Election '17 Postmortem

Greensboro: Stay the course--mostly

The City Council lost its only two white men--leaving Justin Outling as the only male on the new City Council--but it will still be an elite-flavored stranglehold. The 11th hour endorsements by five former mayors for Mike Barber and Tony Wilkins may have helped to erase the former's razor-thin 12 vote lead over Michelle Kennedy in the primary and put the latter councilman's hold on the District 5 seat out of reach.

Speaking of the person who Wilkins lost to, Tammi Thurm now comes with her own caveat. While she did Greensboro a huge favor by getting rid of the creative community's biggest foe, the only person to get a perfect score from Democracy Greensboro worked for Randall Kaplan in the past and has also curried favor with the other political clans while catering to the leftmost group at the same time.

I previously thought that the worst of all worlds scenario would be either the incumbents (and Goldie Wells) sweeping or the elites deeming Barber (or Marikay Abuzuaiter) expendable and attempting to co-opt Democracy Greensboro's anti-establishment sentiment. Instead, they may have co-opted Thurm in District 5 as a third way. I mean, look at the second link as far as Thurm's funders go: 

• Chip Hagan, husband of the former U.S. senator who likely sealed her fate when she voted against the DREAM ACT
• Andrew Brod, one of the economic development gurus whose theories have done the city far more harm than good
• Ivan Cutler is a very prominent part of the Greater Greensboro Politics Facebook page, which advances the city's establishment agenda 
• Dawn Chaney is a big supporter of the creatives' second biggest foe, Nancy Hoffmann (check out Dang's blog for how much of a hindrance Ms. Chaney truly is)

What the District 5 result means for Democracy Greensboro is that Ms. Kennedy may be the only reliable City Councilwoman who will stand up to the moneyed factions. What it means for Ms. Thurm is that she will have to choose who she wants to serve over the next four years--the citizens of Greensboro or the city's political clans. If Thurm does the right thing, she risks being challenged by someone who's backed by the elites or a stronger conservative who has the full backing of Roy Carroll and/or Marty Kotis in '21. The most apparent thing is that conservatives in West Greensboro turned on Wilkins and did so by staying home in the second round. Meanwhile, the elites were split, so, it may have more to do with the incumbent losing the seat rather than a strong showing by the challenger. And if Thurm sells out, she'll get a challenger to her left.

To no one's surprise, Vaughan swamped her way to a third term. What is more surprising is the blowouts in the district races. Talk about depressing! Despite whispers about Sharon Hightower's stance of small businesses in southeast Greensboro, she got the highest percentage of votes (84%). Goldie Wells made her District 2 appointment official as she becomes the third person to be appointed to City Council and then elected outright in three election cycles. At this point, the political clans may as well buy five of the remaining six seats (once again, Kennedy is the exception here) because the same nonsense would happen anyway.

High Point: Build it now, not later

Jay Wagner narrowly edged Bruce Davis and as a result, the forces who want to build the downtown stadium without the county commissioners' input prevailed over those who wanted the city to mend fences with the county. 

The future of the city is truly on the line over the next two years. A couple off decades ago, I would have been with the build it now crowd but my personal doubts about the Triad's future and evidence that sports stadiums aren't that much of an economic boost placed me in the build it smart camp instead. The Catalyst Project must be handled correctly or it will be a wrap for Downtown High Point. I'll make it a guarantee right now: If there is no stadium in the spring of 2019, there will be a massive backlash in the fall that will be Trump like.

The conservatives' favorite candidate finished 366 votes short of keeping her at-large seat but Cynthia Davis and her allies like Jim Davis could end up with the mayor's seat and the majority in two years if Wagner et al's strategy backfires.

Turnout was 14 percent this year as opposed to the 11 percent in 2005, the last time city elections were held in odd numbered years. Not exactly a vast improvement.

Press censorship: Staggering

Maybe a reason for the serious disconnect is because how compromised the local press is. The televised press does fluff pieces for the Triad's power players but does no investigative journalism to uncover corruption. Meanwhile, the print journalists are all either too scared of the establishment or fully in bed with them. Radio? Really? No, seriously? All of the local AM stations have been converted to sports, music, Spanish or religious formats. The lone FM news/talk station may have a regional show in the morning but it is a feeder for national shows that air later in the day and the host and caller discuss national issues.

Despite numerous candidates filing to run in Greensboro, the local press only focused on a few of the challengers even though there were clear signs that the area is heading in the wrong direction. At the end of August, the Triad Business Journal put out an article that said in no uncertain terms that Greensboro has lost jobs in the private sector since 2007. And yet, not a single seat holder was eliminated in the primaries. As a matter of fact, they were mostly rewarded with new terms. When challengers did bring up that all was not well, they were ignored, ridiculed for bringing up "social issues" or even branded as "extremists."

The News & Record's approach with write-in candidates was sickeningly hypocritical. While it was all too happy to highlight people mounting such campaigns in Rockingham County, it was silent on such candidates in Guilford County.

Also, some friends of friends had a personal run-in with Outling and his wife that could have painted the District 3 councilman in a very different light had the media reported on it (I'm withholding much of the details because a] I don't know all of the story and b] another blogger tried to run with the story and was forced to delete it by the people who are at odds with the Outlings and I don't want to be next). Well, these two found out the hard way that the TV media aren't reliable because they only going to protect the powerful.