Who'll wear the coattails in this house?
Published October 14, 2016
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photo courtesy jleonard, News and Observer[/caption]
by Paul O'Conner, Capitol Press Association, published in The Asheville Citizen-Times, October 12, 2016.
North Carolina’s latest poll numbers have me thinking about coattails. That is, how one candidate on the ballot helps or harms his or her partisan running mates.
A bit of history: After the Reagan landslide of 1980, North Carolina Democrats, who still controlled state government, started seeing presidential coattails differently.
Until 1968, North Carolina had dutifully sent its electoral votes to the Democratic presidential candidate every year since Reconstruction had ended – 1928 being the one exception. And down-ballot Democrats had enjoyed the coattails for a century.
By the early 1980s, however, North Carolina had gone Republican in three of the previous four presidential elections, twice for Richard Nixon and then for Ronald Reagan, and the 1972 Nixon re-election landslide had carried in the state’s first Republican governor of the century and a U.S. senator named Jesse Helms.
Democratic Party leaders and key legislators toyed with moving races for governor, lieutenant governor and other state offices to the off-year, when state Republican candidates would not benefit from coattails provided by the GOP’s candidate.
The idea gained some legislative support after Jim Martin twice won election as governor, 1984 and 1988, in years of subsequent GOP landslides for president, Reagan’s re-election and George H.W. Bush’s 1988 win. But all such talk ended when Jim Hunt returned to politics and won the governor’s office back for Democrats in 1992.
What Hunt had shown, and what Mike Easley would also demonstrate, was state Democratic candidates could win even when the state went Republican for president, that strong Democratic gubernatorial candidates served as a firewall to the Republican surge.
That firewall, of course, depended on a significant core of Democrats and independents willing to vote Democratic in the state. Even in the great Republican year of 2012, when North Carolinians elected Gov. Pat McCrory, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and heavy majorities of Republican state legislators and congressmen (the latter two groups benefiting from partisan gerrymandering), voters elected six Democratic members to the Council of State to only four Republicans.
All of which raises questions of where the down-ballot vote will go this year. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are tied in the polls, but Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper is enjoying a 3.6-point lead over Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, according to the Real Clear Politics rolling average.
Eight months ago, I wrote a column – thank goodness it only appeared in Chinese – that said Trump might work as a drag on McCrory. Now it appears something quite different might happen.
So what way do the coattails work in that case?
Does Cooper help Democrats win back lieutenant governor and labor commissioner offices, a dozen or so seats in the General Assembly and maybe N.C. Supreme Court control? Or does Trump grow in strength, carry the GOP ticket and maybe McCrory?
Five weeks from voting, all of this is very unclear.
O’Connor writes for Capitol Press Association.
October 14, 2016 at 3:34 pm
Michael Warren says:
I don't see coat tails from either the Governors race or Presidential race. I firmly believe Hillary Clinton short of a miracle on Donald Trumps part will win the Presidential election and might even carry North Carolina even though I'm not voting for her, but Richard Burr is going to win the US Senate race. I think Deborah Ross gave a good fight but it is appearing she is going to come up short. Even in my new neighborhood in Charlotte where I just moved back to the state, there are Cooper signs all over the place but in those same places there are Burr signs.
As for the Governor's race just like I think Hillary might win but Burr will win. Cooper I think will probably also win as well, but I don't think he will have an effect at all on the other races. Those races are going to have to be decided on their own and also if you are a candidate and you need to rely on someone else to get you over the top, that doesn't say a lot about you as a candidate. I imagine Dan Forrest will still be the Lt. Governor come January 2017, I as most voters have NOT been impressed with Linda Coleman like we have Roy Cooper and I imagine there is going to be lots of split ticket voting not just in NC but all over the country as well. The 2 leading PResidential candidates are neither well liked, well respected or well trusted.
