In a debate that focused on everything from Iran and health care to equal pay for women and earmarks, Congressional candidates Republican Mark Meadows and Democrat Hayden Rogers pushed back from the similarities that people draw between the two conservatives.

Looking at Mark Meadows today, it is difficult to imagine him as a self-described “fat nerd” wandering the high school halls in Tampa Bay, Fla.

The Republican candidate for the 11th U.S. Congressional District has come a long way during his life — both in his self-made success and actual distance.

Hayden Rogers grew up hunting, fishing and playing the chasing game ‘Fox and the Hound’ in Robbinsville.

Touting himself as the all-around Western North Carolinian, Rogers reminisced about his childhood in rural Graham County, just a short jaunt from his grandparent’s house.

Both considered conservatives within their own political parties, Republican Mark Meadows and Democrat Hayden Rogers have more in common than just a handful of political similarities.

Both are Christian, came out of humble beginnings to find success, married their high school sweethearts, have two children and are running for the U.S. House in North Carolina’s 11th District. The list could continue.

Western North Carolina found itself in an unflattering national media spotlight a year ago when a reporter from The New Yorker picked the state Senate race between Jim Davis and John Snow to illustrate a masterful takeover of national politics by conservative special interest groups.

John Snow dreads his daily trip to the post office these days. It’s just two blocks from his home outside Murphy, but the whole way there he wonders what will be waiting for him this time.

Once inside, he heads for the trash can and peers inside. And more often than not, he finds his own face staring back, perhaps flanked by a cartoonish cutout of Obama’s head, or alongside a drowning pink piggy bank, or — the worst yet — as an accompaniment to the menacing face of a child rapist behind prison bars.

Whether a grassroots movement to spark planning in Cullowhee dies or moves forward will rests with the next Jackson County board of commissioners.

A group of Cullowhee residents have called for development guidelines. Without standards, Cullowhee is vulnerable to unattractive development according to proponents. But, they need the county’s blessing to put them in place.

Absentee voters have been licking their stamps for weeks, and beginning last Thursday, early voters started arriving at polling places across Western North Carolina.

The presidential debates of the 2012 election are now behind us. Barack Obama, the Democratic incumbent president running for re-election, and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee and former governor of Massachusetts, made their pitches to the voters who watched them engage one another for almost five hours on three separate occasions.

Despite having three Macon County commissioner seats on the ballot this fall, only one has any competition.

In the conservative leaning county, two sitting Republican commissioners will stroll back on the board after no Democratic candidates stepped up to run against them. While Commissioners Jim Tate and Kevin Corbin had to fend off challenges from other Republicans in the May primary, both won and are now enjoying a leisurely campaign season given the lack of Democratic opposition.