RALEIGH – I’ve just gotten back from a mini-vacation to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I was participating in Historicon 2002, the largest miniature wargaming convention held in the country each year. (Miniature wargaming refers to tabletop games representing military conflicts from antiquity through medieval and modern times, using lead or pewter miniatures and plenty of scenery and artistry. And shame on you for not knowing that.)
Anyway, having just seen pitched battles depicted between Egyptians and Hittites, Romans and Parthians, Arabs and Berbers, Crusades and Saracens, English and French (in many, many different ways) and the Union and Confederacy, among others, I was well prepared to survey the preliminary order of battle for North Carolina’s legislative elections.
As Eric Dyer observed in The News & Record of Greensboro (see: http://www.news-record.com/news/government/legrace27.htm) legislative politics this fall will reflect a combination of retirements, redistricting, and recriminations. Some incumbents had already planned to leave, but others bailed out after seeing a bit of green in a somewhat larger political pasture – or seeing no chance of reelection in their current seat. In Raleigh’s News & Observer, Lynn Bonner scans the filings across the state to spot the non-returners as well as places where powerful members have a recruited challenger (see http://newsobserver.com/news/story/1590542p-1618421c.html). These include both Democratic Senate chief Marc Basnight and he who would like the job, Republican Patrick Ballantine.
Many have suggested that the new maps favor Republican candidates, and Winston-Salem Journal reporters Dana Damico and Theo Helm find some evidence for that proposition (see http://www.journalnow.com/wsj/news/elections/MGBLHSR154D.html). But they also quote political participants and observers who emphasize the uncertain nature of the outcome and predict that electoral competition will dissipate as the decade wears on (the latter point is a bit odd, since the current maps will only be in use in 2002 and will be redrawn by the legislature next year).
Kerra Bolton Fisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times got a sense of what some voters were thinking about as they look forward to legislative races (see http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story/news/17287). I particularly liked the comments of a Hendersonville resident who complained that the current crop of lawmakers didn’t know how to get the state’s fiscal house in order. “Don’t spend more than you have,” he stated matter-of-factly. Alas, I didn’t see his name on the filings list.
Later this week, I’ll do a comprehensive look at the candidates in spotlighted races that will likely decide control of the General Assembly. Right now, I must unpack all the T’ang Chinese soldiers I purchased and plan to paint (someday) and keep scanning the newspaper sites for additional information about the close of the filing period. Remember: Sun Tzu observed in The Art of War that the key to successful command is good intelligence. It lets you decide when and where to meet the enemy, given limited resources and the inability to determine the outcome once the battle begins. The two main political parties are gathering a lot of intelligence right now, so as to avoid stumbling foolishly into a pitched battle on territory that favors the enemy.