Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
We’re trying as best we can to keep tabs on all the political news that’s starting to brew:
Young kicks off campaign
Buncombe County Commissioner David Young kicked off his campaign for state treasurer last week. Young raised $181,250 at a fundraiser at the home of UNC Board of Governors member Adelaide Daniels Key. Among those in attendance were state Reps. Bruce Goforth and Susan Fisher, former N.C. Secretary of Revenue Helen Powers and former Court of Appeals Judge Alan Thornburg. He faces Sen. Janet Cowell and Raleigh attorney Michael Weisel in the Democratic primary. (Dome, THE NEWS & OBSERVER, 10/29/07).
Dalton raises cash
Sen. Walter Dalton of Rutherford County raised more than $100,000 a fundraiser in Raleigh last week for his race for lieutenant governor. The event, held at the home of Wallace and Jeanette Hyde, a former U.S. ambassador, showed Dalton’s support among the Democratic establishment. The event included glowing comments from Senate boss Marc Basnight, who called Dalton” a forward-thinking leader.”
Among the sponsors were Sen. Vernon Malone, Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik, BlueCross BlueShield CEO Robert J. Greczyn, former Lt. Gov. Bob Jordan, UNC benefactor Walter Davis, former News & Observer publisher Frank Daniels Jr., former Glaxo CEOs Bob Ingram and Charlie Sanders, and former state Democratic chairpersons Tom Hendrickson, Betty McCain and Barbara Allen. The other Democrats running for the job are Durham lawyer Hampton Dellinger, Winston-Salem Council member Dan Besse and Canton Mayor Pat Smathers. (Dome, THE NEWS & OBSERVER, 10/29/07).
Libertarians start petition drive
The state Libertarian Party has again started a petition drive to gain official recognition. Since the early 1990s, the state’s restrictive ballot access laws have required the party to go through cycles of official recognition, loss of that recognition and petition drives to reacquire it again. But Libertarians hope changes to state law in 2006 will make this petition drive the last they’ll go through. But to have candidates on the 2008 ballot, the party must collect 70,000 signatures from registered voters before June.
The verification process is tough – at least some signatures must come from each of the state’s 100 counties and each signer’s identifying information must match voter records. Voters who move, die or have their registrations lapse while the petition drive is ongoing can confuse matters. To ensure there’s enough to meet the requirement, the Libertarians are planning to collect about 90,000 signatures. As of this month, the party had collected about 80,000 “raw,” or unverified signatures.
The party is in this situation because political parties in North Carolina lose official recognition – and the things that come with it, such as a check box on voter forms and a party line on ballots – if their presidential or gubernatorial candidates fail to receive a significant amount of votes every four years. Until last year, that threshold was 10 percent of the vote. In 2004, the last presidential election year, the Libertarian candidate for president took little more than a third of 1 percent of North Carolina’s vote. The new threshold, thanks to a 2006 ballot access reform law, is 2 percent, which Libertarians find heartening, Irving said. In 2004, the Libertarian candidate for governor, Barbara Howe, received 1.51 percent of the statewide vote. It also will mean the party can use its resources for something other than signature drives, he said. The party estimates that the drive costs at least a dollar a signature.
Libertarians have argued that the rules are unfair and have a lawsuit on the issue pending in state court. They argue that the rules crowd out alternatives to the Republicans and Democrats, who each have more than a million affiliated voters in North Carolina. Libertarians argue that they approach civic questions for a different perspective and are neither conservative nor liberal. In October 2005, when the Libertarian Party had state recognition, the N.C. State Board of Elections reported that there were 12,403 registered Libertarians in the state. (Mark Schreiner, WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS, 10/27/07).
