County Board Musical Chairs
Seems a palace coup is in the works on the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners, according to this report from WBTV’s Steve Crump that has Democrats squabbling over whether Jennifer Roberts, the top at-large vote getter in November’s election, should remain chairman of the board.
Harold Cogdell, the board’s incumbent vice chair who placed third in the at-large race, supposedly has been lobbying his fellow Democrats, along with Republican commissioners, to name him chair next week and bring Jim Pendergraph, a Republican who placed second in the at-large race, along as vice chair.
The plan, though, would only work if enough Democrats bail on Roberts and support the Cogdell/Pendergraph hybrid. Roberts, meanwhile, says she has latched up support from all the Dems. From an e-mail she sent out this week:
I have heard from all the Democrats face to face, who have all told me they are supporting me for chair. Thank you for that support. I have not heard definitive answers from the Republicans, but hope you will join my colleagues for a show of unity and support me as well. This would bode well for working together over the next two years, and I think we have worked well over the past 2 years. As for Vice Chair, I understand Jim is interested, and I appreciate his enthusiasm. However, I have explained to all why I would like your support for Harold Cogdell for Vice Chair. Harold and I have worked well together and the tradition is to have the Vice Chair come from the majority party, even though Harold received the fewest votes of all the At Large. I have told Harold I would like to have him continue in this role, because it has worked well, we trust and understand each other, and when he has to fill in for me, he speaks for the majority party and on behalf of the whole Commission.
Neither Roberts, Cogdell or Pendergraph could be reached for comment, but one Republican commissioner, who asked to remain anonymous, said Cogdell had called to ask support for his bid, which would seem to contradict Roberts’ claim that all the board’s Democrats are backing her.
“If the Democrats were all on the same page, none of this talk would happening,” the Republican commissioner said. “But it is.”
For most Char-Meck elected bodies, the top at-large vote getter is named board chair, with the second-place finisher from the same party tapped as vice chair. Democrats, though, have sometimes ignored that tradition when it suits their own agenda (as a recent example, think Kaye McGarry getting dissed for school board chair despite being that at-large race’s top vote getter).
In the Roberts/Cogdell cage match, though, it’s Dem vs Dem. Unless the board’s minority Republicans could get something tangible in return for supporting Cogdell’s bid (say some guarantee of no tax hikes), however, it’s tough to say they’d gain anything of substance from having Pendergraph as vice chair.
It’d be nice, but ultimately wouldn’t carry much juice, other than possibly creating some rifts in the board’s Democrat majority.
“The vice chair is several rungs below the theoretical importance of the vice president,” said the Republican commissioner. “You get a little more money and have to cut a lot more ribbons.”
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