Both parties continue to take care of business.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Traditionalists and modernists

Pat yourself on the back, captains of industry. Paul Luebke says you rule, and he ought to know. Not only is Luebke a four-term state representative from Durham, but he really did write the book on politics in this state, Tar Heel Politics: Myths and Realities. His follow-up to that 1990 text, Tar Heel Politics 2000, came out in November, and it's even more revealing than the first, published before Luebke, who's a sociology professor at UNC Greensboro, became a state lawmaker.

The way Luebke sees it, North Carolina really has one dominant political party - the business party - with two wings. No, not Democrats and Republicans, but traditionalists and modernizers. Both ' believe in trickle-down economics, preferring a sales tax, which hits working people hardest, over high taxes on business.

Why should Luebke's thesis matter to business people, besides giving them the satisfaction of knowing they set the agenda in Raleigh? It gives a new way of assessing whether a politician is actually helping business. We all let our vision be narrowed by party affiliation and threadbare labels such as liberal and conservative. Luebke says those labels only confuse things when applied to North Carolina. (Though a Democrat, Luebke classifies himself as an "economic populist" and has made a name for himself in Raleigh as an outspoken opponent of applying the sales tax to groceries.)

Traditionalists are the sort who think textile barons built those quaint mill villages because they wanted to provide great employee benefits. They see federal education grants as a socialist conspiracy. Scratch that, they see the federal government as a conspiracy. "Traditionalist ideology is rooted in the Baptist-based culture of North Carolina's small towns and rural areas," Luebke writes. As a rule, traditionalists oppose every sort of tax. They tend to support the state's old-line industries - furniture, textiles and tobacco - and do their bidding in the General Assembly and Congress. Basically, they hate change. Their archetype is the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Jesse Helms. But Harlan Boyles, the Democratic state treasurer, also fits.

In social matters, traditionalists think people should know their place and stay there, hewing to the communities and churches they grew up in. That social stance reinforces their economics: A rural, small-town work force keeps wages lower, which helps old-line industry. "Traditionalist businesses fear the competition that might...