A Sometimes-insider’s History of the Chatham Coalition, parts of which may even be true. Part 2: 2003, Casting about in the Wilderness

(note: if you are coming into this series in the middle, please at least read the introduction to clarify the level of journalism or not as opposed to storytelling, that is contained herein)

Shortly after the 2002 election a big meeting was held at Lynn and Rich Hayes’ house to discuss what to do next.  Lots of people where there, many of whom I was meeting for the first time.  It was decided that what had happened was terrible and we needed to never be caught napping again but no real specific actions came out of that meeting that I remember.

Bunkey’s election definitely galvanized the community.  At first there was some hopefulness that his BOC wouldn’t be as bad as we feared. A bunch of us who had worked on the progressive campaigns went to meet Tommy Emerson.  He received us at his house and spoke reassuringly, telling us Bunkey’s people weren’t his people and he would listen to citizens. 

Margaret Pollard was at the meeting at the Hayes home and also expressed the sentiment that Bunkey wouldn’t be “that bad.”.  But it didn’t take long for it to become apparent that optimism was misplaced.  Bunkey had been put there by his developer supporters for one purpose, and he intended to fulfill it. Despite what he told us at his house, I can’t recall Emerson ever disagreeing with or voting against Bunkey in his entire tenure, and Outz just quietly went along with whatever Bunkey wanted.

Initially just liberals and progressives were galvanized but then as the extreme pro-development nature of Bunkey’s board became apparent, more moderates were drawn in as well.  There were noisy, well-attended demonstrations held at commissioner’s meetings urging them to be careful with growth and consider all the factors, but these were all ignored.  In fact Tommy Emerson, the chair of the commissioners the first year, seemed to resent that citizens would have the nerve to question him, an attitude that also helped fuel opposition to that board that would spread wider than just the liberal and progressive community (and ironically that’s an attitude that George Lucier would later be accused of also cultivating).  By the end of the first year Bunkey replaced Emerson as chair but Emerson continued railing against citizens who were rude enough to speak out against what they were doing.  

Grass roots green shoots

Another thing that was happening was that citizens’ organizations were being formed.  Chatham County United (CCU) was mainly formed to fight Cary annexation into northeastern Chatham, and the Southeast Chatham Citizens Advisory Committee (SECCAC) was an outgrowth of work to stop a regional landfill in Moncure in 2000. Also Chatham Citizens for Effective Communities (CCEC) formed around general growth issues in Chatham County.   There may have been a few other groups formed around specific issues during this time, but I can’t remember specifically who they all were.  

These groups worked on their individual issues and each had different outlooks and main directions, and there was no real coordination between them.  Over the next year or so two commissioner candidates emerged from these groups for the 2004 election: Patrick Barnes from Chatham County United, and Mike Cross from the Southeast Chatham group.  These candidates came more or less organically out of these groups, and had made the decision to run by late 2003.

Jeffery and company to the rescue

The Chatham Coalition was being formed at about this time as well under the leadership of Jeffrey Starkweather and others.  I would later learn that Jeffery had a long history of political activism in Chatham, dating back at least to when the Fearrington development was being proposed and planned,  and had also owned a newspaper in the county.  However, Jeffery was a new face to me and many others who had worked on the 2002 campaign because he had been relatively dormant for the past few years, but his reputation preceded him with long-time county developers and regressive forces in the county who had butted heads with him in the past.   

Many of them had a viscerally negative reaction to him because of these past battles that I and my compatriots hadn’t been here for, and we couldn’t quite understand why they hated him so much except we figured they were just concerned that he was building a progressive political machine that would challenge their dominance of county politics.  The attacks against him were pretty vicious, including accusations that he had been a member of the Communist Party, and the usual “not one of us” right-wing culture war crap. 

These attacks, of course only served to make him a more sympathetic and popular figure with most liberals and moderates, especially when Jeffery convincingly refuted them.  He did this by reminding them that he had owned a newspaper and had therefore been a business owner, and as a reporter for his paper had attended meetings of all kinds of groups, including not only the Communists, but also the KKK and surely they wouldn’t say he was a member of that organization.  It was the first time someone had refuted the right-wing haters in a way that actually shut them up (for a while anyway, and a lot of us think it was partially because by reminding them he had attended KKK meetings as a reporter, he was also reminding them that he knew who else had been there), and earned him immense respect from the progressives and moderates in the county.

As the Coalition was being formed and the campaign teams and organizations were becoming familiar with new (to us) faces like Jeffrey Starkweather, Jan Nichols, John Hammond, and Roland McReynolds, it looked like the Coalition was exactly what we would need: a political  machine of our own to counter the developers’ machine, and their formation was widely and enthusiastically welcomed by the progressive community and increasing numbers of  moderates as well who were despairing at the excesses of the Bunkey BOC.

Who was the Coalition, really?

The Chatham Coalition was organized as a PAC, and its stated purpose was to tie together the various citizens’ groups that already existed and help them coordinate their efforts towards electing more responsive county leaders.  It wasn’t at first intended to supplant these other groups but to provide an umbrella to help them work together, and an officially registered  channel to organize and fundraise for overt political activity.   However over a short time the Coalition eclipsed these groups in county politics. 

My opinion of why that happened is simply that the members of those original groups who were most dedicated to direct political action migrated to the Coalition because what it wanted to do better matched what they wanted to do.  As these people migrated between groups, when the dust settled CCEC evolved to more of an educational and informational organization (running a citizens academy for example), and SECCAC evolved to a mostly nonpolitical regional organization mainly dedicated to keeping people in Southeast Chatham connected and informed.  CCU probably had the most members move to the coalition and stayed more political but was mostly eclipsed by the Coalition.

As the coalition was forming and it was becoming clear that there were some smart, formidable and savvy people leading and running it, and many others flocking to it to help, it was clear it was becoming a formidable force for the 2004 election.  The thought most of us had about them was: thank goodness, too bad you weren’t around for the 2002 election, because we sure could have used your help then.