WILKESBORO – North Carolina is going to have a busy political summer in 2004. Because of a delay in the election calendar this year, engineered by legislative leaders dragging their feet on redistricting, the primary date is now July 20. Moreover, if current trends continue in a number of contested races, including a crowded Republican primary here in the 5th District, at least a sliver of North Carolina voters will come back to the polls in August to decide runoffs.
Primary politics are complicated this year in several interesting contests. July and August votes are unlikely to attract the level of turnout we usually see in May primaries. That will tend to favor the more conservative candidates in Republican primaries and the more liberal candidates in Democratic ones, since party activists are more likely to participate in the dead of summer while marginal voters are vacationing or at least hiding out in front of their air-conditioning vents.
For Republicans in particular, the prospect of low-turnout July primaries and even-lower-turnout August runoffs could generate some fascinating and surprising outcomes. In the governor’s race, for example, six serious candidates are running hard and making it unlikely that frontrunner Richard Vinroot can get to the 40 percent level he needs to avoid a runoff (assuming Vinroot remains the name-recognition frontrunner by the time we get to July 20). Once he gets matched up with a single competitor in an August runoff, all bets will be off – not that GOP candidates other than George Little are much into betting on anything, I should say.
One factor in Vinroot’s favor, as I have pointed out before, is that competitive Republican primaries in the 5th and 10th congressional districts will likely push up turnouts in those two western areas of the state where Vinroot’s support is disproportionately to be found. Fewer reasons exist for Patrick Ballantine’s Eastern supporters or Bill Cobey’s Triangle and Piedmont fans to turn out, for example, But knowledgeable observers I’ve talked to in recent weeks caution that handicapping the GOP governor’s race is turning out to be next to impossible. Ballantine, Cobey, Little, Sen. Fern Shubert, and Davie Commissioner Dan Barrett are just implementing their campaign strategies for the homestretch. Don’t discount the importance of Little, Shubert, and Barrett, by the way, at least as it regards the potential to spoil one or more of the campaigns of the better-known candidates.
Speaking of those competitive U.S. House primaries, each congressional race features the same dynamic: a gaggle of GOPers from the district’s most populous county and one or more challengers from outlying counties or sections of counties. In the 5th, Sen. Virginia Foxx has represented many of the districts northwest-mountain counties while much of the rest of the field is from Forsyth. In the 10th, Rep. Patrick McHenry hails from the part of Gaston County in the 10th while the other three Republicans are fighting over support in their base of Catawba County. It would be in the best interest of Foxx and McHenry to win their primaries outright at the 40 percent level. Otherwise, if they get into their runoffs against individual competitors, the population dynamics no longer work in their favor.
On the Democratic side, primary/runoff oddities are most likely in legislative races. In Wake County, for example, three strong candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination to replace Sen. Eric Reeves. Raleigh city councilwoman Janet Cowell and attorney Jack Nichols are arguably a bit more to the left than businesswoman Carter Worthy, but in a low-turnout affair it’s hard to know how this marginal difference will play out, or whether Democrats hoping to nominate a woman for the slot will split their votes, aiding Nichols.
For North Carolina candidates and political activists in this year’s primary season, it may be Summertime, but the living – campaign-wise, I mean – will hardly be easy.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.