Mike Easley served as North Carolina’s governor for eight years. He leaves new Gov. Beverly Purdue with a full plate of challenges. It’s clear what will occupy her time over the next year, but it is not nearly as clear what the future holds for Easley, or even what his North Carolina legacy might be. John Locke Foundation President John Hood discussed that topic with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Martinez: So before Mike Easley left office …
Hood: Who?
Martinez: Right. How quickly we forget. He gave an interview in which he really lashed out at the news media. What was he so mad about?
Hood: He was mad about the news media doing its job, which arguably had not been done consistently throughout the eight years of the Easley tenure. But certainly in the last couple of years of Mike Easley’s administration, the Raleigh News and Observer, the Charlotte Observer, and other media organizations were pretty aggressive investigating various aspects of state government — the probation and parole system, mental health system, the handling of public documents, which was kind of an outgrowth of the mental health investigations. There were some disputes about e-mail and other public documents — even the passage of the state lottery and the subsequent scandals that surrounded the rolling out of the state lottery. These were all events in the last two to three years of Gov. Easley’s administration that really have, I guess, framed his administration for history. I don’t think he will be remembered as much for grappling with the state budget crisis that he inherited from Jim Hunt in the early part of the 2000s. I don’t think that period, which at the time was pretty momentous, is going to be remembered as the Easley era. I think what will be remembered is a series of scandals and government mismanagement, miscues, that capped off Gov. Easley’s reign.
Martinez: So is that essentially why he decided to lash out? Because he is afraid of what you just said? I mean [if] this is what he is going to be remembered for — the bad things?
Hood: I think he is sensitive to the fact that he is not going out on his best note. He is sort of going out on his worst note. But I also think that Gov. Easley truly believes he is being unfairly treated by the News and Observer of Raleigh, in particular. On their probation and parole stories that the N&O had done, they had looked at a period of time during the last eight years, at the number of people on probation who were subsequently convicted of other crimes or accused of other crimes, and so on. Easley’s argument was that this problem was even worse during the previous administration, so mine is actually an improvement. The News and Observer had not done that analysis. I actually am told that they were not provided those data until after their story ran, and then Easley came in with the other argument.
So I think Easley maybe believes he has a legitimate gripe about that story, which is what he was lashing out about. But his more general point that the news media’s job is to be nice to him as long as he is nice to them, is a strange — at best — a strange explanation of how government media relations are supposed to work. I think it would come as a surprise to most people, and I think it would come as a surprise to the news media, that the Easley administration has ever been nice to them in the first place.
Martinez: Yes, you know it has been interesting to watch him, John, because he has not been someone who seems to enjoy being out in public very much. I mean you see him at a few public events and ribbon cuttings and things like that. Certainly he has been out in front when we’ve had disasters. But he has pretty much kept to himself. Did that perhaps exacerbate the problem when newspapers started to do some critical reporting of him?
Hood: Well, look at what the mental health story and the probation story both say about Easley. These are stories about programs that were well intended, reforms that were implemented, or changes that were made, that were poorly managed. There was not a lot of oversight, effective oversight and management from a month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter basis. Is this going the way we expected or should we go a different way? Gov. Easley is not in much of these stories because he isn’t involved in these issues very much. He has given a lot of authority over to cabinet secretaries or to people under cabinet secretary level, to carry out programs. And then when programs aren’t carried out well, it is not as if Easley is being held personally responsible in his mind. In his mind it is either, nothing was wrong or, well, somebody did that and I’ll have to do something about it. But he is not really internalizing the very clear message from these stories, which is that we had a governor who wasn’t out, who wasn’t active, who offered a tremendous grant of authority and autonomy to cabinet secretaries and other managers who maybe just weren’t up to it.
Martinez: Let’s talk about the last eight years a little bit, in terms of policies that he might be remembered for. Is there anything that you would particularly say — you know what, that Mike Easley, he actually did that well, or he did something positive for the state?
Hood: Well, one could argue that even though he raised taxes — which I didn’t think was a good idea in the previous recession in the early 2000s and didn’t cut taxes enough to offset that — he probably could have done it a lot worse. If you look at other states and the way they handled previous budget crises, they had even larger tax increases. But as far as his positive accomplishments are concerned, I am afraid they are pretty scant. The two major initiatives that Easley talked about during his initial campaign, and that actually became law, were the “More at Four” preschool program which, like it or not, is really going to be more lumped into Gov. Hunt’s idea than Gov. Easley’s. Gov. Easley’s proposal was: “Hunt’s got ‘Smart Start.’ That’s a preschool program, but it doesn’t focus enough on 4-year-olds, so I am going to focus on 4-year-olds.” Well, it is kind of an iteration of Gov. Hunt’s early childhood idea. So I’m not sure that really is something Easley can personally own as a truly new initiative.
So what you have left is the state lottery. And I think it is pretty obvious that the state lottery’s legacy is at least mixed, if not a net negative, since it has been implemented. So what you’re left with is a governor who was here for eight years, who presided over some momentous days in American life, in North Carolina’s history, who dealt with some difficult challenges — maybe not very well, but certainly experienced them — but I don’t think he’s going to be remembered very clearly. I mean, Gov. Hunt will be remembered, in part, because he was governor for 16 years. But also, he left his mark on just about everything in state government, whether you like it or not. Gov. Martin — Republican Gov. Jim Martin, who served for two terms — will be remembered, in part, because of the Transportation Improvement Program, the huge road-building program that he created in 1989. I don’t think anything similar to that is associated with Mike Easley, except maybe mismanagement and scandal. Now that’s sad, but that’s reality.
Martinez: How do you think he wants to be remembered?
Hood: I think he believes that his administration was very successful. I’m not sure how many people share his — I was going to say delusion — but at least his illusion of that. I think that he probably doesn’t have additional political aspirations, so he is probably done in public life, at least in elective office. So again, I think he’s probably sensitive to the idea that he might be remembered for the problems that cropped up in the last couple of years of his administration, but I think he should think about the idea that maybe those problems that cropped up in the last couple of years were the result of the whole eight years and the way he approached the job.
Martinez: The issue of transparency and secrecy in terms of documents and access to the press — it seems to me that that is going to be something that a lot of folks will remember him for. Do you suspect he might have regrets about how he conducted that aspect of the governorship?
Hood: I don’t sense any, any sorrow or any regret from Gov. Easley about his relationship with the press or with public documents. It’s been a hostile relationship — far more hostile than ever happened really between Gov. Hunt and the press or even Gov. Martin, the Republican, and the press. Gov. Easley’s tenure was not marked by openness and transparency.