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Roused Republicans, they say, are turning out in droves to local meetings like the most recent annual Lincoln’s day dinner in Rockingham County, where 250 shown instead of the usual 100 or so.
Posted on 08/21/2009 2:00:11 AM PDT by MitchellC
Calling the recently passed state budget a “debacle,” Republican leaders kicked-off a statewide “budget tour” in Burlington on Monday as part of their efforts to win back legislative seats and return their party to the majority in the state House and Senate.
State GOP Chairman Tom Fetzer, along with Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger and House Minority Leader Paul Stam, joined local GOP leaders and others for lunch at Sal’s Italian Restaurant, where Stam said there were “great questions” and a “great turnout” that included Sheriff Terry Johnson, state Rep. Dan Ingle and school board Chairman Tom Manning.
Fetzer, Stam and GOP spokesman Jordan Shaw then stopped by the Times-News.
The tour, they said, is part of the GOP’s effort to regain 12 state House and eight Senate seats Democrats now hold. Regaining 10 in the former and six in the latter would give Republicans the majority on both sides of the General Assembly.
Stam and Fetzer are confident that Burlington real estate agent Rick Gunn can win a second bid against Democratic state Sen. Tony Foriest, whom they say is vulnerable because of his role as chairman of the Senate Education Appropriation Committee.
Foriest narrowly defeated Gunn, a political newcomer, in the 2008 race.
Foriest, they say, was instrumental in helping shape a state budget that raised taxes $1 billion and cut per-pupil spending 4 percent amid a recession. “I thought it was unconscionable what they did,” Stam said of the Democrats.
Another focus of the six-town tour this week is to “restore the Republican brand” of fiscal responsibility and limited government, which Fetzer and Stam acknowledge was damaged by the large-scale spending of the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress for six of Bush’s eight-year tenure. “I was embarrassed with the way the Republicans governed those six years,” Stam said.
Such spending and Bush’s unpopularity contributed to the GOP’s losses in the General Assembly in 2006, Stam and Fetzer say. Despite this, they say, their party managed to hold serve in the state House and Senate in 2008.
Convincing voters that Republicans are again fiscally conservative and favor limited government won’t be a tough sell because the “Democrats are helping us,” Fetzer said.
Thanks to President Barack Obama’s recent struggles on health care reform and other issues, and the 2009-11 state budget, the tables have turned, they say.
Eminent domain and death-penalty-related legislation are issues likely to loom large with voters in 2010, when voters pay more attention to state and local races thanks to the lack of a presidential race, the GOP leaders say. The House’s passage of the N.C. Racial Justice Act, which 61 Democrats voted for, is aimed at creating a moratorium on executions, not prohibiting racial discrimination, Stam said. The bill, Fetzer said, plays into “the stereotype that Democrats are weak on crime.”
Roused Republicans, they say, are turning out in droves to local meetings like the most recent annual Lincoln’s day dinner in Rockingham County, where 250 shown instead of the usual 100 or so.
Party coffers are another beneficiary of the turnaround.
Despite “getting badly outspent” in recent elections,” Republicans outraised Democrats nationally through the first six months of this year, Fetzer said. The recent GOP losses have also shaken and energized party activists, he said.
“In 2006 and 2008, we were playing defense,” Fetzer said. “In 2010, I think it’s the Obama Administration that’s playing defense.”
Fetzer predicts a “good year” for Republicans in the mid-term 2010 elections in North Carolina.
To win back House and Senate seats, though, the GOP will need to convince unaffiliated voters and conservative Democrats, as well as Republicans, to vote for Republican candidates, Fetzer said.
Are these goals reachable?
They seem realistic. In the state House, I think we have an opportunity to capture quite a few more.
Somehow someway the NCGOP will lose this contest. Long time observers of the NCGOP comedy team will see this right away!
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