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Durham Newspaper Says Wake Co. “Goes To Hell”

By Elliott West, The Raleigh Telegram

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

DURHAM - A local newspaper serving the Triangle says that Wake County has “gone to hell” due to the actions of local voters in the 2009 elections.

In a front cover title with flames licking around a map of Wake County and in the lead opinion feature in the newspaper, the Independent Weekly newspaper of Durham says that the county has been gone to “hell” recently. Due to recent politics and in-fighting on the Wake County School Board and the Wake County Board of Commissioners, the newspaper says that Wake County is now in “the dumper.”

“The county is in crisis,” said author Bob Geary in the editorial. “The Wake school system, lauded as among the best in the nation and an engine for the county's growth, is in mortal danger from the newly elected school board majority and its right-wing backers.”

The newspaper squarely blames Wake County voters for creating the situation.

“Everything changed with the October 2009 elections, which swept the new majority into power based not on the unraveling of the consensus but rather on the votes of a tiny sliver—about 4.5 percent—of the county's electorate,” says the article.

Now that Republicans have taken control of the board, the newspaper advocates changing the election years from odd years to even ones to get more voters involved.

The Wake County School Board has been a lightning rod of controversy in the past year, as Republican backers during the 2009 election protested busing of children over long distances and year round schools, while Democratic backers have been opposed to reducing diversity at schools.

The resignation of Wake County Schools superintendent Del Burns was a sign of the rift between the new board’s goal of reducing busing and educators’ goals of increasing diversity.

With tensions escalating on both sides, it doesn’t seem that any compromise or resolution will present itself soon.

There have been personal attacks on both sides, as recently pointed out by Barry Saunders, a News & Observer columnist.

“It has already deteriorated to the point that Ron Margiotta, school board president, referred in an open meeting to people who disagree with the board as ‘animals out of their cages,’ and the Rev. William Barber was quoted as referring to the board's ‘Mafia’ tactics,” said Saunders.

“So, can a crack about somebody's mama be far behind?” he joked.

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