In 2009, Wake County Democrats were blindsided by a turn of events they never could have imagined: conservative candidates, backed by the local Republican Party, won a majority on the Wake County Board of Education.
To the west, Democrats in Greensboro were shocked to see Bill Knight, a conservative Republican and political newcomer, win that city’s mayoral race. No Republican had previously won the (officially nonpartisan) race.
Now, two years later, the roles may be reversing. Last night Wake County Democrats staged the shocking defeat of the one conservative, Ron Margiotta, who wasn’t a newcomer to the school board. As the longtime representative of a GOP-leaning Wake County district, he had for years been a lone voice opposing the school system’s busing policy. Then, from 2009 to 2011, he chaired a very different board.
No longer. While control of the Wake school board apparently won’t be settled until next month, when Democrat Kevin Hill and Republican Heather Losurdo will meet in a runoff, Margiotta’s chairmanship is obviously over.
As for Bill Knight, he didn’t lose his reelection bid Tuesday night — but he came awfully close. Greensboro City Councilman Robbie Perkins won 48 percent of the vote, with 34 percent going to Knight and 11 percent to a former councilman, Tom Phillips. Perkins and Knight will advance to the November runoff.
As Democrats celebrate their primary victories and seek to build on them next month, Republicans would be well advised not to react the way the Democrats did two years ago. They should not attempt to question the legitimacy of any shift in power by pointing to low voter turnout, as Wake County Democrats did in 2009. Turnout is always low in municipal-election years. That serves to magnify the importance of organized voting blocs who get out their vote, be they conservatives in 2009 or liberals in 2011. It doesn’t mean that the elections count any less.
The truth is that just as Republican-leaning voters were angry at recent political events and motivated to turn out in 2009, Democratic-leaning voters were angry at recent political events, both local and national, and were motivated to recover some of the ground they lost during the Tea Party-fueled cycles of 2009 and 2010. They are on the cusp of succeeding at that goal.
Republicans also shouldn’t pretend that these signs of Democratic resurgence have no bearing on the higher political stakes coming in 2012. If Democratic and liberal groups do as good a job of turning out like-minded voters in November 2012 as they did in October 2011, and Republican and conservative groups do as poor a job of turning out theirs, Democrats will make sizable gains in legislative races and may well reelect Gov. Bev Perdue, despite her low approval ratings and other political difficulties.
As for swing voters, they likely weren’t much in evidence in the initial 2011 balloting. Municipal and school board races really do turn primarily on the turnout of partisans, who are the most reliable voters. But even here, Democrats have reason to be cheered by yesterday’s primaries. For the most part, their candidates chose clear, persuasive messages that presented themselves as reasonable-sounding alternatives to opponents they portrayed as extreme. The Republican messages were muddled and unappealing.
Nothing is set in stone. As I wrote yesterday, sometimes local elections are predictive of subsequent political trends. Sometimes they are not. But I’ll say this: if North Carolina Republicans don’t take their 2011 mistakes and omissions seriously, that will make failure in 2012 more likely.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation