Feb 04 2010
Another One Bites the Dust
ShareSen. Larry Shaw, a Cumberland County Democrat, announced Thursday he will not seek re-election this year. Shaw has served in the Senate’s 21st district since 1995.
“A wise man once said the greatest one among you, is the greatest servant among you,” Shaw said in a written statement. “My public service duty has been fulfilled and now the torch of community servitude must be passed on. Now more than ever, Cumberland County needs an individual with an executive mindset to harness the resources necessary to allow it to continue to develop into a competitive region of the state.”
Shaw’s departure is the latest in a wave of longtime senators announcing their retirements. Tony Rand, the former Majority Leader, resigned his seat representing a Cumberland County district at the end of last year.
His retirement is a bit of a loss for the movement. Shaw was not a doctrinaire liberal. He supported Charter Schools and opposed unlimited municipal annexation. Give n the composition of his district, I doubt his replacement will have the same views on these issues.
Perhaps more important than Shaw’s individual positions was his plain civility when speaking to someone from the other side of the political spectrum. I had several conversations with him and can truly tell you that I was never frustrated or offended by him. That is a trait lacking in much of the elected representatives of the Democrat party today.
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I tend to agree with Jeff. The sad thing in North Carolina is that the day of the moderate Democrat is now done. They know it and they know this will be a bad year for Dems in general, so it’s a good time for the old guard (moderate Dems) to get out.
Sadly, in their wake, they are leaving behind a bunch of virtual Communists to run in their collective places. It’s going to be more and more difficult to find any common ground between D’s and R’s in NC and that’s a bad thing. However, we don’t want too much common ground. We still need to stand on our principles, just as did the late US Sen Jesse Helms.
Everyone (except Helms and a few others) gets corrupted, the longer they are there. It’s good that some of this old guard is “swept away”, as the quote from Star Wars goes, but there is the above-mention, reverse side of the coin.
If we Republicans and the conservatives could get our messages out that no matter how much we hate the NC General Assembly, we have to stand up and stop voting for our buddy who represents our district, we can things back.
If we take things back, will it be like 1994, when we took the State House, but then screwed it up so bad, that we lost it? We can’t do this again.
In that year, one Harold Brubaker (the new House speaker), a moderate Republican, immediately got in bed with Marc Basnight and Tony Rand and started doing all kinds of unthinkable things to our cause. He was an extreme sell-out and caused me to quit my activism for about two years. For me to quit, it’s gotta be something serious.
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