Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

June 27, 2005

"King of the Hill" Democrats

Several years ago, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) asked his pollster to separate King of the Hill viewers "in poll results in order to use them as a political barometer," the Charlotte Observer reports. Easley theorized that those viewers were like the showís central character, Hank Hill, and would be "non-college educated white males, a group that Democrats overwhelmingly lose -- except for Easley."

The pollster found that Easley captured 40% of the "Hill" vote, while top Democratic candidates lost by a 3-to-1 margin.

Easley has tried to "travel the middle ground he ascribes to the show's viewers. He hunts, supports the death penalty, blocked tolls on the interstate and crashed a race car into the wall in Concord. But he also raised taxes, increased spending and last week vowed to fight a cut in Medicaid, state health care for disabled, elderly and poor."

Matt Bai in the New York Times Magazine has more on the "Hill" vote.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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