Easley, Perdue toadie still thriving in state govt in McCrory era
Dan Gerlach has been a major player in North Carolina Democrat circles for some time. He was a senior adviser to former Gov. Mike Easley (D) and former Gov. Bev Perdue. Former state senate president president pro tem Marc Basnight (D) and Easley (D) orchestrated Gerlach’s promotion to the presidency of North Carolina’s Golden Leaf Foundation.
Golden Leaf is funded by tobacco settlement money from the 1990s. It was initially intended to help cover health care costs for smokers, but evolved into an economic development slush fund.
In November 2012, voters ushered into Raleigh a conservative revolution based on sweeping out the old ‘good ol’ boy’ corruption and introducing a new era of conservative clean government. Since then, many observers 
on the right have been dismayed over how many players from the Hunt-Easley-Perdue era are still hanging around Raleigh in influential government positions.
If you were following the news on Thursday from western North Carolina, you might have noticed Gerlach at Gov. Pat McCrory’s side for a major economic development announcement. Yes, that’s right. A key figure from that era we were told in 2012 we had to sweep away is STILL hanging on as a major player in the state’s economic development operation.
Civitas has a great piece HERE documenting what a cesspool of political cronyism Golden Leaf is. A real question to ask McCrory and the foot soldiers in Raleigh’s ”conservative revolution” is this: Why are Gerlach and Golden Leaf still feeding out of the state government trough?
I remember when the Golden Leaf Foundation wrote the first check to lure Spirit Aerio to the Global Transpark. The check was in the amount of $100 million dollars.
One check for one company for one hundred million.
Of course it was not political.
McCrory has never been nor ever will be a conservative. He is morphing into the 5th term of Governor Hunt
Does it really matter who is allocating funds, and which administration they were aligned to? At the end of the day, funds are being directed to better the lives of North Carolinians in need. GL submits to regular audits and if there were any abnormalities, it would be shut down. The fact that is has survived investigations, and functioned well through diverse political landscapes, bears testimony to this.
Are you defending $100,000,000 to one company?
Are you telling me it was not a political decision?
Check out how Spirit is doing and tell me the taxpayers got their moneys worth from that $100 million dollar check.
As I recall the Golden Leaf complained that they could not fund many projects that year because of that $100 million dollar gift.
What is that old saying about putting all your eggs in one basket?
The Republicans still haven’t figured out how governing actually works.
Yeah, they have not had much chance to feed at the trough over the past 100 years. Give them a chance to slop up the gravy. The Dems had a long time to perfect their act. The Great Train Robbery was not thought up in a day.
Republican governors Jim Martin and Jim Holshouser got it figured out easily enough. Why cannot McCrory? Is it because their experience was in Congress and in the State Legislature, which gives a better background for the governor’s office than being a big city mayor?
If this were the only bad personnel decision in the McCrory administration, it would be a big one, but the sad thing is that it is just the tip of the iceberg. The most complete compilation of such decisions I have seen is in this thread:
http://www.talkingaboutpolitics.com/CommentDiscussionForum/tabid/74/aft/756/Default.aspx
The nub of the problem seems to be that McCrory chose a bunch of cabinet secretaries who had no GOP political savvy and were not necessarily keen on GOP policy positions, and then gave them free rein to select their own key staff. This is unlike previous GOP governors who kept a firm grip on that from the governor’s office. The result of this lax policy is a real mess. Policy oriented Republicans are not getting positions while those whose policy orientation is in other directions are.
ok and while Gerlach and GL are out trying to do something to improve the situation, even if it does involve bowing to political agendas at times, the rest of you are what, trolling around making highly educated political assumptions and judgments? Wow I wish I was that perfect that I could throw stones at the tall trees!
The Democrats ran GL like a political slush fund. There was lots of politics in how money was distributed. The GOP did not need to leave the foxes in the hen house. That was just dumb.