Put this one down as the dumbest idea in politics since the Democratic Lieberman fiasco: The North Carolina Republican executive committee will consider whether to ban independent voters from participating in the Republican primary next year.

Yes, this is the same Republican party that was tossed so far out of power in the last two elections that it now is unable to pass the time of day.

Never mind that recent polls show independents are flocking to the GOP and that the only route back to leadership for Republicans is through the help of independent voters.

The NC GOP’s theory is that independents who vote in the Republican primary might select moderate candidates. The proposal to limit participation is opposed by GOP legislators, the ones who have to get elected.

Duh.

Remember when liberal Democrats in Connecticut tossed out Sen. Joe Lieberman in the primary, only to see Lieberman come back and win as an independent and make a new career of sticking pins in the Democratic backside?

In the 21st century, the politics of exclusion are a sure way to the politics of extinction, as it should be. A political party that cannot do the basic math to add up the votes does not deserve to get the votes. So here is a math lesson for both parties: more votes are better than fewer votes. Posted by Leroy Towns

As North Carolina Democrats continue trying to find a candidate to take on Republican Incumbent Sen. Richard Burr next year, there is one thing certain about the upcoming race: 2010 is not 2008, at least yet.

That statement simply means this: Burr is not Dole, it is not a presidential year, and massive dollar support of a Democratic challenger by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is far from certain at this early date.

Veteran political reporter Rob Christensen reports in the N&O that state and national party officials are working hard to get N.C. Rep. Bob Etheridge to enter the race against Burr. As always, the carrot being held in front of the potential Senate candidate is money–lots of it–supplied by the DSCC, which in 2008 spent more than $11 million in behalf of Sen. Kay Hagan in her successful race against Sen. Elizabeth Dole. It is a tactic used by both national parties to recruit Senate and House candidates. Their pitch is “don’t worry about money, we’ll get you plenty.”

Promises, promises

Promises are one thing, but the money showing up in campaign coffers is yet another.  The dust of political history is littered with disappointed candidates who got nothing or less than they were promised by their national parties.

The reality is that candidates usually only get the promised money if, sometime in the late summer or early fall of 2010, it is determined a) the other candidate is really vulnerable and b) the challenger is in a strong position to win. In other words, national parties throw money at an incumbent only if they are confident their challenger has a better than even chance of winning. That will take a good amount of polling and other research next year.

In spite of popular perception, campaign money available to national parties always is in short supply and there is considerable analysis involved in deciding how to spend it to the best advantage.

North Carolina is an expensive state in which to wage a U.S. Senate campaign. As was reported here exclusively last November, the Dole-Hagan race was the most expensive media race in the nation in 2008. The candidates and their supporting groups spent $34.2 million on television advertising. The biggest spender on TV by far was the DSCC, which spent $11 million for ads. The DSCC, in fact, was a major factor in the race, given the fact Hagan herself waged a fairly lackluster effort.

Who will get cash?

An added factor is that of the 37 U.S. Senate seats up for grabs next year, Democrats will be defending 19 of them. Politico recently looked ahead to the 2010 Senate elections and came up with a list of 10 seats most likely to flip parties. North Carolina was not on the list, even though Burr’s poll numbers at this point are less than stellar, as Christensen reports. Burr consistently polls favorably against whatever Democrat is matched with him, however.

But neither yesterday’s poll numbers nor today’s promises count for much in a race that is a year away. The traditional advice not to count on a contribution until the check clears still is good advice. Posted by Leroy Towns

One of the lessons of efforts to eliminate private money in political campaigns is the fact money always finds a way into the system. The usual illustration is that money in politics, as money in the rest of life, is like water headed downhill: place a dam here and the water finds another route.

That basic rule of human behavior was illustrated clearly in the recent Chapel Hill council election, the first to give tax money to candidates. Mark Kleinschmidt was one of two candidates who accepted public financing and his race for mayor against Matt Czajkowski, who did not, was extremely close.

A big loophole

Thus, in the closing days of the campaign it is no surprise that Klenischmidt supporters came to his rescue with money outside the public finance system. It came in the form of a mailing against Czajkowski signed by a mysterious and unregistered group named “CHC PAC.” Former Councilman Cam Hill fessed up after the election. Apparently, the law allows such anonymous and privately financed efforts in the closing days of a publicly financed campaign as long as the spender registers within 10 days–after the vote.

Voters had no way of knowing who was spending the money. A candidate accepting public financing got the benefit of using tax funds plus secret outside support as well. You can read more about it here and here.

And candidates can always count on someone to assist. For example, part of the success of Republicans nationally in the 1980s and 1990s was due to the help they received outside the campaign finance system from socially conservative churches. Politics in the pulpit might raise questions, but fliers on windshields when the flock heads home highlighting candidates approved by the church are difficult to prohibit–and highly effective. Trouble is, that effort goes unreported for the most part.

Free speech is protected

While local law obviously needs to be changed to force timely disclosure of such last-minute efforts, it would be most difficult to outlaw such spending. The U.S. Supreme Court has held repeatedly that using money to exercise free speech in political campaigns is protected by the First Amendment. Free speech, especially political speech, is one of our most basic human rights.

If private money in campaigns cannot be halted, how can it be regulated to ensure public confidence in the system?

Anonymous and secret spending in political campaigns may be the most corrupting behavior of all. But it can be controlled. The current system of campaign finance is based on a very simple concept: Put reasonable limits on contributions, then fully disclose dollars raised and dollars spent. Finally, trust voters to make the decision. Disclosure must be extensive and enforcement must be rigorous, however.

Political candidates are, after all, the company they keep. And it is far easier to count up a candidate’s friends when contributions are allowed and disclosed than when contributions are from tax money.

Chapel Hill voters are not entirely sold on public finance of local elections. A Public Policy Polling survey just before the election showed just 51% in favor of candidates having the public finance option, 31% opposed and 17% unsure. Polling on campaign finance is difficult and highly influenced by how questions are asked and whether there is an attempt in the poll to objectively educate respondents, who for the most part do not fully understand the issue.

Are voters concerned?

Campaign finance is almost never at the top of voter concerns. The issue has much more traction with insiders and the media than it has with voters. Chapel Hill Polling before the election put the council’s approval rating at just 40%, with 49% disapproving and 11% undecided. It is a sure bet that the issue of public finance had little to do with those numbers.

Nor did campaign finance have anything to do with another number: 16.84%. That figure is voter turnout in the recent election. Of 70,143 voters, only 11,814 bothered to cast a vote.

Now there’s a real problem in search of solution. Posted by Leroy Towns

Government and political PR people have many tricks that help bend political reporters to their spin. One of the easiest to use is playing into media bias.

Case in point: When the Chapel Hill city council took tax funds to finance local elections, the last thing it wanted was continual reminders in the media that it was using, well, tax money to pay for elections. So the council came up with “voter owned elections” to describe the scheme.  Like fat bass, local media took the bait, even though reporters have at least three choices: voter owned elections, a term that favors the pro-public finance crowd, taxpayer funded elections, a term that favors opponents of it, or a relatively neutral term like publicly financed elections.

A big part of the reason, of course, is that media people generally favor public financing of elections. Plus, they generally take what the spin doctors hand them.

Some media, like the Daily Tar Heel, went even further, blindly pronouncing the Chapel Hill program a “success.” No evidence is produced for that statement save for the fact the only two people taking tax money in the recent election were both elected.

In fact, tax-financed candidate for mayor Mark Kleinschmidt won only after his supporters mailed an anonymous last-minute negative attack on the other candidate, Matt Czajkowski.

The mailing was financed with private contributions, of course, well outside the public finance system.

And even more interesting, the Chapel Hill Watch blog reports that the attack mailing may be perfectly legal even under the local pubic finance system. After the election, Kleinschmidt supporter Cam Hill fussed up. Apparently, all he needed to do was report the effort, after the fact, so long as he registered before Nov. 4.

When will reporters notice that the warm and fuzzy voter owned election concept is starting to feel, well, a whole lot less warm and fuzzy?

Truth is, reporters and political operatives love to play this game. But the real question is, does the game advance independent journalism or the civic good? Posted by Leroy Towns

Note: this is a corrected version of the original post. See comments.

Up early on Wednesday and want to see the results of yesterday’s local elections? Go directly to the Carrboro Citizen or Indyweek.com. Those two publications had the most complete election coverage, including stats on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education. The Daily Tar Heel had full coverage, including video, of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro mayor contests, along with aldermen and council races.

The Chapel Hill News badly trailed other local media. Readers on the News web site had to click through several pages to find stories on the mayor’s races in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Posted by Leroy Towns

A voter who wants information on local elections–especially the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board–should go directly to the outstanding election guide at Indyweek.com. The guide contains both news articles and the results of questionnaires answered by the candidates. The information is easy to find and use.

While both the Chapel Hill News and the Carrboro Citizen have given considerable ink to the local elections, it is difficult to find basic information about the candidates. Searches turn up many stories with little way of comparing candidates via bios and views on current issues. As expected, most stories are about the contested Chapel Hill council elections.

The Daily Tar Heel has an easy-to-use voters guide, but it lacks information on the school board elections.

The Orange County Board of Elections web site has a complete list of candidate filings, of course, but links to the candidates are for email addresses, not candidate web sites.

What about local blogs? OrangePolitics.org has the usual comment from a handful of local activists. A new blog, Chapel Hill Watch, takes a more moderate approach and contains some interesting discussion about local politics and local news media. Neither blog is much help in comparing candidates.

All indications are the local elections next week will set a new record for low voter turnout. That is the fault of voters, who have the responsibility of getting informed about each candidate and then getting themselves to the polls. Indy did a professional job of helping voters find needed information on the candidates. Posted by Leroy Towns

Common Cause believes money is ruining democracy, but the real threat to the republic is uninformed and uninvolved voters.

In one of the most important and contentious school board elections in recent memory, only 11.6 % of Wake County voters went to the polls in the four most contested school board districts this week. Even as that pathetic spectacle was unfolding, Common Cause CEO Bob Edger was explaining to several North Carolina audiences that democracy is not well: “I think money is the corrosive factor that has polluted our system over time.”

Of course, Common Cause uses that line to further its special interest goal of public finance of campaigns at all levels.

But adoption of the Common Cause plan most certainly would make the problem of voter involvement worse, if that is possible. The reason? Giving money to campaigns is the most widespread act of citizen involvement in campaigns behind actual voting. Public financing would curtail even that small personal involvement and investment in democracy.

Money is not the reason 90% of Wake County voters let 10% of their neighbors make school board decisions. More likely, it was a lack of civic responsibility caused in part by lack of information. Voters were uninformed despite the fact the N&O ran numerous stories about the election. But old-style reporting of election stories in isolation, coupled with fewer and fewer voters reading newspapers, doesn’t work to inform citizens.

Until someone comes up with a new model to inform citizens, that makes the money spent by candidates on campaign messages even more important. Posted by Leroy Towns

In the weeks before the 2008 NC election for governor last fall, the UNC community (maybe communities on other campuses as well) pushed the panic button. Democrat Beverly Perdue had inspired little passion and polls gave Republican Pat McCrory a chance to win. 

The Carolina rumor mill went into high gear. Across campus and at nearly every gathering the word was frightening: if McCrory wins, there will be an immediate 10 percent cut in the budget and layoffs across the university. Further, it was said, McCrory cares little about Carolina; Perdue is “one of our own.”

Fast forward to January. The governor, announcing a dire budget situation, ordered cuts of 7 percent. More cuts and furloughs were announced later as the Legislature took up the issue.

Reality check: It was brand new Gov. Beverly Perdue doing the cuts.

In politics today, never underestimate the power of old fashioned social networks. They work even when voters get it half right. Posted by Leroy Towns

Carrboro Alderman want to limit campaign contributions to $250 for mayoral and alderman candidates. Almost always, proposals to limit dollars in campaigns and proposals for taxpayer financing for the political class are solutions in search of a problem. Even worse, they are usually incumbent protection schemes.

Jennifer Frye, associate director of Democracy North Carolina, commented on Carrboro’s plans in the Daily Tar Heel:

“One reason that they’ve done that is to level the playing field for candidates running for office,”  she said.

Campaigns for public office in our democracy are competitions to decide whose vision of the future will be enacted into law. By definition, campaigns in a democracy cannot be waged on ”level playing fields.” To mandate equality among candidates corrupts democracy.

Campaign finance discussions usually are cloaked in public purpose language, but they are nearly always about power–who has it and who gets it. In other words, when someone says they want to level the playing field in campaigns, it means they want their candidates to have more of the power. Posted by Leroy Towns

When Democrat Beverly Perdue blew away Republican Pat McCrory in the traditionally GOP stronghold of western North Carolina to win the race for governor, eyebrows were raised across the state.

Now the secret to McCrory’s loss of the west is out. In an article written for the current issue of Politics Magazine, Democratic consultant Thomas Mills says a large contribution from Service Employees international Union (SEIU) was spent on a direct mail campaign attacking McCrory in western North Carolina. As a result, Perdue won the 11th Congressional District by more than 20,000 votes.

The Mills article is instructive on two levels. First, it shows the new muscle flexed by unions in the traditionally non-union state of North Carolina.  Second, it is more evidence that independent expenditures often trump campaigns of the candidates themselves.

Records on file with the NC State Board of Elections show SEIU made an independent expenditure for printing and mailing of $181,991 against McCrory. That presumably paid for the direct mail campaign Mills engineered in the west.

Mills reports that McCrory threw a real scare into the Perdue campaign with his change rhetoric and his strong early polling. Also nervous was SEIU, which feared election of a Republican with a veto pen.

Mills writes that SEIU originally intended to focus its effort on Charlotte, McCrory’s hometown. Polling, however, revealed a new target–the west.

…as we delved into the crosstabs of the poll, a new target emerged: western North Carolina. The region was essentially tied, with McCrory holding a 1-point lead (44 percent to 43 percent) over Perdue. We also found that the region held the largest percentage of undecided voters (15 percent). And among unaffiliated voters, almost a third had yet to make up their minds. In addition, the voter ï¬?le revealed an efficient mail universe that ï¬?t the budget: 75,000 unaffiliated voters living in 62,000 households in the western media markets.

We also knew McCrory needed a big win in western North Carolina. The region is overwhelmingly rural, white and conservative and has traditionally served as a base for Republicans. Every Republican who won statewide in recent years racked up large margins in the west. In 2000, the last time the governor’s race was open, Democrat Mike Easley lost the region when he was �rst elected governor.

Further, Mills says, polling revealed voters in the area responded to messages about resources going to other parts of the state. Five direct mail pieces then were sent to the west, beginning October 14. The first three mailers tied McCrory to big developers and accused him of benefitting from his office as mayor of Charlotte. The fourth dovetailed with charges from Perdue that McCrory displayed a disdain for rural areas of the state. Finally, the campaign accused McCrory of being more willing to help developers than public schools.

When the votes were counted, the success of the program exceeded our expectations. Not only did Perdue win the 11th District, she won by more than 20,000 votes, by far the largest margin of any non-incumbent Democrat in a statewide race, and the largest margin for a Democrat in an open gubernatorial race in a generation. Her margin in the target area was twice as high as her margin in the state as a whole. She also received more votes than any other non-incumbent Democrat— including 2,288 more than Kay Hagan and 11,775 more than Obama/Biden, even though 1,354 and 3,906 more people voted in the U.S. Senate and presidential races, respectively.

Independent expenditures play a huge role in campaigns, sometimes even eclipsing the candidates. Sen. Kay Hagan’s victory over Elizabeth Dole was the result of a campaign waged on Hagan’s behalf by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Hagan’s campaign was just a formality.

While Perdue did wage an aggressive campaign in her own right, it is clear the SEIU campaign in the west was one key to her victory.

Expect more of the same in 2010. Posted by Leroy Towns