The City Council Elections and the Simkins PAC

The candidates for city council have declared, and the campaign season is beginning. 

One of the accoutrements of political campaigns locally, in recent times, has been the practice of  seeking and/or receiving the endorsement and assistance of the Simkins PAC.  The PAC has had the power to sway city government and to make or break candidates.  The resources it has mobilized at election time, in various ways, have resembled those of a political machine. 

The recent history, however, is extraordinarily tainted.  The Rev. Michael King and Project Homestead were the objects of some courageous reporting in the News and Record within the last couple of years.   The St. James fiasco was more recently reported by the same paper. 

Given the fruits it has produced, the PAC no longer has the ethical standing to influence local elections in this manner.  Every candidate for City Council needs to repudiate any active or implied support from this PAC.  They need to refrain from seeking its assistance.  They must foreswear any association with it.  They should deliver an unequivocal signal to the PAC that they refuse its help, and forbid it from acting on their behalf. 

Any candidate that does not do these things becomes associated with the scandals and improprieties reported by the News and Record.  It is well past time to have local elected officials that are no longer beholden to this organization and the illegitimate loci of power and influence it establishes.  Candidates need to be elected to office based on their own credentials and positions; and not based on explicit or implicit promises made to this group.

I would like to see reported which candidates are seeking its help, and which are refusing it.

Comments

[Roch101]

Hi Joe,

I'm not sure of the link between the public policy fiascos you cite and the PAC. Does the PAC have some direct responsibility for these foibles that should discredit their endorsements of candidates?

[David Hoggard]

I have to ditto Roch's question. Guilt by association on the part of some PAC members does not equal culpability by the entire membership of the PAC in the fiascos you site... but...

More to the point, however, is how their credibility, and thus their influence, has waned over the years in my estimation. This could be due to promises made and not kept.

Two years ago the PAC endorsed the new baseball stadium and urged voters to reject the ordinance change ostensibly because, as PAC leader Steve Bowden stated, "we have written guarantees" that a certain percentage of work on the stadium would be performed by black citizens of Greensboro.

When the work was underway and few such workers were observed doing the actual work, Bowden admitted that no such "written guarantees" existed.

People pay attention to such things. Action speaks much louder than words.

That said... one of the main considerations I had about running at large was the PAC's potential endorsement. I made several calls to guage some members' level of commitment to my potential candidacy and recieved a positive response. Their endorsement is still pivotal in a tight race.

It is one thing to disagree with many of the PAC's views and endorsements... quite another to ignore them (or perhaps even court them) even in their currently lessened state of influence within the black community.

Their endorsement still carries weight among many black Greensboro voters. But that weight is not near what it used to be.

[Joe Guarino]

David, you are closer to the action than I am, and I hope you are correct that the influence of the PAC is waning. But their influence in the past has been dispositive.

And Roch, its status as a machine with the power to make or break candidates created the environment in which leaders with questionable character were installed into office and/or given disproportionate power. And elected officials had to kiss the rings of the leaders they installed in possession of political power. When that power was used toward improper ends, and the means utilized was improper, everyone ignored it until the News and Record ran its series.

I am going to invoke once again the example of my cousin for whom I worked in an earlier life. You may recall how I related how he played a role in Giuliani's ascendancy to the New York mayoralty. I talked with Guy about it a couple of years ago. He emphatically related how he had always felt strongly about how important it was that good people (by implication, people of character) be introduced into the political arena and be nominated for public office. The Simpkins PAC has not furthered that objective in Greensboro or Guilford County; and in fact, has opposed that objective through the manner in which it has wielded power.

And I don't impugn the members of the PAC. I do, however, have concerns regarding what its leadership has done, and what implications it has had for the manner in which power has been wielded.

[Mr. Sun]

How is the the Simkins PAC is tainted by the problems with Project Homestead and St. James? They had no direct involvement with those two situations. They endorsed a broad slate of candidates. What is the connection? It couldn't be that those were "black problems" caused by "black politicians" and we need to straighten up how these "black votes" are being exercised. I have no idea what this nonsense you write above means: "as a machine with the power to make or break candidates created the environment in which leaders with questionable character were installed into office and/or given disproportionate power."

How is the Simkins PAC tainted by Project Homestead and St. James other than the fact that they are all "black stuff." How?

[Joe Guarino]

I have responded in a new post today.