What the Local Elections Revealed

by John Hood, John Locke Foundation and NC SPIN panelist, November 7, 2013.

Not too long ago, North Carolina Republicans competed effectively with Democrats in urban elections.

In fact, there was a moment in the 1990s — a fleeting moment, as it turned out — when the mayors of four of North Carolina’s five largest cities were Republicans. Pat McCrory, the future Republican governor, was mayor of Charlotte. Tom Fetzer, the future chairman of the state GOP, was mayor of Raleigh. Durham and Winston-Salem also had Republican mayors. And Republicans were regularly competitive in mayoral and city council races in other major cities, including Wilmington, High Point, Cary, and Asheville. (Only in Charlotte and Winston-Salem were municipal elections officially partisan, but the officially nonpartisan elections elsewhere were anything but.)

In the aftermath of the 2013 election cycle, the situation looks vastly different. Moderate Republican Edwin Peacock did about as well as anyone from his party could in contesting the open mayoral seat in Charlotte, but still lost to Democratic Patrick Cannon. Democrats or left-leaning nonpartisan incumbents weren’t even seriously challenged in most other cities. Only in Fayetteville did a Republican candidate, Nat Robertson, win a major-city mayoral race in traditionally Democratic or competitive territory. And Robertson’s margin was razor-thin.

In fact, in several cities local Republican or conservative activists actually preferred Democratic candidates to nominally Republican ones. The clearest case was in Greensboro, where the conservative weekly Rhinoceros Times endorsedDemocrat Nancy Vaughan over Republican incumbent Mayor Robbie Perkins. He lost.

North Carolina Democrats are spinning these developments, as political parties tend to do. They argue that the 2013 elections portend political difficulties for the Republican legislature in 2014 and Gov. McCrory in 2016. That is a fundamental misreading of what is really going on, at least with regard to local politics in our state.

First of all, even as Republicans began to lose their competitive edge in Charlotte, Raleigh, and other big cities, they were gaining in county politics and in the smaller municipalities that ring those cities. In the heyday of GOP urban success, 1996, Republicans controlled only 41 of the state’s 100 county commissions. Today, they control 53. Their gains have been particularly pronounced in urban, suburban, and exurban counties, while Democrats retain control of many far-flung rural counties in the Coastal Plain, Sandhills, and far-western mountains. Similarly, Republican candidates for municipal office are faring well in the fast-growing towns and small cities that circle urban cores.

Look at Charlotte, for example. Once competitive, it is now firmly Democratic. But the other municipalities in Mecklenburg County are friendlier territory for Republicans. And every county surrounding Mecklenburg has Republican-controlled commissions and, often, Republicans in municipal office.

What’s really going on here is a local version of the Big Sort. Conservative-leaning voters who once resided in larger cities, or would have moved to larger cities from other states, are instead choosing to live in places such as Cornelius, Monroe, Apex, or Smithfield. Liberal-leaning voters aren’t following suit, and in some cases are actively choosing to live in the urban cores. As a result, previously purple polities (say that five times, I dare you) are becoming more reliably red or blue.

The phenomenon is hardly limited to North Carolina. It has been underway in most states for decades. In 1998, for example, eight of the nation’s 15 largest cities had Republican mayors. As of today, only one of those 15 mayors — Greg Ballard of Indianapolis — is a Republican.

Look, I think Republicans ought to compete more aggressively in municipal elections, particularly in places where the demographics aren’t yet stacked too much against them, just as Democrats can and should compete to recover their footing in urban-ring counties that have tipped from blue to red over the past two decades. Competition makes pretty much everything better. While one-party communities can still have competitive primaries or nonpartisan races, partisan competition is usually more vigorous.

But I also think it is silly to ignore the obvious demographic shifts affecting North Carolina politics. Despite its increasingly inability to compete in big-city mayoral races, the state’s Republican Party is stronger in the suburbs — and statewide — than ever before.