RALEIGH – With Richard Moore ending his two-term tenure as North Carolina’s state treasurer, there’s a pivotal contest underway to elect one of the state’s most powerful politicians.
Unlike the subject of yesterday’s column, the office of lieutenant governor, this job has not traditionally been considered a political stepping-stone. Held by only three individuals in the past half-century – Edwin Gill from 1953 to 1977, Harlan Boyles from 1977 to 2001, and Moore since then – the post of state treasurer has mixed formal authority over state and local investments with an informal but significant role in state political discussions about fiscal policy.
All three of these treasurers were occasionally at odds with governors and legislators who wanted to spend or borrow more than the treasurers deemed prudent. Politically, four powerful constituencies with a direct interest in the state treasurer’s decisions – teachers, state employees, local governments, and firms seeking to sell investment or bond-counsel services to the state – have watched the office carefully. So have North Carolina’s banks and financial-services professionals, some because they are in that group of potential state vendors and others because of the expectation that a moderate-to-conservative state treasurer might act as a fiscal restraint and stabilizer in Raleigh.
Oh, and the state treasurer chairs the state’s Banking Commission, among other state board roles.
As Moore exits, four experienced politicians are running to replace him. The Democratic primary contains three competitors: state Sen. Janet Cowell of Raleigh, Buncombe County Commissioner David Young, and Michael Weisel, a former chairman of the Wake County Democratic Party. The Republican nominee will be Rep. Bill Daughtridge of Rocky Mount.
All the candidates emphasize their business and finance experience in their campaign messaging, which is understandable. Cowell is a former securities analyst and business consultant who once worked for Chris Fitzsimon at the Common Sense Foundation and served on the Raleigh city council for four years before being elected to the Senate in 2004. Young, a four-term county commissioner, worked for BB&T for many years and currently serves on the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. Weisel claims the longest experience in matters related to the state treasurer’s office, including not only as an attorney and former portfolio manager but also his service on the banking commission, the community-colleges board, and the board of trustees for the state pension system. For his part, Daughtridge cites his work as a financial analyst for a Texas oil company and his management of Daughtridge Oil & Gas Company in Eastern North Carolina.
Garnering scant press coverage due to the presidential and gubernatorial races, the Democratic candidates have been contesting the primary via endorsements, the web, and now paid advertising (Weisel and Young seem to have outraised Cowell by a significant margin, but she has a strong political base in populous Wake County). Although it’s fair to consider Cowell somewhat to the left of the other two, the endorsement lists don’t precisely follow the pattern. She’s gotten the nod from groups such as the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, NARAL, and key African-American political organizations in Charlotte and Raleigh, but Young can claim support from the state teacher’s union and the main black political groups in Durham and Greensboro.
Another way to think about the face-off is that Cowell, even as a former city councilwoman, is running as a state-government insider from a district chock-full of current and future state pensioners while Young, who served as president of the statewide association of county commissioners, is running as an expert on local governance and yet-another standard-bearer for underrepresented Western NC. Weisel, who’s in third place in the (admittedly scant and unpersuasive) polling in the race, has been the most aggressive in challenging the experience and positions of his opponents, including their willingness to raise funds from the banking and financial-services industry.
I have no prediction in this race – except to say that it could well be the most-important mostly obscure state campaign of 2008.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.