N.C. GOP denies push for closed primaries
Republican primaries in North Carolina will continue to be open to unaffiliated voters.
GOP spokesman Jordan Shaw said the party's Executive Committee, comprising nearly 600 lawmakers and local political leaders, overwhelmingly rejected a resolution to allow only Republicans to choose the party's nominees.
Voters unaffiliated with a party have been helping pick who runs on the GOP ticket since 1988.
Republicans pushing for the change argued that party members should be the ones picking their nominees, because independents are more inclined to back moderates.
The resolution was adopted at the party convention in June, when a simple majority of committee members present usually is required for passage.
Many state leaders worried closed primaries would damage Republican chances to win elections in 2010. North Carolina's 1.4 million unaffiliated voters make up 23 percent of the electorate.
State party Chairman Tom Fetzer said Republican candidates benefited in the 1994 elections because the GOP welcomed unaffiliated voters at a time when the Democratic primary was still closed.
Unaffiliated voters have been allowed in Democratic primaries since 1996.
State law allows an unaffiliated voter to participate in one party primary but not both. A party has until Dec. 1 to tell the State Board of Elections it wants to prevent registered voters without a party from participating in next year's primary.
"Purity" may cost NC GOP
The N.C. Republican Party has been channeling its inner Jesse Helms lately, and not just because a portrait of the late conservative icon was unveiled last week.
At a GOP banquet Saturday night in North Raleigh, one of the main speakers was to have been Doug Hoffman, the New York conservative congressional candidate who was the favorite of Glenn Beck & Co. But he canceled because of an illness.
The state GOP is also considering a rule change that would bar unaffiliated voters from voting in state Republican primaries, in theory screening out some moderate voters.
In this age of polarization, it is politically incorrect to be a moderate.
The Republican Party likes to bill itself as the conservative voice of North Carolina and that is true enough, although the Libertarian Party might take exception.
But the NC State Republican Party has historically been far broader than the Helmsian party, with strong ties to the more moderate GOP brand of the mountains, the foothills, the board rooms and the suburbs.
Sometimes the Republican Party forgets that.
Twice in the last century, Republicans have won the governorship. In both cases they elected moderate conservatives, Jim Holshouser (1973-77) and Jim Martin (1985-1993).
Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, another moderate conservative, probably would have been elected governor last November if Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had not made a huge effort here.
It has only been in U.S. Senate races that the Republican Party traditionally has spoken with a pure conservative voice. That's largely because Helms and his longtime political organization, the National Congressional Club, helped elevate to office a series of Helms-like conservatives.
But that was a club, not a political party.
Those calling for ideological purity have a short memory. Helms was repeatedly angry and frustrated at President Ronald Reagan, who would provide only lip service to such issues as abortion and school prayer. And it was Reagan who signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
This is actually an old debate. During the 1970s and 1980s, the state Republican Party was often torn by factional warfare between Helms-style conservatives and more traditional Republicans.
I was present in 1988 at a GOP convention in Franklin County in which a riot broke out, with multiple fistfights.
The Republican Party grew rapidly in the '60s, '70s and '80s in North Carolina by courting conservative Democrats.
But North Carolina has maintained the strongest Democratic Party in the South during the past decade by siphoning off moderate Starbucks Republicans.
As conservative British Prime Minister HaroldMcMillan (1957-63) once noted: "A successful party of the right must continue to recruit from the center and even from the left center. Once it begins to shrink into itself like a snail, it will be doomed."
North Carolina GOP May Block Independents From Primaries
North Carolina Republican Party leaders are meeting this weekend to decide if they want to continue allowing unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in GOP primaries.
The state party's executive committee is expected to debate a resolution asking the party to limit voters to registered Republicans only, starting in May's primary. Unaffiliated voters have been allowed to participate in GOP primaries since 1988.
Onslow County GOP Chairman Patrick Lamb says a closed primary would ensure more true conservative candidates are nominated.
Party chairman Tom Fetzer says a closed primary would not bode well for Republicans who want to get a majority in the Legislature and re-elect U.S. Sen. Richard Burr. Fetzer says winning is about building coalitions.
Democrats have invited unaffiliated voters to participate in their primary since 1996.
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Sources: WRAL, McClatchy Newspapers, News & Observer, WITN, Wikipedia, Google Maps
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