"And in this corner, weighing in at 800 pounds, the Republican gorilla, Elizabeth Dole!"
OK, that's not the kindest characterization one could make. But it's clear that the powerbrokers in the Republican party have selected Dole as North Carolina's next U.S. Senator, to succeed the infamous Jesse Helms. So the only question left is will the people of this state get any say at all in who their next senator will be?
Dole is a Republican Party stalwart, both a failed presidential candidate and the wife of one. Her name eclipses any rivals for the Republican nomination. But the national GOP leadership intensified that by systematically "persuading" her serious challengers to bow out rather than threaten Dole.
The best example is Richard Vinroot, who lost a fairly narrow gubernatorial race in 2000. Declaring for Senate last year, Vinroot's statewide name recognition and ties to the Charlotte banking industry, promised he'd be both well-known and well-funded.
Then the hammer came down. In a transparent political humiliation, Vinroot was slowly squeezed by Republican Party operatives. Other viable candidates were likewise dissuaded by their own party's leadership.
The result: There are very few Republicans vying for that nomination--Dole, a lawyer named Jim Snyder and three physicians.
The lineup is hardly surprising: The non-Doles are able to fund their own campaigns. Snyder, for one, has already spent over $100,000 of his own money. Those candidates are less easily compelled to cease campaigning than the major candidates whose political lives subject them to the state Republican Party's will.
It's ironic that the state party is rubber-stamping Dole; she hasn't lived in North Carolina since she graduated from Duke in 1958. But Dole's Christmas card this year had a photo of her, her husband and her 90-year old mother in her mother's house in Salisbury. The card read, "From our home to yours." (Really. It's as plausible as her manufactured "small-town" image--unleashed last week at a rally as choreographed as a Broadway musical.)
More incredibly, she's been endorsed--months before the primary-- by prominent Republicans left, right and center (well, OK: right, far-right and radical-right).
Vinroot had to support Dole; President George W. Bush came down, raised money for and endorsed Dole; and Jesse Helms backed Dole at another fundraiser.
Dole, meanwhile, said she can't think of a single issue on which I disagree with Jesse Helms. This for a man who voted since the 1970s against every single civil rights bill (and the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday), who just got a big, fat "zero" rating from the League of Conservation Voters and whose 1990 campaign attempted to intimidate over one-hundred thousand black voters. One must wonder if Elizabeth Dole would--as Helms did--tell a mother whose only son died of AIDS, "Your son was playing Russian roulette with his sexuality."
With party neutrality in the GOP primary now long gone, it's clear that the Republican nominee will be Dole. Millions of dollars will then flow into this state, to keep the Helms seat for this Helms wannabe.
Further, the state Republican party's efforts to delay the primary--ostensibly on district-lines grounds--is likely an attempt to move the potentially divisive Democratic contest closer to the election: just one more piece in the Dole machine's plan to smother all opposition.
But the only alternative to the Republican party's installation of Dole is in the Democratic party, where the real primary is. Dan Blue, the first black speaker of the General Assembly, is a moderate with considerable state legislative experience. Erskine Bowles, a Charlotte investment banker who served as chief of staff in the Clinton administration, is a moderate with strong concern for working-class issues. Cynthia Brown, a former member of the Durham City Council, is clearly the most progressive candidate, with a wide-ranging platform. Elaine Marshall, current N.C. secretary of state, was the first woman elected to statewide office and, is clearly an impressive administrator with a history of solid accomplishments.
Any one of the Democratic candidates would be far superior to Dole in their lives in North Carolina, their clear commitment to the people of this state, in their ability to know what this state is and what we need for our future.
There is a major point for Dole to remember--things have changed since she left North Carolina: Nixon isn't vice president anymore; the population here has more than doubled; the principal industries are no longer textiles and tobacco; and despite efforts of people like her buddy Helms, women and blacks now have full and equal rights with white males.
Most importantly, the people of North Carolina have learned from past machine politics: We decide for ourselves who will represent us--not George W. Bush, not Jesse Helms and certainly not Elizabeth Dole's handlers.
Edward Benson is a Durham resident.
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