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Ohio, Mississippi and Maine got a lot of the headlines, but North Carolina voters also struck a heroic blow against the Koch brothers in elections Tuesday night.
Charles and David Koch were obviously not on the ballot, but the election was a referendum on their influence in Raleigh, N.C. Their presence in North Carolina has roots in 2009 when the Kochs supported organizations that worked to elect a new school board majority. Those candidates won and began pushing to overturn a highly successful diversity policy, which was the model framework for scores of school districts across the country.
As Sue Sturgis from Facing South wrote before the election:
The Kochs have given over $5 million to date to AFP, which supported the anti-diversity candidates who won the majority of seats in the 2009 Wake school board election. Brave New Foundation points out that the AFP-NC chapter had access to approximately $1 million from 2007 to 2009 — money critical in laying the groundwork for that election. AFP also supported local groups that advocated for an end to the diversity policy.
While Americans everywhere rightfully celebrate the outcomes in Ohio, Mississippi and Maine last night, let’s not forget the hard fought win for public education last night in North Carolina.
Organized people can beat organized money and Koch money alike.
I invite you to keep the pressure on and join me at the Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook.
4 Comments
For those of us who don’t live in NC, what happened?
Wake County, where Raleigh is located, has a nine-member school board. In the previous election two years ago, several tea-party/Koch/Art Pope (our local mini-Koch) – sponsored candidates won elections in their districts and created a new five-member right-wing majority. Fortunately, one of them (Debra Goldman) was not quite as crazy as the others, and prevented the others from carrying out some of their more extreme ideas.
Now, two years later, the four non-RW members plus the RW chairman (Ron Margiotta) were up for re-election. Margiotta got booted out, and three of the other four won outright. The last contest was won by Kevin Hill, the (sane) incumbent, but he did not get a plurality of the vote. There was a runoff election on Tuesday in which he did get a plurality of the vote, so upon seating the new members of the board, the right wingers lose their majority.
While this is certainly good news, it is disturbing that the turnout was so abysmal: the (unofficial) totals were 10672 (Hill) vs 9740 (Losurdo). I’m not sure what the population of the district is, but I’m damn sure there are a lot more than 20,000 registered voters in it.
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/Wake/33127/49976/en/vts.html?cid=0139
That information should be in the article. Also low turnout and we won means we still won. It also means the Koch brothers base of Tea Baggers are not as motivated even in the South as we think they are the constant GOP attempts on Fox news to keep them angry is failing. I do agree our base should have turned out more but we need real Dems to give them more to inspire them to turn out. Still it seems more of us were inspired to vote than the GOP this is a win!
Also to be fair do we really have that much of a base in that state? We need numbers on past off year elections to really compare turnout numbers I mean school board elections never get much turnout period.
We do need to ask GOP Presidential Candidates who take Koch money if they favor a return to segregation of schools. We do need the MSM to ask them the tough questions. We need to know which GOP candidates are getting Koch money. This shows the Koch brothers are straight up racists! And my vote goes for FDL making a huge issue about this!
The turnout is probably not that unusual – I don’t have historical data at my fingertips. My comment was more of a general lament that there were only 20K people in a district of ~100K that turned out for a decision of (minor) national significance.
As for the voter base, the Democratic Party does have an extensive base in NC. They are on the average, more conservative (in the dictionary sense) than say, Northeastern Democrats, but historically they have been responsible for a lot of economic development in the state (a great university system, Research Triangle Park, decent highways). The Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) is “bluer” than the rest of the state, so moderate progressive candidates can win here.
Of course, some of the D’s (I’m looking at you, Heath Shuler) take that “more conservative” thing a little too far.