Wake County is the fastest growing county in a state where half the counties are losing population. It’s been the economic engine pulling North Carolina out of the recession. It’s attracting industry and Raleigh’s downtown is becoming a destination.
So what have Republicans got against Wake County? They turned it into a virtual punching bag. The latest shot comes from the three Republican Senators who want to gut the deal to sell Dorothea Dix campus to the city of Raleigh. Instead, they want to sell it to the highest bidder because why should our capitol city have anything nice?
The Dix nix is just the latest in a string of shots Senate Republicans have taken at Wake County. Their plans to redistribute sales tax revenue and dole out incentives shift money from Wake to smaller counties. Sen. Chad Barefoot’s proposal to redistrict county commission seats is little more than a legislative coup d’etat in slow motion.
They’re short-sighted, small-minded people with authoritarian instincts. Sen. Tommy Tucker (R-Union), one of the sponsors of the Dix nix, once told a newspaper publisher testifying before his committee, “I am the Senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.” That pretty much sums up the sentiment of the state Senate.
Wake County, though, will continue to grow. Today, it makes up more than 10% of the state’s population and that percentage will increase, as will resentment against Republican overreach. A poll released yesterday shows that Wake voters oppose Barefoot’s plan by almost 2-1. Just like their voter suppression laws undermine any Republican outreach efforts to the African-American community, the current overreach will drive a wedge between the GOP and Wake County, darkening the county’s blue hue while its political influence is growing.
Rural North Carolina needs help but the GOP approach is unbalanced, mean-spirited and authoritarian. The goal is not just to help smaller counties but to hurt, or at least insult, Wake. It’s bad for Wake County and it’s bad for North Carolina. The old saying, “Payback’s hell” comes to mind.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
‘Not well-informed on economics or public policy…’ Those two items barely scratch the surface of what is unknown by many at NCGA. They don’t know how human reproduction works, amongst other things, and maintain very old fashioned attitudes–a day or two after Sen Tucker told his constituent to sit down, he spoke in a committee hearing and casually referred to his very elderly aunt as an Old Maid. Every women in the gallery gasped. Many present were too young to have ever heard this term used out loud. A young woman sitting next to me was stunned for a moment then turned to me and asked, Did he really say what I think I heard! I can’t believe he said that!
Well, yes, he did. And that attitude is part and parcel of the outlook that has come to Raleigh.
26 to 17 percent of the state of North Carolina live in poverty. How it is that a state that has the geographic blessings NC has can create such major poverty for so many is the accepted right of the pseudo aristocrats to determine who makes money and who doesn’t. The state leadership sells the people out as selling its labor as pliant and cheap. The state’s population has doubled since I graduated high school in 1971. Who of these people would want to move to counties where there are no jobs and no respect for their rights, because they are newcomers? I like the idea of redistributing some of the taxes towards the less well off counties. I’ve suggested that every county have an airport of its own. I’ve suggested that the transportation infrastructure be so designed to enable people and freight to get anywhere within the state within 4 hours.
P.S. I am grateful to Thomas Mills and his staff for producing this very valuable source of news about the political activities that are steamrolling along daily those who look to political actors for defense of their interests as honest working people, who are weakened daily by these events. American Pragmatism is philosophically opposed to the ideologues who do not seem to even grasp the slightest goals that were expected of honorable government. The goals proper of government are defense and education, just to say so. It is not to sell the people out for cheap, and give all the public lands to speculators.
As I’ve said many times, I think the Republican’ts in Raleigh really want North Carolina to become the new Mississippi of the country.
I think the determination to interfere with, and yes, punish, Wake, Mecklenburg, and Buncombe counties reflects a larger, inchoate but deep seated anger from the rural corners of our state. The 2010 gerrymander brought a bunch of rural radicals to Raleigh. Many of them don’t have much experience with governing, and, to put it mildly, are not well informed on economics or public policy.
But they know what they like. And they don’t LIKE cities. Cities have Democrats, and scary brown people and gays. And they treat them just like everyone else! (well, that’s the ideal, anyway, YMMV) And yet, the rural radicals have a sense of being left behind: cities have jobs, good jobs that are not available even to the smart, well connected old boys out in the hinterlands. Cities have foodies, and brew pubs, and festivals, and hipsters, and half millio dollar houses left and right. Cities steal their kids, and infect them with foreign ideas, because the Conservative Way just can’t create jobs.
So what’s a right-thinking conservative legislator to do? When you’re driven by fear and anger, lots of things become simpler. Punish those cities! It’s not rational, it’s not good politics, it’s terrible policy. But it’s what they’re doing.
And the urbanites notice. The gerrymander is a steep hill to climb, but Republicans will continue to diminish in clout in the urban areas. The wealthy in the cities may be natural Republicans, but many of them won’t flout the local powers that be. Donations for local Rs will be harder to come by. Less of the talented will choose to run as Rs in urban zones. So it’s easy to envision a vicious cycle of decline of urban Republicanism in NC. Actions have consequences. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of folks.
You hit the nail on the head…jealousy and fear.
How can we do more to help the more rural counties of North Carolina when so much of our “statewide marketing” usually promotes certain key regions of the state which are already prospering?
David P. McKnight
Durham
DO’s:
-create a new Rural Center, one that the GOP fully funds and allows to work with rural counties and businesses w/o state micromanagement;
-create and fund a jobs program that actually seeks to help WORKERS and not just businesses;
-try to find innovative ways to link thriving businesses in our metro areas with complementary and partnering businesses in rural areas;
-expand Medicaid —on the federal dime— so that the smaller hospitals in rural areas aren’t facing imminent closure, and that the near-poor and medically needy in those counties can be in better health and thus able to fill/keep a job.
DON’Ts:
-don’t follow tax strategies that specifically batter and weaken metro economies and governments. A strong overall state economy can help all areas, and can generate state revenues that can be appropriated to rural programs;
-don’t deprive rural residents/workers from benefiting from the EITC;
-don’t cut the community college system budget and don’t keep forcing the increase of CC tuition. The NC CC system is a guaranteed way of insuring that rural residents are best trained for working class jobs.
-don’t “reform” the state’s income tax formula in ways that deliberately produce revenue deficits, and thus require the starvation of existing state rural programs, or the non-initiation of new state rural programs
I wonder what percentage of legislators and staff are served by Wake County restaurants and bars–maybe 100% ? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
Well, indicative of their legislative actions, the GOP must truly resent lodging/dining in Raleigh and Wake during session. They might actually believe that they are being robbed and mistreated. Maybe they need to propose a State Elected Official Freedom Act, akin to their Religious Freedom bill. It would allow themselves the right to refuse to pay lodging and restaurant tabs and sales taxes in Wake County, or to have the option of directing any sales taxes they do pay in Wake to go to their own counties. I’d say I am just joking, but the GOP’s anti-urban and self-serving actions of late tell me to say “Careful what you joke about…”.
I re-up and addend me earlier comment: Disgusting, *obese* third-world hicks. Everyone one the Dix bill’s sponsors is a gross fata–.
Yes, I think that future demographic changes and population growth will mean more political power exerted by Wake County (and by other Triangle counties, too, BTW). The GOP’s continuous shots at Wake, whether on its voter districting, the timing of county special referendums, Raleigh’s business tax/fee collections, the sending of more of its generated sales tax revenues to rural counties, or now this “Dix Nix” effort, will not serve the GOP well in the voters’ minds.