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DEMOCRATS SWEEP WAKE COMMISSION RACE - Democrats in Wake County celebrated as (left to right) Jessica Holmes, Matt Calabria, John Burns and (not pictured) Sig Hutchinson swept four Republican incumbents off the Wake County Commission Board. Democrats will now occupy all seven seats, and promise better progress on growth management, public transportation, and school construction [photo courtesy of Sarah Lien Finnerty]
[RALEIGH ONLY]
DEMOCRATS SWEEP WAKE
COUNTY COMMISSION
BOARD
By Cash Michaels
Editor
In the
midst of key Republican midterm election victories statewide and nationally
Tuesday might, four Democratic candidates for the Wake County Commission Board
defied the GOP trend, sweeping four GOP
incumbents, and giving the board a pure Democratic Burns, Matt Calabria and Sig Hutchinson gave
Democrats something to smile about on an otherwise bleak evening, ousting GOP
incumbents Rich Gianni, Joe Bryan, Paul Coble and Wake Board Chairman Phil Matthews.
The
Democratic four used a unique strategy to win – they ran as a team on the
issues of better managing growth, investing in public transportation, and
developing a better, more congenial relationship with the Democratic-led Wake
Board of Education.
The current
GOP-led board fought and threatened the school board relentlessly, going to the
Legislature to change the school board elections for 2015, and seeking to
takeover school system properties since the county commission dictates the
system’s budget.
It is
expected now that discussions between the two Democratic boards about school
construction and improving teachers’ salaries will go more smoothly.
The
individual contests were surprisingly not even close.
In District
3, Holmes defeated Gianni 56 to 44 percent; Hutchinson over Bryan 55 to 45
percent to take District 1; District 7 saw attorney John Burns oust former
Raleigh Mayor Paul Coble; and Matt Calabria was victorious over Board Chairman
Phil Matthews in District 2, 56 to 44 percent.
Published
reports note that the Democratic candidates raised, according to the most
recent campaign report, approximately $750,000, more than their GOP opponents.
The
“Democratic Four” will serve for the next four years, meaning that Republicans
won’t be able to vie to take the Wake County Commission back until 2018.
The Wake
Republican Party had tried to derail the Democratic victory rpior to election
night, charging that the four would “…rubber stamp Rev. Barber’s Moral Monday
demands all over our county.”
Rev.
Barber, in response, called the Wake GOP charges “race-baiting….(and) and
“scare tactics.”
In other
Wake County election results, Republican incumbent Wake County Sheriff Donnie
Harrison defeated Democratic challenger Willie Rowe, a former sheriff’s
department investigator, 59 to 41 percent.
Democrat
Lorrin Freeman defeated Republican John Bryant, 56 to 44 percent, to become the
new Wake District Attorney.
Southeast
Raleigh incumbents did well at the polls, as expected. State Sen. Dan Blue,
Rep. Rosa Gill and Rep. Yvonne Holley all won their seats.
Republicans
Chris Malone, Gary Pendleton, Marilyn Avila, Nelson Dollar and Paul Stam won
their respective contests for the state House, while Democrats Gale Adcock,
Darren Jackson, Duane Hall, and Grier Martin were all victorious.
On the
state Senate side, where Democrats had hoped to gain at least four seats to
cripple the Republican 33 seat super majority, that effort failed, even though
Democratic incumbents Josh Stein and Dan Blue won
re-election. Republican incumbent senators Chad Barefoot and Tamara Barringer
won, while GOP candidate John Alexander defeated former Raleigh Mayor Tom
Bradshaw, though by only just 700 votes, enough to probably prompt a recount if
requested.
The race
for Wake clerk of court is also tight, as approximately 2000 votes separate
Republican Jennifer Knox and Sam Bridges, both garnering 50 percent. Knox, with
all precincts reporting, has that edge.
District
Court judges Keith Gregory and Vince Rozier, Jr. ran unopposed, while Craig
Croom defeated incumbent District 10 Judge Charles Gilliam.
The Raleigh parks and rec facilities bonds overwhelmingly
passed, and Jennifer Austin Wadsworth and Matt Overby both won for Wake soil
and water conservation district supervisor.
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STATE NEWS ELECTION
ROUNDUP 11-5-14
Congressional races
If North Carolina Democrats were
seeking to gain seats in Congress during Tuesday’s midterm elections, they were
sadly mistaken. They only won three of thirteen Congressional seats.
While
incumbent Democratic Congressman G. K. Butterfield easily won re-election in the
First Congressional District, former “American Idol” entertainer Clay Aiken
failed to unseat Republican Rep. Renee’ Ellmers in District 2. District 3
Republican Congressman Walter Jones had no problem keeping his seats, and nor
did Democratic incumbent David Price in District 4. Tea Party favorite Virginia
Foxx was again re-elected in District 5, while fellow Republican Mark Walker
easily took the first time victory in District 6.
In the
Congressional District 7 race, Republican David Rouzer trounced New Hanover
County Commissioner Jonathan Barfield to win the seat formerly long held by
Democrat Mike McIntyre. Republican Richard Hudson was victorious in District 8,
and with no competition beyond a write-in candidate, Republican Robert
Pittenger romped to a 94 percent victory.
The
Congressional 10 District race saw another Tea Party favorite, Patrick McHenry,
slid to easy victory, as did GOP’er Mark Meadow in District 11.
Perhaps the
most impressive victory, however, was in the Congressional District 7 race
between veteran state House Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat, and black Republican
talk show host Vince Coakley. Adams crushed Coakley 75 to 25 percent to win the
congressional seat formerly held by Rep. Mel Watt. By doing so, Adams
immediately assumes the unexpired term of Watt, and also won a full term in
office.
And
finally, in the 13th District, former US Attorney George Holding, a
Republican, won re-election to a second term.
State Judicial races
In the race for NC Supreme Court
associate justice, incumbent Cheri Beasley holds slim 3,000 vote lead over
attorney Mike Robinson as both are tied at 50 percent each. At press time, no
winner had been called because of the close numbers.
In other
nonpartisan state Supreme Court races, Chief Justice Mark Martin easily held
off a challenge by Judge Ola Lewis, 73 – 27 percent, while incumbent Justice
Robin Hudson won re-election, and Sam Ervin defeated Robert Hunter for a state
Supreme Court seat.
On the
state Appellate Court side, Judge Mark Davis, who, as Gov. Beverly Perdue’s
General Counsel, helped to bring about pardons of innocence for the Wilmington
Ten, easily won his race, as did Judge Donna Stroud, who ran unopposed. Lucy
Inman defeated Bill Southern in a close race for the third appellate court seat.
Of the 19
candidates running for the seat of retired Appeals Court Judge Martin, former
Appellate Court Judge John M. Tyson led the pack with 24 percent.
Legislative races
Because of the 2011
redistricting by the Republican-led state Legislature, no one was expecting
that Democrats would, or even could, take back the NC General Assembly during
the midterm elections. There was hope, however, that Democrats could at least
win four seats in the state Senate, thus knocking the GOP advantage there down
from 33 to 29 seats, and eliminating the Republican super-majority there, which
allow them to override the governor’s veto.
That didn’t
happen, and in fact, the Republicans actually added a seat, reinforcing their
super-majority.
In New
Hanover County, for instance, Republican Michael Lee defeated Democrat
Elizabeth Redenbaugh 56 to 44 percent in the state Senate 9 race to replace
Republican Thom Goolsby. In District 8, Republican Bill Rabon trounced Democrat
Ernie Ward, 57 to 43 percent.
In the
state House, Democrats picked up a handful of seats, but not nearly enough to
overcome House Republicans 30-seat dominance.
So the
Republican-led NC General Assembly remains veto proof.
New Hanover County
races
With a 41 percent overall voter turnout, for the New Hanover Board of
Commissioners, Republican Skip Watkins and Democrat Rob Zapple were both
elected. Zapple joins Jonathan Barfield as the only two Democrats on the board.
Incumbent
New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon won re-election, and in the race for four
open seats on the New Hanover County School Board, four Republicans –
incumbents Janice Cavenaugh, Don Hayes, Ed Higgins, and newcomer Bruce Shell –
all won, leaving their three Democratic opponents behind.
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TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS 11-5-14
MOST DURHAM TRAFFIC STOPS TARGETED BLACKS, POLICE REPORT SAYS
In a startling report from the Durham Police Dept., approximately 84 percent of traffic stops by the Durham P.D. for the first half of this year were black motorists. 762 out of 910 people pulled over by traffic officers between Jan. 1, 2014 through June 30th, 2014 were African-American because, according to Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez, because most of the stops were in a small, predominantly black portion of town that his department considers “high-crime.” Lopez said the high number of black traffic stops were not the result of racial profiling. In recent months, various groups have accused the DPD of targeting black drivers because of race. The City Council has now required routine reports from the police department.
ANOTHER FALSE EBOLA ALARM FOR NORTH CAROLINA
A person who came into the United States from Liberia last weekend through Newark Airport, took a bus to Durham, and then developed a fever while staying in Person County with family members Sunday, has tested negative for Ebola, North Carolina Dept. of Health and Human Services officials said Monday. That person, whose identity was protected, had been taken to Duke Medical Center in Durham for examination and tests. Those tests proved negative for Ebola, and the patient was declared noncontagious. This was at least the third false alarm for Ebola in North Carolina over the past two weeks.
UNC STUDENTS EXPRESS CONCERN ABOUT WAINSTEIN REPORT
With a possible punishment from the NCAA still looming, UNC – Chapel Hill students gathered last week on campus to share their concerns about the explosive Wainstein report, and how it has put the academic reputation of the state’s flagship school under a dark cloud. The report, issued two weeks, detailed how 3100 UNC students, mostly athletes over an 18-year period, were able to pass “paper” classes in the African and Afro-American Studies Dept. because their grades were fraudulently awarded without their having to do any work. Students said tighter controls and supervision need to be in place to ensure that that doesn’t happen again.
SEN. HAGAN LOSES IN SQUEEKER - Democratic incumbent Senator Kay Hagan, after leading in the polls for several weeks, finally lost to Republican challenger Thom Tillis 49 - 47 percent Tuesday in what many observers say was the most expensive US Senate race in history with over $110 million spent. Like other Democratic senatorial candidates. hagan tried to distance herself from Pres. Obama. [Cash Michaels photo]
HAGAN DEFEATED, GOP
IN CONTROL OF US
SENATE
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
With the
most expensive US Senate race in history now over, NC Democrats are licking
their wounds, wondering what more they could have done to get their statewide
standardbearer, Sen. Kay Hagan, over the finish line to re-election victory.
The first
term Democratic incumbent lost her re-election bid in a squeaker Tuesday
evening to Republican challenger Thom Tillis, the state House speaker, 49-47
percent. Libertarian Sean Haugh and several write-in candidates made up the
four percent balance.
Political
observers estimated that the Hagan – Tillis race cost upwards of $110 million,
with a plethora of campaign television attack ads between the two candidates,
many of them paid for by outside groups whose funding is legally untraceable.
Sen. Hagan,
who had refused to definitely reach out to the Democratic African-American base
during the three debates she had with Speaker Tillis, apparently peaked too
soon as she held a consistent 3-4 point lead over the Republican for several
weeks going into election night.
GOP
observers, however, credited the Tillis
get-out-the-vote machine with building momentum going into the homestretch. As
a result, while a record 2.7 million voters took part in the NC 2014 midterm
elections – 1.1 million of them early voters of which African-Americans made up
25 percent, turnout in several key areas of the state was lackluster enough to
cost Hagan the 3,500 votes she needed for victory.
The Hagan
loss is also a blow to the Obama administration, putting a definite nail in the
coffin of any chance that the president could retain a Democratic majority in
the US Senate. With the Republicans nationally claiming the Senate majority for
the first time since 2007, and the Republican –led US House only strengthened
by Tuesday’s midterm results, most observers see the president’s agenda going
nowhere during the last two years of his presidency, unless he jumps when the
GOP-dominated Congress says jump.
Observers
are calling it “Red America” now, thanks Republicans now having 52 of the US
Senate’s 100 seats in their column.
Georgia, Alaska, South Carolina, and other Republican-leaning states
contributed to the GOP victory, as Republican gained at least seven new seats.
In addition, GOP victories in
governors’ races nationally in normally Democrat-leaning states like Maryland,
Illinois, and Massachusetts added to the Republican stronghold of state
governments that could be counted to champion conservative policies.
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CASH IN THE
APPLE 11-7-14
By Cash Michaels
DEMOCRATS BLUNDER – This is being written
actually before the Tuesday, Nov. 4th elections, so I have no idea
what the results will be. That being said, if the Democrats lost big, as was
being widely predicted, there’s a very bad reason for it.
They haven’t got the guts to fight
for the freedom they profess to cherish.
Put a pin in it here for just a
moment, and let’s take a look at the Republicans.
No, I don’t like their “conquer the
world” policies either, and indeed, most Americans don’t. And yet, citizens
favor the GOP over the Democrats because at least the Republicans have the
strength of purpose for their crazy convictions.
They have guts; they’re willing to
go full throttle no matter how Lord-have-mercy-wrong they are.
They are willing to fight for what
they believe. As far as they’re concerned, they “own” America. This is “their”
country (delusional, aren’t they?), and they do what’s necessary to keep it.
The GOP are willing to FIGHT, and
fight HARD, for what they believe in.
And that’s the reason why they’re
able to run the table in almost every election in recent years. The exception,
of course, was 2008, when folks were so sick and tired after eight years of
George “Dubya” Bush, that voting for Barack Obama for president was a true
breath of fresh air.
The presidential election of 2012
was basically handed to Pres. Obama by
Republican Mitt Romney because Romney kept putting his rich foot in his mouth
(remember the “…47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes…” remark?).
The Republicans, and specifically
the Tea Party, took over Congress, and most of the governorships and state
legislatures in 2010 and 2012, including here in North Carolina, and the world
has been upside down every since.
And I’m not writing this as a
partisan. If the Democrats had been acting this way recently I would be calling
them out too. As a democracy, we’re supposed to have a vibrant two-party
system, where the best ideas are placed on the table for the electorate to
evaluate, and the people decide. And the
two respective parties are supposed to do what they did in the old days, namely
debate the issues, come to a compromise, and then move forward knowing that
they did the best for their constituents, and ultimately the nation.
That’s really what the American
people want, which is why, for a while, it seemed like a good idea to vote for
a divided government – a way to keep both the president and the Congress, or
the governor and the state legislature, in check if opposing parties had some
modicum of control.
Well Lord knows that idea has now
gone to hell in a handbasket. Divided government today means one side trying
desperately to destroy the other, a la’ the Tea Party-led Congress doing
everything it could to destroy the first African-American president of the
United States for the past four years.
And yet, as disgusting as it was,
and still is, look at the focus and dedication of these folks, albeit twisted.
They shutdown the federal government twice, they voted over 50 times to repeal
Obamacare, they refused to work with the president on any meaningful
legislation to improve the economy, and they have fought him to the point of
threatening to both sue and impeach him from office, which they vow to do if
the GOP takes over the Senate.
Again, these people are bat-boat
crazy. But you have to admire their commitment to FIGHT hard for what they
believe in.
Well, what are Democrats willing to
fight hard for? Name one thing, please.
As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow astutely
pointed out last week, The economy is on a definite upswing; gas prices are
$3.00 per gallon or way below for the first time in four years; the stock
market overall is making money; we’ve had 56 straight months of uninterrupted
job growth; the Affordable Care Act has signed up over 8 million people for
better access to affordable health care; unemployment nationally is below 6
percent…this is the kind of news any candidate whose party is currently in the
White House would kill to campaign on.
Instead, Democrats are actually
running away from that great news, simply because of the name attached to all
of it….President Obama. His poll numbers are reportedly in the low 30’s, making
him poison, these Democrats in swing states say, to their candidacies. They run
from him, they criticize him,…and some are too scared to even admit that in
2008 and 2012, they actually voted for him.
The Republicans have done an
absolutely superb job of making Democrats deftly afraid of their own leaders,
and their own shadows. Dems are afraid to spread the good news, so instead,
they ran around bragging about how “conservative” they are.
Democrats, so afraid to run on the
truth, that they allowed Republicans to define the rules of engagement. Keep in
mind, now that it was the GOP that virtually brought the nation to its knees by
closing the government twice, doing nothing about the economy, and trying to
stop affordable health care from going forward. There is a lot there that the
Democrats could have made the Republicans pay for during this election. And if
the Dems were smart, they could have, and should have, tied any GOP candidate
to the very unpopular Congress, whose poll numbers are in the teens…even lower
than the president’s.
Democrats should have made
Republican candidates ashamed of wanting to even be associated with the GOP in
Congress. Instead, they spent more time trying to run away from Pres. Obama.
So call this the “run scared”
midterm election of 2012, the election where Democrats had all of the moral
fortitude of wet toilet paper. Instead of fighting on their successes, they ran
like rabbits. The party needs backbone and commitment to principles. It needs
to face down its adversaries and make them pay for the harm they’ve done to the
nation, and to the divisions they’ve caused.
The Dems desperately need to grow a
pair, because if they’re not willing to do even half of what the Republicans
have done to win control of this nation, then Dems might as well hang it up.
No one wants to be associated with
cowardice!
Make
sure you tune in every Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. for my talk radio show,
''Make It Happen'' on Power 750 WAUG-AM, or online
at www.waug-network.com. And read more about my thoughts and opinions
exclusively at my blog, ‘The Cash Roc” (http://thecashroc.blogspot.com/2011/01/cash-roc-begins.html).
Cash in the Apple - honored as the
Best Column Writing of 2006 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
Columnist Cash Michaels was also honored by the NNPA for Best Feature Story
Journalist of 2009, and was the recipient of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP’s
President’s Award for Media Excellence in Sept. 2011.
Until
next week, keep a smile on your face, GOD in your heart, and The Carolinian in
your life. Bye, bye.
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