News
Email
Print
Burr race lacks heft
Democrats have yet to offer heavyweight
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: June 28, 2009
RALEIGH - So far, none of North Carolina's big-name Democrats seems to want to run next year against Sen. Richard Burr.
Even as Burr has already begun preparations for what could be a tough re-election fight, his most likely challengers are two dark-horse candidates, both lawyers with little political experience and even less statewide name recognition.
In that regard, it's not much different than what happened in the 2008 U.S. Senate race, when top Democrats declined to run against incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole. State Sen. Kay Hagan was persuaded to run and wound up defeating Dole.
Cal Cunningham, 35, is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve who served in the war in Iraq. He now lives in Lexington and works in Winston-Salem for the law firm Kilpatrick Stockton.
Kenneth Lewis, 47, is a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser, including for Barack Obama's successful campaign in North Carolina. He lives in Chapel Hill and works in Durham for the law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.
Lewis quietly filed paperwork several weeks ago, making him the first official Democratic candidate in the 2010 Senate race. He said he plans to make a more formal announcement in a month or two, but in the meantime, he is trying to organize a campaign and begin raising money.
"I've been traveling across the state talking with the people of North Carolina," Lewis said.
He said he is being advised by Joe Trippi, the prominent national Democratic strategist who worked for former presidential candidates Howard Dean and John Edwards.
Cunningham has not yet formally declared his candidacy, but he, too, is visibly testing the waters and gathering support. Last week, in a message to supporters on Facebook, he suggested that he is strongly considering an announcement soon.
"We are taking active steps to see if we can get a campaign together," Cunningham said Friday. "It's going to be a very large, very arduous undertaking, and we're looking at the politics of it to make sure that there is political support if I get out there and do this."
Cunningham seems to be getting more buzz among Democratic insiders, who believe that his military background would be appealing in a statewide run against Burr. And unlike Lewis, Cunningham has run for public office before -- he served one term in the N.C. Senate in 2001 and 2002.
Online groups have sprung up in recent weeks trying to draft Cunningham to run. He's also been noticed by the Washington political magazine Roll Call.
"If he gets into it, you can believe he'll be in it 100 percent," said Joan Dressler, the chairwoman of the Davidson County Democratic Party, who is a friend of Cunningham and Cunningham's wife.
Dressler praised Cunningham's spirit of self-sacrifice and said he would bring a populist appeal.
"There's no question that his intellect is superior to the average person, yet he has the ability to speak and talk to people on all levels," she said. "I think a lot of people can identity with him -- not just his peers, not just lawyers, not just the intelligentsia, so to speak."
Republicans say they're not worried by the Democrats' machinations so far.
"They haven't been able to field a top-flight opponent for him yet, and they may not be able to," said Tom Fetzer, the chairman of the N.C. Republican Party. "They know that Richard is a formidable opponent."
Fetzer also noted that the political climate for Burr in 2010 will be different from the climate that Dole faced in 2008.
In the first midterm elections after a new president comes into office, the minority party almost always picks up legislative seats.
And Burr is a different sort of candidate from Dole. Unlike her, he is a longtime resident of North Carolina and spends a lot of time in the state. But he is seen as vulnerable because of recent polls showing his approval rating below 40 percent -- quite low for an incumbent facing re-election.
With 16 months to go before the election, it's still early. But one common theme is emerging between the Dole race and the Burr race. That's the unwillingness of prominent Democrats to get in the race.
Two years ago, national Democrats struggled to recruit a top candidate before ultimately settling on Hagan, who was a state senator at the time and was just the sixth choice of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington. Hagan ended up beating Dole by nine points.
This year, national Democrats again tried to recruit candidates with prominent names and established political organizations. Five top choices of the DSCC were U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, Attorney General Roy Cooper, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, former State Treasurer Richard Moore and U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge.
Shuler and Cooper have said they will not run. The others have shown little or no interest in the race.
That leaves an opening for a lesser-known candidate, just as it did for Hagan two years ago.
"I think that North Carolina is at a turning point," Cunningham said. "We have become an important part of the national dialogue because we're a very competitive state. And that played itself out in the last election."
■ James Romoser can be reached at 919-210-6794 or at jromoser@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
