It’s a shame Karen Crowell appears to feel the need to attack positive developments in Chatham County based on ideology

Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 22:55:47 -0400
From: Donna Kelly
Subject: Negativity

It’s a shame Karen Crowell appears to feel the need to attack positive developments in the county based on ideology. This week it’s a program to reward county teachers developed by the county school superintendent and supported by the county school board.Her initial attack was based on false claims of a tax increase followed up with more political rhetoric. Karen ignores the many people that regularly work together to make these things happen in her desire to discredit three of those people because they happen to be registered Republicans.

Last week she took aim at the Megasite and used it to launch an attack on Republicans at the state level, despite the fact that most of the work so far has been done by a diverse group of people at the local level. I’ve attended a number of meetings about the Megasite over the past year and the optimism and level of cooperation has been inspiring.To see that effort belittled to score political points was disgusting.Fortunately, I believe the majority of people in the county, unlike Karen, can see the potential in such a project and work together to support it.

It’s true that Bock, Petty and Stewart don’t talk a lot about being Republicans. Maybe it’s because they are interested in finding the best solutions for Chatham County and working cooperatively with our towns and school system without regard to party politics.While what happens at the state and national level does have a tremendous impact on local government, most people recognize that different levels of government handle different issues.Shouldn’t we expect local officials to talk about local programs and local results because that’s what they can influence?

The 2010 election was historic because it was the first time since Reconstruction that Republicans have held the majority of seats on the Chatham Board of Commissioners as there had only been one Republican commissioner elected in that time.While some will try to claim otherwise, even Bunkey Morgan was elected as a Democrat.So what does a party label really mean if people as diverse as Bunkey Morgan and George Lucier can both be elected as Democrats?Isn’t it more important to look at how local officials handle local affairs rather than judge them by the actions of others that happen to share some party label?

While Karen claims that Republicans are unpopular in NC and implies people are running from the party label, voter registration statistics tell a different story, especially in Chatham County.In 2004 Chatham County was 54% Democrat while today that number is only 44%.It’s obvious Chatham voters are losing faith in the Democratic party. While Republican registration has remained relatively stable the number of Unaffiliated voters has climbed from 18% to 30%.To me it looks like people are tired of the partisan bickering and looking for leaders who focus on solutions, not partisan politics.

The 2010 election showed that Chatham voters were willing to look beyond party labels and judge local officials by their actions and we’ll find out this November if they’re willing to continue doing that or if they’ll be swayed by people like Karen who would rather judge people by labels than results.

Donna Kelly