RALEIGH — Cary has a more conservative mayor with the election Tuesday of Ernie McAllister to replace Glen Lang, who was defeated in the October primary. At the same time, Raleigh elected a less conservative city council. Longtime High Point Mayor Becky Smothers is back in office after a one-term hiatus, Asheville has elected two new council members without changing its ideological balance, Charlotte has elected Pat McCrory as mayor — again, and Fayetteville’s mayoral choice is a Democrat.
Hmmm. These results aren’t much to work with in writing a post-election column. The election of 2003 in North Carolina has turned out to be somewhat less than revolutionary. With mayors reelected in virtually all the major cities, save Cary and Wilmington, and power staying pretty much in the hands of the parties or factions who held it before, the political season hasn’t delivered much of the way of exciting developments.
The real news of the 2003 political season is outside North Carolina. That news is big, and arguably has more relevance for our state’s immediate political future than the fact that school bond referenda in Guilford, Durham, and Davie passed easily in Tuesday voting (a $59 million bond did fail miserably in Surry County, the only one of the four where significant opposition was evident beforehand).
There were two gubernatorial contests settled Tuesday. Both involved Democrats trying to hold their party’s conrol of state governemnt against strong Republican challenges. Both Democrats also defended themselves against attacks on fiscal policy by blaming President George W. Bush and his tax and trade policies for the economic woes afflicting their states.
Both defenses failed.
In Kentucky, Republican Congressman Ernie Fletcher easily defeated Democratic Attorney Gen. Ben Chandler to become the first GOP governor in the state in decades. Chandler, the grandson of a former Kentucky governor, was retain his party’s control in Frankfort despite the mess left by outgoing Gov. Paul Patton, whose fiscal miscues and extramarital affair were politically devastating. Don’t jump to conclusions about the affair, by the way. This wasn’t just another instance of the “sex police gone mad.” In his case, while governor he had an affair with a lobbyist, and then according to her used state resources to punish her after they broke up.
Chandler tried desperately to change the subject to the “Fletcher-Bush” economy, but this dodge didn’t work.
Similarly, in Mississippi a much closer race pitted GOP lobbyist and activist Haley Barbour against incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, who won one of the close gubernatorial elections in history back in 1999. This time around, it was the Republican who prevailed, becoming only the second governor elected from the GOP in Mississippi since Reconstruction. Even more than Fletcher perhaps, Barbour had been attached at the hip to Bush and his economic policies — and not unwillingly. Musgrove blasted Bush, who came to the state to campaign for his old friend Barbour, but Musgrove invited no big-name Democrats into Mississippi to boost his own chances (apparently Howard Dean, he of the Confederate Flag fixation, was unavailable).
The significance for North Carolina politics should be obvious. Gov. Mike Easley has been pursuing the Chandler-Musgrove approach for months: blaming Bush and trade for the state’s economic woes. I just don’t think it’s going to fly. Not only do these gubernatorial elections demonstrate its limits, but also the national economy is growing rapidly now. If North Carolina grows at a similar rate, the political risk to Easley will ease. But if it lags behind the nation, as it has been for much of the past two years, Easley will inevitably take the brunt of the blame, unless he can convince voters that Bush has singled out North Carolina’s economy to be devastated while leaving our neighbors with growing economies.
Seems about as likely as it was for a Democrat to become mayor of Charlotte or a Republican to become mayor of Fayetteville this year.
p.s. I should also note another outcome Tuesday that deserves some attention from NC policymakers: in two of the three large U.S. cities that had mass-transit projects on the ballot for voter approval, voters said no.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.