Have Charlotte Democrats become ‘victims of their own success’?

State of play: Council will vote next month on the Unified Development Ordinance, a rewrite of the city’s development rules, including its most controversial portion: allowing duplexes and triplexes by right in single-family neighborhoods.

If the current council, made up of nine Democrats and two Republicans, votes on it before they leave office, it will likely pass 6-5.

• That’s the same squeaky margin as the visionary 2040 plan that stirred much debate last year. The UDO will put the 2040 plan’s ideas into law.
• But Republicans are hoping to win at least one additional seat in the council races, swear in that hypothetical new GOP council member before the UDO vote, and strike the single-family zoning provision from the plan.

The questions: How did a nationwide Democratic priority supported by the Biden administration to reduce housing barriers come down to just one vote in a city where Republicans make up less than 21% of registered voters?

• The answers are complicated — from differing visions for their biggest policies around housing and transit, to messaging, to the range of political ambitions among local members — but most raise another, more simple question:
• Are local Democrats prepared to maintain their dominance in Charlotte politics, or are these signs they’re slipping?

Why it matters: Democrats hold the levers of power in Charlotte. They serve in nearly every local and statewide office in Mecklenburg County aside from a handful of seats. But there is hardly one version of a local Democrat, and at times their bickering and behind-the-scenes maneuvering makes it clear that there’s little harmony in local Dem land.

• Toss in bad national poll numbers for Democrats, low fundraising numbers for the local party, and the likelihood of a low turnout in a summertime municipal election, and now some current party members and officials say the Democrats’ near unilateral control over the city has made it complacent.

“I think the Democrats here in Charlotte Mecklenburg have become victims of their own success,” says Ray McKinnon, who has held a number of roles in the party, including as a former DNC member representing North Carolina, and current chairperson of precinct 222 in northwest Charlotte.

• “It seems inevitable that Democrats are going to get elected. It’s not inevitable.”

Yes, but: Some see the differences between Democrats as a positive.

• “We are not here to bring out one homogeneous idea behind one homogeneous person, like the Republicans are to be completely honest,” council member Braxton Winston said at a Democratic press conference last week in SouthPark, a traditional Republican stronghold that is shifting.

The other side: Jane Whitley, chairperson of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party, says she doesn’t take anything for granted.

• “We always have to work for people’s votes and that’s what we’re doing,” she says.
• Whitley says the party mailed its Blue Ballot to voters and is organizing for Stephanie Hand, the Democratic challenger in a competitive south Charlotte race to District 6 representative and Republican Tariq Bokhari.

Reality check: Democrats are still the largest group of registered voters in Mecklenburg County, at 42%. Charlotte hasn’t voted for a Republican citywide in more than a decade. So the “slate” of Republicans running for city offices in this month’s election are undoubtedly underdogs.

• But both parties are angling for unaffiliated voters, who now make up the largest group of registered voters in N.C. — and in Mecklenburg, they are 36% of registered voters.
• Plus, the election this July is at an unusual time, which some fear could tamp down turnout. In the first six days of early voting, about 9,100 people voted, according to the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections. That’s actually better than in 2019, the last municipal general election, when fewer than 5,500 people voted in the first six days of early voting.

Between the lines: Two local leaders in the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party resigned late last year, and in a joint resignation letter obtained by Axios, alleged that Whitley resisted calls to look at areas for the party to improve, and collaborate on a strategic plan for get out the vote.

• “The response is always that Mecklenburg has many Democrats in office so we don’t need to change anything,” wrote Janice Robinson, former secretary, and Jennifer Gaddy, former second vice chairperson.

The other side: Whitley disputes much of the information in the letter and said it doesn’t reflect the overall mood of the party.

• She also says the party does have a written strategic plan for getting out the vote, though declined to share its specifics. The party has more organized precincts, or voting districts, than ever before, she said, and she pointed to the success of Democrats in towns outside of Charlotte.
• “We’ve held control of the City Council since 1999,” she says. “And since I’ve been chair we’ve taken 100% control of the County Commission, electing three women in districts that used to be fully Republican,” she says. 

Yes, but: Democrats disagree over whether getting members of their party elected should be the ultimate goal.

• “I think we run the risk of stagnating if we don’t continue to encourage and welcome new people and give them a vision of where we want to be two, three, five, 10 years from now,” Gaddy tells me.

But messaging is difficult when the divides over how to run our city often don’t fall neatly along party lines.

The reason the vote on the 2040 plan, which boiled down to the single-family zoning issue, was so close is because three of the five no votes came from Democrats.

What they’re saying: After Winston was first elected in 2017, he says he asked some of the mentors who helped him campaign how to learn about policy. They told him they didn’t know.

• Winston hears the misconception from other Democratic leaders that the city is trying to take away the right to build a single-family neighborhood. And he blames that on a lack of focus on governing in the party.

• “The Democratic local party specifically, there hasn’t been in my opinion, the willingness to take a strong stance,” he says. “And that has hurt momentum to bringing more opportunities for affordability in this county and the city.”

The party holds informational sessions on local issues, but doesn’t take positions on specific policies before council, Whitley says, in part because there isn’t agreement.

But the Democrats’ “big tent” means there isn’t a united front to respond to Republicans’ criticisms.

• “When you have in Mecklenburg County essentially full control, and every year we’re fighting over funding for teachers,” says McKinnon, “We are fighting over basic things that we shouldn’t have to as Democrats.”

Zoom out: Political parties, says UNC Charlotte political science professor Eric Heberlig, are less dominant in the South than in other parts of the country. Other organizations — like the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, or the New North Carolina Project that aims to recreate Stacey Abrams’ voter mobilization campaign in Georgia — fulfill some of the traditional political party duties, he says.

Heberlig says the party that is out of power is generally more motivated.

• For the dominant party, though: “You’re not going to put the effort in if there’s really no point,” he says.

By the numbers: The Mecklenburg County Democratic Party’s fundraising lags behind parties in urban areas across the state, some a fraction of Charlotte’s size, state campaign finance data show.

• In this election cycle, the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party raised $47,686, per its most recent report. Wake County’s Democratic Party raised nearly three times as much, Guilford’s brought in over $100,000 and the Democratic parties in Buncombe, Forsyth and Durham all took in more.

• Mecklenburg County has more Democratic voters than the last three counties combined.
• By contrast, Charlotte’s Republican Party raised $166,706 this election cycle.

Connie Green-Johnson, the chairperson of the Mecklenburg party’s fundraising committee, says there previously wasn’t a fundraising plan, but she’s developed one, and is hoping to put on additional fundraising events.

What’s next: Even if Democrats earn enough votes to maintain their power on July 26, in November, urban areas like Charlotte will be critical to the chances of statewide Democrats like Senate candidate Cheri Beasley.

• Mecklenburg County’s 2020 turnout, at 72%, trailed the state’s 75%, even as turnout improved from 2016 in almost all county precincts, Whitley’s data shows.
• The party isn’t doing enough to make people want to vote by connecting the dots between politics and their lives, says Collette Alston, president of the African American Caucus for the North Carolina Democratic Party, and past president of the African American Caucus of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party. In 2020, North Carolina’s Black and Hispanic voter turnout lagged, at 68% and 59%, respectively.

“I think that a lot of people are being told to go and vote,” Alston says. “And it’s more looked at, especially in the Black community, as a term of numbers and getting bodies to the polls, rather than this is why you need to vote in these elections.”