Last minute thoughts and analysis on the 2011 Raleigh Mayoral race

Note: As I stated in this piece, I am not an expert in local Raleigh politics, this was just an attempt to apply the same kind of political analysis I use for my work for state politics, to local politics. Believe it or not, this was put together relatively quickly (please forgive any typos or ill-worded sentences). This is nonpartisan analysis and I simply highlight what I believe to be important political aspects of the rapidly concluding mayoral campaign. And I unfortunately have found I don't have time to regularly update this blog, but wish I did!

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For those of you who know me, or follow me on twitter, you know that I spend most of my time covering and analyzing state politics in North Carolina (from a nonpartisan perspective). However, since today is Election Day for local races in Raleigh, I thought I would share my analysis of the political dynamics in the single most high profile contest, the Raleigh Mayoral race. First, let me say that I am not an expert in local Raleigh/Wake County politics. However, recognizing this fact, several months ago I decided to use this year’s local races as an opportunity for me to learn more about Raleigh’s local political scene and engage more in that discussion. After months of observation these are my thoughts as we head into the campaigns final hours.

After ten years leading Raleigh, current Mayor Charles Meeker chose not to run for re-election leaving an open seat contest in his wake. I’ve found the candidates that are seeking to succeed him politically very interesting and somewhat surprising.

Dr. Randall Williams, who is a registered Republican (one of two in the race), got into the race with the backing of former Raleigh Mayor (and former NC Republican Party Chair) Tom Fetzer. With little in the public record from which to glean information about Dr. Williams, my early opinion of his politics was formed largely based on Fetzer’s backing of his campaign. I expected Dr. Williams to be a down-the-line conservative like Fetzer, but that hasn’t really proven to be true. I base that mainly on Dr. Williams’ support of Raleigh’s two proposed bonds dealing with transportation and housing that some conservatives have opposed. Dr. Williams has talked up his background as a doctor and his experience with humanitarian missions to Afghanistan. Beyond that, however, Dr. Williams hasn’t been an aggressive force on the campaign trail.

The other Republican in the race, real estate executive Billie Redmond, has been an energetic campaigner, and raised significant funds for her campaign. Initially I assumed her political identity would line-up as a moderate Republican. However, as the campaign progressed, she’s increasingly struck conservative themes. As I understand it, she opposes the two proposed bonds as part of a theme that became central to her campaign, the city’s debt. Public debt has obviously been a hot national political issue due to the continual debates in Washington about the debt ceiling and the federal government’s budget. It seemed that Redmond’s campaign tried to hook into that conservative discontent with public debt and make Raleigh’s debt a campaign issue. A chart depicting the growth of city debt was featured in Redmond’s campaign commercials and was a frequently raised issue in candidate forums.

Current City Council member Nancy McFarlane is the only mayoral candidate with any electoral experience or experience with city government. She is registered Unaffiliated, though her ties to Mayor Meeker (who is an outspoken Democrat), and support for center-left policies, earned her the endorsement of Wake County’s Democratic Party. Even though it was widely assumed that Mayor Meeker support McFarlane’s bid to succeed him, he didn’t publicly endorse her campaign until last week (the week before the election). While my first reaction was surprise that his endorsement wasn’t made official early in the campaign, I came to view the relatively late endorsement as a smart political move. Waiting until shortly before the election to announce Mayor Meeker’s endorsement appeared to me to be part of a strategy of waiting to expend resources on campaign commercials, direct mail pieces, and yard signs until late in the campaign when voters were finally tuning into the election. Municipal races tend to produce low voter turnout, so launching several campaign commercials, sending direct mail pieces and having a newsworthy endorsement in a timeframe most likely to earn public attention/recognition seems to me to be a good political strategy (if indeed that’s what her campaign was going for). Another interesting political strategy embedded in Mayor Meeker’s endorsement of McFarlane’s campaign was the implicit and explicit attempt to tie McFarlane to Mayor Meeker and his tenure. This seems like an obvious point since McFarlane clearly made a big deal of the endorsement, but it’s a noteworthy move in my view in the context of what’s going on in national politics. Both the President and Congress are suffering from poor approval ratings, the public is generally dissatisfied with both parties, and there has been consistent unease with “the establishment.” Many national political observers have suggested that 2012 may be an election that doesn’t have a partisan advantage, but is dominated by frustrated voters willing to turnout incumbents of both parties. However, McFarlane is hugging Raleigh incumbent Mayor Meeker as tight as she can and bucking the strategy I’m guessing many politicians will use next year. McFarlane and her campaign have basically been saying, “If you like what’s been going on with Raleigh for the past several years, vote for me.” I think it would be an interesting exception to what many believe is becoming the rule dominating the 2012 election cycle.

I’m not really in the business of predicting election outcomes, I tend to lay out the facts as I see them and let others come to their own conclusions. However, it’s not illogical to assume that the fact that there are two Republican candidates, they may hurt each other’s chances by drawing from the same voter pool. McFarlane has also run a credible campaign and despite the nation’s economic issues, Raleigh is still generally viewed as a prosperous and growing city (those “best of” rankings continue to roll in for example), which helps her as she’s tried to position herself as the virtual incumbent in the race. The Wake County Democratic party has also invested in this “off year” election heavily (and in ways they didn’t in 2009). Will this be enough for Nancy McFarlane (and many of her Democratic allies) to win? I don’t know, but as I’m finishing this sentence, we only have to wait a few hours to find out.

Minority status and Twitter

Is the usage of twitter by a party and it's members in the legislature inversley related to it's representation in the General Assembly? Put more plainly, is the party out of power in the NC House and/or NC Senate more likely to have members use twitter? In my opinion, it seems like it.

On Sunday December 12, the @NCHouseDems joined twitter and got me thinking about this. The use of Twitter by elected officials is probably just an component of a larger point about how parties who find themselves in the minority turn to any method they can to get their message and perspective to the public, media, stakeholders, etc. I'm pretty active on twitter, and based on my experience, Republicans in North Carolina have been the primary users of twitter - at least during the 2010 election cycle. They were also out of power at virtually every level in North Carolina during that time. But now that the GOP has won majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, will their usage of twitter diminish? Or will they continue to use it as a medium to communicate with their supports, etc.? Of course, there have been some active NC Democrats on twitter, but no real members of the Democratic leadership has taken advantage of twitter to my knowledge.

TweetNCGA (a project of the conservative John Locke Foundation) does a good job of aggregating tweets by members of the General Assembly as well as tweets referencing the General Assembly's hashtag #NCGA. I also created a list of the newly elected members of the General Assembly on twitter here. It'll be interesting to see if these folks who were often times frequent users of twitter during the campaign to see if they maintain their use.

This may seem like a silly thing to talk about, but twitter is a very important tool for me, and is increasingly an important communication method for politicians at all levels. Will North Carolina's elected officials that are now in the majority continue to embrace it? Or will twitter be a tool largely for those in the minority or on the campaign trail?

The incoming Speaker & the Governor

On Wednesday December 15, Governor Perdue (D) made an unusual move and addressed a relatively informal budget meeting put together by the incoming Republican leadership in the NC House. It wasn't too long into her speech that she made her reasons for addressing the meeting clear, she wanted to get out in front on a few issues and called on the legislature to do three things. She wants the legislature to enact session limits (90 days for the "Long" session and 45 days for the "Short" session), create an independent redistricting commission in time for it to re-draw North Carolina's political maps for the 2012 elections, and increase transparency of the legislative process. She acknowledged that she didn't come up with these ideas, they all have either been championed by, or had some support from, Republicans. I thought these issues were interesting - in part - because through my work at the North Carolina FreeEnterprise Foundation, we asked about a couple of these issues in our candidate questionnaires.

One of the key players in the upcoming legislative session, (soon-to-be) Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenburg), will have a lot of say into what gets done in 2011 and 2012. He was one of the incoming members of the legislature that filled out the candidate questionnaire and I thought his answers may shed some light on whether the Governor's new pet issues will get off the ground in the NC House. You can see Rep. Tillis' full scanned questionnaire here.

On the issue of an independent redistricting commission, Rep. Tillis is not a fan. Beyond a commission that could serve in an advisory role, he doesn't want to cede legislative authority to redraw political boundaries and questions the "nonpartisan" nature of any commission engaged in this kind of activity.

The Governor may have found common ground with Rep. Tillis on the issue of session limits though. He indicated that he would support session limits, but no specific lengths were identified in the questionnaire, so there may be some disagreement on exactly what those limits would be.

And while a question about increasing legislative transparency wasn't asked on the questionnaire, another question did catch my eye on Rep. Tillis' questionnaire. The questionnaire states: "State legislative leaders (the President Pro Tempore of the NC Senate and the Speaker of the NC House) should be limited to serving no more than two consecutive terms at a time." Rep. Tillis, the incoming Speaker of the NC House, answered "Agree". Who knows what the next election holds and who will be leading the NC House beyond 2011-12, but this answer may have more relevance in a couple years.

I don't know if the Governor knew of Rep. Tillis' opinions on these topics before she proposed them, but it does look like she's might be trying to pick a political fight with the incoming GOP majorities. And based on Rep. Tillis' asnwers on the questionnaire, she just might get that fight. Who will be the beneficiary? We'll have to wait and see.

Race for NC GOP Chair

Shortly after the 2010 elections, the Chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer, announced he would be stepping down. Immediately following this announcement, news that former US Rep. Robin Hayes would run for the Chairmanship surfaced. There are two other candidates running that I know of, NC GOP Vice chair Timothy Johnson and former Guilford County GOP chair Marcus Kindley, but my sense is that Congressman Hayes has the advantage.

As I was thinking about Congressman Hayes, his bid for NC GOP Chair and the current political environment, I recalled a description of one of his campaigns in an older edition of the Almanac of American Politics. This is from the 2006 edition and is describing Congressman Hayes' 2000 General Election campaign when we was running for a second term:

Hayes traveled the campaign trail with a four-foot-wide reusable blank check signed "Uncle Sam." At each stop he took a felt-tip pen and wrote in the federal money he had brought in: $650,00 to extend water lines to a school in Stanly County, $258,000 for a pilot housing program in Troy, $4 million for two airports.

The 2008 edition of the Almanac of American Politics added, "Hayes has compiled a conservative voting record, with an occasional populist streak, devoting much of his energy to getting federal money for the folks back home." Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like Congressman Hayes worked hard, and campaigned on, securing federal earmarks for the 8th Congressional District. Recently, many Republicans have sworn-off seeking federal money. In November, Republicans in the US House of Representatives voted in favor of a voluntary ban on earmarks. Earmarks are also a target of the Tea Party movement that has largely support Republicans and is credited with helping Republicans win control of the US House in the 2010 elections.

It strikes me as interesting that in this current political environment, former Congressman Hayes, who seemed to actively seek out federal funds for his district, is now the main contender to lead his party that now disapproves of such activities. Has Congressman Hayes sworn off support for earmarks too? Has the issue even been raised in his campaign for NC GOP Chair? People tend to have short memories. Since the election of party chairs is the consummate insiders game, coverage of the campaign is understandably scant. If anyone knows if this has come up, I'd be interested to hear about it.

I'm offering this information only as an interesting observation (at least to me) and have no dog in the fight for NC GOP Chair.

The GOP and a voter ID law

I've said many times in this blog that I'm not going to get into policy issues, this blog is about politics. I'm sticking to that and taking a quick look at the politics of a policy issue that has come to the surface recently: a voter ID law. Jim Morrill of the Charlotte Observer reported (and it was widely picked up and reported around the state) that the new GOP majority in the North Carolina General Assembly wants to pass a voter ID law to prevent voter fraud. The article does a nice job of hitting the talking points of the conservative and liberal/progressive side of this policy debate (and if you want some additional information on academic research on this issue, visit this great blog post at the Politics and Policy in the Tarheel State blog). My first thought is: does the GOP really want to have this issue be featured so prominently in their agenda?

This issue is not out of the blue, it's a part of the GOP's 10 point, 100 day agenda but GOP leaders kept the focus of the campaign on jobs and the economy - a winning strategy. Speaker-in-waiting Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenburg) even went as far as to make bracelets for GOP House candidates that said one thing on them "Think Jobs" and told the candidates to snap their wrists with them if they felt tempted to talk about anything other than the economy. Why would they want to deviate from that winning campaign strategy as they transition to governance? I'm not suggesting they ignore all other issues, but I do wonder why a voter ID law appears to be so prominently placed on the agenda.

Again, I'm not debating the merits of a potential voter ID law. But is this an issue voters care about? Maybe it is for the Republican base, but I haven't seen much evidence that it is for wider audience. Will support for the new GOP majority in the General Assembly soften if voters think the legislature is spending too much time on issues not directly related to jobs and the economy? Perhaps.

In my opinion, this illustrates the political danger in this upcoming legislative session for Republicans. The GOP will need to strike the right balance between pressing economic/budgetary issues and social issues (more or less like the voter ID law) that have long been bottled up in the Democratically controlled General Assembly. What is that balance? I have no idea. But national Democrats have signaled that they will contest North Carolina vigorously in 2012 as they did in 2008, which means attention and resources will be devoted in the state to helping Democrats up and down the ballot. If Republicans appear to be spending too much time on issues other than jobs and the economy, the campaign theme they won, their newly won majority could be in realy jeopardy.

I'm sure others have lots of thoughts and opinions on this. Feel free to agree or disagree, just thought I'd add my initial analysis of this recent issue.

Party switchers are everywhere...except NC

I saw an article today from Jonathan Martin at Politico highlighting Democratic losses across the South in the 2010 Midterm elections, including some lawmakers elected as Democrats switching parties after November 2. An AP article also detailed these Democrats-turned-Republicans from around the country, though most of them are predictably concentrated in the South. North Carolina, like many of it's Southern neighbors saw big Republican gains at the state level. In a lot of these cases (including North Carolina), Democrats had been in control for a long time. Some of these (former) Democratic lawmakers wanted to keep positions of power, others wanted a seat at the table they've never had before, and others changed parties to reflect their more conservative perspectives that they believe are now a better fit within the Republican party.

All of this made me think that here in North Carolina, not one Democratic lawmaker has switched parties after the elections. I actually hadn't given it much thought in part because there hasn't even been a whisper of such a move in the media. Now that doesn't mean conversations haven't been taking place, but I certainly haven't caught wind of any such talk (if it's occuring). Is it surprising we haven't seen any party switchers in NC? In my mind, not really. Republicans made significant inroads in Eastern North Carolina, a region long dominated by moderate to conservative Democrats. Many of these Democrats either retired/resigned or lost this year. So practically speaking, the number of Democrats state legislators that may be conservative enough to be potential party switchers is just pretty small in NC. Again, doesn't mean we won't see any, but so far, it's been all quiet on the party switching front in the Tar Heel state.

Post-Election Analysis

Well the 2010 Midterm Elections are over and the GOP scored big wins in North Carolina at the state level though it looks like all but one Tar Heel Democratic Congressmen survived the GOP wave. Over the next several weeks I'll be taking a look at how big GOP gains were in NC and how exactly they made those gains both here and through work. If you have any ideas about how to slice the data, ideas for analysis, or any observations you think would be helpful, please send them my way. In addition to post-election analysis, I'll be keeping tabs on the General Assembly leadership elections taking place soon, and the all-important redistricting which will start cranking up after the new year. Plus, the 2012 election cycle started the day after the 2010 election cycle ended and it's never too early to start tracking what's going on with the North Carolina Council of State races which will be up for election in addition to the Congressional and General Assembly seats again. I hope to return to regular blogging now, don't hesitate to keep me honest so I won't slack off. I'll still be tweeting (probably a lot) so twitter is always a good way to catch up with me, my observations, and hopefully useful analysis.