R or D?
Oh. You should have asked that before.
This state has more than enough Dims. I've been a registered Republican since before I was old enough to vote. There was a voter registration drive at my high school, and I registered at 17 before the following Presidential election.
Why did I choose Republican over Democrat when the majority of NC was Democrats at the time -- including my mother? Because i saw why my mother was voting for Democrats, yet nothing they promised ever came to be. Seemed the only thing they preached was more welfare, more Social Security and higher taxes. Republicans at least had policy positions on other issues that should have been important to every voter. However, the voters didn't care about issues that didn't affect them directly. Most got back nearly everything they paid in taxes each year, so higher taxes didn't bother them.
Anyway, it seemed we were being milked by Democrats -- take more to give more away, and get elected in the process.
Even at that young age, i knew the longer one party held onto power, the less chance we had of anything improving for anyone other than the politicians. So, I opted for the party that was not in power at the time.
The first election I voted in was 1980, when Reagan beat Carter.
I graduated HS in 1980, went to college for 4 years on an ROTC scholarship, and started my military career in 1984. That was after Reagan started rebuilding our military in part by making military pay more competitive with comparable civilian jobs. So, in essence, i wound up personally benefiting from choosing the Republican ticket.
