Easley's quiet way meant mixed results

RALEIGH -- There was a day when Gov. Mike Easley's style seemed quirky but effective. His aversion to public appearances drew quips about the groundhog or Howard Hughes, but voters liked the low-key governor with a common touch, and Easley got virtually everything he wanted out of the state legislature.

"Where's the 'Waldo' of American politics?" first lady Mary Easley joked during a Democratic Party breakfast in 2001 when her husband was in the back of the room instead of the front.

As Easley leaves office, though, his low visibility has looked more like detachment that left him unaware of neglect in the state's mental health and probation systems. He appeared politically tone deaf to his wife's $80,000 raise at a state university and her pricey overseas trips on the taxpayer's dime: "It costs what it costs," he said in July.

Easley won passage of a state lottery, shepherded the state budget through a tumbling economy early in his first term and expanded education for preschool children. He touts his efforts in education, but after seven years of his signature education programs and $1 billion more per year in education spending, colleges and employers complain that North Carolina students remain unprepared for classes and jobs. The high school dropout rate remains embarrassingly high, more than 5 percent in 2006-07.

The rap on Easley, even by some Democrats, is not that he skipped barbecues and chicken dinners. It's that he made little use of his office's most powerful attribute, that it is the biggest and loudest platform for advocating ideas and change. He had the baseball bat, but let the pitches go by.

"He was not a hands-on governor," said Sen. David Hoyle, a Gaston County Democrat. "He appointed people to secretary positions and other positions of responsibility, and he just turned 'em loose."

Friends and foes say that Easley is not a public person in what is a very public profession. Even political opponents enjoy private meetings with him, given his nightclub-quality humor and mimicry. His public schedules, however, are virtually blank. Other governors participate in as many public events in two months as Easley does in a year.

"Here's the thing I tell my schedulers," Easley said in a recent interview. "Do not mistake motion for action."

Easley describes two styles of governing. The first is to stage large public events to rally support behind an idea, then "back-fill" it with work and results, a clear reference to former Gov. Jim Hunt's penchant for pushing big programs before the details were ironed out.

Easley said he prefers to start small, with a sample or pilot project, expand it for a couple years and then go to the legislature or public with the results. His "Learn and Earn" program for high-school students to get college credits grew that way, he said.

"You can either go to [the legislature or public] with a vision and hope they buy into it," Easley said, "or you can go to them with proof and say, 'This is what we did.' "

Either way, Easley said, "You move at about the same rate."

The great delegator

Easley's critics acknowledge his success in securing passage of his education programs, including his "More at Four" early childhood initiative and efforts to reduce class sizes. It's what he did not do with the office that troubles them. His detractors see muscle that wasn't flexed.

"Very little that was truly transformative happened on Easley's watch," said Joe Sinsheimer, a former Democratic consultant in Raleigh. "Twenty years from now, he will be remembered simply as the governor between Jim Hunt and the state's first woman governor."