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Opinion: Looking At The NC Runoff Election Results

By D.G. Martin, The Raleigh Telegram

Thursday, July 8, 2010

RALEIGH - Opinion columnist D.G. Martin talks about the Marshall-Cunningham Senate runoff, the success of conservative African-American candidates, and Carolina politics.

Looking At The Runoff Election Results

By D.G. Martin

Did anybody care about the runoff elections?

It seems like a crazy question to ask during the week of the Fourth of July celebrations of independence, freedom, and the right to participate in our own governance.

Crazy or not, it is a fair question to ask the 95 percent of North Carolina registered voters who passed by that hard-earned right to participate in the political process.

For the rest of us, let’s begin a conversation about some of the lessons and questions from last week’s results.

First of all, a self-congratulating comment about the results in the U.S. Senate primary. When Cal Cunningham called for a run-off after the first primary, most political commentators said the contest would be detrimental to the eventual Democratic candidate, who would lose weeks of organizing and fund-raising time for the November battle against Senator Richard Burr.

I took the other side: “To have any chance of winning in November, the Democrats need a jump-start of enthusiasm for their nominee. She or he will stand a better chance of getting that kind of spirit when the nominee is a clear winner over another strong candidate.”

Hardly anybody agreed.

Surely, they had second thoughts when they read the following report in the Raleigh News and Observer right after the run-off, “[According to a new Rasmussen poll]…. Marshall has received a bounce from her Democratic primary victory Tuesday and now trails Burr by a statistically insignificant margin of 44-43 percent, Rasmussen found... In a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, Burr held a 50-36 percent lead over Marshall.”

Elaine Marshall still faces a tough battle this fall as she sails into a Republican wind against a well-funded incumbent. But the primary run-off win has given her momentum and credibility she did not have after the first primary. When she makes those mandatory fund-raising calls this summer, she can talk like a winner, not like a mere beggar.

Secondly, there is the question raised by the victory of Bill Randall over Bernie Reeves in the Republican primary for the 13th congressional district, running between Raleigh and Greensboro, currently held by Democrat Brad Miller. Randall, a Tea Party conservative, defeated Bernie Reeves, who claimed support from the old Jesse Helms network. This result might not be noteworthy, given the success of Tea Party candidates over old line Republicans in primary races across the county, but for one fact: Randall is African American, not who you think of as the model of a North Carolina ultra-conservative Republican.

It would be easy to mark Randall’s primary victory as an aberration, were it not for the victory of another African American conservative in a Republican congressional primary runoff in South Carolina.

In the solidly Republican, 80 percent white, 1st congressional district, Tea Party-backed candidate Ted Scott crushed Paul Thurmond, son of Strom. Unlike Randall, who has an uphill battle against Miller, Scott is a clear favorite to become the first African American Republican congressional representative from the old Confederacy since North Carolina’s George Henry White left office in 1901.

An African American Republican representing a white majority district in the cradle of the Confederacy? Is something historic happening under our noses? Is there something to celebrate here?

A “bittersweet celebration” is the way Al Sharpton described it to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, admitting that “You'd have to say there has been some kind of shift in racial attitudes in that area,” On the other hand, voters merely chose “a black reactionary over a white reactionary.”

What to make of all this?

I am stuck with Sharpton’s analysis until somebody wiser--maybe you--explains to me what Randall’s and Scott’s victories show us about today’s changing politics and racial attitudes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In addition to being a newspaper columnist for dozens of newspapers across North Carolina, D.G. Martin is the host of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch program and the author of Interstate Eateries, available at interstateeateries.com.

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