archived: 10 - 16 Dec, 2006 Back Next
UPDATED: December 14, 2006
SPEAKER BLACK
Speaker Black, who narrowly won reelection, has announced that he will not seek reelection as Speak of the NC State House in January.
State House Speaker Jim Black, whose campaign finances and connections to the gambling industry are being investigated by a federal grand jury, said Tuesday that he will not seek another term as speaker.
"I've been speaker for four terms," the 71-year-old Democrat told The Associated Press. "This is, again, not about me. I don't have any need for me to be speaker forever." . . .
Black, 71, announced his decision after having dinner with about 25 House Democrats at a Raleigh restaurant. He said their focus in next year's legislative session should be about issues such as education and mental health, not who is leading the party.
Black added he plans to be involved in choosing his successor, a decision he doesn't expect until January.
In TPJ’s estimation, no ideological voting block among Democrats has sufficient strength to control who will be the next Speaker of the House. A more detailed analysis will appear in Sunday’s TPJ.
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ON THE DOLE
Sen. Dole will be on the “A” list for opposition by Democrats. Democratic Party chances to unseat Sen. Dole may have gotten the biggest boost from her lackluster performance as head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Caucus. Waves of discontent over her conduct of the national campaign continue to reverberate:
Campaign finance reports filed this week have led to second-guessing about whether the National Republican Senatorial Committee borrowed too little for its final all-out push for its candidates.
At least two Republican Senate candidates lost by just a few thousand votes, and reversing just one defeat would have enabled the Republicans to hold the Senate.
As of Nov. 27, the Republican senatorial committee had raised $87 million since the election cycle began in 2005 and ended up about $1.2 million in debt.
By comparison, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which lacked the inherent fund-raising advantage of controlling the Senate, raised $119 million in this election cycle and ended up $5.4 million in debt.
Candidates and parties routinely borrow at the end of close races and then pay down the debt after the election. The final figures, and especially the low debts, left some Republicans grumbling privately that their Senate committee’s leader, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, had failed to give it her all.
“Obviously, Elizabeth Dole did not get great reviews for her performance at the committee,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst. “Nobody is saying she did a great job. You would have to be in a coma not to realize that a $30 million fund-raising advantage for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is astounding.”
The old adage is perhaps true: victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is a bastard. Republicans will certainly support Sen. Dole’s reelection bid, but her national failure may dampen the enthusiasm of that support considerably.
North Carolina Democrats often lose the “publicity wars.” Two conservative Republican organs are the John Locke Foundation and the John William Pope Civitas Foundation. Just these two conservative organs incessantly spew the conservative ideological agenda, often disguised as academic studies.
Over the past few weeks, TPJ published several articles challenging John Hood’s assessment that the North Carolina Democratic Party victory in November was “broad” but not “deep.” Hood’s characterization is simply Republican “spin” that receives wide distribution as political analysis.
We count the Civitas Foundation among those who participate in the Republican spin game. Today, TPJ provides a flashback to a Civitas Foundation sponsored poll from April 20, 2006 ominously predicting that Speaker Black would hurt the Democratic Party’s efforts in November (emphasis added):
The Democratic caucus meeting today may be looking to distance themselves from their leader, House Speaker Jim Black, as a new poll results indicate voters supporting his resignation have now climbed as high as 66%, according to the latest non-partisan statewide poll. Equally as troubling for Democrat candidates are that two-thirds of voters also indicated they would be “less likely to support legislative candidates” if they knew they had accepted contributions from Jim Black's campaign fund.
TelOpinion Research, an Alexandria, Virginia-based research firm, conducted the poll April 13-17 on behalf of the Civitas Institute, a North Carolina think tank. The survey included 800 interviews with citizens who voted in one of the last two election cycles. The Civitas poll is called the DecisionMaker Poll because it only surveys actual voters.
The DecisionMaker Poll first asked about Speaker Black in January when 42% of respondents favored his resignation. The number increased to 59% in February and 64% in March. “The trend is the really bad news for the Speaker,” according to Hawke.
Jack Hawke, President of the Civitas Institute, said, “With such an overwhelming call for Black's resignation, the Democrats have increasing pressure to make a change in leadership. One of the reasons legislators continue to support the Speaker is his ability to raise campaign funds, but this survey indicates that his fundraising could hurt Democrat candidates.”
Carefully reading the poll, the Republican spin misters are careful not to predict any Democrats defeat as a result of the polls findings. Yet, the reported increasing percentage of “actual voters” who are calling for Speaker Black’s resignation from 42% to 64% and those Democrats who accepted campaign funds from Speaker Black were far less likely to be supported by voters convey a very Republican message – oust your leader during an election cycle and do not accept sources of funding that would normally assist Democratic candidate campaigns.
The Civitas poll was picked up by the main stream media and even some progressive organs in these articles:
Bush, Black good barometers for poll
Raleigh News & Observer: Under the Dome
Mecklenburg: GOP newcomer will challenge Black
NC Policy Watch
The Civitas Foundation’s polls in fact help create the news; and the perception about Speaker Black. In hindsight, was the Civitas poll accurate? Or, did Republican spin misters artfully create the news as a larger effort to create the election results it wanted? The Civitas poll, and other polls by Civitas, generates free publicity that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of paid political advertisements.
The proof of the poll’s accuracy was in the election results – NC House Democrats gained a net five seats in the State House. Speaker Black won reelection, albeit narrowly, after months of repeated attacks on his candidacy.
Democrats are in desperate need of a counter strategy.
Last Update: 12/17/2006