Thinking about what's at stake on the ballot today, i go immediately to the Wake Commissioners elections. It feels like a Republican year, but if the Democrats' story about an effective ground game is true at all, it will be true in Wake, where Dems have been working the phones and ringing doorbells for weeks trying to crank up their base. I was told a few weeks ago that polls showed the Republican candidates in Wake ahead, with only Steve Rao close among the Democrats. I suspect the gap has closed some since then, however.
The Wake Commissioners have three Democratic holdovers (Stan Norwalk, Betty Lou Ward, James West), so unless the Republicans win all four seats on the ballot today, the Democrats will continue to have a majority. Because voting is countywide for every "district" seat, however, a four-seat sweep by the GOP is just as possible this year as the three-seat Democratic sweep was in '06.
If it's a close election countywide, though, and I believe that it will be, I do think Rao has the strongest chance of breaking out and being the only Democratic winner. He's run an effective campaign, he should have some additional support from Indian-American voters in Western Wake who ordinarily trend Republican, and Tony Gurley, his GOP opponent, is saddled with baggage because of having stolen the chairman's position this year.
If it's really close and a second Democrat wins, it could be Commissioner LIndy Brown holding her seat against Tea Party Republican Phil Matthews. Brown may get some extra votes in Garner, her hometown, for protecting the regional library there and for the sheer fact of having shown up at every public meeting in her district for the last four years.
I rate Jack Nichols' chances against Commissioner Paul Coble as slightly worse than Brown's against Matthews, but I may be underestimating the effectiveness of Nichols' somewhat understated campaign to "restore sanity and civility." It struck me as less compelling than "stop the right-wing Republicans before they wreck the schools," but that's just me. Finally, Commissioner Joe Bryan, running as a newly saved convert to conservatism, seems safest of all against Democrat Don Mial.
Is a Democratic sweep impossible? Well, Barack Obama carried Wake County by almost 64,000 votes in '08 — 250,891 to 187,001. The Democratic votes are out there somewhere. Too bad Obama didn't campaign again in Raleigh.
Barring some kind of Gurley-style swindle, even a single Democratic win puts the chairman's gavel back in Democratic hands — probably Brown's if she wins, otherwise Ward's, I'd guess — and puts a potential roadblock in the way of the GOP-controlled Wake school board. That said, if Brown is the only Democrat who wins, she's pretty much said that the commissioners shouldn't mess with school board issues — i.e., that stuff's really controversial, and Brown isn't going to wade into it ... especially having shown that the route to re-election is to NOT wade in.
On the other hand, if Rao wins, he's been the most straightforward of the Democrats in criticizing the school board's direction while suggesting adeptly that there are middle-of-the-road solutions to be found. Put Rao on the Wake Commissioners with holdover Stan Norwalk, and you have a potent combination intellectually and politically. Add Nichols to that mix, with the fall of Paul Coble thrown in for vast symbolic impact, and it would be a strong Democratic board capable of reining in the school board and/or cutting a deal with dissident GOP school board member Debra Goldman.
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That's what I'm looking at first and foremost tonight. One other thought on the Wake elections: If the Republicans sweep the Commissioners races, I'd look for the next Wake referendum to be, not a school board issue, and certainly not a 1/2-cent sales tax increase for transit issue; instead, it will be a vote on whether to raise the sales tax 1/4-cent with the money going to the school system.
The 1/4-cent plan would be paired with some sort of scheme to have more charter schools — well-heeled ones for the suburbs, church-basement types for Southeast Raleigh.
In state elections, the general view seems to be that the N.C. Senate will go Republican and maybe the House as well. If either chamber is controlled by the GOP, the next state budget (2011-12) will have to be balanced without any significant tax increases. That almost certainly means cuts of $2-3 billion, much of which will come out of state aid to the K-12 public schools.
Once again, charter schools will be served up as the antidote by the GOP. They are cheaper, since charter school funding includes nothing for a building, only for operations. If the parents have money, they make up the difference. If not — church basements.
More later.