Richard Burr’s “bulb” is not exactly luminous. In the middle of the ’08 market meltdown, he ordered his wife to execute a bank run. More generally, he has a habit of making buffoonish comments and embarrassing himself through sheer ignorance. So when he declares North Carolina a red state, there’s no particular reason to take him seriously. Years of evidence show this state is purple.
Start with 2006. That year, political debate was dominated by the Iraq war. A true “red state” would have stood strong for Victory and sent the party of flower children back to Berkeley. What really happened? NC-11, a mountainous place with stout Republican heritage, elected one of the cycle’s iconic Democrats. A few miles down the road, a Democratic schoolteacher named Larry Kissell came within 329 votes of beating Robin Hayes, with almost no support from the DCCC. This is not the look of a Republican hotbed.
2008 echoed the previous cycle–with a bang. Kissell defeated Hayes by a booming 10% margin. Shuler retained his upcountry district with 62% of the vote. In the gubernatorial race, Bev Perdue beat an impressive upstart named Pat McCrory. Likewise Kay Hagan, who took down Elizabeth Dole by almost ten percentage points. And we all know what happened at the top of the ballot. The narrowness of Obama’s win does not make his victory a “fluke” anymore than Romney’s small margin does his.
Even 2010 tells a complicated story. Yes, Republicans took the General Assembly and Burr won by double digits. But the story doesn’t end there: Elaine Marshall outperformed her Democratic counterpart in Ohio. Plus, Shuler hung onto his seat–a feat thought so impressive it got him a writeup in the New York Times–and Kissell was re-elected, too. Despite the infamous “Who Are You?” incident, Bob Etheridge actually came within a point of holding off Renee Ellmers. Democrats kept their majority of the state’s Congressional delegation–during the strongest Republican year in six decades.
2012, so the narrative goes, was when Democrats collapsed. Popular vote results suggest otherwise. The state was second-closest in the presidential election. Legislative contests were a split decision, with Republicans winning narrow victories for the General Assembly and Democrats getting a majority of Congressional votes. The reason Republicans ended up with huge majorities is that the elections were rigged by gerrymandering. Their outcomes do not reflect public opinion.
In 2014, Republicans took the governorships of Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois, won all but one contested Senate race, and defended heavily targeted governors across the Midwest. If North Carolina were just a “red state,” Hagan would have lost by double digits, like her counterparts in Arkansas and Louisiana. Instead, she came within 1.5% of beating her opponent and held him to less than half of the total vote. Higher turnout in a few metropolitan counties could have swung the election her way. Meantime, North Carolina had one of the few Republican-controlled legislatures where Democrats gained seats. And Democrats dominated in the state’s most politically aware county.
On that note, I will conclude with a question. If North Carolina is a Republican stronghold, why does the GOP feel the need to constantly gerrymander the state? Surely a party guaranteed of victory wouldn’t need to change the rules. Actions speak louder than words, and the NCGOP’s antics easily drown out Sen. Burr’s bluster. We’re purple as a mountain sunset.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
Richard Burr is the very definition of an empty suit, and spends virtually all his time in the state giving pep talks to business groups that call for more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Okay, you win. Go ahead and relax now.
-AHJ
As one newish to NC, I’m not seeing the purple at all. And it’s a shame.
I’m seeing an absentee Democratic party putting up no offense to a Republican party working overtime to destroy the state. McCrory’s putting a private-school fan of censorship onto the Board of Ed. (WHY isn’t this a bigger deal?!)
UNC-system has been defunded. Teachers from K-college are demoralized. Talent is fleeing. Jobs are growing in low wage (poverty wage) sectors.
And worse – Hagan lost to Tillis! Seriously, that’s demented. Take the blinders off and really go after the NCGOP!!! Or better yet, “wash your hands” of this “purple-state” nonsense.
Yeah, but Hagan didn’t lose by much and neither got over 50%. I’m not sure that its a case of NC being a Purple State, but that both Parties keep putting up Purple candidates. You can barely tell the difference between the Hagan and Tillis and neither exactly represent the mainstream of their respective parties.
“You can barely tell the difference between the Hagan and Tillis…….”
Truly, one of the most out-of-touch posts offered to date on these blogs.
I was referring to the matter as viewed through the eyes of a moderate, mainstream people. Naturally, this wouldn’t even register among extremist impulses.
No offense, but have you read any of my other posts? I’m not sure how anyone could accuse me of not “going after the NCGOP.”
“If North Carolina were just a “red state,” Hagan would have lost by double digits, like her counterparts in Arkansas and Louisiana. Instead, she came within 1.5% of beating her opponent and held him to less than half of the total vote. Higher turnout in a few metropolitan counties could have swung the election her way.”
I am responding to this post about NC’s purple status, which I find delightfully delusional. Thom Tillis ran an incredibly inept campaign and won anyway. He is an idiot whose first big national publicity as a senator came from his protest of handwashing regulations!!! How ridiculous – and how reflective of NC in its current state.
WHERE IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY? It’s vanished. They should be leveraging the lunacy of the NCGOP for all its worth – and instead, they’re nowhere to be found.
McCrory just nominated Todd Chasteen to the state board of education – he’s a private school advocate and a school book censor whose wife runs a Christian private school. Job growth is seen only in low-wage sectors. Public education has been shattered – shattered from kindergarten to the university level. Duke Energy – which pocketed billions in profit for years and years – will pass on the cost of the Dan River cleanup to consumers. And the politicians who allow all these things just won resoundingly in 2014.
WAKE UP. This is NOT a purple state. This is a state that has embraced the red for all its worth – in part because the party of the blue has gone AWOL. Can’t have purple when all you’ve got is red….
Someone from Main Street USA,
You raise valid points. You would like to see a more aggressive public campaign to shout it from the roof tops what the Republicans are doing to our state.
I’m not sure how newish you are to North Carolina, but you may have heard about the Moral Monday protests in Raleigh and other locations around the state. It is not like there has been no direct action taking place to attempt to shine a spotlight on matters. I might suggest you write a letter to the editor of your local paper expressing your concerns. It isn’t a waste of time. People reading a letter written by their neighbor may give it more weight than a protest by people they don’t know. And there are plenty of community organizations you can volunteer your time with who are doing their best to shine a light on what is going on.
You find the efforts of the Democratic Party in North Carolina lacking. I agree with you on that score. There are many complicated reasons for that. I’m not interested in parsing those reasons or listening to anyone’s excuses about why that has been so. What I would point out to you is that the NCDP elected a new Board in early February and I am expecting improvement in the functioning of the state party.
The state’s largest county, Mecklenburg, underperformed miserably in the 2014 election. But at the county convention on the 18th a new Chair and new board were elected who I am confident will do the essential things needed to turn out a vote in this heavily Democratic county that can drive statewide victories.
There were bright spots in 2014. Buncombe County flipped two seats in the lower house of the legislature for instance. Chatham County did a great job in local elections. It isn’t all bad news.
We have an excellent chance to elect a Democratic governor in 2016. There are Republican seats in the legislature that can be flipped so that the Democratic governor’s vetoes of crazy Republican initiatives can be upheld.
But how active are you in any of this? Have you contacted your local Democratic Party to volunteer? Do you know who your precinct chair is? Is your precinct even organized? If not, are you willing to organize it?
This year is the opportunity year as far as organization that will pay off next year goes. The primary for municipal elections isn’t until September 15th. You have several months to register voters and to get to know your neighbors in your precinct and turn them out at election time. And municipal elections have a bit less crazy than presidential year lunacy. Much easier to talk to people and identify friendly voters.
You are disappointed in the performance of the Democratic Party? Well, the party isn’t an abstract concept. It is people. And you are a people. So get to work.
Contact your local party. Beat on doors. Talk to people. Work your precinct.
If you and everyone reading this will do that the Republicans won’t stand a chance.
Talk is cheap because there is always such an abundant supply. Action is what’s needed.
Where are the candidates? Kay Hagan? Really? Outside of the Chicago Republican party, I’ve never seen such paralysis as with the NC Democratic party.
Whether one labels NC red or purple, it really doesn’t matter, does it? Electorally, the state can go red or blue in any given election year. Obama and Perdue take the state in 2008; Romney and McCrory win it in 2012. Tillis may take a senate seat in 2014, but, locally, the state’s major GROWING metro counties are definitely in blue column.
Eventually, demographic and in-migration trends will turn the state more clearly purple at first, then a heavily blue lean after that. While mischievous GOP efforts in extreme gerrymandering may delay the full reflection of that reality within the NCGA and even in some urban county commissions (e.g., Wake), it’s only temporary…..
To repeat, just like everything Burr has said and done since his initial election to the US Senate, it really doesn’t matter…….
When one considers some of the heavyweights that North Carolina has sent to the Senate throughout history it is hard to believe that we have two such lightweights representing us there today. One may have been appalled by Jesse Helms for instance, but he was no lightweight. That a near cipher like Burr is favored to be re-elected has to leave one, regardless of politics, shaking one’s head at the thought that this is the best we can do.
Your description of Burr’s comment as bluster is spot on. He surely knows that during a presidential year he is very beatable. Assuming the Democrats get their heads out of their hindquarters and recruit and properly support a good candidate.
This is objectively a purple state, as you very ably demonstrate in your post. It is a great opportunity for whichever party works smart and out hustles the other.
The answer to your concluding question is pretty obvious. They can’t hold the legislature without gaming the system. Through gerrymandering and denying the vote to as many people belonging to demographic groups who regularly vote Democratic as possible.
It will work for them in the short term. In the long term they will have to actually make some sort of attempt to appeal to voters in the demographic groups who they are currently trying to disenfranchise and who they adamantly refuse to appeal to and mostly accuse of being too stupid to vote for them. Nationally, the last Republican politician who truly advocated aggressively appealing to African-American voters was Jack Kemp. And he’s been dead for six years. Now one of their leading 2016 presidential hopefuls is speaking out against LEGAL immigration. That should play well in the Latino community.
It’s hard to see these guys changing course in any meaningful or strategically effective way. The crackpots they locked in the attic during the sixties (which enabled their greatest electoral successes) are now driving the bus. The lunatic fringe is now their mainstream.
Purple today. Blue tomorrow.
I would agree that North Carolina is a politically competitive state. We are three more points Republican than the rest of the country, more light red than purple, but there are a a few (less than 5) Democrats that hold equivalently Republican Congressional seats across the country. Our last three major statewide elections were won by Republicans, but this is a state Democrats can still compete in, especially due to demographic changes and the Obama voter registration program in 08. However, you are wildly overstating your case here, and fail to account for the eroding advantage North Carolina Democrats traditionally have over their national counterparts.
So let’s review your evidence against North Carolina being a red state.
1. The 2006 congressional elections, specifically the results in NC-11 and NC-8. While these results were somewhat impressive, you exaggerate their importance. This was a wave election year, where Congressional Democrats won the national popular vote by almost 8%, meaning that with a uniform swing, you would expect any district less than 8% more Republican than the rest of the country to fall to the Democrats. However, the two districts you cite-NC-11 and NC-8, weren’t even that Republican. Democrat-drawn NC-11 was an R+6 PVI seat, so his performance was roughly in line with national expectations. Larry Kissell fought for a Democratically gerrymandered seat that was only R+2 PVI, according to Cook’s Political Report. His narrow loss there was actually a dramatic Democratic under performance given the year.
And with hindsight, can you really call Shuler “iconic”? He was only in office for 3 terms, and he did not fit in well with his increasingly liberal Democratic caucus, even declining to vote for Pelosi in 2011. Shuler had no major accomplishments in Congress. After redistricting, he left Congress and is a lobbyist for a company Democrats despise. He will likely never run for any office ever again. It was a nice win, sure but not iconic.
2. 2008. Yep, a great Democratic year. Given the way the districts were drawn, you would have expected these results. However, even here, you see the seeds of the N.C. Democrats destruction next cycle. They failed to make many gains in the legislature despite a wave election and Perdue didn’t overperform the top of the ticket the way NC Democrats traditionally did.
3. 2010. Elaine Marshall was absolutely destroyed by Richard Burr, who lost major metropolitan areas that no competent Democrat can lose in the 21st century. The fact that she did somewhat better than another failed Democratic candidate in Ohio is completely irrelevant-Ohio is a state with a much, much lower minority population than North Carolina, giving Democrats a lower electoral floor. Because Democrats have a more favorable demographic picture in North Carolina, even a terrible candidate is guaranteed a higher vote % than an equally terrible candidate in Ohio.
And, oh yeah, the Democrats were destroyed in the legislature and barely kept a majority in the Congressional delegation despite a gerrymandered map and some of the most conservative Dem incumbents in the country.
2012. Conveniently, you leave off Walter Dalton’s horrendous campaign. He was the first Democrat in modern North Carolina history to underperform the top of the ticket in a race for Governor. By this cycle, traditional democratic downballot strength in many areas had vanished, and Kissell lost convincingly. (You can blame gerrymandering here, but then you’d have to also account for Democratic gerrymandering previously).
2014. Hagan did well compared to the national picture, but still lost despite vastly outspending her opponent. Democrats netted a grand total of ONE legislative seat (loss of one in the Senate, pickup of 3 in the House, Tine switched parties) after this cycle, and this was due more to individual incumbent problems than democratic success-they actually loss the statewide popular vote for legislature by 6-7 points, much worse than they did in 2012.
And here’s another piece of evidence for us being a “light red” state-Senator Burr, the individual you bash so much in this piece, doesn’t have a declared opponent! You’d think purple-state Democrats would be jumping at the bit for such a winnable seat.