The Republicans just chose a 25 year old partisan to replace Rep. Bryan Holloway who gave up his state House seat to take a job with North Carolina School Boards Association. Kyle Hall’s entire career has been in politics. He currently works for US Representative Mark Walker. Before that he worked for Americans for Prosperity and former Senator Neal Hunt. At 25 years old, his experience indicates a disturbingly narrow world view.
Hall lauded Holloway as a “great conservative leader.” He’s not praising Holloway for what he’s done. He’s praising him for what he believes. That mentality created the intractable partisanship that has crippled Congress and shifted North Carolina blindly to the right. Often, the partisans are more interested in scoring political points and adhering to ideology than finding solutions to problems.
For fifty years or so following World War II, the country, and state, had a broad political center. Each party had ideologues pulling them to the left or right, but the leadership operated from a center-left or center-right perspective that steadily moved the country forward. Today, the partisans rule while the centrists are ridiculed as DINOs or RINOs.
During those years when moderates ruled, most of our leaders, who were disproportionately men, were veterans. For a period in their lives, they lived with, worked with, and depended on people of all political persuasions. They learned that people with remarkably different world views could have similar goals and values. They learned to respect differences, not demonize them. And they learned to work toward common goals with people they might not like, much less agree with.
Today, the number of veterans is dwindling and the number of partisans is rising. We could benefit from a few more political leaders who viewed governing more as a process than an ideological battlefield. We need leaders with broader world views. Maybe some sort of national service could help us find those people.
I wish Kyle Hall well. I hope he’s got maturity beyond his years and wisdom beyond his experience. We need people who can lead us forward. We don’t need more partisan warriors in elected office.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
While I understand your concern around his background and I share it…the one thing that it does demonstrate is that the GOP wants to showcase younger talent in its elected ranks.
We are seeing this more and more across the country the average age of elected GOP members is going down and for democrats is going up.You can call it a political ploy, but it can be effective.
Democrats need to wake up and not just assume that younger millennials will be in their pocket and vote for them, especially if the party doesn’t reflect them in terms of more leaders their age.
Its why I’m glad to see folks like Brian Turner, Jeff Jackson and the Ian Baltutis (new mayor of Burlington) or Chaz Beasley and Brian Farkas running for the NC House in 2016. Let’s hope this is just of start of a shift for us. Let’s hope this is just the start for our side, it may be the key to winning is the long slog back to a majority.
We are in serious trouble. Tea party , Scott Walker Americans for the Prosperity of the 1% John Doe letters kochCo election Fraud kind of trouble. The kid is hard core as they come research him….