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CHARLOTTE, N.C.- Tuesday voters in Charlotte will elect a Mayor and City Council. Across Mecklenburg County, three at-large school board seats are also up for grabs. And there’s a quarter-cent sales tax referendum on the ballot to support arts, parks, and schools.
Click above for more in this week’s political wrap with WCCB Charlotte Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis
The House of Representatives has voted to formalize its impeachment inquiry. Will that move the needle?
On the next Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup…
People have been wondering for months what led to former CMS Superintendent Clayton Wilcox’s July suspension and later resignation from the school system. This week, the Charlotte Observer reported that there were reports of racist and sexist remarks by Wilcox that were reported to officials in the system and that the school board knew about remarks. We’ll discuss details.
Two more rulings about political maps in North Carolina came out this week, one upheld, and one thrown out—for now, and there are implications for the 2020 Election… we’ll take a look.
City Council approves spending for improvements at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, but postponed a vote about the Silver Line, the proposed rail line that would go from Matthews to Gaston County.
Senator Richard Burr is receiving a lot of attention– and it’s not positive- on Twitter for a comment he tweeted this week about whether NCAA athletes should have their scholarships taxed if they receive compensation for the use of their likeness. This comes after the announcement by the NCAA Governing Board that student athletes will be allowed to be compensated for their names, images and likenesses.
We’ll cover those stories and much more on this week’s Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup.
Guests:
Ann Doss Helms, WFAE News
Nick Ochsner, WBTV news reporter
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com and WCCB
Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV Reporter
[OPINION] ROCK HILL, S.C. — Why was South Bend, Indiana, mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg in South Carolina over the weekend, with a busy schedule that included tailgating at a historically black college homecoming and delivering remarks at an AME Zion worship service?
“To say that I want to be the president who can pick up the pieces, that we’ve got to be ready not just to defeat this president but to guide the country forward,” he confidently told me. “I have my eyes on that moment and what America’s going to need.”
It’s quite a tall order for a candidate polls show in single digits in the first-in-the-South primary, where he is still largely unknown to the African Americans who make up the majority of the state’s Democratic voters, even as his campaign coffers and Iowa poll numbers rise. In a weekend packed with public appearances, he and a diverse group of campaign workers and surrogates, including some from South Bend, were trying to catch up — and distribute those “African Americans for Pete” buttons.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It has been a busy week in politics, both in the state and nationally.
In North Carolina, a three-judge panel of state judges said the state cannot use the current congressional districts as drawn for the 2020 elections while the lawsuit against them proceeds. This may mean the state’s March 3 congressional primaries could be moved in a competitive primary season with crucial contests up and down the ballot.
And in Washington, a decorated Army officer’s testimony drew attention and partisan attacks, while House Democrats plan a vote to formalize the impeachment inquiry.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – President Donald Trump is declaring that the leader of Islamic terrorist group ISIS is dead.
And Democratic Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg spent the weekend campaigning in South Carolina.
Click above for more in this week’s political wrap with WCCB Charlotte political contributor Mary C. Curtis.
OPINION — When Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley sent her 14-year-old son, Emmett, to visit relatives in Mississippi, she never thought he would return in a casket, a victim of a mother’s nightmare and America’s shame. A group of white men kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered him that summer in 1955 for the “crime” of flirting with a white woman, who years later admitted to lying about their supposed interaction.
Mr. President, that’s a lynching.
Mr. Trump will participate in a criminal justice forum Friday at Benedict College in Columbia.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Happening this week: President Donald Trump is visiting South Carolina as part of a bi-partisan event on criminal justice reform.
The White House confirms Trump will appear Friday at a forum at Benedict College in Columbia. The event marks Trump’s first visit to a historically black college or university.
Some of the democrats vying to challenge him are also planning to attend… including front-runners Former Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
OPINION — In the summertime, Baltimore can be hot as blazes with humidity to match. Trying to cool off in a public pool would be quite an ordinary outing for an 11-year-old boy. But for young Elijah Cummings in 1962, it turned into a nightmare in the still largely segregated city. White adults and children resisting integration yelled, “Go back to where you came from” — sound familiar? — to children and, over the heads of a police line, threw rocks and bottles, one of which caught young Elijah in the face.
That day taught Cummings he had rights, he later said, and it made him determined to become a lawyer despite teachers who dismissed his dream as impossible. With strong parents and supporters such as his boss at a drug store, who paid his college admission fee, Cummings fulfilled that dream and so much more.
The experience and the lesson he learned from it told you a lot about the boy who would become the man, a fighter for justice and a leader with a sense of right and wrong, even when there was a price to pay —lasting physical and emotional scars, reminders of work left to be done.
