Municipal election update

Mayoral candidate Thomas Stith showed off his deep pockets yesterday by dropping an 11 x 17 slick brochure to an unknown number of households.

Local political activist and former City Council member Frank Hyman was one of those whose household received the mailing. His reaction on a local listserv was pretty quick:

The [brochure] crosses a line that hasn't been crossed in Durham to my knowledge. Stith uses 3 grossly unflattering pics of Bill Bell as a Karl Rove way to influence voters.

Here's a scan of the brochure.



Frank also speculated that Stith was mailing this anti-crime piece to white males, but i'm not so sure. Soon-to-be Mrs. Dependable also received one in her name at out house, and last night i was door-to-door delivering our quarterly neighborhood newsletter, and saw several of these brochures in mailboxes belonging to someof my African American neighbors. I think it's more likely he's dropping this to small business owners and/or a list associated with the Chamber of Commerce.

Anyway, Frank's knowledge of Durham politics is much more extensive than mine, so i'll take him at his word that this kind of thing is relatively unknown in Durham.

That said, it didn't strike me as particularly outrageous, but maybe that's a statement on the current nature of our political discourse more than anything else. I think, though, that Stith is walking a fine line.

Stith has been on Council since 1999. It's pretty hard to blame the Mayor, who is under Durham's charter simply the presiding officer at Council meetings, and not the head of the executive branch, for Durham's problems without having to accept some of that blame himself. Additionally, it seems like half of Stith's campaign is designed to give the impression that he's the incumbent. He probably doesn't want to make Durham seem like a terrible, scary place, if he's going to be running as someone who's got some responsibility for that.

And then there's the whole issue of this kind of a negative campaign. How will Durham voters respond? Stay tuned.

UPDATE: There was some discussion in the comments about exactly where the names that Stith dropped the flier to came from. I said that my information indicated the names could not have come from a voter registration list. It turns out i was interpreting that information incorrectly. I don't know where the names came from, but a voter registration list is not ruled out.

Sorry about that.