Free Republic

WINSTON-SALEM | "Grass, paper, Monk." When Jay Helvey says the words, he sounds like he's playing the traditional children's game, "Paper, rock, scissors." What he's really doing is describing the beginning of one of the world's great resumes. In something of a Horatio Alger story, Helvey, 45, the child of teachers Jim and Doris Helvey of Lexington, has parlayed a classic local childhood work experience of the 1960s and '70s - mowing yards, delivering The Dispatch, hopping curb at Lexington Barbecue, applying veneer finishes at Carolina Panel Co. - into great success in academia and the business world. He served...

Democrat in G.O.P. Clothing? Winston-Salem, NC - On Monday, Republican COngressional candidate Ed Powell criticized Jay Helvey for having Erskine Bowles's Finance Committee Chairman, Scott Livengood, as the chairman of the Helvey for Congress campaign. "This is proof-positive of what i suspected all along: Winston-Salem's downtown Democrats aretrying to hijack the Republican Primary with their man, Jay Helvey," Powell said. "It is beyond hypocritical for Helvey to praise Congressman Burr on the campaign trail and then have Erkine Bowles's biggest supporter in the Fifth District as his campaign chairman." Livengood's history with Erskine Bowles is a long one. Livengood contributed...

Fifth District race getting interesting Many political observers in the Triad think that the entrance of Ed Broyhill into the congressional race hurts state Sen. Virginia Foxx the most. She was counting on her base of support outside of Forysth County, and particularly in the northwestern mountain counties, to at least get her into a runoff with one of the many Forysth candidates. But Broyhill has obvious connections, family and personal, in many of those same counties. One of those competing for the nomination,Nathan Tabor of Kernersville, reportedly fired a previous set of consultants because they had proposed a campaign...