After more than a decade working together as members of Tribal Council, Alan “B” Ensley and Jim Owle are vying for the position of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ next vice chief. 

Principal Chief Richard Sneed and challenger Teresa McCoy will face off at the ballot box this September as Cherokee voters decide who should be their chief for the next four years, but last week they met onstage at the Joyce Dugan Performing Arts Center for a debate hosted by The Cherokee One Feather. 

From Thanksgiving dinners to football games, from the floors of Congress to Joe’s Bar & Grill, from universities to kindergartens, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Americans find themselves locked into political and cultural debates, shooting out tweets, screaming at rallies, shouting down speakers, and smearing their opponents. Civility and a sense of humor have been banished, replaced by identify politics pitting tribes of people against their neighbors whose skin color, religion, party, and gender preferences differ from their own. The abuse of language, reason, and argumentation, and the failure to define terms or to make clear what is said, only make more brutish this mix of hysteria and malevolence.

Nineteenth century poet Walt Whitman once wrote “I hear America singing.”

Ah, those were the days.

When Ricardo Nazario-Colon first stepped onto Western Carolina University’s campus to interview for the new chief diversity officer position, one thing stuck out to him above all else.

If you are undecided or just want more information about the Nov. 8 election, there are plenty of opportunities to get to know the candidates. Here is a schedule of upcoming candidate forums. (If any group has a forum planned that is not listed, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call Jessi at 828.452.4251.)

A candidate debate last week between N.C. Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, and challenger Jane Hipps, D-Waynesville, plowed a lot of ground. Education, Medicaid, and fracking were the biggies, but the 90-minute debate ran the gamut, touching on government spending, guns, charter schools, teacher salaries, higher ed, and so much more.

A debate between N.C. Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, and his challenger Jane Hipps, D-Waynesville, last week was lively, testy, heated, fiery and passionate — and that’s just talking about the audience.

Despite ground rules laid down by the moderator at the start of the debate expressly prohibiting cheering and jeering alike, the electrified audience had the air of spectators at a sporting event. With a crowd of 300 strong, it was a better turn out than expected for the third and final debate in the inaugural debate series hosted by the Western Carolina University Public Policy Institute and political science department.

N.C. Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, is known for his direct and unapologetic communication style, but it landed him in hot water with some audience members at a debate held at Western Carolina University last week.

Davis made a reference during the debate to the large percentage of African-American children born to unwed mothers, which in turn made them more likely than the general population to end up in jail.