On gay rights, Neal supports full equality, including marriage, as a matter of law. But he also recognizes that the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom when it comes to whether same-sex unions should be sanctioned by various faiths.
Given his background as a Wall Street investment banker and venture capitalist, Neal is at his best when dissecting the causes of the nation's widening gap between rich and poor and the erosion of middle-class jobs. He calls it "unconscionable" that corporate CEOs make 400 times as much money as the average worker. His prescription for fixing what ails us includes sweeping investments in education and our economic infrastructure, not war, and for junking free-trade policies in favor of fair-trade ones. He thinks the federal government should prepare to buy mortgages and refinance them to prevent foreclosures.
Neal is hardly a perfect candidate. He's never run for office, can be long-winded and abstract about policy, and while he grew up in North Carolina, he's lived elsewhere most of his adult life. He acknowledges that his business life has had its ups and, recently, some downs. He's not rich, and has had trouble raising money despite having been a top fundraiser for the '04 Democratic ticket of Kerry-Edwards.
That said, Neal didn't get into this race until every potential "establishment" candidate from Gov. Mike Easley on down had walked away from it. That includes state Sen. Kay Hagan, D-Guilford, who announced that she wouldn't run, but changed her mind a few weeks later—after Neal declared. Party leaders in Washington and Raleigh quickly endorsed her; the inescapable conclusion was that they feared having a gay candidate on the ticket.
Hagan is a former bank lawyer whose politics are rooted in the moderate-to-conservative side of the party. As one of the Senate's appropriations chairs, she's helped shape state budgets that do well by education but maintain a regressive tax structure. On the campaign trail, she's finally getting up to speed on national issues; for example, after not knowing what to say about Iraq, she's lately started to talk about "redeploying" out of there, though not on any timetable.
She obviously expects to be Dole's opponent and is keeping her powder dry—and away from any "liberal" influences—until the main event. She's refused to meet Neal in a televised debate on grounds that the three other, minor candidates weren't invited too. The three—Duskin Lassiter, Howard Staley and Marcus Williams—weren't invited because they aren't running serious, let alone statewide, campaigns.
In the Republican primary, we endorse neither candidate. Dole has devoted most of her first term to traveling the country—not, however, including North Carolina—as chair of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Her efforts in that regard were not just a failure but an embarrassment. Worse, though, is her steady support for all things Bush. The only exception is her newfound enthusiasm for harassing illegal immigrants, the tack she's used to re-introduce herself to the state she supposedly represents. Dole's primary opponent, a retired New York City cop named Pete DiLauro, is a perennial office-seeker with nothing to recommend him.
This endorsement is taken from the Triangle Independent Weekly, a publication from the Raleigh-Durham area. We haven't talked about more local politics in a while, and until recently I embarrassingly knew barely anything about the Senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates. So here is something on the issue. I generally agree with the endorsement of Neal for Senate. I am realistic enough, however, to know that an openly gay candidate has a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected in North Carolina. Still, if he makes it through the primary, he might have shot against Dole. She has done jack shit for the state and has been sucking the teat of the W for 7 years. Bad Dole.
