Asheville 2009 Municipal Election Results and Commentary

Yesterday was an off year Municipal Election across most of the country, and here are the results of a few of the races I tracked in Buncombe County.


All data for this post was culled from the North Carolina State Board of Elections website.


Here are the details of the races available as of 5.57 am this morning:






Asheville Mayor


78.75 %  9,543  Incumbent Terry Bellamy 
20.06%   2,431  Robert Edwards


City Council (Top 3 Are Seated)


19.24%   6,567  Esther Mannheimer
18.46%   6,301  Gordon Smith 
17.28%   5,899  Cecil Bothwell
_________________________
13.91%   4,749  Incumbent Carl Mumpower
13.53%   4,620  Write-In (most are probably for Incumbent Robin Cape)
10.18%   3,476  J. Neal Jackson
07.40%   2,525  Ryan Croft


There is no data on the state website that breaks down voter turnout by municipality, just an overall figure for all of them, so take that in mind when you look at the following figures...


17,199 ballots were cast out of 88,229 registered voters for a turnout of 19.49%. 


According to latest statistics available on the Buncombe County website, there are (as of 10-15-09) there are 64,235 registered voters in Asheville. 32,993 are Democrats, 19,127 are Unaffiliated, and 12,012 are Republican. 


Commentary


During this election cycle, the "conservative" candidates took a pledge not to raise more than $3,000 in their campaign. In fact, Carl Mumpower did not actively seek re-election by organizing a campaign effort. He attended what forums he was invited to and sent missives via email stating his positions. As far as I can tell, the other conservatives took their lead from him.


That is no way to serve the people, or to protect their interests.


I hope that, in the future, conservative candidates will run for office in Asheville with the concept firmly implanted in their skulls that they must organize a campaign that raises money, gets their message out, and gets people excited enough to volunteer for the campaign and build a real network that can feed the campaign money, more volunteers, and an effective Get out the Vote effort for early voting and on election day. 


If they want to see how to effectively do that, they can look no further than the campaigns of the three people who will be sitting in the Asheville City Council Chambers soon. I was particularly impressed with the organization that Gordon Smith and his campaign created.


I would like to thank Carl Mumpower for his years of service to Asheville during his time on the Asheville City Council. I hope he gets that rest he has been wanting.






Interesting Facts:


Gordon Smith had about 300 donors to his campaign, and Cecil Bothwell had about 550 donors and about 750 volunteers according to a video report on the WLOS website.

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Asheville Election Results (All Precincts Reporting)

Asheville City Council Race (Top Six Advance to the General Election)

Candidate	Percent	Votes
Cecil Bothwell	19.63%	3,718
Gordon Smith	18.87%	3,573
Esther Manheimer	17.29%	3,275
Kelly M. Miller	13.09%	2,479
Carl Mumpower	12.30%	2,330
J. Neal Jackson	6.71%	1,270
Ryan D. Croft	5.46%	1,034
Jenny Bowen	2.85%	540
César Romero	2.14%	405
Larry D. Chastain	1.66%	314

Asheville Mayor (Top Two Advance to the General Election)

Candidate	Percent	Votes
Terry M. Bellamy	76.22	5,150
Robert W. Edwards	17.12%	1,157
Shad Marsh	4.19%	283
Denise C. Pendleton	2.47%	167

You can see these results and more on the North Carolina State Board of Elections Website.






Commentary


The turnout was very low in Asheville, with the following numbers telling the tale...



Registered Voters: 64,061
Ballots Cast: 7,113
Voter Turnout: 11.10 %





#1--Voter apathy appears to be at an all time high, and it looks like the candidates will have to engage in some serious Get Out The Vote campaigning if they want to win.


#2--Mumpower and Neal have said that they wouldn't raise more than $3,000. I think they better rethink that if they want to win.


#3--Robin Cape will be in the race as a Write-in Candidate, and should shake things up quite a bit. 


I'll have a more detailed analysis of the race later this weekend.


**10.57pm** Edit--Thanks to an anon commenter who noticed that I forgot César Romero. I have fixed the oversight.


**7.29am 10/07/2009** Update


Leslee Kulba of the JLF Blog Wild West recognizes the primary as a "Progressive Landslide" she comments, in part...

...the semi-progressive mayor beat three contenders with 76.22% of the vote. The top four vote-getters in the city council race were progressives. A progressive who dropped out too late to get her name off the ballot got more votes than two of the nine remaining candidates.

Source: Wild West




The BCGOP posted a very remarkable spin on the story, commenting, in part...

The results are in! Robert Edwards easily made it into the general election with 17.12% of the vote. Carl Mumpower and J. Neal Jackson will also be on the Asheville ballot for City Council. Mumpower was the highest vote-getter in quite a few precincts.

Source: BCGOP Website (I have taken a screenshot in case it disappears down the Memory Hole. 


I hope that that organization can recover from errors made by past leadership, and that they will focus on building their precincts before they toss rocks from their glass house.

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My Muslim President Obama by Asma Gull Hasan

Why members of the Islamic faith see him as one of the flock.

I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel, just as African-Americans did for the non-black but culturally leaning African-American President Bill Clinton, that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama.
I know it's odd to say this. At first, I thought I was the only Muslim engaging in this folly, and I am reluctant to express it lest right-wing zealots try to use "Muslim" as a smear and cite my theory as proof of an Islamic traitor in the White House or some such nonsense. But, since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice.
"Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." They would cite his open nature and habit of reaching out to critics, reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad's own approach, and also Obama's middle name, Hussein. Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama isnot Muslim.
Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam. These realists said that, although not an avowed and practicing Muslim, Obama's exposure to Islam at a young age (both through his father and his stint in Indonesia) has given him a Muslim sensibility. In my book, that makes you a Muslim--maybe not a card-carrying one, but part of the flock for sure. One realist Muslim ventured that Obama worships at a Unitarian Church because it represents the middle ground between Christianity and Islam, incorporating the religious beliefs of the two faiths Obama feels connected to. Unitarianism could be Obama's way of still being a Muslim.

Source: Forbes
Hat Tip: Echo910 (via email)

Commentary

Imagine that.

I remember a long drawn out discussion I had on a progressive group blog about these very things, where I brought up many of the same arguments that this writer does, and was not believed by the hooligans there, and was even called various versions of a hater for doing it. I wonder if they will say the very same thing about a Muslim who has now said the very same things.

You'll also note that many of the comments are addressed to someone called "TP" or "Pig" or "Thunder Pig". That is me. My comments have been removed "webscrubbed" if you will, because either they are very cogent, or may be a result of my banning from commenting at the group blog recently. I draw your attention to the very strident nature of the "progressive" reaction to my commentary and analysis...which are now gone down the Orwellian Memory Hole because that is who lefties are, destroyers of whatever they disagree with.

Just as Pahroah decreed the name Moses is to be stricken from history, so do the lefties order even the record of the opposition to be stricken from history. But you can still see echoes of my presence because some of the commenters have quoted portions of my commentary. 

I think that Gordon Smith [photo] (future Asheville City Council candidate) has just run into the same problem faced by Josef Stalin, sometimes when you airbrush people from history...an empty spot remains, as in the photo below where an enemy of Stalin's is removed from the photo:

 This photo is in the public domain.

This is just one more example of what I call "Stalinist Tactics of the Left" [examples from Malkin], and a reminder that altering webpages, removing blogs and removing videos from youtube only works if there exists no other copies of them made by forward-looking individuals. Johnny Rockslide will live again, if only in political commercials. A Bene Gesserit punishment banquet can be a long feast indeed. Hors d'oeuvres, anyone? 

So, back to the Obama "will be seen as a Muslim" claim: this woman gives anecdotal evidence to back up my claims, which, when forecast by me...were evidence (to lying lefties, at any rate) of me trying to spread hate. So, is this woman trying to spread hate? Am I by reporting upon it? Or the lefties who try to distort my words or intentions by their attempts at misdirection?

I expect to be vindicated in several other statements I have made about an Obama Presidency in the next four to eight years.

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Happy New Year!

Here is a video stand-in for a Fireworks display:

Good bye 2008, and Hello 2009.

I think that we have thoroughly beaten up 2008, and it will never recover from our wounds.

2009 however, is yet young and pliable enough for most of us to believe that we can take it where we will without suffering too much for our efforts.

I officially declare that it is my belief that (at least in North Carolina) 2009 will be the year of the Citizen Journalist. 

Part of my reasoning lies in the utter failure of the Legacy Media (Newspapers, TV and Radio) to provide actual, useful information when it comes to matters relating to our elected officials and what they are doing in their jobs beyond soundbites and lefty-slanted "spin".

The backlash has already begun, and people are racing to gather their forces and train them for the counter assault. Beach heads are already being scouted, and lanes of advance plotted.

This year, there will be thousands of new websites launched and nearly as many social networks built to facilitate that need, and to train an army of people from the precinct up to engage in the political battles to come for the next few years. Many of my Republican colleagues are under the mistaken impression that 2012 will be easy, and that we need not prepare for it until after the 2010 elections because we have a strong field of candidates. 

We'll see about that. 

2009

I will be making a forray into covering state and local politics this year on a scale I have never before attempted...but I won't be alone. I intend to raise an army of citizen journalists (not glad-handers) to help me in this endeavour.

I will have more details, along with links, on January 28, 2009. 

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LIVE From Times Square, 2009 Celebration

Here is the Mogulus live-stream from Times Square, which will be live from 4pm to 12.15am Eastern!

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End of the Year and Taking Stock

It used to be (at least for me) that the end of the year meant taking things a little slower, looking back on the past year and making plans about making plans for the new year.

This year it is very different (save 2006...but that is a story for another time).

Everything seems shoe horned into the last couple of months. I have a project that I have been dreaming about for the past three plus years. I have been trying to gather a crew of people I can count on to participate and work toward a common goal of making the government in North Carolina accountable for it's actions. That goal is now in sight, and will be officially "online" in a little over four weeks.

I don't mind telling you that I am nervous. Not about the people on the left who may try to tear it down (that is to be expected), nor about the people I thought were sympathetic to my goals. I am worried about success. Success is a strange animal, and it tends to change people in unexpected ways. I hope that it doesn't throw me a curve ball I can't handle.

These are some of the things on my mind as I continue to be extremely busy in front of my computer for twelve hours and more everyday as I try to work out all the bugs, build graphics and discussion groups and provide tools for those who will share my dream of doing what has never, ever worked in North Carolina to any large degree. But if I told you that, I'd give the game away, wouldn't I?

It has been a wild ride and the next year promises to have more packed into it than the previous ten.

I am so glad that many of my colleagues in the Republican Party are finally embracing the Internet, and to a certain extent, the Social Media networks, and to a lesser degree, the Web 2.0 technologies. Some of their models are wrong, but failure is an important teacher...and has taught me well.

If you read any books this next few weeks, I would suggest that you read the following in the order presented below. This is part of the model I have been working under for the past decade (for the older books). The lessons in these books must be absorbed by conservatives (whether we agree with them or not) if we are to be successful and reverse the political and moral decline of America:

1. Future Shock (Wikipedia) (Orson Welles Documentary parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
2. The Third Wave (Wikipedia) This one is pretty solid.
3. Powershift (article at The Logic of Success) This one will blow your mind.
4. Creating a New Civilization (a simple, succinct review)

Alvin Toffler is interviewed by Newt Gingrich on Book TV. The interview has been taken down in the past few months, try this one where the couple appear on Charlie Rose, which begins at the 20 minute mark. Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote the above books over a 35 year period. I do not agree with a lot of their politics...but I will say that much of their work has withstood the test of time. That is why I ask you to begin with a nearly 40 year old book of theirs because you won't believe it was written so long ago. I also hope that you get a kick out of some the odd ideas, too...like changing one's race, Michael Jackson aside.

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