Are The New York Times and local Republicans overstating the role that Obama for America played in this fall's Wake County election results?
The Sunday Times Review analysis piece cites the Raleigh and Charlotte mayoral races and the Wake school board races as examples of how successful the Obama campaign was locally. The article goes on to quote local Republicans to buttress the assertions in the piece about a mass Obama for America organizing effort in Wake.
“It was very scary,” said Chris Sinclair, a strategist for Billie Redmond, the Republican candidate for mayor in Raleigh. “You don’t know what’s going on until you wake up after Election Day and go, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened?’ ”
The piece cites an email sent 10 days before the Nov. 8 election from Jeremy Bird, the Obama for America national field director, to volunteers across the country.
"We have less than two weeks until November’s local and state elections,” Bird writes. “That means we need to ramp up our organizing work block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood.”
Something to consider is that the Raleigh mayoral race and four of the five school board races were decided Oct. 11. The only school board race that might have been impacted by that email was the District 3 runoff.
"Although the Democrats seemed reluctant to talk about it, the Obama organization used the fall election as a trial run in places such as Charlotte and Greensboro, although apparently not in Wake County," Rob Christensen wrote in his Nov. 13 column.
Comments
My LTE to the Times in Response
Wed, 11/30/2011 - 10:20 — WhalerCaneDear Editors,
In Sunday’s column, “Team Obama gears up for 2012”, Chris Sinclair, strategist for failed Mayoral Candidate Billie Redmond, attributed her 2 to 1 loss on the ‘hidden hand of thousands of Obama for America volunteers’ descending upon Raleigh, NC. This is simply factually incorrect. In fact, ‘Organizing for America’ conducted their own events the weekends before our elections, distracting volunteers from our local races.
What lead to record volunteer participation and voter turn out had nothing to do with the Obama campaign. The answer to his question, ‘oh my gosh, what happened?’ is that voters were presented with two very clear examples of leadership locally. One was of the irrational tea party Wake County School Board, lead by the defeated Chairman Ron Margiotta, which had brought much unwanted national attention and ridicule to our area.
The other was of the progressive, professional and rational leadership provided by Mayor Charles Meeker and Mayor Elect Nancy McFarlane on the Raleigh City Council the past ten years that resulted in a resurgence of Raleigh, which is consistently ranked as the best place to live and do business in America.
Mr. Sinclair and his candidate Ms. Redmond unsuccessful tried to mislead voters that Raleigh had a debt problem to play on national fears. That was a woefully unsuccessful strategy that voters clearly saw through. Nancy McFarlane defeated Billie Redmond 60% to 30% because she offered to keep Raleigh moving forward, not by playing to our fears. This was a spirited local election, not a referendum on national politics.
Respectfully,
If Billie Redmond...
Tue, 11/29/2011 - 09:00 — bpuli9999truly was that clueless about the elections, maybe politicking is not for her.
‘Oh my gosh, what happened?’
Mon, 11/28/2011 - 21:19 — youthinksoRepublican overreach!!!