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)

  • Have Never-Trump Republicans looked at Biden lately?

    Editors at Issues and Insights wonder whether the president’s Republican critics have looked at the alternative. President Donald Trump causes people to do the strangest things, but none is as strange as the growing determination by some Republicans to get Joe Biden elected in November, even as Biden…
    Mitch Kokai, July 7, 2020
    Barack Obama with Joe Biden in White House

  • Targeting COVID-19 rules that force people to die alone

    Helen Raleigh of the Federalist pans COVID-19 restrictions that have led to lonely deaths. Everyone who knew Elizabeth Valerie Reiter describes her as someone who was kind, thoughtful, and always positive. Her husband, Steve, agrees but he also likes to add that Elizabeth was “super cute.” On April…
    Mitch Kokai, July 7, 2020
    Senior bundled up in chair

  • Democrats target tax code for Green New Deal goals

    Ryan Ellis writes for the Washington Examiner about congressional Democrats’ latest efforts to secure their Green New Deal. Advocates of the “Green New Deal” … want to use the tax code to put in place most of their domestic policy goals for a simple reason — there is…
    Mitch Kokai, July 7, 2020
    Featured image thumbnail

  • Soros plans to double 2016 election spending

    Joe Schoffstall of the Washington Free Beacon details plans from one of the political left’s biggest bankers. Liberal billionaire George Soros is on pace to double his 2016 election spending as he works to oust President Donald Trump, public records show. Soros’s big investments in the 2020 race…
    Mitch Kokai, July 7, 2020
    Featured image thumbnail

  • Lying about Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech

    Charles Cooke of National Review Online criticizes a Democratic senator and mainstream media outlets for their mendacity. Senator Tammy Duckworth says that, during his address at Mount Rushmore on Friday, President Trump “spent all his time talking about dead traitors.” This is a flat-out lie. It is entirely…
    Mitch Kokai, July 7, 2020
    Mount Rushmore monument with George Washington

  • New Carolina Journal Online features

    Emma Schambach reports for Carolina Journal Online that new UNC System President Peter Hans’ performance-based pay could set a national example. The Daily Journal uses an 800-year-old story to warn readers about problems linked to rewriting history.
    Mitch Kokai, July 7, 2020
    Peter Hans

  • Martin Center column critiques UNC-Chapel Hill for giving in to mob

    Shannon Watkins of the Martin Center directs her latest column toward addressing disturbing developments at the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus. When the University of North Carolina leadership and the state’s legislators capitulated to the frenzied mob that toppled a statue of a Confederate Army soldier at the…
    Mitch Kokai, July 6, 2020
    Old Well and South Building at UNC

  • Biden, the Russians, and the Taliban

    Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online argues that the Russian government and the Taliban would be among the groups most happy to see Joe Biden win the American presidential election. Hard to fathom which notion is more hilarious. Is it that Joe Biden would get tough with the…
    Mitch Kokai, July 6, 2020
    Joe Biden with voter