INTERESTED IN RUNNING FOR OFFICE?

One of the truths of our civic culture is that there are two distinct groups of citizens. In one group we have those who are willing to seek office to serve their community and the other group is made up of those of us who observe the first. Clearly, both groups are necessary for our system to work but we should acknowledge that it takes a lot of courage to be in the first group.

What if there were an election and nobody was on the ballot? Not very likely you say because there are always those who are willing to be group one folks. I guess that’s been true, and anyway it’s probably more likely that there could be an election and too few came out to vote. But it takes real bravery to sign on to be in group one and no courage at all to not participate in the electoral process.

How would you decide whether to run for office? After deciding to run what else do you have to do to enhance your chances of success? That is such a good question that the Community Action Network (CAN) decided to sponsor another free and nonpartisan campaign and elections workshop that will be held at the Chapel Hill Town Council chambers on Saturday April 28th from 10 a.m. to Noon. Registration is not required.

The workshop will cover running for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, the Chapel Hill Town Council, the Orange County Board of Commissioners, the Hillsborough Town Council and the two school boards in Orange County. Those interested in running, as well as those just interested in working on a campaign, are the prime target audience.

Here is how it will work. The workshop will have three components. The first will consist of questions from moderator Rosemary Waldorf (former Chapel Hill Mayor) directed to a panel of former elected officials and volunteer campaign workers. The questions will focus primarily on deciding to run for office, campaign staffing, scheduling, financing, publicity, election laws, and the use of technology. In the second component, members of the audience will be able to participate directly by asking questions of the panel members.

The panel members scheduled to participate are Nick Didow, a former Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board member; Steve Halkiotis, a former Orange County Commissioner; Susan Halkiotis, a former Orange County School Board member; Tom Jensen, a recent UNC-CH graduate who has been active in a number of local campaigns; Thomas Mills, a political consultant; Ruby Sinreich, a former candidate for Chapel Hill Town Council and a computer technology usage expert; and Allen Spalt, a former Carrboro Board of Aldermen member. Others may be added in the run-up to the workshop.

After the panel discussion and questions from the audience, panel members will break into several small informal groups. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss specific questions that they have and follow up on topics that were covered in the first two components. The last time that CAN sponsored the workshop, the small groups were very popular and the added benefit was that participants were able to establish relationships with the former office seekers and campaign workers.

There will be some useful information to take home, as CAN has prepared a resource packet. It will include basic information about how to file for elections, samples of reports required by the Orange County Board of Elections, and a campaign activity timeline.

Why is CAN doing this? As a nonprofit membership organization that advocates for the general public interest, the board sees this activity as a perfect way to increase public awareness of this critical civic activity. Additionally, no organization other than CAN has done a similar workshop so it fills a need. Several attendees at the last workshop did in fact run for office and thought that the workshop was useful.

Since it might be difficult for some to get to Town Hall on a Saturday morning, the session can be seen in real time on Chapel Hill cable channel 18 and it will be rebroadcast on future dates on the People’s Channel.

I hope that many people come to the free workshop or watch it on TV. I also hope that more than a few people in Orange County will be motivated, after some serious thinking and analysis, to seek office. Having a good pool of candidates means that we will continue to have good political leadership. After all, we have some tough policy issues to navigate.

Just as CAN has tried to be “a positive force for positive action” in the Orange County community, having positive individuals who are willing to serve us is a good thing; having to choose from a slate of many good candidates is an even better thing!


Fred is the past chair and a current board member.
Previous columns are available at www.columnsbyfredblack.blogspot.com

BIDDING BLUE MOON ELECTION FAREWELL

I suspect that I’m not the only one glad to say goodbye to this blue moon election! Every 12 years we have one of these blue moon elections, meaning that there is no race for the White House, Governor’s Mansion, or U.S. Senate to generate the kind of excitement that they say brings voters to the polls.

No excitement? I guess it depends on what you call excitement. Personally, I could do without that brand of excitement like they had in Durham with the DA race, or the venomous 13th Congressional District race with Vernon Robinson, or even the school bond issue in Wake County.

We had our own brand in excitement in our Superior Court race. Here were four people that everyone I talked to said would all serve us well because they were all capable and competent. Two had been appointed to the Superior Court by the Governor, one was a District Court judge, and the fourth is a practicing attorney who formed the first integrated law firm in North Carolina.

To get their message out they bombarded us with glossy card mailings, robo calls, yard signs, and campaign ads, all to generate name recognition. As a group, it looks like they spent more than $350,000 on their campaigns. Is money the ultimate arbitrator in local politics today? Well, it appears that number one vote getter Carl Fox spent the least amount of money.

Philosophically, I’m still not sure that I believe that we should make judge candidates raise money and campaign like other office seekers. Maybe we should make all of these races eligible for tax dollar funding. I think the idea should be given a good look.

Our House race was a barnburner too, wasn’t it? How many people watched the two candidates discuss their visions for the future? If dissolving the Congress and starting from scratch was on the ballot, it might have won. Why? It seems that, at best, people are pretty fed up with the institution, and at worst, thoroughly hostile towards it. Some incumbents in other places lost their seats, but David Price didn’t and will be part of the House majority in January. Let’s hope they can get the institution back on track.

Then there was the Orange County Board of County Commissioners race. On the Democrat side, there were three candidates for three seats, and two of them were incumbents. On the Republican side, there was one candidate. Some believed that a Republican could win in Orange County if a significant number of traditional Democrat voters joined with the Republicans and the unaffiliated.

Driving this was anger with Mike Nelson due to some of his actions while the mayor of Carrboro. Nelson finished third with 27% of the vote. I suspect that he benefited greatly from straight ticket voting but he won in the northern precincts where Republican Jamie Daniels did well in 2004.

Probably the most heat was generated by the referendum to change how we elect commissioners. The consensus seemed to be that moving from five to seven commissioners was a very good thing. The controversy was over the two electoral districts that the voters were asked to approve. It seemed that even the commissioners themselves weren’t overly excited with the plan that they crafted, but they pushed it as a forward step in the right direction. I hope that they take some more concrete steps to make our process better.

What wasn’t exciting in this election was the turnout. In this community, with fewer than 37% of those registered voting, we have nothing to be proud of. Why was it so pitiful? Don’t people care? Sure it rained, but remember all of the beautiful days we had during the early voting period? We can and must do better!

So is it just an excuse or did some people not vote because of more concrete factors? Is not voting a protest? Is not voting a statement of contentment? Some who don’t vote claim that they don’t know the candidates or the issues. Maybe it’s a good thing that they refrain. But why do so few citizens exercise their right, a right that so many fought for and even died for?

Well, I congratulate Weaver Dairy Satellite for their typical outstanding turnout (81.6%) and hope that the two precincts with the lowest turnout — Country Club and Mason Farm will benefit next time from more UNC student activism.

Congratulations also to all the winners and those many candidates who ran fair, honest, and inexpensive campaigns. I applaud you for seeking to serve us. For those folks who didn’t vote, remember, politicians read the winds. If your vote doesn’t stir the winds, there will be less accountability. Accountability generates excitement. Accountability is a good thing.