A Message to Gideon Moore and Mecklenburg Republicans
Let me first start by giving my sincerest congratulations to Gideon Moore, the new MECK GOP Chairman! Gideon has proven himself to be a hard worker within the party, he put together a large team, and I believe he is going to be relentless in continuing to build out the precinct organization.
As someone who is largely an “outsider” – fact is I have been precinct chairman in 227 prior to making my run for the Chairmanship so I am not really an outsider – this was a great opportunity to allow the voices of 25 – 30% of the Republican Party to be heard in a positive, solutions based way. Those of us “on the outside” don’t want to be on the outside. In fact, a whole lot of people who came out to support me want to be part of the solution. However, we want to be included and in some cases we want our ideas to be acted upon. And not because we want our way or we’ll throw a fit – but rather we think that taking a step back and examining our strategies and to find ways to say YES to new ideas instead of saying no is an approach we need to pursue.
New data was released in the Observer on Sunday – in Mecklenburg County in 2000 the demographics looked as follows: 55% White, 33% Black, 7% Hispanic, and 5% other.
Now, per the 2010 census, it looks like this: 45% White, 35% Black, 14% Hispanic, and 7% other.
The other reality is in registered voters. In the County, Republicans are outnumbered by 90,000 voters. In the City, proper Republicans are outnumbered by the Democrats by over 110,000. (This would also explain why in places like Huntersville, Matthews, and Mint Hill Republicans do much better electorally.) These stark numbers ultimately mean that in order for Republicans to win the at-large races it will take to regain control of our local governing bodies, we must win close to 70% of the Independent vote while making sure we get 10% more of registered Republicans to vote than do the Democrats.
It is no longer good enough to look at the Black and Hispanic communities and say “they won’t vote for us anyway, so why try”. We must try, and try hard, and try for a long, long time – using our principles and beliefs and actions to chip away at our voter shortfall. The reality is, Blacks and Hispanics vote Democrat NOT because the Dems give them stuff, but rather it is because we’ve largely turned our backs on them. Don’t believe that, get out into the community and ask the question.
The great thing is, we can work on attracting Blacks, Hispanics, Independents, and Reagan Democrats AND at the same time keep working hard to get out the Republican vote. See, for us to be successful, its not an “either/or” solution, its a YES TO ALL OF THE ABOVE solution.
I thank Gideon for running a hard and clean race with me. From the beginning I said that no matter who won, the job is daunting and that either of us would be up to the task. Am I disappointed I lost? Sure. But I am also happy that Gideon won. As for what is next for me, well that has not been entirely decided – but I am NOT going to take my ball and go home. I am going to keep fighting for all of the things I espoused during my campaign. I will absolutely help Gideon and the GOP as he sees fit to use me. And if you think it is a good idea, I might even run for office to try to keep pushing our collective message onward – we’ve got a big mess in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and we are quickly running out of time to get it fixed.
Finally, I want to make sure all who read this know that we have got to keep down the path of making our Party more inclusive, more open to solutions based debates that make people feel welcome for contributing and presenting new ideas. Republicans come in many different colors, ages, shapes, and sizes. Some are “conservative”, some are “libertarian”, some are Black, White, Hispanic, Asian etc. But we all know that our city and county are not going down the right path and we need to get together and fix it.
I have only ever wanted to be part of that solution. And, at the end of the day, we are all on the same team and the future of our city and county depend on our ability to hold true to Republican principles, find and elect great candidates, and rally all of our people around the kinds of solutions that can ONLY come from the Republican point of view.
Thanks for reading, and once again, congratulations to Gideon!!
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