The Democratic leadership is shocked that New York Congressman Joe Crowley lost the Democratic primary on Tuesday to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Crowley was the fourth ranking Democrat in the House and considered one of the contenders to become speaker if the Democrats win the House in the November election. It was a huge upset that reportedly nobody saw coming.

What is amazing is not only that he lost but that everyone is so shocked by it. With all the money he had, certainly he was doing polling, so why should anybody be surprised unless the polls once again proved to be completely inaccurate in predicting the results of an election.

You would think that after nearly every poll and pundit in the country picked Hillary Clinton to win, and some by a landslide, people would have learned that whatever pollsters once knew about the way people will vote is gone.

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I subscribe to the News & Observer in Raleigh mainly because I want to know what’s going on in the state government. I received an email this week about the News & Observer’s coverage that stated they have five reporters dedicated to covering the state government. Compare that the News & Record that has no reporters dedicated to covering the state government. But that is not hard to understand when you realize that the News & Record also has no reporters dedicated to covering the Greensboro city government or the Guilford County government.

Of course, there is no reporter dedicated to covering the national government.

However, it appears there is a team of reporters dedicated to covering the Rockingham County government, which does make you wonder about the priorities of the daily newspaper (at least for now) headquartered in Greensboro.

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Here’s a little known fact that seems relevant today. The first selfie was taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius but it took about 170 years for the idea to really catch on.

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The Guilford County Schools wanted it to be noted that School Superintendent Sharon Contreras has also turned down the 3 percent raises that are built into her contract. The raise she received this year was because all non-certified staff and central office employees received a raise from the state.

We made a point last week that former Guilford County School Superintendent Mo Green never accepted a raise and Contreras has followed that lead in declining the yearly raise built into her contract.

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Working for a weekly publication makes the time fly. Every week you have a deadline and then you turn around twice and there you are facing another deadline and another week has gone by.

This week we put out our 26th paper of the year which means we only have 26 more to go this year. It seems to me like a couple of days ago we were sending the first issue of the year to the printer and I was saying, “Only 51 more to go this year.” And in what seems like a couple of weeks, I’ll be saying, “Well that’s it for this year.”