Polk Lore

Unlike just about everyone else who is running to unseat an incumbent in 2026, Republican Mike Hager is not a political newcomer, not by a long shot. He served as state representative for District 112 for six years, finishing up as House Majority Leader — until 2016, when he gave up his seat to look after his parents. Back then, his home in Rutherford County was in District 112. Now it’s in 113, a...

The Republican majority in the NC state house, led by then–NC House Speaker Tim Moore, recently redrew Congressional District 14 to strongly favor candidates with Rs after their name. Moore went on to run in that district, winning easily and making it hard to dream up scenarios in which even the most popular Democrat can win in next year's election. A serious challenger in the Republican prima...

One of every eight Americans makes use of federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. One out of eight. Let that sink in for a minute.  In Polk County, things aren’t quite as bad, at just one in nine. That’s still awful. But it’s much worse in some places. Next door in Rutherford County, for example, it’s about one in five. Why do we, the richest country in the history of the w...

Zelda Briarwood is a 35-year-old former wilderness therapist and banking field technician who is, to be blunt, running an uphill battle for the nomination. But the truth is, neither of the better-known challengers has any more political experience than she does. Which is to say they are all starting their runs for the US Congress from absolute zero. That says a lot about the Democratic Party in Di...

Dr. Richard Hudspeth is the former CEO of Blue Ridge Health, a non-profit agency that helps folks in Polk and other counties in western North Carolina get the physical, mental, and dental care that they might not otherwise have access to. He’s also a general practitioner. So, it’s fair to say he probably has a pretty good idea of what works — and what doesn’t — in the U.S. health care system. That...

I know it's a big ask, given how horrible all the political news is these days. But if you live in Saluda or Coopers Gap, or certain parts of White Oak, and you’re interested in who your representative in the US House of Congress should be, then it's time to accept the need to pay attention to politics again. Jamie Ager , who, along with his wife, runs Hickory Nut Gap Farm, wants to be the...

A state government that's engaged in a war on public education. The challenge of enforcing a ban on smartphones in classrooms. Artificial intelligence that threatens to put an end to critical thinking. Now is perhaps the least attractive time in history to be running a public school in North Carolina — or pretty much anywhere else, for that matter. So you have to applaud the courage of Todd Mu...

Surprise: It turns out that driving all that heavy machinery up and down the middle of the Green River, and ripping out all those fallen trees may have made things worse, not better. At least, in some places and in some circumstances, from an ecological perspective. Almost year after Helene, it's probably time to start preparing for the next storm, and how we can avoid making the same mistakes aga...

A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump ordered Congress to stop funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Congress, including Polk County’s two congressmen, complied. That saved US taxpayers about a billion dollars, but it put in peril scores of public radio stations like WNCW that used to rely on the corporation for at least part of their budget. Plenty of stations are laying off staf...

Myles Freeman is about to graduate from Polk High School, so as part of my attempt to revisit some of the guests and topics I’ve covered over the past three years on Polk Lore, I asked him to come back and tell me how he, as a trans man, is doing at what is a critical juncture in anyone’s life. Dig deeper All Blissed Out Live Playlist (YouTube) John Oliver Tonight: Transgender Rights II (YouTube)...

Twenty years ago, Democrats could win seats in Polk County. without too much difficulty. Today, they can't even beat a Republican organization that needs to call police to break up their meetings. Is there anything they can do about that? I asked NC Democratic Party First Vice-Chair Jonah Garson , who was in Columbus recently for the Polk Democrats County Convention. It's a long conversati...

Everyone says they appreciate our firefighters and other first responders. But when you find out just how little we pay the people who put their lives on the line to protect our homes and businesses — and accept a lifespan that is, on average, ten years shorter than what the rest of us can expect to enjoy — it becomes pretty clear that maybe we don’t   actually appreciate them as much as we should...

Jon Klimstra is not a high-value target in the war that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are waging on the imperfect but  mostly successful  post-war, liberal consensus on how to expand freedom, equality, and prosperity in America and around the world. He and his wife are just apple farmers.   But here they are in the midst of it all. In this episode, Jon and I talk about how he’s being affected by the...

I'm not sure the Tryon Daily Bulletin was even at the Tryon rally the other day — they didn't take their own photos, for one thing. It was good to see some coverage, but that coverage didn't really capture the spirit of the event. So here's a short audio essay on what went down, along with some important context. Sources Measles eliminated in 2000 https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-r...

A few years from now, no matter who is running the country, there's going to be a big hole in the civil service thanks to the one-two punch of a hiring freeze and a U-turn in foreign policy now being performed in Washington D.C. Polk County's Cecelia Thompson is a casualty of those forces. She's a senior at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where she’s studying political sc...

What role should local governments play in the national crisis we're living through? How far outside their comfort zone is it reasonable to ask county and city politicians to go? I don't have answers. But we can start at least acknowledging the problem. Sources Brevard City Council Feb. 3 meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DivXuyb0rVI Panama hotels imprison US deportees: https://www.npr.org/...

Within a few weeks, 141 Polk County voters have a very real chance of discovering that the ballots they cast in last year's election have been thrown out. All because the losing candidate in the election for an NC Supreme Court seat wasn't able to accept the outcome of the election. One of those 141 is David Twiggs. He's not happy about that scenario — which is the subject of a court b...

There’s a long list of people who went above and beyond in the hours and days after Tropical Storm Helene smashed into the Blue Ridge Mountains. For some communities in Polk County, that list is dominated — not by first responders and other government employees who are paid to help when disaster strikes, because so many of them were trapped at home by blocked or washed out roads — but by those who...

There's a little piece of Polk County you've probably never heard of. Tropical Storm Helene destroyed a bridge on the only road in and out. The story of how the folks who live their responded is worth hearing, because it changed the very nature of the piece of the county, Resources Brennan Center story on Big Hungry and Cliff Marr: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/north-caro...

Had enough of election coverage? Stop tearing out your hair, because cued up next is just what you need: a politics-free discussion with Saluda singer-songwriter-composer Michael Flynn, a.k.a Slow Runner. I’ve been bugging him for ages to do an episode of this show so we can talk about the economics of the music industry, Taylor Swift, and a certain song that he can't not sing, Finally, with the r...

One county commissioner runs afoul of his profession's state licensing board. One congressman tries to thread the needle of partisan disinformation. One podcasters tries to put it all in context. Sources IRS funding: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/aug/28/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-falsely-said-harris-voted-to-hire/ Cooper and Biden calls: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tim-...

Pam Genant , who wants to represent about two-thirds of Polk County as a member of the US House of Representatives. Isn't she the Democrat who ran against congressman Patrick McHenry in 2022 for District 10? Yes. Here's how she ended up on our ballot this year: Redistricting last year left Saluda and Coopers Gap in District 11. Tryon, Columbus, and Green Creek are now in District 14, which just ha...

US Congressional District 11, in addition to being a bit of a cursed, and repeatedly gerrymandered, seat, is pretty darn spread out. Polk is on the eastern outskirts, and the the western end is the Tennessee line. There are a lot of counties in between here and there crying out for some attention, and we’re never going to be near the top of any candidate’s priority list. Making things worse this t...

In the 2022 election for NC House District 113, Republican Jake Johnson, running for his second full term, received 27,267 votes, which worked out to all of them, because the Democratic Party of North Carolina couldn’t find anyone to run against him. Two years before that, Johnson, who was running to fill out the term left by the resignation of fellow Republican Cody Henson, drew 30,367 votes agai...

Rob Parsons is the most recent addition to the Polk County Board of Education, which has to get at least some of the credit for that success. In this first partisan school board election in history, he’s running as a Democrat, and his Saluda seat is the only one that’s being contested by a Republican. His fellow Democrat member, Rick Covil of Tryon, is running unopposed, and independent Cindy Alle...