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It’s up to the voters
Published 7:30pm Wednesday, July 4, 2012It’s a safe bet that voter turnout for the July 17 second primaries in Beaufort County likely won’t reach 20 percent.
We would like to see a good turnout, but one thing history teaches us is turnout for second primaries is abysmally low. That’s a shame. While some of the races on the ballot for the July 17 primaries may not hold much interest for Beaufort County voters, there is at least one race that should hold the attention of those voters.
It’s the race between Beaufort County resident Arthur Williams and Mattie Lawson, a Dare County resident, to become the Republican nominee to take on Democrat Paul Tine, also a Dare County resident, for the 6th District seat in the N.C. House of Representatives.
It’s become somewhat of a contentious campaign.
Williams, who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party last year, has been endorsed by Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones, who represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District, and Jeremy Adams, who finished third behind Williams and Lawson in the May GOP primary.
Lawson paints herself as the true conservative. Williams’ detractors contend he’s a Republican in name only and is nowhere near the conservative that Lawson is.
Our concern has more to do with Beaufort County being fairly and adequately represented in the N.C. General Assembly than which candidate is the more conservative one. The question voters must ask themselves is which candidate would best represent them in the Legislature.
As for Williams and Lawson (Paul Tine, you pay attention, too), they must remember the candidate who prevails in the general election in November must represent the entire 6th District, and that includes Beaufort County.
That, in part, is why this second primary is important.
Voters, keep that in mind.
Geography is important in one sense.
Bill Cook is GOP nominee for NC Senate. Cook defeated Arthur Williams for the NC House, and he has been a breath of fresh air after the stale stench of beltway yes-man Williams. The most important race for Beaufort County and local Republicans is getting Cook into the Senate.
How do we best do that? With a geographically balanced ticket that includes both of the major counties common to both the House and Senate districts, Beaufort and Dare. We already have a Senate nominee from Beaufort, so that means the House nominee should be from Dare to balance our legislative ticket. Running two Beaufort candidates would unbalance the ticket and probably hurt the chances of both. Of course that may be Williams game plan if he has a hidden agenda for his longtime party, but it is actually probably more blind ego driving his campaign.
But why would any Republican want to vote for someone like Williams, who supported Obama for president in 2008 and supported Obamacare when it was going through Congress in 2009, in the first place?
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