Did you hear the one about how Bev Perdue and David Price control the Ukraine government's agricultural policies? (updated 8/11/11)

Whenever a major plant closes, finger pointing and blame abound. For the last four years, when the Chatham county commissioners were Democrats, every job lost in the county, or every prospective job what went to another county, was blamed on county government's so-called anti-business attitude. Examples: here, here, here, here, and here.

But now the county commission is firmly in the hands of the GOP. So now when there is a loss of jobs in the county, the same people who looked no further than local politicians now need to find someone else, who is a Democrat of course, to blame. People who previously blamed county job losses on local politicians have suddenly opened their minds to global or statewide trends.

The recent announcement of the closing of the Townshend's chicken plant is a perfect example. The local Republicans have gone through a few scapegoats, none of them local, but all of them Democrats.

Here is a link to the N&O's article about the closing. This article devotes significant space to the effect of high corn prices on the chicken raising model.

First GOP scapegoat: ethanol loving environmentalists

So naturally, the blame must be with environmentalists who are forcing us to create ethanol, driving up the price of corn! There are two problems with that theory.

The first problem is that environmentalists are not responsible for ethanol subsidies and mandates. Politically powerful agribusiness lobbies are. After all, among the politicians who support ethanol are such liberal environmentalists as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. What do these GOP stalwarts have in common? Oh yeah, they are running for President and need to do well in the Iowa caucuses. Meanwhile, the GOP candidate who has come out most strongly against ethanol subsidies is Jon Huntsman, who is arguably the most liberal GOP candidate and is coincidentally skipping the Iowa caucuses.

The second problem with that explanation is that the price of corn really didn't increase much while Omtron owned the plant. It is true that it has shot up in the last year, but during the five months between Omtron's purchase and decision to close the plant (Feb 2011 to July 2011), the price of corn went up only 4%, from $293 per metric ton to $305. During that time frame, the peak price was $319, but that was in April and it's been going down ever since. So Omtron decided to close the plant after three months of steady declines in the price of corn. You can look at the historical price data here.

Second GOP scapegoat: State government (but only the parts controlled by Democrats)

An interesting rumor started making the rounds that the state of NC would not let the owner of the chicken plants use state ports to import cheap corn from Ukraine. You see it turns out that apparently Omtron's plan was to use the fact that they had signfiicant food processing interests in the Ukraine to get cheap corn for their chickens, therefore beating the grain market. What a brilliant plan. Until, according to local GOP activists, it was spoiled by Bev Perdue and David Price.

Normally it's hard to trace false rumors like this back to the source, but in this case it can be traced to its source. Tom Glendinning, frequent conservative poster to the Chatham Chatlist and staunch Brian Bock supporter appears to have started this rumor. He posted this rumor to Brian Bock's facebook page (see screen shot) and sure enough within an hour of that posting going up, Bock's supporters ran with it and used this "fact" to make BBS postings blaming governor Bev Perdue for the closing of this plant.

Tom also posted this "discovery" of his to the Chatham Chatlist. Here is part of what he posted:

And if you get a chance to whisper in the governor's or David Price's ear, let her know that we would like an unloading dock permitted for Omtron so that it can bring the grain over to feed the chickens, to sell the meat, to pay the workers, to pay the taxes, and let us get back to living again rather than dusting off our tents to set up our "primary dwelling spaces."

Now one thing is strange about this, besides the fact that this "fact" is false (which I'll get to in a minute). And that is, why is David Price's name even mentioned? David Price doesn't have authority over NC's ports. David Price doesn't represent the part of the state where the ports are located. David Price also doesn't represent the part of the state where the chicken plants are. Why in the world would he be involved? Besides the fact that he's the nearest Democrat that Tom can lash out at, that is.

If the port rumor were true, I could see Bev Perdue having something to do with it, but trying to pin this on David Price is just silliness.

Now about this "fact" about the port. None of the news stories about the plant closing mention any problem with the port. In fact, besides Tom's "this guy I know said it" rumor, I can't find any evidence of any problem with the ports.

So I contacted Dianne Reid, the head of the Chatham Economic Development Corporation to ask if she had heard of any problem with the ports. Not only did she respond that she was aware of no problem with the ports, but she had also asked the state commerce secretary and he wasn't aware of any port issue either.

(update 8/11/11). More info on this has come to light, from this Chatham County BBS posting. This is NC Secretary of Commerce Crisco being paraphrased by Pittsboro Mayor Randy Voller, this was discussed at a Triangle-J Council of Governments meeting at which Mr. Crisco was the guest speaker (and commissioner chair Brian Bock was absent).

"...Omtron has had a good offer for the facilities, which they have so far declined to accept. Omtron was well aware that North Carolina was not set up with a grain elevator at our port(s) yet pursued the purchase of Townsend's through the bankruptcy court. The state was working with Omtron to contract such a facility. The state was about a month behind schedule, but all parties anticipated its completion in a reasonable time frame to meet Omtron's needs. Omtron's Ukrainian management told the state that they were pulling out not due to this situation but because of some unspecified grant they claim to have been promised by an agency in the federal government. Sec. Crisco said that his department could not verify the veracity of this claim."

So who's my scapegoat?

When I have disputed partisan GOP explanations for the closing of the chicken plants, I am often asked for my own.

The N&O article about the closing is probably most accurate and it mentions two factors worth mentioning.

The first factor is a supposed lack of discipline in the U. S. poultry industry. At first blush this might seem like a swipe at the workers in the plants, many of whom our Republican friends like to remind us are illegal aliens. However it only looks like that if you don't read the next sentence. Here is the "discipline" quote, in its full context:

He just decided to shut it down and take his losses and go on," said David Purtle, a former Tyson Foods executive who was hired to be Omtron's CEO. "He just didn't like the environment in this country and the lack of discipline that the poultry industry had."

The U.S. poultry industry has been resisting calls to reduce production levels, something that many believe is necessary in order to put it on firmer financial footing.

It's clear that by "discipline" Omtron's CEO isn't referring to shiftless workers. He's referring to price fixing and production controls.

The next factor is the price of feed. As I described above, the market price of corn didn't increase significantly during Omtron's ownership of the chicken plants. However the N&O article about his purchase of the plants, in February, referred to a plan to beat the corn market by importing cheap corn from Ukraine. Even the reporter who wrote that story thought that was pretty tenuous plan, but it was a plan.

Who ruined the cheap corn plan?

However that plan didn't look quite as good when, on July 1st, the Ukraine government imposed a 12% export tax on corn. As the linked story said, this caused corn exports from Ukraine to become uncompetitive and plummet 75% in a month. Clearly if you had a plan based on getting cheaper corn from Ukraine, and the Ukraine government raised the price of your corn, then your plan to rely on cheap corn from Ukraine is broken.

In light of that, is it a coincidence that just over three weeks after this Ukraine tax went into effect, the decision was made to close the chicken plants?

So my conclusion is that government action did in fact ruin the business plan for chicken plants. The Ukraine government, that is. Clearly, you should call Bev Perdue and David Price and demand that they do something about this!

Last Call: a book political junkies of all stripes can enjoy immensely

I just finished reading the book Last Call, which is comprehensive history of Prohibition from the very beginnings of anti-alcohol movements in the 1800s to repeal in the 1930s and its effects beyond that.

This is without a doubt the most entertaining and informative political and history book I have read in years. And anyone who enjoys politics can enjoy it, be they left, right, or something else. The events and controversies in this book took place so long ago (80-150 years ago) that even though Republicans and Democrats are involved both parties are mostly unrecognizable to their current adherents, but still similar enough to their modern counterparts to keep it interesting.

This book has everything, and I do mean everything. Some gems, without giving away any of the books' reading enjoyment, include:

• The surprisingly large effect apportionment and the state of district maps of both Congress and the state legislatures had on both enactment and repeal of Prohibition
• How Congress blatantly violated the Constitution for a full decade, in order to protect Prohibition. It's surprising this isn't more well known.
• The role and operations of pressure groups on both sides of the issue, and how amazingly similar they are to today's pressure group operations. You've probably never heard of Wayne Wheeler which is a shame because he is the political ancestor of Karl Rove, James Carville, and everyone of that ilk.
• The role of the KKK in American society then. And no, contrary to popular belief it wasn't just Southerners or Democrats who allied with them. Not by a long shot
• The role of the Catholic and Jewish religions and Americans' views of them in shaping politics and society
  
• Why none of these three things could have happened without the other two: The income tax, Prohibition, and women's suffrage. The links and interrelationships between these three are fascinating
• Why Henry Ford and other big businessmen flip flopped on Prohibition
• Reading quotes from politicians, both on the left and the right, that would be positively cringe-inducing and career ending now.
• Why it's probably not a good idea for modern day liberals to adopt the term "progressive"
• A serious and factual investigation into Joseph Kennedy's past, with results that may surprise you
• An era when the sheer weight of hypocrisy could actually end a law, even a constitutional amendment
• A reminder of how it is possible for Congress to get a constitutional amendment ratified without cooperation of the state legislatures.
• Why St. Pierre in Canada was the place to be, moreso than anyplace else in Canada
• Can you imagine a time when the federal government was so skinflint Congress refused to appropriate funds to enforce federal law? And it wasn't for any other reason than they were too cheap, it wasn't resistance to the law itself

I could go on and on with so much more but I think the point is made that there is not a dull moment or an uninteresting thing in this book, for a reader with an interest in politics.

I also learned recently that Ken Burns is going to be doing a miniseries on Prohibition. It's apparently loosely based on this book in that he and author shared some research, but it is not a collaboration between them so it may provide a different perspective. I'm looking forward to it.

Will Bob Atwater switch to the NC House?

Here is the new NC House map:

And here is the old NC Senate map:

Why did I put the new house map next to the old senate map? Compare new house district 54 with old Senate district 18. They are very similar. Note that if you bring up the new house map in the detailed district viewer, new house district 54 contains more of Sanford than the picture above implies. -- but not district 51 rep Mike Stone's house, which is on the west side of U.S. 1.

Given that Bob Atwater and Ellie Kinnaird have been drawn into new Senate district 23 together, and the new district 23 appears to favor Ms. Kinnaird since it includes Chapel Hill, and that new house district 54 not only looks a lot like Bob's old Senate district, but also has no incumbent, I wouldn't be surprised to see Bob Atwater concede the senate seat to Ellie Kinnaird and switch to the house and run for new district 54.

Bob's already familiar with campaigning in Sanford and it seems to me he would have a better chance in new house 54, than in a primary against Ellie Kinnaird in a district that includes Chapel Hill.

That's my guess just from looking at the maps, I haven't spoken to either of them or anyone on either of their teams.

A Gerrymandering "work of art"

It's no wonder the NC GOP waited until the Friday before the fourth of July weekend to drop their redistricting map on the public. Nate Silver said it best when he tweeted:

GOP gerrymander in NC is a work of art. State voted for Obama, but McCain won between 56-58% of the vote in 10 of 13 new districts.

That just about sums it up, and not a whole lot more needs to be said.

Except that I will say some things, because redistricting is just too interesting to me leave it alone. It's one of my strongest political interests. Maps, numbers, history -- what more could you want?

First of all, here's the proposed GOP map:

And here's the map as it currently stands, which the GOP map will be replacing:

My comments:

1. Obviously, gerrymandering is in the eye of the beholder. For two decades the GOP and their conservative allies have whined about the 12 district, calling it the ugliest gerrymander in the country. So now that the GOP has a chance to do something about it, what do they do? They make it even more weirdly shaped, stretched out, and squiggly than it was before. Not only that, but they take the 4th district, which was one of the most compact ones in the state, and transform it to make it look much like the 12th. So now we two snake-shaped districts instead of one, courtesy of the same GOP that complained about the shape of the 12th for 20 years.
2. Brad Miller (13th district Democrat) is toast. This is not an insightful observation, it's been obvious from the beginning that the GOP was going to target him and they did. That said, it's hard to feel sorry for Brad Miller, even though he's a fellow Democrat. First of all, I can't think of any way in which he's distinguished himself in Congress. But most of all, we have to remember how he got that seat in the first place. As chair of the Democratic legislature's redistricting committee in 2001, he custom-drew it for himself. He also drew the Republican who is now chairing the redistricting committee out of his seat in the legislature. Revenge is a dish best served cold, but also: what the redistricting pen giveth, the redistricting pen taketh away. Bye-bye Brad, hope you enjoyed your 10 year run.
3. Heath Shuler is more screwed than I expected. For at least 30 years, the 11th district has been one of the most compact and regularly shaped districts in the state. It was also reliably Republican, until Shuler took it in 2006, and surprisingly easily won re-election in 2008 and 2010. Well the Republicans have exacted their revenge by removing Asheville from the district (notice how district 10 reaches up and grabs it). Asheville is the most Democratic place in western NC and was likely Shuler's base. Now he's lost it.
4. Asheville is just as screwed as Shuler. It's now stuck in Patrick Henry's district, one of the most Republican in the state represented by one of the most extreme wingnuts in Congress. Talk about a bad fit, but the intention wasn't to make a fit -- it was to deprive Heath Shuler of Asheville's Democrats, and bury them in a district where they will no influence. It's pure gerrymandering genius.
5. Rene Ellmers, whom the Daily Kos aptly called "one of the dimmest bulbs in the freshman class" has hit the lottery. Remember she barely squeaked by a tired and damaged Bob Etheridge to win district 2. Now it's been redrawn to keep her safe. The good news, for me personally, is that she will no longer represent me, with Chatham County drawn out of her district. I'm happy to not be represented by her.
6. If he hasn't already, David Price (4th district Democrat) can go ahead and buy a house in DC. The new map ensures his continued tenure, as the mapmakers crammed every Democrat they could from the Triangle and its surrounding area into his district, to make the ones around him more Republican. He got Chapel Hill, Durham, the northeastern Chatham County, the area of Wake county where NC State and Meredith are as well as the areas around the SAS institute where the educated high tech voters live. Yes his district now looks like District 12 Junior, but it's safe for him.

So what do I really think?

After all that you may think I hope the map gets thrown out, or think it's beyond the pale. Well I don't. Yes it royally screws Democrats, and it's an ugly looking gerrymander, and it exposes the hypocrisy of decades of GOP whining about Democratic maps. But Democrats have been doing it for 140 years.

Now after all this time the Republicans control redistricting, and you bet they are going to maximize their advantage and do all they can to make up for all those decades of Democratic gerrymandering. Redistricting is the ultimate example of "to the victor goes the spoils" and by winning the legislature for the first time in over 100 years last year, the NC GOP has earned the right to draw their maps. We shouldn't expect them to show restraint that our party never showed.

Democrats inadvertently complicit in their own redistricting slaughter

Besides, the NC Democrats are complicit in their current situation. Recall that the governor of NC has no veto power over district maps.

Why is that?

Because when the Democratic-controlled legislature amended the NC constitution in 1996 to give the governor the veto, they figured they would always control the legislature but that the Governor could be a Republican. So they made sure the Governor had no say in this process.

Now it's 15 years later and oops -- we have a GOP legislature with a Democratic Governor who is forced to sit helplessly on the sidelines while the GOP carves up the spoils of NC redistricting.

Talk about an example of trying to fix the system in your favor, backfiring.

Examining the Republican claim that George Lucier redistricted without public input

The GOP majority of the Chatham Board of Commissioners is working on pushing through their commissioner redistricting plan. Brian Bock explained how they did this in his blog. Basically he and Commissioner Petty drew the districts with help from the county GIS department. No one else was included.

Commissioner Bock justifies this by claiming this is what George Lucier did in 2007. The exact quote from his blog on this is:

Commissioner Lucier worked directly with the county GIS department to develop new districts to propose to the BOC.

Furthermore, Bock's supporters have been hitting the bulletin boards, claiming that what Commissioner Bock is doing now is no different from what Commissioner Lucier did then.

However, Bock and his supporters are not telling the full story. Commissioner Lucier did not simply go to the county GIS office and invent a completely new district plan like Bock and Petty did. Commissioner Lucier's goal was to restore the districts to what they were prior to 2006, when Bunkey and his lame-duck board attempted to gerrymander them after being voted out of office, but before leaving office.

Recall that among other things, the Bunkey gerrymander would have prevented commissioner Patrick Barnes from running for re-election, plus it was rejected in a countywide referendum in November 2006, so it was clearly an egregious injustice that had to be undone.

So Lucier did not come up with his own plan. He simply restored what was there before Bunkey tried to gerrymander the districts. This is what Lucier and his allies said they would do before the 2006 general election, and he followed through.

Now when this is pointed out to Bock's supporters, they will claim that is not true, that Lucier did not restore what was there before Bunkey. And it's true that Lucier's map is slightly differerent from the pre-Bunkey map, however it had to be.

The only way Lucier could legally replace Bunkey's map was if his replacement map had more equal population between districts than Bunkey's map, using 2000 census data. Bunkey's map had about a 3.5% population deviation between districts using this data. So Lucier and the county GIS department tweaked the pre-Bunkey districts to make their 2000 census population deviation 1.7%, to meet this legal requirement.

Did that result in a different plan that was "devised" by Lucier? Well rhetoric can fly all day, but at the end of the day the best way to judge that is compare the actual maps side by side.

First of all, apologies for the quality of the following pictures. They are like this because the only way I was able to get them was in .pdf format. I had to screen copy the PDFs and convert the screen copy into jpgs, to get these into a postable format.

This is what the Chatham County commissioner election districts looked like before Bunkey changed them in 2006 (source: Chatham County GIS office):

This is what they looked like after Lucier changed them in 2007 (source: Chatham County website):

Looking at these two maps side by side, it's pretty obvious that what Lucier did was restore the pre-Bunkey maps as much as possible. OK, he also changed their map colors. :) That's it. The very slight differences between the two maps, which were legally required, are very thin justification indeed for likening what Lucier did to what Bock is doing now.

Correction 6/23/2011: I actually had the maps switched when I originally posted this, and have corrected that. It's an easy mistake to make because, except for the colors, the maps are almost identical (which was the point anyway).

To conservatives, land use regulations are like the old joke about lawyers

Which old joke about lawyers?  The one that goes "everyone hates lawyers, until they need one. "


We saw this principle in action in the recent fight over the proposed private landfill in Bennett.  Recall that Bennett is a conservative part of the county where there is no zoning and the residents like it that way.  


How conservative is Bennett?  In the 2010 general election, the Republican commissioner candidates all received over 80% of the vote in the Bennett precinct.  In the NC Senate election, Republican Roger Gerber got 66% of the vote in Bennett while getting only 45% countywide and getting just 40% of the votes in the Senate district overall, in an otherwise great year for Republicans.  So I think we can stipulate that the voters of Bennett are rock-ribbed property rights conservatives. 


Well they are until someone wants to build something they don't like, like a private landfill.  Then they look just like the liberals, pinkos, and property rights haters of Eastern Chatham.  In fact their arguments against allowing a private landfill in their community could easily have been written by any liberal eastern Chathamite.  Two of their arguments in particular stand out.  They were both made, among other places,  in this post on the Chatham County bulletin board by poster mary51802, who is of course a staunch supporter of our conservative, property rights commissioners:

we found out in Chatham is one of the counties were the Shiners are endangered in our Cape Fear River basin, and a report on livestock revenue for the area along with a federally protected Woodpecker lives here.

We also have proved that he cannot change the frontline or road on 902 because of the Scenic Highway designation. It also states that any business that appears on it has to fit in with the area and it will not. 

Here's what's most interesting about these arguments. 

1. The attempted use of the endangered species act, which in any other circumstance conservatives would at best sneer at someone else using that to protect themselves from a project, and at worst that they believe should be repealed anyway. I mean seriously, can you imagine what Mary or any other Chatham County conservative who supported her on this  would say about an Eastern Chatham resident saying that a major development or shopping mall should be stopped because of endangered shiners and federally protected woodpeckers?    
2. The use of the Scenic Highway designation which results in a requirement that any business should "fit in"  (remember this is an unzoned part of the county).  This one was particularly rich, as these are the same people who oppose allowing another part of the county to have a corridor ordinance to protect their quality of life, then are quick to use a highway corridor law to protect themselves from development. 

Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad the landfill was defeated.  The hypocrisy of its opponents doesn't make this landfill a good idea.   But now that Bennett's conservatives (with the support of our conservative property rights commissioners) have used progressive and liberal arguments to defeat a landfill in their own backyard, the question becomes:  


Did they gain a new appreciation for how these types of laws and regulations can help protect citizens, or will they now go right back to working to make sure no one else can benefit from the same protections they just used for themselves? 

Have a Shot of 'Spro, or should we attack peoples' livelihoods over their political views and actions?

Recently on the Chatham Chatlist, Tina Meeks who owns the Shot of Spro mobile expresso van wrote in a P.S.:

I will probably have about a dozen customers or concerned local business owners stop by to let me know that I have just caused myself more alienation of my business by speaking out because I am NOT a supporter of some previous or current leaders. It amazes me how you are judged based more on your political beliefs than you are on what you have to offer as a business.

I doubt I agree with Tina on just about anything politically, as she is a supporter of Brian Bock and the Republicans, but I agree with her on this sentiment.  Personally, I don't patronize the Shot of 'Spro van simply because I am never in Pittsboro when they are.   But if the van were around me and I wanted a coffee, I would not hesitate to buy one from the Meeks' and their political views would not enter into my purchase decision.

As some other examples, I have in the past  hired Heather Johnson to do some Quickbooks setup for the charity I am treasurer of, and I have also patronized Bunkey's Car Wash.  Once when I was at a Bunkey's Cary location getting my car washed, I ran into Barbara McCoy who was surprised to see me there.  But I needed a car wash and the location was handy to me.  I'm not going to drive across town just to avoid giving Bunkey my $10 and it would be silly to do so. If Bunkey's does a good job at a reasonable price, I will use them.  I have since had other minor, non political interactions with Bunkey Morgan that were perfectly pleasant  (I will probably get my liberal card taken away for saying that).   I've patronized other businesses in Chatham that I'm pretty sure are owned or run by people I work against in the political arena, but I don't bother to find out and if I did it wouldn't matter.  I'm a capitalist and I will patronize the business that gives the best product at the best price.

So what? 

The reason I mention this is that I think one of the things standing in the way of civil discourse in politics is the tendency to take everything completely personally and think and wish nothing but ill of our political opponents, to the extent that we not only attack their political views and actions (which is to be expected) but even go so far as to attack their livelihoods and personal lives.   That is not the path to civil discourse, folks. It's the path to warring tribes who never interact with each other except to fight with each other.  Does anyone think that if they successfully got someone fired or caused their small business  to suffer over their political views, that would make the victim and his or her friends more sympathetic to their side?  Or that it would make that person less of an advocate for their views? I mean seriously, would it accomplish anything, beyond hurting the local economy and pissing people off?

It goes beyond deciding to patronize a small business or not.  During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, a Coalition steering committee member clumsily and unsuccessfully tried to get someone on the Cross and Barnes campaign team in trouble at work because that person was sending emails to the chatlist on what the complainer thought was company time and company resources.  This was someone who had worked happily and cooperatively with the same person two years before and never had a complaint about this email practice then.

This was the first time I had been working with a group directly against the Coalition so I don't know if this was a common practice of theirs but I suspect that a tiger doesn't change its stripes.   Also, before being banned from Gene's Chatham BBS, John Hammond used to make not-so-veiled threats to posters he disagreed with who he thought were posting on  their company's time and computers. His implication has always been that since he's retired he's untouchable but everyone who works better watch their step.  And the Coalition wonders how they got so unpopular!

They do it it too

It also happens on the right. When I lived in Cary I had as neighbors a couple who were friends of Paul Stam (at the time he wasn't in the legislature) who used to regularly demonstrate against abortion at the legislature. Once the wife was quoted in the News and Observer saying that people should boycott the businesses of legislators who supported abortion rights.   Their house was for sale at the time and they were struggling to sell it, so  after reading her quote in the paper article I suggested to her that maybe people who support abortion rights should boycott the houses for sale of people who are anti-abortion activists. She didn't appreciate the parallel.   I guess it's easier to suggest doing it to someone else than to consider having it done to you.

Why I really wish Brian Bock had kept his job at Suntrust

And of course there is Brian Bock.  He of all people should be the example of why such attacks are counterproductive.  During the 2010 campaign he was fired from Suntrust, specifically because of his campaign. Now I have no idea if this was driven by complaints from his opponents, or something else completely internal to Suntrust. I asked him and he doesn't really know for sure either.  Whether or not complaints led to the firing or not is beside the point.  Because I do know that after being fired he went on to win a very close election and was not the least bit chastened.  In fact I'd wager that the firing freed up  more time and energy to concentrate on his campaign, and probably spurred him on to redouble his efforts and contributed to his victory because of the extra bandwidth he suddenly had.

And now that Brian Bock is a commissioner with no responsibilities to Suntrust, he probably has more time and energy to devote to building an effective machine to have a lasting effect on Chatham politics than he would have otherwise had.    And make no mistake, Brian Bock is a smart man who knows what he's doing.  As a political opponent of his, I'd much rather he be spending his time right now dealing with tax season for his (I assume) demanding clients, than having full time to cement his electoral gains!

By the way it is to their credit that the liberal-leaning Chatham County Line  newspaper denounced the Bock firing in the article I linked above which was written by former Chatham Coalition steering committee member Tim Keim,  though I doubt most conservatives would agree with the reasons they denounced it for.

Evaluating the WWP concessions

OK, now that a little bit of time has passed and the passions have somewhat cooled, let's take a look at what our GOP commissioner majority got from WWP in exchange for permission to run a treated wastewater pipe through Chatham County.  First of all, here is commissioner chair Brian Bock's take on it.


Involuntary Annexation

Probably the flagship concession in many peoples' eyes is an agreement from Cary and Apex to refrain from involuntary annexation into Chatham County.  Paul Stam will be introducing a local bill to make this agreement mandatory but these municipalities have also agreed to enter into a 20 year inter-local agreement to refrain from this type of annexation.  As Brian Bock explained it to me and on his website, the inter-local agreement is for backup in case the bill does not pass the legislature, and the bill makes the inter-local agreement binding at the state level.

How significant is this?  Well it's definitely something.  The fact that neither Cary nor Apex has previously involuntarily annexed into Chatham County, and that Cary has a sort-of-but-not-really policy of not doing involuntary annexations may diminish it a bit but not completely.

First of all, as every investment advisor or securities salesman has ever told us, past results are not necessarily indicative of future returns, and you have to look at Cary's involuntary annexation record in that light.  After all Cary could have 100% turnover on its town council over the next four years, and the new guys could decide to become aggressive annexers.   And also, despite trying to present a benign face to the world on annexation, Cary does do involuntary annexations, or a least has attempted to, in the past and been stopped only by the actions of another town,  and Cary continues to make statements implying they will try again in the future.    Also Cary has a comprehensive annexation program that they maintain which was last updated in February 2010, which explicitly keeps open the possibility of involuntary annexations in the future.

However it is worth noting from the Cary annexation plan map that no areas in Chatham County are included, so involuntary annexation by Cary was not an immediate threat to any Chatham County property owner.  However as Cary grows into Chatham County through voluntary annexations, so-called donut holes would be created, and those are the types of areas that Cary likes to target for involuntary annexation, as you can see from their map linked above, and from the town's past statements on the matter.

So this concession is something and Bock & Co.deserve credit for getting.  It closes off the threat of a possible long-term side effect from voluntary annexations.  It's a distant threat and a theoretical one, but the agreement preventing it was something worth getting.

What about voluntary annexation?

Voluntary annexation is where the commissioners GOP majority and their opponents differ strongly.  The previous board of commissioners and many of their supporters, especially the ones who live in the area most affected by Cary's growth into Chatham County, also wanted a rule that would require Cary to get Chatham's permission for voluntary annexations into Chatham County.  But not only was this never on the table, but even if Cary offered it Bock would have turned it down.  We have to be clear on this:  The Board's Republican majority never would have accepted, much less sought, this concession.  It goes against their basic philosophy.

The differing views on this offer an excellent window into the different views of each side on growth and planning issues.

To the Republicans, voluntary annexation is simply property rights.  Philosophically they believe that a property owner should be able to seek annexation into the Town of Cary if they choose, since doing so provides an opportunity for water, sewer, and other infrastructure on the annexed property which enables much denser, intense, and lucrative development.

Now in the arguments over this the Republicans often invoke the specter of the small property owner with a failing well and/or septic system who simply wants to join the town to get the basic infrastructure they need to keep their home livable.  And Cary does do annexations for this purpose on occasion.  But that is a red herring.  Commissioners of either party or political philosophy would have not a problem giving annexation permission for such small, one-off emergency annexations (remember what was sought was a requirement that Chatham give permission for these annexations, not an outright ban), especially since they don't change the existing land use in place.

The real interest behind the Republican support for unlimited voluntary annexation is large developers who want to develop property more densely and intensely and profitably than it would otherwise support.  For example the developers of Amberly and Cary Park.   Note I didn't say "their property" because usually these developers only purchase an option to purchase the land, then pursue annexation and only complete the purchase if they get the annexation.  This allows them to use the existing property owner, usually but not always a Chathamite who obviously wants to complete the sale, as a front to make the annexation look local and friendly.

What's so bad about that? 

So how could Democrats oppose something as seemingly benign as voluntary annexation?  Well because they don't see it as benign.  They see it as a way to get around Chatham County's own land use planning.  After all if a property is annexed into Cary, all the land use planning and permitting comes under Cary's jurisdiction, not Chatham's.  As a point of reference on this, Cary considers three homes per acre to be "low density" development, a definition I doubt many Chathamites would agree with.

So consider a scenario in which a developer wants to put a particularly noxious and intense development right in the Jordan Lake watershed.  It may not even be residential, it could be for example an industrial use or a bar like the Goldston Sports Arena, or a go-kart track like Frankie's Fun Park or Adventure Landing  (whose Raleigh location has sparked complaints from nearby neighborhoods over late night noise for years). Chatham County could deny the rezoning for this but if the property owner can then turn around and request annexation from Cary and get that permission anyway, Chatham would have to take it and the problems it would bring.

Would Cary do such a thing?  Well Cary would benefit from the tax revenue of the development (as would Chatham) without upsetting its own voters since most of those disturbed would be Chatham citizens and neighbors who aren't in Cary, and therefore aren't Cary voters.

This is one of the reasons why the previous Chatham Commissioners wanted a joint land use plan to be worked out with Cary before they gave permission for this pipe, and also why they wanted to have a say in Cary's annexations into Chatham County, including the voluntary ones.  It was to protect the Chatham citizens who would be affected but would otherwise have no say in what happens around them.  Republicans dismiss this concern out of hand, and they have a name for citizens having no say in what happens around them: property rights.

$500,000 for Moncure

Another concession being touted by Bock and his internet campaigners is an agreement by WWP to give $500,000 for improvements to the Sprott Center in Moncure.

First of all, Bock absolutely had to get this concession because New Hill, an unincorporated town with no commissioners or elected representatives to speak for them, was able to get this same concession.  So there's no way Bock could have said he was looking out for his citizens if he couldn't get at least what New Hill got.  (It's worth noting that New Hill also got sewer service from WWP for 36 properties, a concession Bock did not get for Chatham).

I consider this mainly a token concession, as $500,000 is less than 0.2% of the $327  million (for now) WWP project and the WWP were obviously willing to throw this amount around to silence opposition.  What's more interesting about this concession is the information that came out later about it, which illustrates how eager the GOP commissioners were to approve this plant and approve it now.

Oops

Two days after the commissioners' vote, the Independent reported that the $500,000 may not be usable for its intended purpose because the Sprott Center is owned by a church.  Bock's response to that discovery, as quoted in the Independent,  was  that there wasn't enough time to get all the information to properly vet this.

I don't know about you but if I made a deal of this magnitude, affecting this many people, I would do due dilligence on all aspects of it.   Unless of course I was planning to vote yes anyway and didn't actually care about the concession, and just saw it as icing on the cake,  or simply a token to give me a fig leaf cover for voting to deliver Moncure property owners into the tender arms of the WWP and their eminent domain powers.

In fact I emailed Brian Bock a few days before the vote urging him to take the time to completely vet any last minute deals or concessions before voting (I did not know about this concession) and to make sure they are properly ratified.  The Friday before the Monday vote he responded to me that he would not be delaying the vote, because he felt the impending deadline made people negotiate better and get it done.  There is some sense to that, except of course sometimes in rushing to get something done in time for an arbitrary deadline,  important things are missed or done sloppily. But really, I think  Bock would have voted for this pipe, $500,000 or no $500,000, so it probably wasn't important enough to vet out like it appears he did on the annexation concession.

Now two other points about the above paragraph in Bock's defense.  Brian Bock deserves credit and kudos for engaging with  his opponents, giving their emails that disagree with him a serious and personal response.  I know I'm not the only person he has engaged with in this way.   And the $500,000 hasn't disappeared.  It will now be up to the commissioners to decide how to use it to fund improvements in  Moncure.  You know, the commissioners who didn't listen to Moncure in making this vote in the first place.  Hopefully the $500,000 will be handled differently.

Tap into the pipe

The last concession is one from the original list that that I commented on before, permission to tap into the pipe in the future.  Not much has changed on this since my first comment, so there's no need to repeat it all here except to say that Chatham will likely never make use of it since we would have to build our own unaffordable sewer plant to do so.  So this one really doesn't count for anything in my opinion.  In fact Brian Bock may agree with me on this because he didn't even mention it in his own blog post on his vote.

What should they have got?

It's fair to ask what concessions I would have sought if I were in Brian Bock's place.  In addition to what was obtained, I would have wanted to see:

1. The same agreement on voluntary annexation  that was made on involuntary annexation
2. WWP agreement to treat raw sewage from Chatham at their plant, under their existing state allocation.  After all, even New Hill got sewage treatment for 36 properties in their agreement with WWP!  The Moncure industrial area is geographically well positioned to benefit from from such a concession.  I don't know how much I would ask for, but the plant overall will eventually treat 57 mgd of raw sewage, so 3 mgd for Chatham usage would be about 5% of that and doesn't seem out of line to me.
3. Explicit protection for the affected landowners.  One thing that stands out among all the talk from the GOP about how they protected the Moncure land owners by voting against them, is that there were really no concessions for them in the end. I would suggest requiring WWP to agree to use the 2009 tax value (plus any improvements) when valuing property and to make property owners whole, for example paying for sophisticated septic systems and replacement wells for landowners whose perk fields and/or wells will be destroyed, and paying 2007 market value for any timber removed rather than requiring the landowners to timber the affected land themselves (at today's depressed market values) to get that value.  There may be other things, I would take my cue here from the affected landowners. 

Conclusion

As I said earlier, the concession on voluntary annexation was never going to happen with pro-development Republican commissioners.  They had no interest in it.  The involuntary annexation concession they got is significant and will satisfy their supporters, and should be appreciated by others as well.  However,  without the accompanying voluntary annexation concession it won't be enough to satisfy anyone else in my opinion, but we should recognize the significance of what they did get here.  It's not nothing. It is something, and it's significant.

I don't know if they sought the raw sewage treatment concession and were rebuffed or never sought it.  Many people besides me suggested it so it's not like the suggestion wasn't out there. However that may have been something that actually would have cost the WWP and been truly significant, and they wouldn't give this one unless they absolutely had to.  In my opinion, WWP knew they were negotiating with a friendly partner who fully intended to give them what they wanted and was mainly just looking for political cover to do so, so there was no need for them to consider a concession this significant, and both they and Brian Bock knew that.  I'm guessing it never came up except maybe as a token gesture.

In the end Brian Bock got exactly what he wanted -- political cover.  He got enough to be able to say that he was fighting for Chatham's interests, and something his supporters can work to sell and rah-rah over, but nothing that actually would have any effect on the effects of the pipeline on Moncure, the  pace of development in Cary, Apex, or Chatham County, or cost the WWP anything significant.     It was a win for him.

A Sometimes-insider’s History of the Chatham Coalition, parts of which may even be true. Part 3: The 2004 election

(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)

For the 2004 election cycle the Coalition did not recruit candidates. By the time the Coalition was formally founded and off the ground, there were already multiple candidates in the Democratic primary. In district 1 the candidates were Patrick Barnes from Chatham County United (CCU), Ron Singleton, an engineer, and Uva Holland, a former commissioner and friend and ally of Bunkey Morgan.  In district 2 there was Mike Cross from the Southeast Chatham Citizens Advisory Committee (SECCAC), former Pittsboro Mayor Mary Wallace who was clearly the candidate of the development community, and Barry Gray, an African American minister and sort of a wild card in the race.

So in the 2004 race the Coalition decided to endorse an already-filed candidate.  They sent out questionnaires, which some candidates declined to fill out and from those the Coalition picked their candidates, and they chose Barnes and Cross. 

The Cross campaign (which I was co-managing with David LeGrys) and Barnes campaign (which Barbara Ford and Larry Hicks were running) were grateful and appreciative of the support and help of the Coalition.   However we were not part of the Coalition.  We kept separate campaign teams and worked with them, but were by no means a merged team. 

Some fissures form

In fact there was tension between Mike Cross’s campaign and the Coalition several times during the 2004 campaign.   These stemmed in large part from two things: the Cross campaign team’s belief that we knew what we were doing (David LeGrys had managed several winning campaigns in Chatham County before, including all of Margaret Pollard’s campaigns) so while we are happy to have the Coalition’s help we didn’t need them to tell us what to do, and Mike Cross’s personal unwillingness to sign on to some of the materials and slogans the Coalition was putting out. 

The bottom line is that Mike Cross was more moderate and some of the attacks and slogans he was being asked to sign onto made him uncomfortable, not only politically but also personally and in some cases he refused which caused tension.

One example that is illustrative of this occasional conflict between Mike Cross and the Coalition came late in the general election campaign.  The Coalition had dug up some old dirt on Mike’s Republican opponent.  A member of the Coalition steering committee (the only reason I don’t name the member is I don’t know exactly who)  brought this information to Mike and asked him “what should we do with this information.”  Mike’s response was “forget you ever saw it.”  The information was old, irrelevant to the campaign or the office of commissioner, we were confident we would win without it, and Mike felt it would just make him look dirty to use it.   The Coalition and Mike vehemently disagreed on this point and neither refused to budge.  In the end Mike’s campaign did not use the information, but the Coalition leaked it anyway, which completely pissed off Mike because he figured he would be blamed for the information being used.

Mike Cross also wanted to campaign in Western Chatham County, but the Coalition thought that was a waste of effort (a theme that would come to define the Coalition over time).  There were many disagreements and arguments along these lines but in the end we all worked together reasonably well. 

They knew what they were doing

The Coalition had excellent organizational and fundraising skills and a lot of people willing to work with and donate to them.  They were committed to grass roots campaigning and had the widespread support and pool of volunteers to make that happen.   Every weekend dozens of people knocked on doors and canvassed county events on behalf of the Chatham Coalition in support of Cross and Barnes, and their fundraising parties were huge events drawing dozens to hundreds of people to hear local music, book readings from local authors, and to support progressive politics in Chatham County.

The Coalition was also very good with data. Armed with printouts of registered Democrats and Independents in the county who were either newly registered or had a history of voting regularly in Democratic primaries, we would meet at the General Store Café, divide up canvassing assignments over breakfast, and then go out and spend the day campaigning. It was an asset any campaign would love to have.   And against it, the situation was reversed from 2002 – the other side didn’t stand a chance. 

Pushback

As the effectiveness of the Coalition was becoming apparent, the other side in desperation started attacking the Coalition, focusing on Jeffery Starkweather.  Many of Mary Wallace's and Andy Wilkie's supporters took to calling it the "Jeffery Starkweather coalition" and some of them even tried to claim he was a communist, a charge he effectively shut down as discussed in the previous entry of this series. These attacks didn't get much traction, but over the years it's a tactic that the other side never let up on.

The result

Combining the effectiveness of the Coalition with the expertise and experience of David LeGrys and Larry Hicks and others on the campaign teams, Mike Cross and Patrick Barnes won their 3-way Democratic primaries with over 50% of the vote each, and Mike Cross won the general election by 1400 votes (Patrick Barnes did not have a Republican opponent).

The Coalition also endorsed candidates in the school board election, who also all swept into office, winning over 60% of the votes in their races.   This Chatham Journal editorial by Chatham Coalition steering committee member Roland McReynolds captures the feeling of the time.

In its debut campaign, the Coalition had run the table and was starting to look like an unstoppable force. 

Western Wake Partners -- what is the choice really?

It's pretty apparent that the fix is in and our GOP board majority will be voting to give the Western Wake Partners the green light to run a sewer discharge pipe from its proposed New Hill regional sewage treatment plant to the Cape Fear River through southeastern Chatham County.

The signs that tell us this are the FAQ on the county's website and the hard work being done online by Tom Glendenning, Donna Kelly,  and other Bock campaign team members on the Chatham Chatlist and Gene's Chatham Online BBS to lay the groundwork with an online campaign designed to make people think that the WWP pipe would be good for Chatham, plus if we don't do it the state will make us do it anyway.

This blog post focuses on the latter argument. The argument being sold by Bock's online campaign team is that if the commissioners say Yes, we get the pipeline with the concessions from WWP/Cary as outlined in the county's FAQ. But if they say no, the state will make us do it anyway, and we won't get any concessions.

Concessions? What Concessions?

The problem with that argument is that WWP/Cary has in fact put no real concessions on the table.  The key "concession" being offered is a possible, maybe, if they feel like letting us, opportunity to tap into the discharge pipe.  People who are pushing this pipe often claim that it would help infrastructure and economic development, but they gloss over the fact that it's a discharge pipe for treated wastewater, not raw sewage.

That means that Chatham is not being offered any sewer treatment capability.  In order to tap in to the treated water discharge pipe, Chatham would have to treat the water first.  That would require it to build its own wastewater plant and sewer infrastructure, and then we could put the output of that infrastructure into this pipe.  That is unaffordable and won't happen, so this "concession" means nothing.

Another featured concession is Cary's promise to come up with a "rescue plan" for Chathamites near its annexation area with failing well and septic systems.  But this isn't a concession, it's business as usual for Cary, which routinely provides this "rescue plan" in Wake County already.  The rescue plan is this: if you have a failing system, Cary will hook you up to their system, but you have to pay the full tap-on fees and agree to be annexed into the town.  (I used to live in Cary and attended many town council meetings in which this plan was implemented for Wake County homeowners)

The other concessions mentioned in the FAQ are too minor to bother with, or are things WWP would likely have to do anyway.

If you don't want to, we'll make you do it

I also don't accept the argument that if the state passes a legislative bill forcing  Chatham to take the pipe, Chatham will get no concessions.  Legislation is a messy process of negotiation and also CYA, with lots of interests represented, including Chatham County and other rural areas that are wary of urban power in the state legislature.  In other words, Paul Stam, who has been represented as the person who will put this bill through,  is 1 vote out of 120 votes in the state house.  Add in the entire Wake County delegation (some of whom don't represent areas served by WWP) and it's up to  9 out of 120 in the state house and 4 out of 50 in the state senate.

There is a good chance that if our Republican legislature, which campaigned on favoring property rights and curbing municipal power in annexation matters, is going to go against its stated agenda to screw Chatham County and its southeastern property owners, they would put concessions to Chatham in the bill to give themselves political cover for their betrayal of principles.  They may also have to do this to get the support of other rural legislators who aren't inclined to help an urban county railroad a rural one, because Wake County does not have a majority in the legislature and will need help to pass such a bill.  And in that case the concessions would be written into state law, instead of just being an informal agreement may or may not be honored.

What they want you to think the choice is

So Bock's online campaigners are trying to portray this as a choice between these two alternatives:

1. Vote yes to WWP and get concessions from WWP
2. Vote no to WWP and be forced by the state to take the pipe with no concessions from WWP

With the assumption that under alternative 1, the county at least gets something.  The problem with this is that it's a false alternative predicated on the idea that WWP is actually offering meaningful concessions, which it is not, and that state legislation would have no concessions to Chatham, which is not a sure thing.   This set of fake alternatives is being sold to us to give political cover to developer-friendly Chatham County commissioners who plan to green light this project.

What the choice really is

The real alternatives are:

1. Vote yes to WWP and get no meaningful concessions from WWP
2. Vote no to WWP and be forced by the state to take the pipe, with concessions that could range from none, to almost none (which is what is being offered now),  to more than is being offered now 

You may ask, what's the real difference between 1 and 2 above if either one may yield no concessions, especially if the state law doesn't give any concessions to Chatham?

My answer to that is with alternative 2 Chatham County commissioners listen to and stand up for Chatham Citizens.  With alternative 1 they listen to and stand up for Western Wake Partners and by extension the Cary and Apex developers who will benefit from the expanded sewer capacity that WWP brings.

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.

A Sometimes-insider’s History of the Chatham Coalition, parts of which may even be true. Part 1: 2002, A Desperate Need

(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)

In 2002 I was working on Gary Phillips’ re-election campaign and David LeGrys’ campaign for commissioner.  It was my first significant immersion into Chatham County politics after moving here from Cary in 1999. 

There was a core of us who did most of the grass roots work on David and Gary’s campaign.  I will probably leave some names off for which I apologize but I remember most of the work being done by myself, Will Sexton, Nancy Brown (who officially challenged Bunkey’s residency in district 4), Bruce Alexander, Mark Barroso (who provided videotaped proof that Bunkey did not live in district 4 which was ignored by the county board of elections), Karl Kachergis, and Barbara Ford.  As far as I could see we were the core workers of the  Phillips/LeGrys campaign besides the candidates themselves.  

The county commissioners led by Phillips had just turned down the Briar Chapel mega development and the developers of Briar Chapel, a California based company named Newland, and the rest of the development community were up in arms and determined to get rid of the commissioners who would stand in their way of doing whatever they wanted in the county.   The campaign they ran was unprecedented in Chatham County, it included push polls, expensive mailings, PACs formed and run by developers and realtors to push the Bunkey campaign, and culture wars attacking the incumbent’s religion and marriage.  In retrospect we really didn’t stand a chance.

To be fair it must be said we weren’t helped by the candidate at the top of our ticket, Gary Phillips, who separated from his wife in the middle of the hotly contested primary season, and who had overstated his educational and divinity credentials. These two things inflamed the county’s conservatives. 

Another thing that didn’t help us was complacency among county liberals and their allies caused by the sheer perceived ridiculousness of Bunkey Morgan’s campaign.  A lot of people who should have known better didn’t think he had a chance of winning a Democratic primary because he had run and lost as a Republican in another district 2 years ago so wasn’t a real Democrat, and he didn’t really even live in the district he was running to represent. 

A lot of people who should have paid more attention or helped defeat him dismissed Bunkey as a joke and thought we were being silly, or paranoid, or just trying to get money or volunteer time out of them by playing up the Bunkey threat. 

One incident I distinctly remember that illustrates this attitude was trying to get the News and Observer’s Chatham beat  reporter (hard to believe now that such a thing would exist, but it did) interested in Bunkey’s business history of being sued for nonpayment by suppliers and the IRS.  This was important because a major part of his campaign message was that he was a successful businessman who had shown an ability to make a payroll and get the bills paid with what he had available.   The reporter listened to what I laid out and then said “None of this matters because face it Bunkey is a joke and he doesn’t really stand a chance in this Democratic primary,  so it’s not a story.” 

After Bunkey won the primary and the Republicans pulled out of the race, a lot of people were shocked that it had happened and realized too late that complacency and letting others do the hard campaigning work wasn’t going to be a winning strategy. 

The fact of the matter was we were a handful of people up against a purpose-built big money political machine and we got bulldozed by that machine.   What we really needed was a political machine of our own.  

A Sometimes-insider’s History of the Chatham Coalition, parts of which may even be true -- introduction

Now that the Chatham Coalition is folding up their tent after a 7+ year run, I’ve decided to put my thoughts and especially recollections of them down to remember. 

This is a history of the Chatham Coalition as I remember it, and as I experienced it.  It is not a definitive or authoritative history.  Even though it is written, it is more oral history than anything.

I did not and will not do extensive fact checking on this history.  The fact checking I will do is based on my email archives and on bulletin board archives only, and information I can find with google searches. 

I did not and will not contact people mentioned in this history to get comments or clarifications or get “their side” of a story.  This is intentional.  I am not a journalist or historian.  Many of these people are my friends, acquaintances and rivals and I want this to be my recollection and not be colored by what they want me to say.  However, that said I welcome comments to this series of blog posts, and anyone is welcome to respond to or clarify what I say in the comments on this blog.

Who am I to write this history? 

It is important when reading anything like this to understand the context, where the author is coming from, and where his biases may be.  By way of introduction I moved to Chatham County in 1999 from Cary, where I grew up (yes it’s true some people did grow up in Cary, not everyone moved there).

When I was living in Cary in the 1990s I was politically active to an extent but not a large extent.  I was active in Citizens for Balanced Growth and peripherally active in the campaigns they supported.  These included Glen Lang, who was the first candidate in the Triangle area to emphasize smart growth as the centerpiece of a local campaign and who eventually became first a town council member and then a very controversial mayor of Cary, and his allies like Jack Smith and others. 

Other members of that group that I worked with were Stan Norwalk, who is now a Wake County commissioner, and Harold Weinbrecht who is now mayor of Cary.  However despite that little bit of name-dropping I had and have no influence over any of them and it’s been over a decade since we worked together.  None of them would likely recognize me on the street today, I mention them just to show who some of the people are who came out of that group.

At any rate I was never in the inner circle or as deeply involved in Cary politics as I have been in Chatham.

After moving here to the Moncure area  I engaged in local politics starting with opposition to a multi-state regional landfill in Chatham County in late 2000.   I worked on the campaigns of Phillips and LeGrys in 2002, and Cross and Barnes in 2004 and 2008.  I also was involved some in the 2006 commissioner campaign but not nearly as much as the other years, one reason being I spent October and a good part of November out of the country in 2006 on job-related travel. I did not participate in the 2010 commissioner campaign, unless you count online arguing and debating as participating, which I really don't. 

I was never a member of the Chatham Coalition’s Steering committee though they did give me the humorous (and completely unofficial) title of Ward Heeler after the 2004 election.  My view of the Coalition has always been that I am not one of them but I worked with and helped them when I agreed with them, and didn’t when I didn’t.

The Coalition was in my opinion overall a positive force in Chatham County, though they went wrong as they got more powerful and successful. 

It is not my intention to whitewash Cross and Barnes or to kick the Coalition people when they are down (OK, maybe a little bit) but to tell the history of the Coalition from one reasonably (but not completely) informed point of view. 

What's the deal with the moniker Peaceful Capitalist?

I've been using the moniker peacefulcapitalist on Chatham County bulletin boards since 2003.  It came from a BusinessWeek article.

We were in the run-up to the Iraq war and BusinessWeek ran an article headlined The High Price of Bad Diplomacy.  In this article BW described how the Bush administration's bungled diplomacy (or lack thereof) in the run-up to war had hurt American companies and would continue to.   What struck me about that article was that it put opposition to the war in stark economic terms, instead of the peacenik terms that most opposition had been using, and which everyone who wasn't already bought into the anti-war view ignored or dismissed out of hand.  It basically pointed out that war is not only bad for peacenik reasons, but also because it's not compatible with democratic capitalism.

When I picked that moniker it was specifically to post a link to the BW article, as I was arguing about the war and I didn't think I would keep it very long. But almost eight years later, I'm still using it because I think it illustrates the idea of being a liberal who nonetheless embraces and believes in capitalism and markets -- those are not incompatible!

Plus there are so few good monikers left on the internet that someone hasn't already claimed!

Sometimes in arguments people will try to claim I'm not really a capitalist because I don't agree with their view of how capitalism should work or be regulated.  That will be for later discussion on this blog.