What are the “key attributes” of Greater Raleigh? The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau is glad you asked. Because they’ve done a lot of market research aimed at “branding” Raleigh/Wake County as a desirable destination — complete with the new logo (above) they unveiled today.

(Update: Speaking of desirable, Chuck Berry will headline the opening of the new convention center September 5.)

Their answer to the above question is:

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Jesse Helms died early last Friday. When I heard the news, I suppressed the impulse to say here what I thought of him. Not the time, while his family and friends gathered to bury him. [And, I’d already had my say about him, which you can read here.]

Five days later, I’m still not comfortable speaking ill of the dead, but I do think it’s important that we remember — while the eulogies flood in — who Jesse Helms really was. He was a small-town police chief’s son with an ingrained notion that some folks in the world were better ‘n other folks, and that’s just the way God had set it up. Fortunately, his daddy and he were in the first group. The coloreds in his town were in the second, along with a sorry lot of whites. As soon as he could, Helms went to Raleigh and started associating with the moneyed class, money being an excellent indicator of God’s favor in these things, doing Willis Smith’s bidding in the 1950 U.S. Senate campaign (Smith was a white-shoe lawyer running against Frank Porter Graham, the liberal former UNC President) even while Helms was allegedly still a journalist covering the campaign. Not long after, Helms was made the N.C. Bankers Association’s paid executive in Raleigh, and he remained the bankers’ man throughout his public career as a Raleigh City Council member, WRAL-TV editorialist and U.S. Senator. He was anything but a man of the people, though of course he purported to be a man of the white people (and later, the straight people) with his regular blasts at “the bloc vote,” Martin Luther King and gay causes of every kind.

I missed Helms in his heyday of hate in the ’60s and ’70s. When I moved to Raleigh from New Jersey in 1986, I expected to see a great deal of him, since by reputation he was outspoken and a forceful advocate for his conservative causes. But, not so. I never saw Helms, on television or anywhere else, until I finally sought him out during the ‘96 Senate campaign, his last and the first year I wrote for the Indy. By then, he was a fragile old man who could barely manage to get up on the stage when presidential candidate Bob Dole came to Raleigh. His ill health might’ve cost him that election had the facts been known. They weren’t, because by then Helms was accomplished at keeping himself out of sight. Having barely survived the ‘84 Senate campaign against Jim Hunt, Helms knew full well that the world was passing him by, his views were distinctly out of favor, and if people really got a load of his act, they’d turn against him. So he picked his public spots very carefully from then on, coming out of the weeds as the ‘90 campaign approached to attack the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), of all things, because it helped support the work of controversial artists like Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Here’s my story about the impact Helms had on North Carolina. In 1989, I organized a seminar on First Amendment issues for high school social studies teachers — in connection with the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. It was held at the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching, which is located on the campus of Western Carolina University. One of the sessions, on freedom of speech, focused on the NEA funding issue, among other things. So I planned to bring some books containing examples of the art to which Helms had objected, including Serrano’s “Piss Christ” image and Mapplethorp’s sexually charged gay-male photographs, just so they’d be available if the teachers wanted to view them. No requirement that they do so. I’m not stupid. This was raw, racy stuff — that’s why it was controversial — and many teachers, I knew, would just as soon not have to look at them. But in case any wanted to, they would be available on a bookshelf in the Center’s library.

Or they would’ve been available there, except that the director of the Center heard about it and he barred me from bringing those books onto his premises. Yeah, freedom of speech and all that, he said, but if Sen. Helms got wind that dirty pictures were being shown to teachers at the taxpayers’ expense, there could be hell to pay — and his budget cut. “There’s an election coming,” he whispered to me in some anguish. I was working for a state commission at the time, so I checked with one of the members, Dr. John Caldwell, the well-respected chancellor at N.C. State. Caldwell said, “You’re a guest of the university. It’s their call.”
If I remember correctly, the books stayed in my car. Ironically, all of them were available anyway in the WCU Library, which information I conveyed to the teachers, one of whom went and checked a couple of them out for the group’s perusal. (I did not put him up to it.) Anyway, that’s who Helms was, a man who sowed fear and was feared to the point that even on a university campus, the idea that people might see for themselves and think for themselves about the issues of artistic expression and public funding was thought to be a little too risky to chance it while Helms was on the scene.

I just got back from voting. Walked to the Wiley school, saving gas; walked back. When I got there, it was three poll workers, one other voter and me. What a ridiculous waste of money this was, a statewide runoff for the Democratic nomination for labor commissioner — the one and only runoff in Wake County (as in many other counties) — at a cost to the taxpayers of between $4 million and $5 million. Next time, let’s either have instant runoff voting as part of the first primary or, if the General Assembly won’t pass it, then insist that every candidate running in a primary for anything other than governor sign a pledge they they will NOT call for a runoff no matter how close the outcome is or how few votes the front-runner got … unless there’s also a runoff for something people will turn out to vote for, like governor or U.S. Senate.

**

First time around for labor commissioner, Mary Donnan won 27 percent of the votes and the other three candidates each got roughly 24 percent, which is pretty close statistically to what you’d get if four candidates nobody’d ever heard of ran for an office nobody cared about but most everybody voted nonetheless. Smith, Jones, Johnson and Thomas for dogcatcher: With 1.2 million people voting at random, all four would get approximately 300.000 votes, which is in fact what happened when Donnan, Brooks, Richardson and Anderson ran for labor commissioner in a primary where people came out first and foremost to choose between Obama and Clinton.

But good grief, 1.2 million folks DID vote, and Donnan DID come in first, and if it was only by 3 percent, so what? This time around, we’re maybe going to get a turnout of 80,000 statewide, and the winning total could be less than the margin by which Donnan defeated the runner-up Brooks … who’s nothing if not a stickler for the rules, and who decided he was entitled to a runoff and damn the cost or lack of sense. I mean, it’s not like the economy’s great and we’ve all got lots of extra cash to throw around, eh?

Which brings me to my main point: Raleigh’s budget.

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Tom Jensen, the bright young man who’s running the shop for Dean Debnam’s Public Policy Polling, commutes to Raleigh from Chapel Hill. On the Triangle Transit’s express bus, which is a big step up from the bad old days when there was no such bus, but not such a happy experience nonetheless — as Jensen explains in a heartfelt plea to our Triangle legislators. Read it and weep, and then come to WakeUP Wake County’s transit forum next Thursday, June 26, 7 p.m., at the McKimmon Center, NCSU (off Western Boulevard).

Dear Triangle Legislators,

The transit system in the Triangle is in critical condition due to the strain put on it by increased ridership in the last few months.

Tonight folks waiting at NC State to take a bus from Raleigh back home to Chapel Hill had to wait as long as 90 minutes to catch a ride. The 4:49 bus broke down. Then the 5:24 bus was so full of downtown commuters who would have been on the 4:49 bus that not only was every seat occupied but the aisles were completely full of folks standing for the 55 minute ride to Chapel Hill. Only about five of the 40 people who were waiting to get on the bus at State were able to board the bus since it was already filled well past capacity. Around 5:45 word came that the 5:49 bus was also packed to the gills from people who got on downtown and thus would not be stopping at State either. Finally a little after 6 TTA sent an extra bus to pick up people waiting at NCSU, some of whom had been waiting since 4:30, and take them home.

Most of these folks got home around 7 PM. In the time it took them to get a bus home tonight they could have just about driven to Charlotte, Richmond, or Wilmington.

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Ah, we’re simmering now, but the much-touted shimmer wall — on the backside of the new convention center (the McDowell Street side) — is expected to be finished along with the center itself in time for the scheduled September 5 opening, according to architect Steve Shuster of Clearscapes. It’s funded by Cree, the LED lighting folks, to the tune of $1 million; Cree is also installing a “hands-on” shimmer-wall exhibit inside the center so we can all see how the big one works.

From the city’s website: Comprised of 79,464 four-inch aluminum pixels, the Cree Shimmer Wall will measure 211-feet by 44-feet. To aid nighttime “shimmering,” 56 LED fixtures will backlight the wall, which will rise up over some of the city’s most highly trafficked streets.

This just in:

Obama to Launch “Change that Works for You” Tour

Two-week swing will highlight key economic issues

CHICAGO, IL—The Obama campaign announced today that Senator Obama will launch a two-week economic swing—the “Change that Works for You” tour—on Monday, June 9. Obama will travel across the country, talking to Americans about how the economy affects their everyday lives. He’ll hold events with voters where they work and where they live, discussing the challenges we face and his plans to turn the economy around.

The tour will kick off on Monday with an economic speech in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Details below.

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Read all about it in today’s Charlotte Observer: The new light-rail transit line there is going like gangbusters — to the point that even the (formerly) fiercest critics now say: Oops.

“I have to admit, they are doing better than I expected,” said former Mecklenburg County commissioner Jim Puckett, who helped lead a failed effort to repeal the half-cent sales tax for mass transit last fall. “Our concern was whether we would have a white elephant, and it doesn’t seem we do.”

OK, the part about “today” is a slight exaggeration. The city’s press release announcing a pair of two-hour workshops on the “downtown element” of the new comprehensive plan arrived this morning, including the note that RSVP’s are required and due tomorrow. The workshops are next Wednesday and the following Wednesday. As follows:

CITY OF RALEIGH TO HOLD PUBLIC WORKSHOPS ON DOWNTOWN ELEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE; PARTICIPANTS MUST RSVP BY FRIDAY

The City of Raleigh will hold two workshops on the downtown element of the Comprehensive Plan update on Wednesday, June 4 and Wednesday, June 11. Both two-hour workshops will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Raleigh Urban Design Center, 133 Fayetteville Street at the Hargett Street intersection.

Citizens interested in attending either workshop should RSVP to Kristopher.larson@ci.raleigh.nc.us. by Friday, May 30. Citizens are encouraged to attend both workshops. Space is limited.

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Interesting to me that some of the biggest fights in Raleigh since I’ve been paying attention (10 years?) have been about parks. Remember what the city almost did to Moore Square? To say nothing of the pitched battles over Horseshoe Farm Park — finally settled once & for all the other day with the City Council’s decision to build gymnasium facilities on the nearby Syndnor White property instead of bucolic HSF — or what may be ahead over Dorothea Dix.

At the center of all the fights: the controversial former city parks and rec director, Jack Duncan, who seemed perpetually to be warring with community groups from a bunker somewhere behind his department lines. But Duncan retired a few weeks ago, and the search is on for his replacement — someone able to work with the parks groups for a change?

***
Below is a message from Russell Allen, the city manager, inviting public input into the selection process. His email address is: Russell.Allen@ci.raleigh.nc.us

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Tonight. In time for the evening news, John Edwards will endorse Obama, according to ABC News.

***

You wondered if/when Edwards would endorse? Answer was: At the point when his endorsement would wrap it up for Obama (or, if things had gone much better for her, Hillary).

Clinton’s decision early on to defend PACs and special interests as people too, and not merely a necessary evil in the fundraising forest, aligned Edwards and Obama as the “Change” options to her “Billary Restoration” campaign, a point Edwards made forcefully in the New Hampshire debate when he tried his darndest to usher her out of the race. As it turned out, his attack on her backfired (remember the tears?) and three weeks later, he was out. Since then, however, Clinton’s been the candidate who worked harder at appealing to Edwards’ blue-collar constituency, and her universal health-care package is a faithful copy of Edwards’ plan, something Elizabeth Edwards has taken to pointing out. So Edwards has been content to bide his time and throw his support to one or the other of his ex-rivals only when he/she was on the verge of victory — key word, verge. If he’d waited any longer, Obama would’ve wrapped it up without him. As it is, Clinton’s lopsided victory in West Virginia last night made it seem like Obama was in need of a momentum-breaker. Enter Johnny.

Edwards, back when he was retracing Bobby Kennedy’s trip through Appalachian poverty, made a lot of friends in Kentucky. Look for him to join Obama there in the days before next Tuesday’s Kentucky primary, where Hillary is heavily favored, but anything short of West Virgina-order blowout will be seen as an Obama comeback. And if Obama, as expected, wins the Oregon primary that night, it should end this so-called “contest” once, for all and officially, with Clinton dropping out.