A new direction.

• Position: Up Front - Eastern North Carolina economic woes

It's easy to forget just how big this state is. But 4 1/2 hours in a car, which Ed Martin and I spent driving from Charlotte to Greenville, brought it to mind, not to mention to aching nether regions of our anatomy. But our discomfort was nothing to the pain a third of the state is experiencing, pain that likely will grow worse before things get better. That's what drew some 500 people to the One East Economic Summit, sponsored by the Foundation of Renewal for Eastern North Carolina.

It was, as FoR ENC Co-Chairman Phil Carlton said, a historic occasion, the first time people from the 41 counties along and east of Interstate 95 had "come together -- to join together -- to accept the enormous challenges we face." There was hope in the air, but also something else -- and it wasn't the whiff of ozone from the thunderstorm earlier that morning.

"I'd call it the big chill," says Ed, who wrote the cover story on the region's economic woes that led off this year's Business Handbook issue. "Not death, but if you're from Eastern North Carolina, the prospect of something mighty close: political impotency. That seems odd to many urbanites who complain that the East has way too much political power. And if you scanned the summit's program, you'd wonder what Easterners were fretting about."

Gov. Mike Easley, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, Attorney General Roy Cooper and other speakers and panelists who hold the reins in Raleigh are Easterners. So are plenty of powerful...