Chris Fitzsimon
People in North Carolina want things to be different in Washington and don’t want to turn the state over to politicians more obsessed with taxes and stoking anti-religious fears than they are with improving education, expanding access to health care and helping people who are struggling to find jobs and keep their homes. That’s the message from Tuesday’s election in North Carolina.
Unless there is a major surprise when the provisional ballots are counted, Barack Obama will have carried the state in this election, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
North Carolina is still a Southern state, and many people weren’t sure they would live to see an African-American carry the state, much less be elected president.
The state’s voters chose state Sen. Kay Hagan to represent them in the U.S. Senate, rejecting the most well-known politician in North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole, who was considered a political rock star and virtually unbeatable just a few months ago. Hagan received more votes than almost everybody else Tuesday night, defeating Dole by more than eight percentage points in a race that was called early in the evening by most major news organizations.
The conservative punditocracy blames Dole’s stunning defeat on money from national Democrats, which they refer to not so subtly as “Chuck Schumer’s money.†New York Sen. Charles Schumer is the head of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.
But it wasn’t money alone that defeated Dole. The two sides spent roughly the same amount on the race when you combine what the candidates raised and spent themselves with the funding from outside groups.
Charles Schumer didn’t kick Elizabeth Dole out of office, the voters of North Carolina did, and the message was clear in the surprising margin of victory. The policies of the Bush Administration and Washington insiders like Elizabeth Dole who supported them were the wrong policies for North Carolina.
Dole’s desperate and offensive attempt in the campaign’s final days to portray Hagan as godless backfired, prompting outrage in North Carolina and around the country. People aren’t nearly as concerned about who attended a fundraiser as they are with how they’re going to pay for their child’s next visit to the doctor.
The voters elected the first female governor in North Carolina’s history, Democrat Beverly Perdue, who defeated Republican Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory by more than three percentage points in a race many Democrats thought she might lose. Perdue even defeated McCrory in his home county of Mecklenburg.
The conservative pundits don’t seem to have an explanation for McCrory’s defeat. Some credit Obama’s coattails, but Perdue received more votes than Obama. Others agree with McCrory that it was the strong support for Democrats in early voting in urban areas that doomed his gubernatorial bid, though he had the same opportunity as Perdue to influence the early voters. Maybe McCrory lost because voters want to hear more about the economy, education and health care than misleading claims about North Carolina taxes.
Democrats picked up a congressional seat, as Democrat Larry Kissell handily defeated 8th District Republican incumbent Robin Hayes in another clear rejection of the current economic policies in Washington that have left so many families reeling.
The folks scrambling to describe Tuesday as anything other than a call for progressive change point to the results in local-option tax votes and General Assembly races as evidence that voters sent mixed signals on Election Day.
Local proposals to raise the sales tax and the real estate transfer tax did fail in the counties that considered them, but it is hardly a surprise that people worried about their own financial situation would rather not pay higher taxes when given the direct choice.
The big Raleigh money of the realtors continues to buy the elections held on the transfer tax, but the realtors had far less success when they targeted state and local candidates who want to consider ways to raise revenue, including a transfer tax. Several realtors ran for the General Assembly with the strong financial support of their industry and lost, even in races they were predicted to win.
The General Assembly in 2009 will have almost the same partisan makeup it had in 2007-08. Democrats lost one seat in the Senate and now have a 30-20 advantage. There were a few changes in the House, but it remains in Democratic hands by the same 68-52 margin they enjoyed last session.
The right-wing pundits say the lack of Democratic gains in the Legislature in such a strong Democratic year was a setback and shows that voters aren’t sold on any progressive agenda. But they know better.
Not too many weeks ago, Republicans were talking about taking control of the Senate by winning back seats in Republican areas that Democrats won two years ago. But the Democrats held all those seats but one, another sign of the progressive tide, not an indication of Republican strength.
North Carolinians want a more progressive state, a fairer state, a more hopeful state and want solutions to problems in their lives, not appeals to our fears and to our past. That was the message that 4.2 million people delivered at the polls Tuesday. Let’s hope the people elected have the good sense to understand it.
Chris Fitzsimon is the director of NC Policy Watch.