BlueNC has been advocating dealing with the Jim Black issue before he destroys the Democratic Party's electoral chances in this state. For months, our calls have fallen on deaf ears. Now the Winston-Salem Journal is reporting that Democrats have finally awoken to the problem:

A Democratic member of the N.C. House said yesterday that his colleagues should start planning for the possibility that House Speaker Jim Black could be indicted.

Rep. Hugh Holliman, D-Davidson, said that he and other Democratic legislators are concerned about whether Black violated campaign-finance laws by, among other things, completing the payee lines on checks for campaign contributions.

The problem for the Democrats now is that they have to play defensive on the issue of Black being indicted rather than the opportunity they could of had. The party could have shown that it stands for integrity by ousting Black when it became clear that he was not acting on behalf of the common good. This would have presented a clear alternative the Republican's allowance of corruption on the national level. For those of you thinking this is just hindsight, I recommended this action before any public hearings (and before we moved to our current blogging platform so no link to the original, but here is a link to my December 15th post calling for his resignation).