What you could buy in lieu of N.C. primary spending

This year's North Carolina primaries were expensive.

How expensive? Well, if you took all the money candidates and outside groups have spent on Triangle-area federal races, you could buy more than 4 million orders of chicken and waffles at Ashley Christensen's Beasley's Chicken + Honey.

In fact, the nearly $57 million spent on those races could:

• Feed 150 people one meal a day for 74 years.
• Pay 12 months of rent for 3,000 Raleigh residents (at $1,500/month).
• Give all of our state's 94,000-plus public school teachers a $600 bonus.