One surprising non-development in the state House of Representatives is the lack of an organized challenge to embattled House Speaker Jim Black. A former Black aide has been found guilty of failing to register as a lobbyist, one of his appointees to the N.C. Lottery Commission has been found guilty on federal charges of wire fraud, a fellow optometrist and fundraiser has been charged with perjury and a former lottery company official has been convicted in state district court for his role in passage of the lottery law. Meanwhile, a former Black ally, ex-Rep. Mike Decker, has pleaded guilty in federal court of accepting $50,000 from an unknown Democrat to switch parties and keep Black in power.
You’d think House Democrats running for reelection might turn on their leader and find a new speaker – or an alternative candidate for speaker in 2007, assuming (1) that Democrats retain control of the House this fall and (2) that Black wins reelection and still intends to run for speaker again, as he has said he will.
But only a few House members have dared call for him to step down. Democratic Reps. Alice Graham Underhill of New Bern, Lorene Coates of Salisbury and Pricey Harrison of Greensboro are the only ones to have gone on record earlier this year suggesting a change. And while others such as Reps. Jim Crawford of Oxford, Joe Hackney of Chapel Hill and Hugh Holliman of Lexington would be interested in the job, so far a public campaign to replace Black hasn’t developed.
Why is obvious. Black has helped most of the Democrats either win office or stay in it. And the Democratic caucus is pretty happy about a successful legislative session this past summer. So no real challenge to Black has emerged.
Until now. As the Observer’s Mark Johnson reported in today’s paper, former Rep. Dan Blue of Raleigh – the state’s first African American speaker of the House – appears to have an inside track on a House vacancy caused by the death of the late Rep. Bernard Allen of Raleigh. He was recommended by the local Democratic executive committee Wednesday, and Gov. Mike Easley by law has to appoint him. And former Rep. Bob Hensley of Raleigh is doing what he can to push Blue as a candidate to replace Black as speaker.
Black and Blue have tangled before, Black prevailing both times. Blue was a candidate when Black first won the post in 1999, and for a time was promoted as an alternative in 2001. Blue has found ways to work with Republicans in the past. He galvanized Democratic support to win the speakership in 1991 after an unusual bipartisan coalition in 1989 threw out the late Speaker Liston Ramsey and elected Joe Mavretic speaker.
Who knows what chances Blue has now. He’s been out of office for a while now. But he has demonstrated one absolutely key test of leadership: he has recognized a leadership vacuum in the House and evidently has given his blessing to his allies to begin contending for it. Will that wake up the House Democratic caucus and produce other candidates as well?
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
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Dan Blue is a formidable political force in North Carolina politics, and one can only wish that he would cease trying to "move people out" and instead "start moving up" in the ranks of North Carolina elective poltiics.
Blue has a lot to recommend him as a progressive and viable candidate for statewide public office in North Carolina. He and would make an excellent addition to the Council of State in future years and he also would be an appealing and respected candidate for lieutenant governor of this state, following perhaps in the footsteps of Howard Lee, who came very close to winning that nomination in the Democratic primary back in 1980.
Dan Blue is well-versed in all the roll-up-your-shirtsleeves work involved in government at the state and local level in North Carolina, and he made a credible and laudable bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2002.
But one wonders if former N.C. House Speaker Blue is getting much in the way of good political advice these days because rather than lay the groundwork for a future campaign for statewide office, the only political news he is making is that he might want to step up as a challenger to current Speaker Jim Black of Mecklenburg County.
Speaker Black, unfairly maligned by the Inside-the-Raleigh-Beltway media in our Capital City, has had an impressive and successful multi-term tenure as the N.C. House's top leader, certainly achieving the kind of political acumen enjoyed by the late Liston Ramsey of Madison County as House speaker some years ago. But whether or not Black seeks another term as speaker, his supporters should mount a stout defense of his meritorius legislative record against the aspersions of others who might wish to discredit these accomplishments only because he attained an important state leadership post as a representative from Mecklenburg County rather than from the eastern part of the state where the Democratic Party promotes most of its up-and-coming leaders.
If Dan Blue wants to run again for speaker, then he should take his best shot. But he has already distinguished himself in that key post previously and he should study out the possibilities of bringing his knowledge and experience to bear on problems facing the people of North Carolina across the state in the future.
Many would agree that Dan Blue has what it takes to be governor of the Tar Heel State. Indeed, statewide office seems to beckon this lawyer-legislator rasied in the red-clay flatlands of Robeson County.
Why, who knows, maybe some loyal Jim Black supporters will get behind a Blue candidady for statewide elective office in 2008 or thereafter. But another run for the speakership? Blue should reflect further on the proposition.
Jack,
I liked your description of Black tangling with Blue. That would make a good headline on the front page.
David, Do you really think that Speaker Black has been unfairly maligned? I think the press has been accurately reporting facts on the misbehavior of Speaker Black. I think the writing is on the wall, Speaker Black needs to go. Someone, whether it be Dan Blue or someone else will become the next speaker of the House. I'm guessing a Republican will end up as the speaker. Black may have a meritorious service record but he has failed the public with his abuse of power. Speaker Black may end up in jail.
You mentioned Liston Ramsey, talk about an arrogant abuser of power! But yes he did have a good knowledge of the political process. He was a skunk, a smart skunk nevertheless. Thank goodness he is out of the picture.
Frank--
I appreciate your question and your comments in general. Perhaps I should "stipuate" a couple of points, as the lawyers say.
I am looking at statewide politics in a different sort of light. I see a situation, and in my view it has lasted for three decades or so, in which the private and public careers of many Charlotte and Mecklenburg County folks have been effectively "vetoed" by individuals or organizations and institutions here in the "Research Triangle Park" region, often acting at the apparent instigation of powerful political groups situated in the Northeast and Southwest.
Back in 1960 both North and South Carolina cast their electoral votes for the Democratic ticket of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte, we put up Kennedy-Johnson signs on a little road named for President Harry Truman, so we practically had a neighborhood "Truman-Kennedy-Johnson" Democratic club.
Of course, the tragic death of President Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963 cut short his promising presidency and necessitated the assumption of the Office of the President by Vice President Johnson who won election to a full term in the White House in his own right in 1964 albeit without the support of South Carolina.
Indeed, never again would both North and South Carolina both vote Democratic for President (unless I am incorrect in recalling that North Caroline went for Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976 while South Carolina went for Republican Gerald Ford).
And ever since the 1970s, the Democrats from New York and the Northeast and Texas and the Southwest have been saying, we'll call all the shots for the national campaigns and you Carolinians just grin it and bear it. Did they give 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who has ties to both Carolinas, a decent chance to work his own region of the country as Lyndon Johnson did for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960? No, they kept him tied up in Iowa and Ohio, so he couldn't spend enough time in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas to break the South's Democratic losing streak.
The national Democrats, after 40 years, are still jealous that North Carolina was the only Southeastern state to vote both for John Kennedy in 1960 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964, so Democratic politicos from New England to the Rio Grande have been subjecting North Carolina to a political tug-of-war ever since, some trying to keep N.C. Democrats loyal to New York and the Northeast, some trying to make North Carolina Dems the virtual political subjects of Texas and the Southwest like back in the 1830s before Texas independence was won. And Texas doesn't even go Democratic any more, yet politically influential musicians from Austin are trying to tell bands where they should and should not perform in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill!
To their credit, the Republicans of North Carolina have risen to the occasion by effectively challenging the right of the Democratic Party to split North Carolina in two. There is something to be said even today for Republican Gov. Jim Martin's slogan in favor of "one unified state."
Bill Clinton was able to win two terms in the White House in 1992 and 1996 without carrying either of the Carolinas, and no Democratic president since the Civil War ever managed to do that, so now they are just saying, forget the Carolinas. including the all-important urban bridge known as Charlotte, N.C.
So what has all of this got to do with Mecklenburg and N.C. state politics today in 2006? My view is this:
The Democratic Party nationally just gave up on being able to carry North Carolina after the 1980 election in which Republican Ronald Reagan was elected to the first of his two terms. Then they seized upon the liberal voting tendencies of the Research Triangle area, including the leading Democratic vote-margin counties of Durham and Orange, to make it a regional base for supporting their national political programs in New York and California while figuring that they could keep electing some Democrats to Congress from the Ralewigh-Durham section while writing the rest of the state off in presidential elections. Pretty soon, this haphazard approach to Democratic Party strategies was extended to senatorial politics as well since the national Democrats used their reliable Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill base to make life so miserable for Democrats from Piedmont and Western North Carolina that not even as good a candidate as Erskine Bowles was able to put together enough winning counties to be elected U.S. senator, but thank goodness the University of North Carolina tapped him to lead the UNC System.
Meanwhile, when Piedmont and Western North Carolina Democrats were given their hiking maps, South Carolina Democrats began facing even steeper hurdles in trying to return their state to the Democratic column in presidential elections because so much of the Columbia and Upstate regions of the Palmetto State are linked economically with the western two-thirds of North Carolina.
Now what does this have to do with Speaker Black? It has a lot to do with all of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County politics because the more strident national Democrats who are trying to force North Carolina Democrats to march in lockstep would just as soon see all the Democrats from the Piedmont and Western sections of the state take a hike--to Tennessee or Georgia or somewhere. They seem to look with disdain upon Gov. Kerr Scott's mid-20th Century assessment of Charlotte as "the engine the drives the economy of North Carolina."
These national obstructionists want North Carolina to behave politically like New York State and Massachusetts, with all the political power emanating from cities in the eastern part of the state just like up North. They want Charlotte to stick to banking, stock car racing and making sweet ice tea but stay the heck out of state (and therefore national) Democratic politics, and of course this is wrong on the very face of it.
So they have been knocking people out of the running from Charlotte for 30 years no matter if they were running for statewide political office, state government leadership positions, newspaper columnist or string player in the North Carolina Symphony. They just keep some political operative on your shoulder all the time.
These unprincipled political opportunists had me put off the campus of my own alma mater, Duke, for seven years without any trial on any charges in any court of law, and the only reason I took a chance on going to Duke instead of Carolina was that I mistakenly thought Duke University's scholastic and academic aspirations would be more securely protected from outside political pressures than in the supposedly more politically active campus environment at Chapel Hill. Forget that Ph.D. in history!
Finally, people should have a thorough look at the true rules and regulations for everything from serving in the N.C. legislature to establishing a state lottery to adding graduate and professional degrees to the curricula of the other branches of the UNC System.
And on the nitty-gritty of campaign finance in Raleigh, my view is this: some candidate for office can get $100,000 handed over to them at a nice dinner by a national committee of one of the major political parties, and that's just fine and dandy--no questions asked. But let someone try to raise a modest amount of retail, person-to-person campaign contributions so as to be able to compete in state and local political races, and somebody writes down the wrong P.O. Box number on a campaign check, then official Raleigh has a fit and says the candidate should resign from politics.
Has Jim Black of Matthews violated the relevant laws governing the conduct of service either in the General Assmebly itself or in the Office of Speaker in particular? That is the central question which ought to be faced. Meanwhile, if state legislators want a new Speaker, they can vote for one in fair and open balloting.
But this political pressure to restrict North Carolina's state political leadership, in the Democratic Party, to the Research Triangle region and Eastern N.C. ought to be resisted by conscientious citizens from both the political parties in the Piedmont and the West. North Carolina needs good ideas from all over, and the national honchos in the Democratic Party should quit trying to tell musicians where they can play, quit trying to declare to qualified educators where they can teach and cease with their endless political ambushes of Charlotte and Mecklenburg people who require a certain measure of cooperation in Raleigh in order to "get to the next level" in their private or public occupational careers, whether they want to be educators, diplomats or business people operating commercially in the two Carolinas.
Apologies for the short book, but Raleigh is getting in the way of the futures of many a Charlottean, and folks in the Queen City may not even realize it.
Interesting history lesson. I have lived here 18 years but never have heard in such detail the inner-workings of the machine (or, at least, your version).
Getting back the premise, could Blue unseat Black?
Your conspiracy theory against Black just doesn't hold water. He has been a rainmaker for the party--an absolute all-star. Why conspire to get rid of him?
Simple. At the least, his integrity has been completely compromised. Dwight Eisenhower has a great quote about leadership that goes something like this: "the common quality among great leaders is their unquestioned commitment to the highest integrity (OK, so I butchered it pretty good).
More likely, Black had an adulterous affair with a staffer, bribed Mike Decker, and committed other criminal acts both minor and major.
Admittedly, I am conservative so from a policy perspective I'd like to see change. However, our representative form of government is broken both nationally and locally when the only people that are heard are powerful lobbying groups.
The DeLays, Foleys, and Blacks of our politcal world are not up to any ethical standard that I am willing to accept.
Although I probably disagree with Blue politically, if he is the man many say he is, I'd take hime as speaker in a heartbeat of the morally-bankrupt Jim Black.
Who in the hell wants either one? They are cut from the same cloth and GIVE US AN HONEST ONE IF THERE IS SUCH A THING. TERM LIMITS IS SORELY NEEDEED.
Kramer--
Those are some harsh suppositions which I wish people would not engage in in these discussions. But you cited Eisenhower, so we should too.
President Eisenhower had a Republican Congress for his first two years (1953-55) then a Democratic Congress for his last six years (1955-1961). But as Senate Majoriy Leader, Sen. Lyndon Johnson of Texas was able to help pass a lot of important legislation while still maintaining a cooperative relationship with the Republican Administration.
Of course, in Raleigh we have had two Democratic governors in office since 1993, but state legislators of both parties still have needed to move forward with their own programs while keeping open the lines of communication with the Governor's Office.
The Charlotte area is known not only for being a great center of finance, utilities and communications but also, going back to colonial days, a proven "distribution center" for the Carolinas and the Southeast. In the N.C. House of Representatives, Speaker Black has done an admirable job of helping House members from each section of the state of North Carolina receive a fair apportionment of the "distribution of goods and services" which emanate from state government.
I believe this is the source of a considerable part of the political jealousy over his position--that all parts of North Carolina are getting their needs met in the N.C. House of Representatives and not just two or three favored regions of the state such as the Triangle, the Triad and the Charlotte area.
Not meaning to complain too vociferously about the national Democratic Party, one must question nonetheless whether its Washington political operatives are trying to help North Carolina as a whole or simply develop the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area as a "political farm club" for the District of Columbia.
Jim Black has achieved something rare that many excellent Charlotte candidates for public office have sought to achieve for Charlotte and North Carolina since the 1970s--from Ed O'Herron (Democratic candidate for governor, 1976) and Luther Hodges Jr. (Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate) to Sue Myrick (as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate) and Harvey Gantt (two-time Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate): bring the special sense of "distribution fairness" that is a Charlotte and Mecklenburg County business and political tradition to either our state or federal capitals in order to better serve the people of the entire state of North Carolina.
One should look at the total record of legislative action and accomplishment since 1990 and judge for oneself just how well Speaker Black has served the people of his home district and the people of North Carolina as a whole.
Meanwhile, officials in Raleigh and Washington who oversee the rules and regulations governing politics and election campaigns ought to decide in advance what the interpretation of those rules should be rather than altering or revising these interpretations of the rules after the fact. That to me is the overriding issue involved here.
David,
It seems to me that you are willing to forgive the sins of Jim Black since he is the rare Democrat from Mecklenburg County that has political power in Raleigh. But don't you think his power has been weakened by his actions and the publicity? But yes I agree that Mecklenburg County can't get any respect in Raleigh. All of the power seems to stay in the East end of the state. We are always referred to as the great state of Mecklenburg. I still feel that corruption needs to be rooted out from government whenever it appears. It appears that Governor Easley has enriched himself with his influence as well. The article in the Observer documents that very well.
One Democrat that you left off your list was DG Martin. Isn't he from Mecklenburg?
I can see the problem that the National Democrats are causing the NC Democrats. They are way too liberal for local tastes. It all started with McGovern.
I agree with Frank: I'm not willing to concede morally for as much pork as we can get here.
For everything good Black has done, he has done deplorable things like the illegal slush funds, the lottery debacle, etc.
You ignore the Eisenhower premise:
TO LEAD, YOU MUST HAVE INTEGRITY.
This is why when police chiefs get caught in internet porn scams, they are done. Period.
David, your knowledge of history is commendable. Your willingness to overlook Black's criminal/ethically lacking activity: notsomuch so.
Frank and Kramer--
Jim Black is not guilty of any criminality. He has been honest, truthful and forthright on all questions about his conduct of the Office of Speaker.
You can't just publicly characterize a person's conduct as criminal just because some people resent his success and accomplishments.
As for D.G. Martin, he should indeed be listed among Mecklenburg's most visionary and able public-minded citizens as should former Congressman and Gov. Jim Martin even though D.G.'s home county when he ran for U.S. Senate in 1998 was and still is Orange instead of Mecklenburg and even though Gov. Martin won election to two terms in Raleigh as a resident of Iredell County and not Mecklenburg.
Yes, those two fellows named Martin who each spent time at Davidson College have made great contributions to the improvement and upbuilding of the state of North Carolina. Of course, D.G. Martin is getting to be even better known by the people of this state through his excellent statewide UNC television network program "Book Notes," and Jim Martin has been quite involved in evaluating current educational challenges faced by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.
Let the issues being discussed with respect to the General Assembly be settled lawfully through due process rather than through presumptions and insinuations not yet proven in a court of law.
And thanks for your interest in better government in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and across North Carolina.
David,
I don't need a court of law to tell me Barry Bonds and MArk McGwire used anabolic steroids.
I don't need a court of law to tell me Pete Rose bet on baseball or Sadam Hussein killed 100's of thousands of people or that Ken Lay screwed the shareholders at Enron.
In each of these cases, as well as the one with Jim Black, it's as plain as the nose on your face.
By ignoring the facts, you condone Black's actions--criminal and unethical as they may be.
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