Tara Servatius’ article “Betrayed Again: Darrel Williams and the White Democrat Problem” is supposedly based on “an analysis by Creative Loafing of past election voting patterns.” We disagree with the analysis and with the resulting conclusions drawn by Servatius. As seasoned political consultants with a combined experience of nearly half a century, we dispute the numbers quoted by Servatius as simply not adding up.
Servatius begins her argument with the neighborhoods of Elizabeth and Dilworth — which she describes as “traditionally heavily Democratic / predominantly white areas.”
This illustration is only half right. Yes, these are predominantly white neighborhoods. However, to describe these areas as “heavily” Democratic is flat wrong. A quick look at the area’s voter file reveals that there is not a single precinct in either Dilworth or Elizabeth with more than 50 percent active Democratic voters. In addition, voter registration levels for Republicans are increasing every election cycle. In fact, in Dilworth’s Precinct 10, Republican voter registration is nearing that of Democrats.
To further prove her point, Servatius quotes Commissioner Bill James’ “purely partisan” analysis of the At-Large County Commission race in 2000 where incumbent Jim Richardson wasn’t re-elected. James does give an accurate overview of the Elizabeth/Dilworth neighborhoods during that particular election in which he states that “with only two exceptions, Richardson came in 30 to 90 votes behind (Parks) Helms and (Becky) Carney in every precinct.” He inaccurately concluded, however, that the 30 to 90 votes by which Richardson trailed Helms and Carney were Democratic votes.
In the County Commission District 4 analysis of that same election, James got it wrong again. If he had carefully studied the Mecklenburg County voter file to see who actually voted, counted the number of Democrats and compared that to the number of votes for Jim Richardson in every precinct, he would have learned that a mere one percent of Democratic voters did not vote for Richardson (more specifically, 142 out of 12,470 Democrats voted for someone other than Richardson). “The truth of the situation” is as follows: in “liberal” District 4, Richardson got 1,217 more votes than the total number of Democrats who voted.
Incidentally, a more honest look at District 4 would look at only Democrats. The fact that the district is two-thirds registered Democrat or Unaffiliated is moot when one considers that Democratic voters make up only 53 percent of the actual vote. Slightly more than half does not make an overwhelming majority.
In the most recent 2002 election, we analyzed as a group the total of African-American and white Democrats who voted in each precinct. According to preliminary voter file figures, Williams received more votes than the analysis group number in 48 precincts. Keep in mind, these precincts included all of the Dilworth and Elizabeth precincts.
It is true that Williams did not receive as many votes as the number of African-American and white Democrats in 141 precincts. However, even this does not show a widespread pattern of whites not voting for an African-American. In fact, some of the precincts where the analysis group under-performed — that is, all African-Americans and white Democrats not supporting Williams — were in some of the county’s most heavily black precincts. For example, in Precinct 16, 1,087 African-Americans voted along with eight white Democrats; Williams received 1,055 of the precinct’s total 1,095 votes. In Precinct 42, Williams was short 74 votes in a precinct that included 1,153 African-American and 29 white Democratic votes.
Another factor that has been constant in both the Richardson and Williams races was that each African-American candidate actually won on Election Day. Where they lost was in the early voting.
Suffice it to say that the data in the voter file just doesn’t support a claim of widespread voting based solely on race.
In conclusion regarding the 2002 At-Large County Commission race, each of the Democrats were the top three vote getters in 80 precincts; Republicans topped the returns in 85. The remaining 34 precincts were a mixture of two Democrats and one Republican, or two Republicans and one Democrat. Mecklenburg County is as divided along partisan lines as the rest of the country.
What of the other races Servatius cites?
In the 2002 Democratic Senate Primary between Blue, Marshall and Bowles, there was a racial split. But, that split was largely due to the fact that African-American candidate Dan Blue didn’t court Mecklenburg County’s white voters. Additionally, Servatius fails to mention that in Harvey Gantt’s last primary campaign against Charlie Sanders, Gantt carried every Mecklenburg precinct but one.
In local races, Servatius does mention Arthur Griffin’s and Patrick Cannon’s at-large victories; however, she fails to mention another African-American’s county-wide victory — school board at-large representative Wilhelmina Rembert. And while it is true that the size of Ella Scarborough’s primary victory in the last city election came from African-American precincts, saying that she won only because of those black precincts is not accurate: Scarborough won hands-down citywide.
As political consultants, we are not naive. We have been working Democratic politics in the South for many years. We know that there are whites who will not vote for a black (and vice versa). However, the facts just don’t support the statements in Servatius’ article and in Commissioner James’ e-mails where each claims widespread racism or a lack of support for African-Americans on the part of white Democrats. The fact that a white Democrat gets more votes than a black Democrat simply means that the white candidate is picking up more Unaffiliated or Republican votes.
Democrats must do two things: solve the problem of how to be competitive in the early voting and also better identify and persuade Unaffiliated and even Republican voters to choose nonwhite Democratic candidates. Democrats must remember that in the end, the most important issue is the total number of votes received over Republican candidates, and not other Democrats.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2002.
