An effort by public union employees to recruit a candidate to run against Democratic Congressman Larry Kissell has failed.
Wendell Fant, a former Kissell staffer, said Friday he would not run as an independent candidate against his former boss.
He had been recruited by N.C. Families First, a party financed by the State Employees Association of North Carolina and its parent union, the Service Employees International Union.
They were upset that Kissell had voted against the Democratic health care bill that passed Congress earlier this year.
The union-backed group first attempted to collect enough signatures to form a third political party but fell short. It then collected signatures to put a candidate on the ballot as an independent.
Fant said he decided not to run for family reasons. Kissell's office had recently fired Fant - alleging he misused a computer for personal reasons - and filed an ethics complaint against him.
N.C. Families First apparently will abandon efforts to run a candidate against Kissell, saying it likes the way he has been voting lately.
In a statement, the group said, "Since we've started our effort, we've noticed that Congressman Larry Kissell stood up to Wall Street, stood up against Big Oil and stood with working families who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
"In spite of our tremendous disagreement with him on his vote against health care reform, we applaud him for those votes."
The group said it would continue organizing to form a third party for the 2012 elections.
Budget work wraps
House and Senate budget negotiators appear to have wrapped up their work.
Negotiators were meeting Saturday to iron out the remaining few differences in the state budget. A sticking point was a $10 million provision that provided in-state tuition rates for out-of-state scholarship athletes. The Senate has long fought for the provision, which means campus booster clubs have to raise less money. The current budget agreement would end that provision, according to a spokesman for House Speaker Joe Hackney.
The budget would next get an up-or-down vote in both chambers. That could happen as early as Tuesday or Wednesday.
The state is facing an $800 million revenue shortfall, and the Democrats who control both chambers decided cuts and not tax increases were the way to balance the spending plan.
Hagan on Petraeus
U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had a brief appearance on "Fox & Friends" last week.
She told viewers Friday that Gen. David Petraeus was the right person to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of forces in Afghanistan. Petraeus will go before the Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing.
Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, was asked whether she would demand changes other than McChrystal.
"[Petraeus] has got to establish everybody being on one page so we can have success in Afghanistan," Hagan said. "We are very committed to him, and I know that if you look at his success in Iraq, he understands that everybody needs to be on the same playing field in order to achieve that success."
Asked whether she would agree with some experts that July 2011 isn't a realistic pullout date, Hagan said Congress needs to get Petraeus confirmed and allow a surge of 30,000 more troops to become fully engaged, which she said will happen at the end of the summer.
"The July 2011 date is really to be discussed and looked at, at the conditions on the ground at that time," she said. "And we're going to turn over the security relationship to the Afghanis, to the local security forces as well as the Afghan national security forces."
By staff writers Rob Christensen, Ben Niolet and Barbara Barrett
Get the biggest news in your email or cellphone as it's happening. Sign up for breaking news alerts.
