report contains notations that either reflect tally errors or illegal contributions. For example, Holliman reports contributions from Citizens for Higher Education, a UNC booster PAC that gave $4,000 for the period and $15,000 for the cycle. Candidates are typically only allowed to collect $8,000 in contributions for an election cycle from any one source. There are several notations like this on the report. My guess is these are totals that bled over prior reports since candidate don’t willingly attest to committee infractions of various sorts. I have a call in to Holliman to sort this out.

  Update: I just spoke with Holliman. He said that his campaign uses the software issued by the SBOE. He didn't know why some contributors were reported as giving over the limit for the cycle. "We're very careful," Holliman said, not to accept more than is allowed. Like me, he thinks either someone made an entry error or something else happened that caused the software to build on totals from the last campaign cycle rather than click over to the new 2009-10 tallies. He'll call me back when there's a definitive answer.

  Holliman reported $8,813.53 in expenditures, mostly in fundraising costs, travel costs and contributions to other candidates. Holliman reported a $1,000 donation to U.S. Senate Candidate Cal Cunningham.
   

• Rep. Harold Brubaker, a Randolph County Republican and former House Speaker whose district borders Guilford County, reported $27,223.20 in contributions and spending $34,161.81 in the last half of 2009 (report PDF). Still, he started the year with $88,751.85. The bulk of his donations came from corporate PACs such as Duke Energy ($4,000), McGuire Woods ($500), N.C. Home Builders ($1,000), Piedmont Natural Gas ($1,000), RJ Reynolds ($1,000), etc.

  Brubaker's expenses include contributions to other committees and various charities. Campaign finance reform advocates may take umbrage at his listing thousands of dollars in payments to credit card issuer Capitol One ($21,386.85) for various meeting and travel expenses.

Local state Senate reports are coming in a different post.

Rep. Earl Jones has been one of the most vocal (and at times, the only) voice in the General Assembly calling out for the legalization of some form of video poker. So, as you might expect, his campaign committee has gotten some donations from video poker interests.

For those who haven’t tuned in to the topic, legislators have been doing their best to get rid of video poker – and its kissing cousin, video sweepstakes – since 2005. Video poker played a role in the downfall of former House Speaker Jim Black, and lawmakers decided to outlaw it after all 100 of the state’s sheriffs (among others) basically said it was impossible to police.

After video poker was outlawed, video sweepstakes machines started creeping into the state. They sort of look like the old video poker machines, but their operators argue that they’re sweepstakes, whose outcomes are predetermined and players are only finding out if they won through a “fun” interface. (Background here, here, here and here.)

Jones has sponsored legislation to legalize the sweepstakes machines, arguing that the state should tax them and use the revenue to fill budget gaps. He has closely allied himself with the Entertainment Group of N.C., which is essentially the trade association for video poker/sweepstakes operators and a scion of the N.C. Amusement Machines PAC, the group that fought video poker’s legislative demise.

So it’s worth noting that four names associated with video poker/sweepstakes show up on Jones’ end-of-year campaign finance report (PDF):

• Fred Ayers, owner of Colonial Vending in Greensboro. At one time, Ayers was the president of the N.C. Amusement Machine Association, a group that represented video poker interests at the legislature. ($500)
• Donald Young, Young Amusement in Huntersville. He shows up as the registered agent of a company that deals with “recreation-video games” in N.C. Secretary of State records, although “Young Amusement” itself seems to be a DBA since it doesn’t seem to be listed. Donald Young at the same address was also a donor to the old N.C. Amusement Machine PAC. ($400)
• Ryan Douglas Kimrey of Charlotte, owner of Alamance Coin, cited in this story from the Gaston Gazette on whether video slots skirt the law. ($300)
• Steven Lee Henderson of Operators Distributing in Archdale. His company was also a player that fought the demise of the old-style video poker machines. ($500)

Neither the $1,700 in video poker/sweepstakes-related money nor the $3,000 in total fundraising Jones reported for the last six months of 2009 are a whole lot by General Assembly standards. And this report is pretty typical for Jones, who has never earned the “prolific fundraiser” appellation, as some of his colleagues have. Still, the connection between his fundraising and this particular set of industry interests bears watching.

Just to balance out my partisan karma for the day, Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, wasn’t the only U.S. senator from North Carolina to get hit with some populist-ish outrage (prior post.) Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican running for re-election this year, came in for his lashes related to a fundraiser he attended in September. The Web site thatsmycongress.com (more on them in a minute) notes that Burr declined an invitation to meet with some tea party activists but attended a fundraising dinner in the same time frame. From the post (click here for the whole thing):

Richard Burr did, on the other hand, have time to party hardy with lobbyists from the financial services industry. They took him to the Oceanaire seafood restaurant, a swanky establishment that features the quote, “to eat an oyster is to kiss the sea on the lips.” I don’t know what Richard Burr was kissing that night, but his lips were definitely puckered up, at a price of $500-$2500 per smooch.

A couple things worth noting about this post: The fundraiser and the tea party event were not on the same night, and Tuesday is typically a busy legislating day in Washington.

Also, thatsmycongress.com describes itself on its masthead as “A politically independent journal of the campaigns and legislation of the United States Congress.” However, their content is more consistent with an entry on their domain registry (click here) that seems to indicate ties to Democratic or at least liberal/progressive politics.

It seems to me that this is part of a campaign to turn Burr’s fundraising prowess (AP reports he has $4.3 million in the campaign kitty) into something of a liability. However, it seems unlikely that the people who are the audience of this post (politically conservative grass-roots folks) are going to turn away from Burr for whichever Democratic nominee wins in May over something like this.
 

I’m coming to this late, but Politico reports that Sen. Kay Hagan was among a dozen Democratic senators who attended a lobbyist-heavy “winter retreat” at the Ritz Carlton South Beach. From the Politico story (link):

There, to participate in "informal conversations" and other meetings Saturday, were senators including DSCC Chairman Robert Menendez; Michigan's Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow; Bob Casey of Pennsylvania; Claire McCaskill of Missouri; freshmen Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Begich of Alaska; and even left-leaning Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Across the table was a who's who of 108 senior Washington lobbyists, including the top lobbying officials for many of the industries Democrats regularly attack: Represented were the American Bankers Association, the tobacco company Altria, the oil company Marathon, several drug manufacturers, the defense contractor Lockheed, and most of the large independent lobbying firms: Ogilvy, BGR, Quinn Gillespie, Heather Podesta, and Tony Podesta.

Worth noting: Politico reports Republicans have a similar retreat on their calendar. (link)

HT: Dome

Also worth noting: President Barack Obama has been on quite the anti-lobbying kick, although one can argue there are a lot of loopholes in the administration’s lobbying curbs. (Links here, here and here.) Still, the retreat as reported by Politico doesn’t seem simpatico with the reform/anti-lobbyist ethos the administration is trying to establish.