RALEIGH – There are many similarities between former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney and current state senator and gubernatorial candidate Fred Smith.
Both entered politics at mid-career, having previously created and run businesses. Both are skilled managers who talk about government as a failing enterprise that needs reorganization, clearer lines of authority, and incentives for excellent performance. In public speeches and media interviews, both tend to break complex problems down into three to five issues or elements, much as an MBA student might set out to write up a case study. And while both men exhibit deep knowledge of fiscal and economic issues, their campaigns have also stressed conservative positions on social and moral concerns as part of a strategy to unify the various strands of Republican primary voters.
Of course, Fred Smith would stress a key dissimilarity: Romney lost. Smith remains intent on winning his GOP primary.
A lawyer, homebuilder, businessman, and former county commission, Smith is currently serving his third term representing Johnston County in the North Carolina Senate. His was the first of the Republican gubernatorial campaigns to get underway, and just completed a tour of all 100 counties. At each event, Smith served up barbeque, original music from Lee Greenwood, and pointed criticisms of the Easley administration, the legislature, and the overall direction of state policy during the past decade.
“There’s a feeling that we can do better,” Smith said during a recent appearance before state columnist and editorial writers. “There’s a feeling that of the $22 billion people send to Raleigh, they aren’t getting their money’s worth.” While North Carolina has faced with some difficult challenges during the period, and its public officials have made some poor policy choices, Smith adds, the real problem has been listless leadership and incompetent management.
The state’s mental-health mess is a frequent object of Smith’s disdain. Gov. Mike Easley failed to provide effective leadership on the issue, he says, because of a lack of clear goals for mental-health reform, poor personnel decisions, an unwillingness to take full and immediate responsibility for mistakes in policy implementation, and a tendency to offer false hope that longstanding problems can be resolved quickly.
In Smith’s view, there needs to be a clearer delineation of responsibilities between the public and private sectors. Having private firms deliver mental-health services isn’t the problem, he says, but failing to set clear goals and policies for mental-health contractors led to disaster.
There’s a similar problem in public education, according to Smith: little accountability for results or thoughtful use of alternative providers. He talks about five parallel systems for serving the needs of individual students: 1) district-run public schools, employing a sound curriculum, teachers paid according to performance, and valid testing to measure outcomes (rather than the current, flawed testing system); 2) rejuvenated vocational education; 3) community colleges for kids “who aren’t wired to sit in classrooms eight hours a day; 4) more chartered public schools (he favors lifting the current cap of 100 charters); and 5) more access to non-public alternatives such as homeschooling.
Asked which tax he would most like to cut, Smith takes a different tack from some of his competitors. It’s government spending that the next governor needs to focus on first, he says, not the particulars of tax reform. Unless lawmakers in Raleigh get a handle on the state budget, particularly such fast-growing areas as Medicaid, any tax reform or reduction that might pass today may not be sustained tomorrow. Smith favors a formal cap on annual spending growth and an end to pork-barrel spending. With fiscal restraint, there’ll be room to reduce the state’s marginal rates and make the tax code fairer.
The pundits say that Smith, a successful businessman who has invested significant amounts of his own cash in his campaign for governor, trails Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory in the polls by an average of 8 points because he hasn’t spent enough money on broadcast television. Is it really possible in the 21st century to gain political traction by campaigning from county to county rather than buying up ads in the evening news? Smith argues that he has been on TV, and will be making heavy buys in the last few weeks of the primary.
Whatever else the political class may think of Fred Smith, there’s no doubt that he is firmly in charge of his own campaign. If he succeeds – the most likely scenario for that outcome is to hold McCrory to under 40 percent in the May 6 primary, forcing him into a late-June runoff – it will be another fascinating story to add to the improbable campaign season of 2008.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.