The mayor of a western North Carolina city plans to challenge Democratic Congressman Heath Shuler’s re-election effort next year.

Five candidates for the fourth congressional district met Monday evening for a forum on issues surrounding the community.

Political Event tonight at BMW Zentrum

GOP’s Wilson is rebuked Tuesday by House Dems and a few Republicans. Former President Carter calls Wilson’s comments “racist”.

Although he wasn’t from the Upstate, Ted Kennedy’s presence was felt in the south.

Business leaders and elected officials along South Carolina’s Grand Strand are discussing offshore energy and how it might affect tourism.

Amid a boisterous debate on health care reform, people have flooded members of Congress with so many e-mails that they overloaded the House’s primary Web site.

Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz tells an Indiana television station he doesn’t plan to run for Congress.

Senator David Thomas will officially announce tomorrow his intention to run for Inglis’ seat with several stops in the Upstate.  Thomas will make announcements in Greenville, Spartanburg and Union. 

The Wall Street Journal reports 2,000 congressional staffers were paid $9.1 million in bonuses in 2008. That’s not in AIG’s neighborhood, but did Congress have a good year?

Congress appears on the verge of doing again what it does best:  delay.

And this time, the delay involves DTV and the long-scheduled, much-publicized switch from analog to digital TV broadcasting.

The U.S. Senate is set to vote next week (the week of January 26th) on the DTV Delay Act.  It would postpone the switch to digital from February 17th until June 12th.  Many in Congress believe millions of households need the extra time to get ready for the switch, plus the DTV coupon program could be put back on track (it ran out of money early this month).

But the delay isn’t a done deal.  And until it is, we need to assume the original February 17th target date still has the green light.

Barrett represents South Carolina’s Third District in Congress.