RALEIGH — I devoted much of yesterday’s “Daily Journal” column to explaining that “caution is in order in predicting the outcome” of a runoff between Patrick Ballantine and Richard Vinroot in the North Carolina Republican governor’s race.
But, heck, sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind, so let me be the first to guarantee you that Ballantine, the former NC Senate minority leader from Wilmington, will be the GOP standard-bearer in the fall race against incumbent Democrat Mike Easley.
Well, okay, I guess I’m not precisely the first to issue such a confident prediction. That would be Richard Vinroot, who on Thursday shocked the political world by announcing that he would not call for a runoff and would endorse Ballantine as the leader of a unified Republican Party against Easley.
It was a remarkable turnaround for the former Charlotte mayor and 2000 nominee, given that the day before he had been questioning Ballantine’s commitment to fiscal conservatism based on past votes for big-spending budgets and corporate-subsidy bills. Now, he said, Ballantine was the clear conservative choice against the tax-raising Gov. Easley. Naturally, the Easley campaign immediately sought to call attention to the discrepancy, though I’m not sure that it would be wise to raise much of a ruckus about Ballantine’s record on spending and incentives, given that Easley just signed a 2004-05 budget that hikes spending by more than a billion dollars and has pushed far more, and more egregious, incentive packages than Ballantine ever has.
Still, it’s a legitimate question to ask: why the sudden course-reversal? Vinroot said that it was a “spiritual decision” made because he didn’t want to delay the selection of a Republican nominee and do any damage to the cause of defeating Easley. Raleigh’s political establishment immediately scoffed at the idea, and assumed that Vinroot’s donors had rebuffed him or that national Republican leaders and organizations had made it clear they preferred Ballantine for the fall campaign.
Knowing Vinroot, I don’t think he simply bowed out because someone called him from Washington and told him to. Several factors seem likely to have influenced the decision. One was a sort of psychological let-down. He led the field in the balloting as reported Tuesday night, but glitches in the New Hanover count had depressed Ballantine’s vote total. Revised figures on Wednesday put him on top, leading Vinroot by about 1,500 votes — not statistically significant, really, but meaningful anyway. That meant Vinroot, not Ballantine, had to call for a runoff. I suspect that made him think twice. Did he really want to go down as a candidate who lost two gubernatorial races and then called for a runoff in a third in which he either fell short or was too damaged to prevail in November?
Also, perhaps as Vinroot began calling his supporters around the state to take their pulse and strategize for the runoff, they let him know that they didn’t want anything to happen that would distract Republicans from the real adversary. Perhaps Ballantine’s late surge and Vinroot’s underwhelming performance Tuesday (due in part to weak turnout in Mecklenburg County) just let the air out of the campaign’s balloon. Perhaps there were other factors, personal ones we’ll never know about. Certainly a man as competitive as Vinroot must have agonized over this decision, and shouldn’t have his intentions or explanation second-guessed.
Some Republicans I talked with after the bombshell dropped on Thursday, mostly supporters of other GOP candidates, expressed warm feelings about Vinroot and what they saw as a tough and courageous choice. One caller to Jerry Agar’s radio show on WPTF-AM in Raleigh said that, contrary to outward appearances, Vinroot’s decision to step aside showed that he truly was a winner.
It’s a painful moment, to be sure, but maybe Vinroot and his supporters will find some consolation there.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.