I woke the morning after the 2014 midterm election thinking about the number one.
It is highly likely those trounced in a swath of upset races across the country woke up thinking about the one thing they wished they had done differently, or the one thing more they shouldda, couldda done.
It is curious whether Sen. Kay Hagan woke wishing she had spent one more dollar in the negative race that was fed with $101 million to garner each candidate 1.4 and 1.3 million votes respectively (pre canvass). Hagan might just believe if she had shelled out $1Â to 2 million more she could have swayed a few of the 49,000 votes that kept her from holding onto her seat in Washington.
It is a sure bet that Republican Senator-elect Thom Tillis is glad he spent that last easy $100Â million.
Just under 2.8 million votes were cast in the U.S. Senate race for North Carolina, the costliest such race in the nation’s history. Tillis, Hagan and their backers (much of it dark money, no obvious trail to the giver) spent $36 per vote.
Imagining what good could have been done with that $101 million boggles the brain.
Since it seems the pot of gold to elect politicians nowadays has no bottom, perhaps those dollars need to be taxed, with the revenues earmarked to the failing education system? That would be one good from bad gleaning use.
One percent is the number that separated the winners from the losers in more than one local New Hanover County race. Wednesday night, as the returns came in at the government center, county commissioner-elect Rob Zapple watched that 1 percent go up, down and up again. For a while he and Derrick Hickey were in a dead tie, then Hickey pulled ahead. For Zapple it was a visible knuckle biter as the final two precincts’ results came in, but he maintained a good attitude about it. Hickey chose not to share election night in the public eye.
As the ranking switched back and forth in the golden hour of potentially second guessing a campaign, Zapple said he had given it his best, and there was not one thing he would have done differently; he had knocked on doors, attended everything he could, spoken to everyone he could, including Republicans.
When it came down to the wire, the results from one final outstanding precinct, the largest in the city, the W29 Williston Middle School made the difference for Zapple, who is by all observations, a downtown person. Zapple ended the race with 29,954 votes to Hickey’s 29,750; a difference of just 204 and a reminder that every one vote counts.
If Zapple were to be seated on the commission, he would bring the number of Dems on the board to more than one for the first time in a great while.
When a race is just 1 percent apart, the underdog has the right to challenge the vote count — something the board of elections doesn’t like to see occur, but nonetheless it did, in not one but two races: Zapple and Hickey for county commissioner, and a 5th district judicial race, in which assistant DA Lindsey McKee Luther has, for the time being, lost to attorney Kent Harrell for the Blackmore seat on the bench. Election results will not be final until the canvass is complete on Nov. 14, when the provisional votes are added into the totals.
Twenty-five year veteran of county finance and county management Bruce Shell became the one new face on the New Hanover County school board with a respectable 33,043 (unofficial) votes, making him the second-highest vote getter for that board. His one new voice will bring a welcomed fresh approach to governing the beleaguered education system.
One of the races with an obvious outcome early on was that of New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon. With more than 66 percent of the vote, McMahon was the highest vote getter in races where there were challengers.
New Hanover County has 159,526 registered voters, of those 66,444 (41.65 percent) exercised their privilege to vote in this midterm election. Of those, McMahon received the nod to continue in his job as the top law enforcement officer in the county from not quite 43,000 voters. Looking at the numbers, with just under 18,000 one-stop votes, McMahon was also the highest vote getter in early voting, of the races that had challengers.
For those running unopposed, District Attorney Ben David was the top vote getter and pulled in the highest number of one-stop votes, 48,242 and almost 19,000 respectively.
One of the overriding messages of the day/weeks of voting was the intense disaffection and sometimes anger over how the government is being run. This says a great deal about the number one leader in this country -— some still believe in the world, that his approval rating is so very poor. It cost more than one fellow Democrat his/her seat.
It is highly possible that when he awoke this morning, the President had more than one thing on his mind he wishes he had done differently these past six years.
I am sure the rest of us have far more than one for him and the GOP.
One thing for sure, the county could not have stood one more yard sign. The gross proliferation of this visual pollution was unprecedented this election. One result of this election should be tighter controls on these yard sign and how many can be placed in one stretch of road or at one intersection.
The worst offender appeared to be county commission candidate Derrick Hickey who, opponents said, deployed as many as 10,000 signs. Obviously the correlation of signs to votes did not work all that well for him and should be rethought by all.
