Gov. Pat: Bev's a disaster, but I'm keeping a lot of her people. | Eastern NC Now

   Publisher's note: Brant Clifton keeps an eye on the Republicans in Raleigh in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    Pat McCrory, fresh of his rout of Walter Dalton in the governor's race, is putting out the word that we shouldn't expect "major personnel changes right away." Wait a minute. I thought Bev Perdue was a disaster -- a complete nightmare for North Carolina. We tossed her out, but we're keeping her accomplices in this four-year-long nightmare?

    The transition team has been touting WorkforPat.com, but if you go there you'll find very little detail about what jobs candidates are being sought for.

    The good folks at NC Spin were speculating on their first post-election show that McCrory would hold over a lot of the top folks at NCDOT. Some of our readers and sources from the Charlotte area are wondering if one of those holdovers will be deputy secretary for transit Paul Morris, who has been an outspoken proponent of the controversial proposed $452 million Red Line transit project for the Charlotte area. The Red Line is popular with local pols and the Chamber crowd, but has been highly criticized by taxpayer advocates and various conservative activists and groups. Our in-coming governor has been a huge proponent of publicly-financed mass transit solutions in-state and across the nation.

    Norfolk Southern, which will be providing a lot of the infrastructure for the proposed Red Line, has slammed the proposed project as "fatally flawed." The D.C.-based Cato Institute has described the Red Line proposal as "an expensive, risky project that is likely to produce few benefits for anyone other than the contractors who build it."