Wheeler's trial balloon gives Democrats a target

When former Charlotte City Council member Lynn Wheeler told the Charlotte Business Journal she's considering a run for the U.S. Senate next year, she gave state Democrats a ripe target.

Wheeler, a Republican, told the Journal that people “are urging me to run, and I’ve told them I will think about it.” That got picked up by the News & Observer of Raleigh.

That was enough for Ben Ray, the state Democratic party's new Director of Rapid Response. His press release:

RALEIGH--Former Charlotte Mayor Pro Tempore Lynn Wheeler is considering running for Senate, reinforcing the weak and unsettled nature of the field of potential candidates against Senator Kay Hagan. Washington, D.C. Republicans have already seen two of their favored candidates, U. S. Representatives George Holding and Patrick McHenry, pass on the race.

Wheeler’s trial balloon makes an expensive and politically damaging primary campaign that much more likely. Each remaining potential candidate is deeply flawed, and will face substantial challenges to even emerge from a primary campaign...

Wheeler could not be reached.

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Lynn Wheeler: Unlikely Civil Rights pilgrim?

You might not expect Lynn Wheeler to be making a Civil Rights pilgrimage through the South. But that's exactly what she's doing.

Wheeler, the former Republican member of the Charlotte city council, is accompanying former NAACP chairman Julian Bond on a seven-day tour called “In the Footsteps of the Movement.” She's even blogging about the trip for Qcitymetro, a new Web site that caters to African Americans in the Charlotte area.

Even Wheeler says she's an unlikely candidate for the trip.

"I grew up in the ‘60s on a plantation outside of Richmond, Va." she wrote. "I
attended an all-white, all-girls high school and college. To top that off, I
was a Richmond debutante and spent my summers at the all-white Country Club
of Virginia, where my parents were members."

Today the group on Tuskeegee, Al., where they heard from Fred Gray, the lawyer who worked with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott days. Travelers, who each paid $3,200 for the tour, also have heard from the likes of movement veterans such as Rep. John Lewis.

"It's compelling, it's riveting, it's emotional," Wheeler said today by phone. "I just wanted to go. I've been obsessed with the Civil Rights movement for some time. And what a better way to learn about it than to have Julian Bond lead the way."