Read our Q and A 
with the new governor

Meet Mike Easley

The new governor is a complex individual,

a shrewd politician who also is a shy family man

Having become comfortably accustomed to governors whose personalities and politics – even their names — were as familiar as a well-read book, North Carolinians are about to roused into attention by the man who next will occupy the Governor’s Mansion – if and when he decides to actually move in.

Michael F. Easley, the Democrat and two-term state attorney general who defeated former Charlotte mayor Richard Vinroot on Nov. 7, might be one of the most complicated, contradictory figures ever to become the state’s chief executive. He will be sworn in on Jan. 5 to succeed four-term Gov. Jim Hunt.

On the one hand Gov.-elect Easley, 50, boasts a biography that’s a Tar Heel classic. He grew up on a tobacco farm in Nash County, the second of seven children who all got good educations and went on to better things. He lettered in football at Rocky Mount High School; received an undergraduate degree, with honors, from Carolina in 1972; and earned a law degree, cum laude, from N.C. Central in 1976 while serving as managing editor of the Law Review.

Six years out of law school he was elected district attorney in Brunswick, Bladen and Columbus counties, and quickly attracted attention for his aggressive prosecutions of South American drug traffickers. USA Today named him one of the nation’s top “drug-busters” for helping convict 40 members of the notorious Shagra-Piccolo Gang, the outfit that had assassinated a federal judge in Texas. One of the drug-runners put out a contract on Easley’s life, and for a time he carried a loaded handgun in his glove compartment; Easley also kept a shotgun at his Southport home and taught he wife how to use it.

He first sought statewide office in 1990 when he ran in the Democratic primary to oppose Republican U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, but lost to Harvey Gantt. Two years later he ran for state attorney general and breezed into office with the highest-ever vote total of any candidate for state office. He was the state’s top vote-getter again in 1996 when he coasted into a second term with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Last May he ran against popular two-term Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, and even though he didn’t have the backing of the party’s old guard, as Wicker did, and even though he raised and spent about $1 million less than his opponent, Easley won easily.

But on the other hand, as a person and as a politician Easley is unique in the state’s modern political history, beginning with the fact that, unlike the born-again Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian governors of the past, Easley is a practicing Roman Catholic who attended an integrated parochial school as a child. And as far as anyone knows, he will be the state’s first governor with a learning disability.

When he was at Carolina it became clear that Easley had a problem reading books and retaining information about what he had read. Classmates helped by reading textbooks to him, and he developed an astonishing ability to remember what he heard. He has since mostly overcome the disability but he still has an aversion to printed materials and prefers oral reports and voice mail.

(Two years ago when he and several other state attorneys general were negotiating the $206 billion national tobacco settlement in New York, Easley was the only participant not seen carrying a briefcase bulging with legal papers. Each night after the proceedings he would have aides read the filings to him, and he relied on a near-photographic memory to cite chapter-and-verse details during the next day’s talks.)

Then there’s Easley’s penchant for biting the political hand that feeds him. Throughout his career he has never embraced, nor been embraced by, the Democratic Party machine, most notably when he took on Wicker, the party’s heir-apparent for governor. That pattern began when, as a district attorney, Easley vigorously prosecuted 34 public officials, most of them Democrats who had helped get him elected, including a state legislator, a well-liked clerk of court and two of the three sheriffs in his district.

And he seldom goes along to get along, even with his political mentor, powerful state Sen. Tony Rand (D-Cumberland). In 1997, when Sen. Rand introduced legislation to allow Blue Cross and Blue Shield to convert to a for-profit company, Easley threw a monkey wrench in the works by offering his opinion as attorney general that the state’s largest insurer belonged to the public.

But what mostly makes Easley a very different politician is that he simply doesn’t like politicking, particularly the back-slapping, barbeque-eating brand of retail politics that long has been a staple of North Carolina campaigns. He comes off as a bit lawyerly when he addresses large crowds and he can be aloof at times. But in small groups he is warm and personable.

(During the interview for this story, for instance, he was cautious in his remarks and reserved in his demeanor. But when he learned that the photographer who was taking his picture also was from Rocky Mount and that they had several common acquaintances, Easley immediately warmed up and soon had everyone laughing at old Nash County stories.)

If Easley is a bit stiff on the stump, there’s no doubt that he’s a natural for television. With his penetrating blue eyes and graying temples, he looks great on TV and has the anchorman’s ability to look through the camera and connect with viewers – a talent he used to great advantage during the gubernatorial campaign.

Despite his occasional unpredictability and his past differences with the Democratic political mainstream, Easley was elected governor on a platform built on traditional party themes. The two major issues he ran on – education and economic development – are pages straight out of Jim Hunt’s playbook. But Easley did break ground on at least one new issue. For the first time, a governor of North Carolina says the state should have a lottery.

Easley’s top educational priority is reducing class size in kindergarten through third grade to no more than 18 pupils. Hiring enough additional teachers to accomplish that would cost anywhere from $120 million to $200 million a year. With the state facing a revenue shortfall of as much as $300 million in the current fiscal year, and with tight finances predicted for the next several years, Easley must find a new source of revenue to pay for his pet project. He thinks a lottery is the best way to do that.

“We’re the only state in the county that plays the lottery and leaves the money on the table,” he says in the accompanying interview. That’s mainly because thousands of North Carolinians cross the state line to play Virginia’s lottery, he says. And now that South Carolina voters have approved a lottery, North Carolina is “the hole in the doughnut,” surrounded by lottery states.

Otherwise, Easley is expected to focus on many of the same issues as Hunt did over the past eight years and to continue the solid, bipartisan relationship with the General Assembly as his predecessor. 

If there is a clear distinction between Hunt and Easley it is that Easley embraces more populist themes, as witnessed by his record as attorney general attacking predatory lending practices and other consumer initiatives. However, he can take a conservative tact at times, as when he fought the federal courts – and won -- over overcrowding in state prisons, a victory that kept 4,000 felons behind bars.

Another distinction is his night owl work habits. According to several published accounts, Easley usually retires at 10 or 11 p.m. and gets back up at 1 in the morning and works through the wee hours – often startling people who get long voice mail messages from him in the middle of the night. He goes back to bed around sunrise for a long nap before beginning the work day. But he frequently tires during the day and often works from home. He has been criticized for keeping an irregular work schedule.

Mike Easley also is very much a family man. His widely-reported reluctance to move into the graceful but aging Governor’s Mansion apparently stems from real concerns about whether his wife and 15-year-old son, Michael Jr., could maintain a normal family life there. His wife, Mary, is a native of New Jersey and a working mom who has a tough commute to her job teaching law at N.C. Central – a commute that would be longer and harder if she had to start from downtown rather than the Easley’s current home near the Raleigh beltline.

The Easleys also own a home in Southport and, together with one of his brothers, a condo on Bald Head Island. Easley is an accomplished woodworker, an avid duck hunter and sailor.

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