[THE MODERATE]

In my opinion, it is more about being practical, I can not see an ending in which Troxler is not the Ag Secretary. Perhaps Basnight sees the same thing and wishes to move on.

[Tom D.]

You are exactly correct. Basnight knows that if there is a new election that Troxler will win going away and that the Republicans will hang the huge amount of money that race will cost around the necks of the Democrats every chance they get. It would be much cheaper for the State to pay Cobb the salary that the Ag commissioner gets for the next four years than to have a new race.

The Dems cannot very well use the constitutional provision to declare Cobb the winner either. That would not play well to the voters for the next go around either.

The obvious solution would to allow those 4,000 or so Carteret County voters whose votes were lost to re-vote, but I do not think that the state election law offers that as a solution. If I was a Democrat in the NC General Assembly, I believe that I would offer a bill to have a re-vote for those voters whose votes were lost [for those of you outside of NC, the names of those voters are known], throw those votes into the mix, and then declare the winner as per the new total. Troxler, the Republican, is going to win, but the added PR that the Dems get will be worth conceding what is a foregone result anyway.