Mitch Kokai

Senior Political Analyst
Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation. He joined JLF in December 2005 as director of communications. That followed more than four years as chief state government reporter for News 14 Carolina, now known as Spectrum News. The job included extensive coverage of the General Assembly for the 24-hour local regional television news channel.

Before News 14 Carolina, Kokai worked as a radio news reporter for seven years. He started a radio news department at WENC-AM in Whiteville, then led Chapel Hill’s award-winning radio news team at WCHL-AM. He spent two-and-one-half years as news director and assignment editor for Raleigh’s WPTF-AM.

Mitch is a Columbus, Ohio, native, and a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate. He has lived in North Carolina since 1989.

Posts by Mitch Kokai (page 1)

  • Martin Center column highlights universities that appease China

    Christopher Balding writes for the Martin Center about American universities’ ties to China. Long the vanguard of liberal change, the American university now leads the appeasement of a hardened authoritarian China. The interest in promoting a broader community of scholars has given way to a toxic combination of business…
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    University buildings with trees

  • Will Biden bypass debates with Trump?

    Tristan Justice muses in a Federalist column about the possibility that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden will skip out on debates. Joe Biden has shut down debates this cycle, using the Wuhan coronavirus as the 77-year-old candidate’s excuse to call off challenges with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders when…
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    Joe Biden sits in plane sit while vice president

  • Trump campaign to portray Biden as ‘Bernie Bro’

    James Antle of the Washington Examiner highlights an interesting development in the president’s re-election strategy. Joe Biden may have won the Democratic presidential nomination, but the Bernie Sanders wing of the party will prevail in the White House. That’s the message President Trump’s reelection campaign is honing in…
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    Bernie Sanders supporters with signs

  • Gun sales continue surge

    Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon documents another record for American gun sales. One of the country’s leading gun makers saw earnings triple as gun sales once again shattered previous records for the month of July. July 2020 saw an estimated 1,795,602 gun sales—a new record and…
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    Gun in hand

  • National Review editor takes on teachers unions

    Rich Lowry of National Review Online describes what he calls the “shame” of teachers unions. No other group has shown as much contempt for its own work during the coronavirus crisis as teachers. Their unions are actively fighting to keep kids out of the classroom and also to…
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    Featured image thumbnail

  • JLF antagonist Whitehouse labeled ‘conspiracy theorist,’ ‘hatchet man’

    Dan McLaughlin of National Review Online profiles U.S. Sheldon Whitehouse, who once targeted the John Locke Foundation from the Senate floor. When Democrats want to threaten or delegitimize the federal judiciary, they know whom to call first: Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator The Hill calls “the…
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    Sheldon Whitehouse

  • New Carolina Journal Online features

    Rick Henderson reports for Carolina Journal Online that North Carolina’s campaign money trail shows Democrats’ efforts to limit school choice. John Hood’s Daily Journal documents homicides spiking in N.C. cities.
    Mitch Kokai, August 5, 2020
    Republican judge candidates

  • The rise of dangerous secular cults

    John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist documents one disturbing result of America’s drift away from religion. For years now, pollsters and demographers have been chronicling the decline of religion in America. And it’s not just religious affiliation that’s declining. Along with lower rates of church attendance, religious weddings…
    Mitch Kokai, August 4, 2020
    Praying in church