My problem isn't with going to State, per se. It's that I have no idea where to park. If they're anything like a lot of colleges, they might try to tow me if I just show up somewhere.
What'd the Republican Agri candidate do to impress you?
Steve Troxler's a hoopy frood.
1. He's not an ideologue. He supported registration of recreational poultry farming, much to the outrage of far-lefties and far-righties (because they seem to have a similar mentality to anti-vaxxers). And he mandated a ban on firearms at the State Fair. Which is a fucking no-brainer, but it got him serious hate from the far-right. He broke ranks with McCrory and his cronies on more than one occasion
like this one.
2. He understands that tobacco is a dying industry, despite being a tobacco farmer himself. He's pushed rather successfully for diversification of North Carolina's agricultural sector, including wasabi production in the mountains, supporting the state's breweries and wineries (and our fledgling distilleries), and doing a lot of PR work to make NC pork and turkey a sought-after commodity overseas.
3. He's an actual damned farmer, not just some guy in a suit on the board of ConAgra or whatever.
4. Touching back on #1, he's an example of the sort of common sense, non-ideological Republican that's an endangered species in this state and which needs to be championed. If he loses, God only knows what kind of candidate they'd run next time. A preacher who wants to kill the brewing/winery industry because drinking is a sin against Jeebus? The head of Smithfield Farms, so he can remove all rules requiring the pigs to have at least slightly non-shitty lives, and likewise for the workers? Some Duke Energy flack who only knows agriculture from what he saw on his kid's Barnyard See N' Say? ("The cow says....moooooo")
If there's any knock on him, it's that he hasn't staked out a position on the ag-gag law (the one that made it illegal to do undercover taping of factory farms to document animal cruelty). But on the whole, he's done an admirable job.
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1420510 times)