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Ex-candidate backs Cheek in DA race

By John Stevenson, The Herald-Sun
November 3, 2006 11:06 pm

DURHAM -- Durham's turbulent district attorney race took another twist Friday, with former assistant prosecutor Freda Black throwing her support behind Lewis Cheek and write-in candidate Steve Monks blasting him as a "spoiler."

Black, now a lawyer in private practice, was an unsuccessful district attorney candidate in the May Democratic primary.

On Friday, she threw her support behind Cheek, a county commissioner, and asked people who voted for her to do the same in an effort to oust incumbent Mike Nifong.

"I ask that you, the 10,000 voters who supported me in May, to vote for Lewis Cheek," Black said in a prepared statement. "Any concerns about who the governor might appoint will not matter if, when you wake up on November 8th, Mike Nifong received more votes than Lewis Cheek."

The governor would be involved because Cheek has said he would not serve if elected.

Black was a veteran prosecutor in Durham and was influential three years ago in the first-degree murder conviction of novelist Michael Peterson, now serving a life prison sentence for killing his wife.

But Nifong asked her to leave shortly after the governor appointed him as district attorney when Jim Hardin Jr. became a judge. The reasons have never been made public

Black said she didn't know why she was let go. Nifong, a prosecutor here for 27 years who is under fire for his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case, has said he couldn't discuss the situation because it was a private personnel matter.

The names of Nifong and Cheek will be printed on Tuesday's ballot. Monks' name will not appear because too few petitioners asked that it be put there. But voters can cast a ballot for Monks, the chairman of the county Republican Party who is running unaffiliated, by writing in his name.

If Cheek wins the election and keeps his pledge not to serve, Gov. Mike Easley would have to appoint a replacement for him. Cheek has said responsibilities to partners and employees make it impractical for him to leave his private law firm.

Monks said last week that if Cheek would change his mind and serve if elected, Monks would support him in an effort to give the anti-Nifong faction a better chance of success.

But Cheek reiterated in a news conference Thursday that he would not take the job.

In a Friday news conference, Monks said Cheek is "a candidate in name only, and he is the spoiler here. A vote for Cheek assures the election of Mike Nifong. A vote for Steve Monks is the first step to improving the public image and the very real problems of our criminal justice system."

Monks downplayed suggestions that a write-in candidate cannot win.

"That is nonsense," he said.

U.S. congressional candidates, he said, were successful in five of nine contests in which they ran.

"All it takes is a motivated and informed electorate," Monks said.

He said Nifong has brought "national and international embarrassment" to Durham through his handling of the highly publicized lacrosse rape case.

So why should voters let the governor choose yet another chief prosecutor, he asked.

"I reject the caretaker mentality of letting someone else, in this instance the lame-duck governor, decide who will be our district attorney," Monks said. "Giving the power to the governor to again appoint our DA solves none of our problems and reinforces the perception of incompetence in Durham."

Meanwhile, Cheek supporters released a new poll Friday in which 70 of 300 respondents said they didn't think Nifong had handled the lacrosse case well, while 155 indicated he had mishandled it and should be replaced.

Seventy four answered that they didn't know.

The Washington-area pollster who conducted the survey, Keith Frederick, said Friday that the findings had a margin of error of plus- or minus- 5.6 percent. There was also a one-in-20 chance that the findings weren't a true reflection of the sentiments of the 300 participants.

Frederick said the survey initially targeted 3,000 people whom pollsters judged were likely voters because they'd cast ballots in the last two general general elections.

"This is an election where there isn't going to be a lot going on to draw people out," he said, noting that there are no major national or statewide races on the ballot. "The best predictor of [who] votes Tuesday is past votes. So we took people who vote on a regular basis."

Pollsters conducted the survey by phone Thursday night and called "in the neighborhood of about 2,000" people, Frederick said. They stopped when they got 300 responses.

The results were not weighted to compensate for any discrepancies between the demographics of the sample and those of Durham in general, Frederick said, adding that a poll of likely voters would normally have more women and fewer blacks in it than a general survey.

Frederick said the poll was commissioned by Ethical Durham, a political action committee that has endorsed Cheek and spearheaded a voter registration drive on the Duke campus.

Ninety-eight of the respondents said they were most likely to support Nifong in Tuesday's election, while 97 went for Cheek, 15 opted for Monks and 91 were undecided.

In another question, 141 people said Cheek's refusal to serve as district attorney made no difference to them. However, 66 said they were likely to vote against Cheek for that reason. Eighty were undecided.

An earlier poll commissioned by The News & Observer and WRAL-TV showed Nifong with a commanding 40-plus percent of voter support for Tuesday's election. Cheek was in the mid-20-percent range, while Monks bottomed out between 2 and 3 percent. The remainder were undecided.

Frederick, the Ethical Durham pollster, said the contact with the group was Stefanie Sparks, an assistant women's lacrosse coach at Duke who is also a paralegal for -- and sister-in-law of -- Bob Ekstrand, a Durham lawyer who represents several unindicted men's lacrosse players.

Ekstrand, a Duke alumnus, has been an active behind-the-scenes player in the continuing controversy over the case.

Staff writer Ray Gronberg contributed to this report.
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