RALEIGH — Just back from a series of six speaking engagements in North Carolina — spanning the west, the Piedmont, and the coast — I’ve seen confirmed at least one of my suppositions about the 2004 electoral season. There just isn’t a lot of energy or passion invested yet in North Carolina’s crowded Republican primary for governor.
I don’t think it’s the fault of the candidates. Collectively, the major candidates have raised more than $4 million and logged thousands of miles as they criss-crossed the state making campaign appearances and participating in debates. Former Senate leader Patrick Ballantine, former Congressman and state GOP chairman Bill Cobey, and Moore County businessman and political activist George Little each have more than $400,000 in the bank right now to begin the campaign’s homestretch leading up to the July 20 primary. Richard Vinroot, former Charlotte mayor and 2000 nominee, has much less but still leads the field. And Gov. Mike Easley has done his part to keep things interesting — defending his record, make jobs announcements, and accumulating a war chest of about $3 million so far for the fall campaign.
But as I spoke to civic clubs, taxpayer groups, and other audiences last week, the questions rarely turned to the political fates of Easley and his potential opponents. Instead, folks wanted to know about the battle for control of the General Assembly, the spirited GOP primaries in the 5th and 10th Congressional districts, and most importantly the competitive race between Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Richard Burr for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by John Edwards.
Burr, in particular, is serving as a significant distraction for North Carolina Republicans from their other races and prospects. No, distraction is too pejorative a word: Burr is in many ways considered the most important GOP standard-bearer. With a razon-thin Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, the national party and President George W. Bush’s political team are preparing to pull out all the stops to win open, previously Democratic seats in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, partly to offset possible losses of Republican-held seats in Illinois, Alaska, and Colorado.
Moreover, as veteran News & Observer political correspondent Rob Christensen observed in a Sunday piece, many Republicans in North Carolina and beyond view Burr as the prototype of a new kind of candidate for the party: youthful but experienced in government, conservative but not stridently so, genial and attractive to uncommitted voters, and capable of uniting most elements of the GOP coalition behind a common cause.
Such candidates make some principled conservatives nervous. For example, Burr has recently seemed to tack away from his previous support for free trade, perhaps a sign of things to come among other Republican candidates in economically distressed states where protectionism has begun to make an unwelcome comeback. And party activists who once thrilled to the combative public persona of Jesse Helms see a very different leader in Burr, whose edges aren’t as rough and whose rhetoric reflects more modern sensibilities and pieties.
But for most Republicans you talk to across the state, Richard Burr’s victory in the Senate race is at or close to the top of their political priority list for the 2004 cycle. They know that he still lags Bowles in statewide name recognition and will need to outperform the former Clinton aide in both fundraising and campaign message over the next weeks and months. They seem ready to pitch in — even if it means devoting less time and resources to a governor’s race where the cost of losing seems lower.
Of course, there are at least half a dozen Republicans who would strongly disagree.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.