“For a moment, I thought he was a former Black Panther.”
This is certainly a pick-up opportunity for us, since Kissell won by 10% largely because (i) Hayes had pissed off a lot of voters and (ii) Obama being on the ballot resulted in a huge black turnout, as well as a large urban white turnout in Charlotte. Just because Obama carried the CD much more narrowly than Kissell did doesn’t mean that “Obama’s coattails” weren’t a significant factor in the election. Obama, like most black Democrat candidates, was a “loss leader” for Democrats in the South, allowing moderate white Democrats to win despite usually falling short himself. Obama’s candidacy created a huge black turnout that gave moderate white Democrat candidates for other offices as many votes as it gave him, while the fact that conservative white Democrat voters in the South shunned Obama (and thus held Obama to 47% in GA and 52% in the NC-08 despite the huge black turnout) resulted in the white moderate doing much better than Obama. Thus, Obama’s “coattails” did help Kissell win by 10%, and in a non-presidential election with much lower black turnout it should be a very different story.
There is another candidate already running, or likely running. He is Union County DA John Snyder, a former aide ot Jesse Helms.