Asheville city election analysis

The big lesson in this week’s Asheville city election was “money matters.” (Should we be surprised?)

Three of the top four fundraisers were voted into office and had it not been for the power of incumbency and attendant name-recognition it is likely the top money campaigns would have easily claimed the top spots.

Republican Bill Russell, a political neophyte who had never attended a City Council meeting before September, bought a seat by outspending everyone else and saying very little about his policy positions. He was Asheville’s G.W. Bush with whom almost anyone might want to drink a beer but whose political thinking was, apparently, somewhat less than skin deep. His backers were Republicans, local developers and a large number of out-of-state contributors. Russell’s out-of-state receipts nearly equaled the TOTAL contributions to incumbent Bryan Freeborn.

However, Russell’s success would have been impossible without the Republican-funded and Libertarian-driven Let Asheville Vote campaign that erupted last summer.

Let’s recap the LAV fracas: A Republican led City Council had shifted Asheville from partisan to nonpartisan elections in 1994, in order to break the apparent stranglehold on local races by the Democratic Party. The Democrats have historically held a wide majority of registered voters in the county and it is clear that moneyed interests and Republicans saw a chance to wrest control from the Democrats by changing Asheville’s system.

(In the larger scheme of things, it is worth remembering that party politics had been in flux, particularly in the South, for a couple of decades at that point, with conservative, moneyed and racist Dems fleeing the party—post-Voting Rights Act—in response to Nixon’s “southern strategy.” The line between old-guard Dems in Asheville and the neo-con Republicans is very grey.)

In the years since, development interests have held sway in the city, no matter what the nominal party affiliations of the council members. Most notably, Mayor Charles Worley, an old-guard Dem but then and now attorney for the Board of Realtors, headed a very pro-development council at the turn of the century. Nonpartisan elections tend to depress voter turnout and heavily reward big spenders according to repeated studies by political scientists.

Mayor Terry Bellamy defeated Worley in 2005. While she received substantial support from the progressive community due to her gender and African-American race, her major backing came from developers and her own career has been in development. As Mayor she has continued to toe the pro-developer line with lip-service to a handful of social issues.

In the same election cycle in which Bellamy was elected, Republican Carl Mumpower won re-election to council and advocated a return to partisan elections, thereby breaking with party policy.

A majority of Democrats voted for a return to partisan city elections in their precincts last March and the Buncombe County Democratic Convention endorsed a return to partisan elections in April.

In early summer, Mr. Mumps again urged his fellow council members to return to partisan elections. Democratic council members Robin Cape, Freeborn, Holly Jones and Brownie Newman, probably acting on the wishes expressed by their party’s convention, agreed and voted for the switch. But when the vote occurred, Mr. Mumps switched gears and voted “No.”

Then arose a Republican funded campaign dubbed “Let Asheville Vote,” which solicited signatures on a petition to bring the change in voting systems to the electorate as a ballot initiative. With the help of local media including most prominently Matt Mittan on 570AM, the Asheville Citizen-Times and editorial approval (if not outright endorsement) from the Mountain Xpress, organizers collected enough signatures to put the matter on the November ballot.

In the ensuing “non-partisan” election, Republican money flowed to the sole self-identified Republican in the race, Russell, while developer money ran to him, to lapsed Democrat Dwight Butner (abruptly turned “independent” though he had run in the previous election as a Dem) and to incumbent Jan Davis, an affable local businessman who routinely voted with Mr. Mumps on matters of note and who is aptly labled a DINO by local activists. (Democrat In Name Only). Ads funded by Republicans blasted Newman and Freeborn for their pro-partisan election votes and even lied about candidate Elaine Lite’s position on the voting matter. Lite had signed and campaigned for the LAV petition. She was one of many progressives who was fooled by the Republican tactic and the high-minded rhetoric advanced concerning the partisan-nonpartisan election issue. Lite was the preeminent “slow-development” candidate, and therefore drew the most pro-development venom.

The results:
Davis won reelection, a Republican in Dem clothing with extremely high name recognition, low negative ratings, and the fourth largest war chest.

Newman won reelection, despite the vilification for his pro-partisan election vote, due to high name recognition, the second-largest campaign fund and his mild pandering to development interests, which softened his too-green image.

Russell trumped Lite and Freeborn with his overwhelming campaign fund, pretty face, TV ads and cautious failure to make any statement of substance.

Freeborn was voted out. As a relative newcomer (with only two years on council in an appointed position) he had relatively low name recognition and a dismal fundraising effort — he was sixth in the money contest, of the six candidates in the race.

Lite, a total newcomer, place fifth in fundraising and sixth in votes. She had virtually no pre-race name recognition and was exposed to enormous vilification by those who hope to sell Asheville to the highest bidder and then move on to other lucrative ground.

It is worth noting that in this “non-partisan” election, the fact that Republican money focused on one candidate while Democratic money was spread among four candidates (plus Butner, who was a Dem two years ago), the heavy concentration of party money did the trick the Republicans have counted on here for 13 years. Anyone who claims that the “nonpartisan” system is actually nonpartisan is lying or self-delusional.

Had the race been partisan, three Democrats would have walked away with the prizes. Self-identified progressives who supported and signed the LAV petition need to take full responsibility for what ensued from that effort: Asheville now faces at least two years of a heavily pro-development council.

You were so suckered.

[On edit: 11/8/07] Screwy Hoolie has admonished me for dumping much of the blame on voters without pointing out the culpability of the council members involved. Cape, Freeborn and Newman, in particular, handled both the vote and their reaction to LAV very badly. Voting to change the current election that late in the cycle was a big mistake (incited, according to my sources, by Mr. Mumps, but that doesn’t let the council members off the hook). It was too late for indy and third party candidates to collect the signatures required to get on the ballot.

Then, their reaction was ham-handed and dismissive. They ought, for instance, to have offered a clearer explanation of their legal inability to rescind their vote on the city charter (there are time restrictions which prevent Council from changing the charter back and forth and back again in a short period of time). They could have held more public hearings on the matter. At the same time, the press was of no help. The Republican money behind LAV was obvious to those of us who looked hard, and I, for one, couldn’t get the Mountain Xpress to report on it. Managing Editor Jon Elliston had signed the petition, and the reporting in Xpress was repeatedly boosterish. Even Kent Priestley, a reporter for whom I hold high regard, uncritically described the LAV effort as a bottom-up, grass roots campaign. Grass rootsers jumped on the bandwagon, for sure, but Republicans Mike Fryar and Christy Fryar were driving the horses.

While Xpress pretended to offer neutral coverage, story after story pitched “Vote!” and egged on the horse race to the filing deadline.
On a personal note, I was embarrassed about that reporting.

We need fundamental electoral reform, which will only be achieved if one or the other party embraces it. Yes, the rules are rigged to favor the two parties, but it ain’t gonna change if you stand outside the lines and yell “foul.” Campaign finance reform, perhaps Instant Run-off Voting, better still, a parliamentary form of government—that’s how third parties will get a chance to participate, as they do in all modern democracies. Ours is an old and failing experiment and it is way past time for modernization.

~ by bothwellsblog on November 8, 2007.