Although they live on the other side of the continent, the reporters at the Los Angeles Times have lately developed an obsession with Union County, North Carolina. That’s because in the process of analyzing the 2004 election, they made a shocking discovery: The country hadn’t just divided itself into red and blue states; it was also dividing itself into red and blue suburbs, and Union County was one of the best examples of this phenomenon.
What’s going on in Union County hasn’t attracted much attention among local pols and commentators. It should, because it has huge implications for local politics. The theory around here after last fall’s elections was that an influx of people from more liberal areas was beginning to tilt Mecklenburg County to the left. But that’s not the whole story. Both blue and red leaning people are still moving to the region, but voter registration numbers show that those who lean to the right appear to be increasingly siphoning themselves off to the suburbs in surrounding cities and counties.
Ten years ago, it was blue as far as the eye could see over the county line. But as young couples with children and conservative tendencies began to flood the counties around Mecklenburg, Democratic voter registration plunged by 15 to 20 points in each county, giving Republicans solid control. Ten years ago, 54 percent of the voters in Union County were registered Democrats. Today, only 34 percent are, which could explain why the Union County Commission consists of four Republicans and one Republican turned Unaffiliated.
Some of that plummet was no doubt due to blue-collar Democrats switching sides, but the population influx in Union and other counties, which totaled more than 70,000 since 2000, was clearly the driving force.
The rejection of Mecklenburg County’s blue-tinged urban culture by young white families has been overwhelming. White enrollment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools hasn’t increased in a decade, while schools in the surrounding counties — mainly Union, Cabarrus and York County, SC — enrolled 10,000 additional white students in the last five years alone.
Sure, the suburbs of the 1970s were more politically conservative than urban areas, too, says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. What’s different now, he says, is that people who can afford to live in suburbia are segregating themselves even further, seeking out places with an image and feel that fits their world view. Suburbanites who tend to vote Democratic prefer neighborhoods closer to the amenities and diversity of the urban core than do suburbanites with Republican leanings, he said.
And something else is happening. While Charlotte continues to spend millions to build and encourage affordable housing for low-income people — who tend to vote Democratic — surrounding areas are doing the opposite in hopes of cementing a permanent middle- and upper-middle-class majority with policies that mandate more expensive construction materials, two-car garages, or bigger lots. The cumulative effect is driving up the cost of new housing from Huntersville to Monroe.
Take Monroe, for instance. Monroe’s land use plan is shockingly blunt about the “blight” an influx of Hispanics has caused in the city’s older neighborhoods, where the majority of the houses are now rental units. To protect newer neighborhoods from the same “blight,” the plan mandates large lots, house sizes between 1,400 and 1,800 square feet and a ban on cheap siding materials.
Just a few years ago, political experts thought that the “exurbs,” as they now call them, would become less conservative as development increased, just as they always had. Instead, the opposite is happening. According to the Times study, George W. Bush won 97 of the country’s 100 fastest growing exurban counties, increasing his cumulative lead there by more than 60 percent since the 2000 race. In the six counties around Mecklenburg, which are trending in the national direction, Bush increased his lead by an average of 20 percent more than Bob Dole’s totals in 1996.
Lang blames this on the strong pull of the conservative culture in the exurbs, which sucks in political moderates who, if they lived elsewhere, might be influenced to vote Democratic. In addition, media marketing studies show that people trapped in their cars for hours on their way to work are increasingly tuning in to right-wing AM radio to pass the time, further reinforcing the rightward drift of exurban culture. When everyone around you supports President Bush, it feels like the whole country does.
Meanwhile, the Times found, Democrats of similar socioeconomic levels remain scattered across the urban and mid-suburban landscape, diluting their power to persuade moderates leftward.
So maybe it’s not that Mecklenburg County is tilting to the left. Maybe it’s that those who could bring it back to the middle have thrown in the towel and gone in search of their own utopia.
This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2005.
