RALEIGH — The Republican primary for lieutenant governor in North Carolina has just gotten a lot more interesting — a statement that until recently would have been viewed by most as an oxymoron.
It wasn’t that long ago that the office of lieutenant governor was a powerful one. It represented the statewide election of the leader of the North Carolina Senate. But after the 1988 election, when Republican Jim Gardner was elected lieutenant governor, the Democratic majority in the Senate was having none of that, for obvious reasons. They stripped the post of much of its formal power, leaving ceremonial and presiding duties in the legislature and slots on various state boards and commissions in the executive branch.
Longtime Democratic legislator Dennis Wicker was elected lieutenant governor in 1992, but by then the Democratic caucus in the chamber had enjoyed their new-found autonomy and didn’t want to give it up. After Wicker vacated in the post in 2000 for an unsuccessful bid for governor, longtime Sen. Beverly Perdue won election — but ever her preexisting relationships with key Democratic senators didn’t translate into any movement towards restoring the job’s powers.
In my opinion, this is for the best. It was always odd to mix legislative and executive powers in a lieutenant governor, and to elect the Senate leader statewide while having the House Speaker elected from among fellow representatives. Ideally, the lieutenant governor position should either be eliminated outright or, my preference, transformed into a true running mate for a governor that would also serve in the administration in some meaningful capacity.
Still, the current post of lieutenant governor has at least one obvious value: it serves as a convenient roost for someone seeking eventually to move on to higher statewide office, most likely governor but also perhaps U.S. Senate. Perdue is widely expected to seek the Democratic nomination for the state CEO job in 2008 — she’ll likely face several strong challengers in the primary, such as State Treasurer Richard Moore or Attorney General Roy Cooper — but another possibility might be to run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Elizabeth Dole, depending on Dole’s plans and Perdue’s gumption.
On the GOP side, Lexington attorney Jim Snyder has for years now been pursuing higher office. Briefly a Republican state legislator, Snyder lost the 2002 Senate nomination to Dole and then flirted with both gubernatorial and Senate candidacies in 2004 before announcing what turned out to be a brief run for the 5th District congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Richard Burr. Finally, he settled on a lieutenant governor bid. Until last week, Snyder was expected to compete for the nomination with former State Sen. Bill Boyd of Randolph County. But Boyd has stepped out of the running, just as another Republican has stepped in.
He is Durham City Councilman Thomas Stith, who served as an aide to former Gov. Jim Martin and also for a time as director of the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Local Innovation. Like most Republican candidates this year, Stith is arguing that North Carolina leaders have been too quick to raise taxes to fund unnecessary spending, thus harming the state’s competitiveness at a time of economic challeges and opportunities. He has been able to put together a political coalition in Durham across partisan and racial lines, a skill many Republicans would like to see replicated at the state level.
Stith has already secured Martin’s endorsement, but don’t expect Snyder to give up without a spirited fight. He’s got big-name endorsements of his own, such as former Sens. Jesse Helms and Jim Broyhill, as well as personal wealth and the kind of strong conservative message likely to resonate with GOP primary voters.
I continue to think that the job needs to be revamped. Until then, the office of lieutenant governor in North Carolina will essentially be a somewhat-high-profile soapbox for someone wanting to opine on key issues facing the state and a somewhat-useful stepping stone for future elective office. Perdue, Snyder, and Stith are all individuals willing and able to make good use of both of those opportunities.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.