RALEIGH – Political junkies love to read the tea leaves sprinkled by off-year election results. I am no exception – but I will say that if you tossed the 2005 results in your teacup, you’d get a pretty weak beverage. That’s not to say the taste would be all bad.
At the national level, Republicans and conservatives fell far short. Democrats retained the governorship in both New Jersey and Virginia. In the latter case, Democrat Tim Kaine triumphed over Republican Jerry Kilgore despite – or was it because of? – a last-minute visit to the state by President George W. Bush. On the other hand, the media will almost certainly blow this close result way out of proportion, ignoring the fact that it was a retention, not a takeover. Meanwhile, Republican Michael Bloomberg won reelection handsomely as mayor of New York City, but no one would mistake him for a conservative. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s initiative gambit flopped, too.
In North Carolina, however, fiscal conservatives have more to celebrate. Tuesday’s municipal elections tested voter opinion on several key issues – taxes, borrowing, and annexation among them – and it looks like many voters were in a conservative mood. Most significantly, a massive school-bond package in Mecklenburg County went down by a striking 57 percent “no” vote. It will take a closer analysis of the precinct counts to be sure, but I’m guessing that a stalwart no-new-tax message from Citizens for Effective Government, a local taxpayer-advocacy group, played a critical role.
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this result, which defied conventional wisdom, the editorial endorsement of The Charlotte Observer and most of the city establishment, and a massive advantage in campaign cash for the pro-bond forces. Perhaps fiscal conservatives in North Carolina’s most populous city and county, reeling from a series of setbacks and suffering under a relatively costly government, will build on this momentum.
In Orange County, voters outside of Chapel Hill-Carrboro were asked whether they wanted to authorization a special school-district tax so that the Orange system could increase its spending up to the level of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, which has long imposed an education surtax. The voters wisely said no, heck no, by more than three to one. In nearby Wake County, however, conservatives lost two school-board bids that were built on part around challenging the system’s busing policies and fiscal management.
In contested mayoral races around the state, two elections merit special attention. In Fayetteville, former newspaper executive Tony Chavronne upended the incumbent mayor, Marshall Pitts, by a large margin. Chavronne’s opposition to Fayetteville’s recent annexation binge almost certainly determined the outcome here, which is a heartening sign that perhaps elected leaders will begin to restrain municipal land grabs for political reasons even as lawyers and judges decline to do so on constitutional grounds.
On the other hand, and side of the state, the unambiguously conservative Joe Dunn lost his mayoral bid in Asheville to fellow city council member Terry Bellamy, who is now the first black woman to be elected mayor of a major North Carolina city.
Make of all this what you will. I would argue that it is a mixed result, no clear statewide message, no clear indication of future trends. For the most part, this year’s local elections stayed local.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.