by Kirk Ross
What if they held an off-year election and people showed up?
That’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I covered my first municipal race in North Carolina sometime in the twilight of the last century.
In my home state, the local elections are partisan things with the kind of organization and efficiency that parties bring to the table. That serves democracy well in places where there is a more even divide, but where party affiliation is lopsided, it means simply that good people with good ideas can’t even get elected as dogcatcher.
Here, where local elections are non-partisan (at least on the surface), building your own organization and driving turnout are the keys to winning. Again last night, we saw another dismal turnout in Orange County. To the winners, it was probably a swell showing – a whopping 17.46 percent. But that means that 82 percent of the registered voters of Orange County stayed home. This despite all the forums, canvassing, yard signs and gentle prodding from scruffy pundits and newspaper columnists.
Next year, during the federal cycle, we’ll get close to reversing those numbers again. People like to vote when they perceive that something big is on the line, although I can’t think of why you wouldn’t want to have a say in the government closest to where you live, especially given the propensity of locals to kvetch about property taxes and giant buildings downtown.
The one thing you can say about the winners in our local races is, in most cases, they’re the candidates who got out and worked the hardest in the campaign season. There are few people who have the luxury of a long incumbency, and most who do got theirs by hitting the bricks in elections past.
This year, the mayors of Carrboro, Pittsboro, Hillsborough and Chapel Hill, plus longtime incumbent council member Jim Ward of Chapel Hill, won without having to scramble for votes as hard as they did in previous years. Although the results show some lopsided wins, it was certainly no cakewalk. Making time for all the forums and neighborhood meetings while maintaining some kind of reasonable home life is not easy, even if you’re a shoo-in.
We end up on the other side of this election with a few hints of how the governing bodies of each town are going to shift.
As the fifth-place winner in the school board race, newcomer James Barrett won the unexpired two-year term that opened up when board member Joe Green resigned. Barrett, who has a close affiliation with Orange County Justice United and a lot of energy and ideas, will be yet another board member determined to take on the achievement gap and other social-justice issues.
Lee Storrow’s win in Chapel Hill means that enthusiasm and organization still play a big role in local politics. Storrow, 22, was out of the gate early and strong. He also drew more students into local politics, a welcome addition after years of relative disinterest on campus.
Matt Czajkowski’s fourth-place showing and the failure of other candidates who touted themselves as “pro-business†to crack 10 percent signals that the trend toward a more conservative town government in Chapel Hill may not be so trendy. It also means that the town has one of the youngest boards in a while. After years of being hamstrung by tight budgets and squabbles with the also-cash-strapped county, the council may get a lot more interesting.
Carrboro returned incumbents to the board but also added Michelle Johnson, who lives right in the middle of the action zone downtown. She got into local politics over the proposed CVS move and will most certainly play a big role in how that project and others downtown take shape.
Next week, I’ll take a closer look at the passage of the quarter-cent sales tax and what it means for the future of economic development in the county.
Thanks for voting, and to each and every candidate, winners and losers, thanks for the enormous time and effort and all those nights and weekends away from friends and family you had to dedicate to your run. Now get some sleep.