RALEIGH – On Election Day, voters across the United States voted for change in Washington. They’ll get some of it (starting, already, with the departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). In North Carolina, however, voters did not vote for change, deciding to add seats to the current Democratic majority in both chambers of the General Assembly. Again, they’ll likely get much of what they voted for.
Democrats won an impressively broad victory in state races this year. No doubt about it. As previously discussed, they outmaneuvered, out-raised, out-recruited, and out-organized state Republicans in virtually every competitive district, and indeed in some GOP-leaning districts available in this uniquely Democratic year. Their broad victory, however, was not a deep victory. It was not an earth-shattering, ideological transformation of the political landscape.
My Carolina Journal colleague Mitch Kokai has crunched the numbers on the seat gains, and they tell an important story. Out of about 1.7 million votes cast in legislative races this year – a fairly small number, compared with past cycles, and reflecting the lowest mid-term turnout in state history – control of the North Carolina House and Senate was settled by 1 percent or fewer of those votes. If Republicans had won about 800 more votes combined in two Senate races, there would have been no Democratic gains. If they had won about 2,800 more votes in the House, there would have been no Democratic gains there, either.
And improbable as it may sound, Republicans today would be in the process of organizing the House and choosing a speaker for the 2007-08 session had they added 9,600 more votes to the majority they won Tuesday – defeating incumbent Democrats Jim Black, Walter Church, Rick Glazier, Marian McLawhorn, and Alice Graham Underhill, plus electing or re-electing Republicans Russell Capps, Mark Hollo, Tim McNeil, and Willie Ray Starling. That would have yielded a 61-59 GOP edge. I say 9,600 votes added to their majority because, believe it or not, Republicans actually won a majority of all votes cast for N.C. House this year, though of course not in the right locations.
Even in the Senate, where the 2003 gerrymander made the political lay of the land less favorable to the GOP, an addition of fewer than 7,700 votes – or about four-tenths of one percent of the total votes cast statewide – would have give Republicans a strong 24-seat minority stake in the 50-seat chamber, by saving or electing Republicans David Blust, Hugh Webster, and Keith Presnell while defeating R.C. Soles and Walter Dalton.
I say this not to minimize the Democratic victory, or attribute it to chance (as if it came from 9,600 flipped quarters all landing on tails), but to illustrate how closely divided North Carolinians remain on state issues and party preferences. Democratic legislators did not need, and have never needed, to convince a large majority of the electorate that their ideas and leadership would be better for North Carolina. They simply needed to convince a few thousand voters in key districts that this was the case. Republicans have had the same opportunity in recent cycles. They’ve fallen short.
So do Tuesday’s election results translate into major changes on Jones Street? Yes and no. Yes, if you mean leadership changes – seven votes may end up saving Jim Black’s House career, but they have ended his career as House speaker. On most substantive issues facing state government, though, I don’t foresee major change — and what changes do come will be of extent, not of kind. Whether at the previous margins or the now-larger ones, the Democratic majority was always going to try to figure out a way to reimpose or replace the nearly half-billion dollars in sales and income taxes scheduled to expire over the next year. It was likely to place new, multi-billion-dollar bond referenda on the statewide ballot for education, transportation, and other capital projects. It was unlikely to allow floor votes on same-sex marriage, a cap on spending growth, or school choice.
Yes, having larger margins are always better than having narrow ones, but once the Democratic giddiness fades, legislative leaders will recognize that a number of the seats they just won – I’m thinking Steve Goss in Senate 45, Ty Harrell in House 41, Ray Warren in House 88, Cullie Tarlton in House 93, and of course Joe Sam Queen in Senate 47 – remain Republican-leaning areas. These are not just additional reliable votes for whatever policy prescriptions would be popular in, say, Chapel Hill or urban Democratic neighborhoods. Democratic leaders can’t afford to rely on these newcomers to pass tax increases, new social programs, or other measures that will be difficult to sell to right-leaning voters in 2008. Remember than in 1994, a national sweep brought Republicans a number of seats in the state legislature (and two in Congress, the 2nd and 4th districts) that would prove impossible to defend in the more “normal” election year of 1996.
I suspect Democratic leaders don’t need that reminder – particularly if Dan Blue manages to win re-election as House Speaker. He’s been through all this before.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.