THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 13, 1995 TAG: 9502130052
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Shortly after the Nov. 8 election, which ushered in the first Republican majority in the General Assembly in more than 100 years, Ruby Bailey, vice president of the Beaufort County Democratic Women, made a poster out of newspaper headlines.
An educator and long-time Democratic Party activist, Bailey said she made the design as a continuous, although painful, reminder to herself and other Democrats of the dismal election that saw a GOP takeover of Congress and a new GOP majority in the state legislature.
And at a recent gathering of the local Democratic women's group, she said the state's Democrats need to begin now to retake the General Assembly and Capitol Hill, hold on to the governor's mansion and halt further Republican gains in 1996.
``We're going to have to start living, breathing and eating Democratic Party,'' Bailey said. ``With unity and dedication, we as Democrats can overcome.''
In 1992, Joyce Cutler, a former chairwoman of the Beaufort County Democratic Party, was a delegate to the national convention in New York where the party nominated Bill Clinton as its candidate for president.
Throughout the campaign, enthusiasm infected Cutler and other eastern North Carolina Democrats, who described the mood as similar to the 1960 campaign when John F. Kennedy was running for president.
For Cutler, the Nov. 8 election and the convening last month of a Republican-dominated state legislature was a jolt.
``I definitely think we've had a wake-up call,'' she said. ``It is the loudest wake-up call I've ever known and I've been in the trenches for 20 years.''
As the state's leading Democratic Party activists prepared to gather in Raleigh this weekend, local and state party officials as well as some of the state's most visible Democratic elected officials saidthe party needs to begin preparing for 1996 immediately.
``The 1996 campaign began Tuesday night right after the election,'' said the Rev. Robert Cayton of Edward, a former chairman of the Beaufort County Democratic Party and a member of the state executive committee.
Getting ready for 1996 means working harder to appeal to mainstream North Carolinians and refining the party's message, according to Lt. Gov. Dennis A. Wicker, who spoke to the Democrats Saturday at the Radisson.
Wicker took time recently to reflect on the recent election and to talk about what the Democratic Party needs to do to prepare for the future.
``We're going to have to adhere to a philosophy that appeals to mainstream North Carolina and that has a clear and concise message as to why it's important to elect Democrats to public office,'' he said in a recent interview in his office in the state capitol in Raleigh.
Democrats statewide also agree that the party failed miserably in getting its message to voters in November.
``I give the Republicans credit for doing a good job,'' said Wicker, 42, a veteran of a tough campaign for lieutenant governor in 1992 against a well-funded Republican opponent. ``The Republicans did a better job of getting their message out and of defining us than we did defining them.''
``Blame for that lies with the Democratic Party,'' he said.
The Democratic Party accomplished a great deal in the state from 1992 to 1994, Wicker said - it built prisons, contributed millions of dollars to a rainy day fund to guard against troubling economic times, provided pay raises to the state's teachers and other employees, invested in major initiatives such as the state's education programs, to name a few, Wicker said.
``That story was never told,'' he said. ``It got lost in the sea of politics and was never clearly explained to the voting public.''
Former House Speaker Daniel T. Blue of Wake County, who won re-election but lost his speakership to Republicans, agreed.
Blue, in an interview shortly before stepping down as House speaker, said inaction by the state Democratic Party in November was ``an invitation to a disaster.''
``We knew the Republicans were on the way,'' he said. Yet, he said, ``there was a total absence of the party during the campaign. There was no organized effort at all.''
Cayton said he was also not surprised by a Republican Party victory in November - just the length and depth of that victory.
``We've seen it coming for at least 20 years in North Carolina,'' he said at a recent Beaufort County Democratic gathering. ``We should have seen it coming.''
Some Democratic leaders, such as Herbert Hyde of Asheville, a former party chairman who lost his state Senate seat in the Nov. 8 election, are calling for a massive party reorganization, especially at the precinct level.
Others, including Howard Lee of Chapel Hill, a former candidate for lieutenant governor who also lost his state Senate seat in November, say Democrats are in dire need of someone near the top of the party who can parry Republican attacks.
Still others say the Democratic Party, which has historically been subject to divisive, inter-party squabbles, needs to close ranks around a central message.
Said Blue: ``We've got to go back to communicating with each other. Organization and communication are key.''
Some Democratic leaders like Cayton are concerned about the recent rush by some party members to embrace the Republican doctrine and the state GOP contract as their own.
``It is tragic that some people in the Democratic leadership are not thinking for themselves,'' Cayton said. ``We are not the Republican Party. We are the Democratic Party.''
``Me-tooism will not work,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Democrats organize
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wayne McDevitt, newly elected chairman of the North Carolina
Democratic Party, chats with Carolyn Coleman of the governor's
office shortly before he accepted the nomination for the chairman's
post at Saturday's meeting in Raleigh.
by CNB