Yesterday was a blast. Leia and I experienced some wonderful southern hospitality at the home of North Carolina State Senator Fred Smith and his charming wife,
Ginny. We were treated to an awesome concert on the lawn by Lee Greenwood and got to hear him in a more intimate setting beforehand at the piano in the Smiths' living room.
The only regret I have is that with all the festivities and people to meet, we didn't get around to sampling the great food available to all the guests. In fact, the only thing we
had to eat was a couple bags of chips.
The first part of the event was a blogger press conference. Several of North Carolina's prominent bloggers were there, and we each had the opportunity to question Senator Smith.
Lorie Byrd of Wizbang! and Townhall.com - and my distant cousin - is working with the Fred Smith campaign and
did a wonderful job coordinating this segment of the event. The bloggers in attendance were Bob Owens, aka Confederate Yankee, Sarah,
who blogs at trying to grok and SpouseBuzz, a group blog by military wives, the Civitas Institute's
Jameson Taylor who writes for Civitas' blog, Red Clay Citizen, Rob Boyce of
Rob Boyce.com, and Dean Stephens of various blogs including
Inner Banks Eagle. Several have posted reactions to the event, so be sure to check
out their fine blogs. Also there was Brandon Winters who works with Nathan Tabor at The Conservative Voice.
During the questioning, I was impressed by Senator Smith's straightforward candor and no-holds-barred responses to our questions. I started things off with a question about the
state lottery, recently forced through North Carolina's General Assembly. Unfortunately, once lotteries are in place, they never seem to go away. Sen. Smith pointed out that
ours has also failed to meet monetary expectations and that the money collected has been diverted in large part to fund other aspects of state government aside from education.
While acknowledging the futility of any plan seeking to rescind the lottery, he spoke of his commitment, if elected governor, to see that all the proceeds go toward their intended use -
education and, specifically, school construction. Further, he said allotments should be based on a per-capita plan rather than the current plan which awards higher amounts to counties
with higher tax rates. In his view, that is just rewarding greater taxation.
I followed up my question by asking the senator if there is any way to avoid the underhanded tactics that ushered in the lottery in the first place. His simple answer: "win
elections." Without the power to control the General Assembly and its procedures, liberal Democrats would have been unable to get that issue past. But how do we do that?
As the evening passed, it became crystal clear that Senator Smith has resolved to attempt to win his election by "drawing a line in the sand" as a true conservative and making no apologies
for that. To this blogger, still shaken and discouraged over the losses last November in many instances by Republicans afraid to stand on conservative values, Sen. Smith's message was
wonderfully refreshing.
And when Lee Greenwood debuted "Good to great", the song he wrote for the Fred Smith campaign, I felt proud once again to be a Republican. With all the bad aura hanging over
the GOP these days, I don't know what it will take to stem the tide against us. However, if anything will, in my view, it will be the kind of true conservative stand Fred Smith is
taking on the campaign trail this election season. Before I went to the event yesterday, I wasn't sure who I would support in the GOP primary for the gubernatorial nomination.
I don't know how far his conservative stand will take him, but I do know I have now found my candidate for governor of North Carolina - State Senator Fred Smith.
