Rainmaking in the Mountains

Thursday saw my wife and me headed west for a fundraiser in Asheville. Our first stop along I-40 West was in Statesville Thursday night to speak to the Iredell County GOP Men's Club. There was a very good turnout and lots of questions after my talk with a strong focus on the emerging "incentives" issue. By 11:00 that night we had pulled into the Cane River Valley in Yancey County as the rain started to fall. There's nothing quite like the sound of rain on a tin roof to make a tired campaigner go quickly to sleep.

Friday found the rain continuing to come down heavily and the Cane River was looking like its old self as swift waters rolled downstream ultimately toward the Mississippi. The rain stopped just long enough for me to get a good, long walk in and then head over the mountain for our fundraiser.

My long time friends Jim and Iris Barkley had generously opened their home looking down on several acres of pastures with the Black Mountains in the distance for our first fundraiser in the west. With impeccable timing the rain stopped just as the guests began to arrive. We had a great turnout and helped start filling our coffers in an effort to adequately fund our campaign.

As I told the more than one hundred attendees, any candidate who can be a rainmaker simply by scheduling a fundraiser clearly has an edge on the field. It was a great evening with lots of old friends from my Asheville days but also lots of new people who had simply responded to the invitation and wanted to hear what I had to say. We're still over seven months until the primary and interest in the race is slowly starting to build along with the "incentives" issue. As Paul O'Conner said in his column today in the Winston Salem Journal, the incentives issue is mine and it's starting to get traction. More in the days ahead on ways we can bring some sanity to our economic development policy in North Carolina.