Meeker Mania

Anyone who knows me knows I don’t traffic in rumors. So I’m more than a little put out with my good friends at WakePol for reporting, under the heading “Rumor Patrol,” the idle talk about Charles Meeker running for higher office and maybe not for a 4th mayoral term. But since they did –

Let the Speculations Begin!!

:)

Number one, and I have this on excellent authority, Charles isn’t thinking small, he’s thinking about U.S. Senate in 2008 against Liddy Dole. More on this below.

Number two, while the mayor hasn’t ruled out running for a 4th term, he’s been telling folks for 2-3 months that he’s not leaning that way. So when you read that “friends have been urging” Nina Szlosberg to run, don’t assume that it’s like most politicians you know who don’t have any friends, but want to run regardless. Nina has lots and lots of friends, and some of them have been twisting her arms, legs and everything else (well, not everything else) to get her to say she’ll be a go if and when Charles says no. Which as far as I’m aware, she has not said — but she has been thinking about it. Nina would be Raleigh’s second female mayor. The first, of course, was the legendary “little old lady in tennis shoes,” Isabella Cannon, who was 91 when Nina met her, but Isabella was still a force in the University Park Neighborhood Association … and Nina was a force as the new University Park NA president … and it was as if destiny had somehow rushed through the space-time wormhole to unite these two sisters. OK, I’m getting carried away now. But Isabella wanted Nina to promise her that she, too, would run for mayor someday, and I believe it’s on a videotape kept in Jay Spain’s possession what Nina said in reply.

Now, back to Charles. Can he be serious about running against Liddy? Often when I tell people what I’ve heard, they roll their eyes. But I’m not rolling mine, for two reasons. One, Liddy Dole is a no-show in the Senate when it comes to North Carolina. She’s running around America trying to get Republicans elected as chair of the GOP’s Senate Campaign Committee, and from all accounts that’s not going well either. Now picture 2008. Will it be a Republican year? Or will the voters think it’s “Time for a Change,” and also time North Carolina returned to its traditional complement of one Democratic and one Republican senator. (You know, so they cancel each other out.) Our other Republican, Richard Burr, is younger, more energetic, and much more present in the state than Liddy. So that’s number one, Liddy ain’t that strong. And number two, Democrats are not exactly lining up to take her on, so if Charles runs, as the squeaky-clean, highly popular, pro-bidness mayor of North Carolina’s booming Cap City — and good manners count too, plus his A-1 family — well, I don’t see why he couldn’t win. (Liddy’s family? All she’s got is BobDole, which reminds us that neither of them actually lives here.)

Now, for my final point. Why, if Charles is serious about the Senate (or about Lt. Gov., which I have not heard, but WakePol — Correction: NCSpin, not WakePol — bad memory — says is the rumor of choice), would he not run for a 4th mayoral term? I know, I know, being mayor is a bear time-wise. So let James West, mayor pro tem, do something useful. And yes, it must be frustrating for Charles to be constantly in search of five votes on a City Council with six Democrats, and have the West-Taliaferro-Kekas trio line up with the two Republicans to make five against him all too often. Still, Meeker as the sitting mayor of Raleigh is (IMHO) a helluva lot more formidable a candidate for Senate than Meeker the ex-mayor who has no power and is not going to get it done on the force of his personality, a la John Edwards.

Charles has not been the neighborhood buffs’ cup of tea as mayor, but he’s gotten the major moves right (to borrow Thomas Crowder’s favorite architectural term), and as a consequence we’re starting to have a downtown Raleigh, a progressive Raleigh and a creative-culture Raleigh and if we can put those three things together, anything’s possible.

Now, if Nina Szlosberg runs, and wins, cool. But what if she doesn’t run? And even if she does, she hasn’t got Charles’ 70% Q-rating, that I know of anyway — notwithstanding that she would be a powerhouse candidate with all her Democratic party and Conservation Council-pro-environment credentials. (And her brains.)

So if I were sticking my nose in progressive politics in Raleigh, I know I’d be thinking about a Draft Meeker movement, just in case. But again, I don’t traffic in rumors. Now well-founded speculation, that’s something else entirely.

This entry was posted from Bob Geary on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 12:35 pm and is filed under City Hall, Around Raleigh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.