Jim Blaine

That seems to be pretty static.

This week we sat down with Ray Martin, who, if you are in the political circle, you definitely know Ray Martin and Jim Blaine and their firm, The Differentiators, and they're m- many, many people connected to them with vests.

But [laughs] we sat down to talk about his journalism career and then getting into politics.

The Do Politics Better podcast is supported by the North Carolina Travel Industry Association.

And, and, and the skills have transferred really, they transfer really well to the political world.

I mean, you, you have to learn to take really complicated information and synthesize it, and as, as one of my editors said, "You gotta get the hay down where the goats can get it." I, I sorta, I sorta hit the jackpot as it relates to, uh, to editors and mentors there.

So you talked a little bit about your first interview with Jim Blaine and Amy Auth.

Yeah.

So who was saying that?

It was mostly Jim Blaine was really upset about it, which is interesting because he's one of the more politically connected.

I mean, they're all semi-politically connected.

But he

Jennifer Lloyd was also... pretty upset.

She said, there's no excuse for this.

What are we doing here in Raleigh? And Jim Blaine made an interesting and kind of flashy point that he thinks it might be due in part to faculty activism against Republican legislators.

He brought up Gene Nichol, who writes occasionally for the News and Observer, again, like, you know, decrying legislative leadership.

How is this at all acceptable?

Trustee Jim Blaine responded immediately, sharing his belief that the discretionary aspects are, quote, a measure of political influence.

The challenge we have is a lot of things that happen on this campus enable us to get nailed.

And I'm going to just give you the most basic, simplest example of it.

Rand was the master, Stephen, at setting a trap for the opposition.

So we talk about Jim Blaine a lot when he was chief of staff with Berger and folks like, oh, he's setting a trap for us.

He's he's making us vote, you know, against this domestic violence bill.

But those are things that Rand was doing, I mean, every day, right? He was setting a trap for you.