Clayton kingmaker

That's me.  Today, Dec. 9, the residents of Clayton, one of the fastest-growing towns in the state of North Carolina, are voting to elect two town council members.

This is the revote of a botched Nov. 2007 election.  It would take too long to explain it in this post, but essentially some people inside the town didn't get ballots with the council race on it, and some people outside town did. 

The brouhaha that led to today's election wound up too late for it to be held in November, when we were selecting a president, U.S. senator, governor and the like.

Anyway, when I went to my polling place at Fire Station #2, there were three people waiting outside to hand me literature. I went inside and found out that I was number 27 voting.  It was 9:05 a.m., and the polls had been open for more than 2 1/2 hours.  

I almost didn't vote.  But as I was driving down NC 42 on my commute, I thought, OK, you wrote that big column last Sunday about Pearl Harbor Day, and the sacrifices of the World War II generation.  Would it be that huge a deal to take a few minutes to do your civic duty?

Whatever motivates you, I guess.  So I went in and voted.

Probably not more than a few hundred Clayton residents will pick two council members today. There are six members of the council, including the mayor.  

Which made me feel pretty powerful.

The town council spends a good deal of its time deciding the growth strategy for a big chunk of the western side of Johnston County.  It is not unusual for council members to weigh rezonings of hundreds of acres at a time.  They decide where utilities are going to go, and that has an impact on where growth goes, as farms get converted into subdivisions. They have the major ability to influence economic development in the town and its surroundings. Through annexation, Clayton is going to gradually become larger and larger, and its council's clout will grow accordingly.

You wouldn't know it from the turnout today, but these are some powerful folks making big decisions in Johnston County.   

And if you go into McCall's Restaurant on Highway 70 in Clayton on any given night during the dinner rush, that's probably how many people decided on the makeup of a third of the town council voted today. Me and a few hundred of my neighbors, who, for whatever reason, stopped what they were doing and voted, because the folks we elect today will have a large say in the future of one of the area's fastest-growing communities.

UPDATE: Well, we elected one council member but the race for the second seat is tied, with eight provisional ballots to be counted.

It is thus possible that we could still be tied if they split four-four, in which case I suggest the matter be resolved by a foot race down Main Street between Alex Harding and Art Holder, from Jones Lunch (best hot dogs in town) to JB's Barber Shop (fine haircuts since Eisenhower was president). 

Note the comment from Rick Mercier, an editor at the Clayton News-Star, who quibbles with my math on whether we were elected a third or two-fifths of the council. Rick is a smart guy and I will defer to his interpretation.