Election Watch: The Myth of the Independent Voter

By TOM FIEDLER, Asheville Watchdog

George Washington was such a fierce critic of political parties that he warned the citizens of their newly formed nation against joining them. A political party “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection,” the father of our country said (not inaccurately) in his farewell address in 1796.

As is the fate of so many fathers, the response of the citizens was …  good luck with that. To Washington’s dismay, Thomas Jefferson had recently started the Democratic-Republican Party to counter Alexander Hamilton’s already standing Federalist Party. Though the names have evolved, we remain essentially a two-party democratic republic with one party or the other alternating the presidencies.

But if recent voter registration trends are an indicator, Washington’s warning may finally be finding support. That’s certainly the case in Buncombe County, which isn’t a national outlier. The latest voter registration numbers suggest that when a fast-growing segment of the electorate is confronted with the choice of choosing to sign up with an established party or to follow Washinigton’s advice (whether it knows it or not), it chooses the latter. Officially in North Carolina that means “unaffiliated,” though most people think of it as being independent.

In fact, both of the major parties have hemorrhaged members since the last presidential election.  In November 2020, there were 77,672 registered Democrats and 47,587 registered Republicans. As of this week, there are just 72,616 Democrats and 45,183 Republicans.

To spare you doing the arithmetic (trust me, I have an engineering degree), this means the Democrats – the party that holds the White House and the governor’s mansion – has lost 5,056 adherents, a nearly 7 percent drop. The Republican Party has dropped 2,404 members, a 5 percent drop.

Considering Buncombe County’s growing population, the question is: Where did the voters go? Answer: To that unaffiliated column as those “none-of-the-above,” aka “independent” voters. Why? That’s complicated.

Today there are 92,257 of them, some 15 percent more than the number in 2020. These voters outnumber Democrats by about 20,000 potential votes, Republicans by about 47,000 votes.

Wow, I hear you exclaiming (not): “Seems like most candidates will want to align with these voters and run without a party.” But no. Only two candidates have chosen to do this for partisan offices. (School boards are non-partisan, though the parties will endorse candidates in these races, a subject to be tackled in the future.)

In the four Buncombe county commission seats on the November ballot, two candidates are going it alone: Van Duncan, who’s seeking to become the commission chairman, and Bruce O’Connell, a candidate for the District 2 seat covering Asheville’s northern and western section. Interestingly, Duncan, the former county sheriff, is an ex-Democrat. O’Connell, owner of the Pisgah Inn and unsuccessful candidate for Congress, is an ex-Republican.

Each candidate left his former party because, they’ve said, the parties drifted too far from their  moderate centers. To get on the ballot without party nominations, each had to collect more 8,000 signatures from registered voters – a daunting and expensive task that clearly discourages more candidates from going that route.

Duncan, who believes Democrats have denigrated the work of law enforcement, explained his decision to go it alone this way: “We’ve allowed the microphones of the extremes of both parties to become too loud.”

O’Connell, a once-proud RINO, says he’s unhappy about sharing a ticket with former President Trump, among others: “I was no longer comfortable with the [GOP’s] direction.”

Here’s the catch: Although the number of these so-called independent voters greatly outweighs those of party voters, you can’t assume they are inclined to support independent candidates, according to extensive research over many decades. To the contrary.

Surveys agree that about 90 percent of these voters consistently lean toward one of the two major parties in proportions close to those parties’ share of the electorate, especially in this state where unaffiliated voters can choose to participate in party primaries without changing their affiliation. Some party loyalists even register unaffiliated so they can cast a ballot in the other party’s primary for the candidate they think will be easiest to defeat.

Only about 10 percent of the unaffiliated voters are actually free thinkers, the ones who say they “vote the candidate, not the party.” Don’t believe them. When someone gives you that line after being asked their partisan sentiment, it likely means they haven’t a clue about who’s who on the ballot. They’d rather be on the recliner watching ESPN game highlights, or the season finale of “The Bachelorette.”

And that’s where they’re still likely to be November 5. I’m not sure they are whom George Washington hoped to protect.

Lightning round

Beethoven’s Ninth?: I phoned state Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, on Friday as she was leaving Chicago to return to Asheville after serving as a delegate at last week’s Democratic National Convention and asked one question: What overriding experience did she take away that she wouldn’t have expected just a few weeks before?

“The joy,” she said without hesitation. “I loved the messaging and being around [Kamala Harris and Tim Walz]. They’re joyful people. They’ve lived lives of helping people, of standing up for people, of lifting up people. The other side isn’t there. In their world if you want to get ahead you have to push others down.”

Mayfield is running for re-election against Republican Kristie Sluder in state Senate District 49. I called Sluder, read Mayfield’s quote to her, and asked if she wanted to reply. She certainly did: “I would strongly encourage the public to listen to the actions of the Biden-Harris administration, not their words. I don’t think everyday Americans are ‘feeling the love’ at street level when it comes to bacon, eggs, gas, and rent.”

Manna from … Caleb? Caleb Rudow, the Democratic state representative challenging Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards for the NC District 11 seat, put a unique twist on campaign spending recently. Although most candidates spend about 75 percent of their cash on campaign advertising, Rudow donated $10,000 of his campaign donations to the MANNA Food Bank, which serves about 150,000 people across western North Carolina. Giving campaign funds to philanthropic organizations is unusual, but quite within the Federal Election Commission’s rules.

“Caleb Rudow will not be recognized in a public way, as MANNA is a non-partisan nonprofit,” the food bank’s communication director Micah Chrisman told Election Watch. (My emphasis).

[Correction: The initial version of this story gave the incorrect number of signatures required for candidates to get on the ballot without party nominations. The candidates needed more than 8,000 signatures. In addition, on Aug. 22, Asheville Watchdog announced it was suspending reader comments on political stories, effective immediately and continuing through the Nov. 5 election. Due to an editing oversight, the initial version of this piece allowed readers to comment. We will not publish comments that have been submitted and have turned off the ability to comment. We are sorry for the confusion this may have caused.]

Election Watch appears each Wednesday and focuses on local politics in the run-up to the Nov. 5 elections.  If you have news to share, contact Tom Fiedler at [email protected]. Tom, who lives in Asheville, has covered politics from local boards to the White House for more than 50 years. He won a Pulitzer Prize during his years as political editor of The Miami Herald, where he was later the executive editor. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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Previously Published on avlwatchdog.org

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