Twelve years ago, Rep. David Miner lost his Cary-based seat to Nelson Dollar in a nasty GOP primary. After his loss, the moderate Miner bemoaned the conservative direction in which the party was moving and warned about the consequences of electing intransigent ideologues like Dollar.

Next month, it’s possible history could repeat itself. Critics of Dollar, now the House budget writer, assert that he has “gone Raleigh” and are targeting him for defeat in the March primary. With the help of a political action committee started by conservative donor Bob Luddy, they will have the resources to do so. The fruits of that committee: an anti-Dollar website, and TV and radio ads on behalf of Dollar’s conservative challenger, Mark Villee.

Luddy and other conservatives are upset with Dollar because of what they perceive as a House budget that spent excessively and was packed with pork. The incumbent defends the budget as containing necessary funding for teachers, cost-of-living increases for state retirees, and points to several tax cuts. GOP primary voters (and independents voting in the GOP primary) will have to decide who’s right.

What’s really interesting to me is how this affects the party’s chances of keeping the seat in their hands come November. While this is a Republican-leaning seat and the top Democratic recruit dropped out just before the filing deadline, this is not a safe GOP seat by any means. A diminished Dollar or a conservative nominee running in an open seat would give the Democrats a shot here. I wouldn’t bet on a victory by Team Blue, but for now this is one of the very few seats that is worth paying attention to in both the primary and the general.

1 Comment

  1. Apply Liberally

    “Luddy and other conservatives are upset with Dollar because of what they perceive as a House budget that spent excessively and was packed with pork.”

    But don’t right-wingers, libertarians, and Tea Partiers all consider the state budget to be too rich and too crammed with pork nowadays, even when the budget is not keeping pace with the infrastructural, educational, social and environmental needs of a fast-growing state??

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!