THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 11, 1995 TAG: 9505110424
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
First District Democrats will hold a politically decisive election for control of the party at a 28-county convention in Plymouth June 3.
Several hundred Democrats from the far-ranging counties that now make up the 1st Congressional District will meet in Plymouth High School at 10:30 a.m. for the all-important job of electing a party chairman.
Isaac Andeaux ``Ike'' Battle, a retired Gatesville educator who is the incumbent 1st District party chairman, plans to seek a full two-year term in the party's top post.
``I'd like to serve another term. I feel like I can do a lot more to bring the party together,'' Battle said this week.
Battle was named last year to succeed Judge James Carlton Cole of Hertford. Cole resigned from the 1st District Democratic leadership after being named to the District Court bench.Battle was elected to Cole's unfinished term in July when state Sen. Frank W. Ballance Jr. of Warren County decided not to oppose Battle for the chairmanship.
Ballance is widely popular as a legislator and as the manager of the successful election campaign that sent U.S. Rep. Eva M. Clayton, also of Warren County, to Washington as the first black and the first female congresswoman in this century from North Carolina.
So far, Ballance has not said whether he will seek the 1st District party chairmanship this year.
But whatever Ballance does, his role will be important to the political ambitions of various 1st District Democrats.
To the slim majority of registered African-American voters in the 1st District, the top political plum is the congressional seat held by Clayton. Many feel that if Clayton should decide to step down, she would endorse Ballance as her successor in Washington.
But many black leaders in the 1st District have thought about running for Congress. And none more fervently than state Rep. Milton F. ``Toby'' Fitch Jr., a Wilson County Democrat. Fitch hasn't committed himself to the upcoming elections. But he is expected to back Battle for party chairman.
``I hope we don't have a fight. I hope they can settle this,'' said Roper Mayor E. V. Wilkins, a recognized leader of Democrats in the 1st District.
The 1992 General Assembly, under U.S. Justice Department voting rights guidelines, redrew all of the N.C. congressional districts and gave two of them - the 1st and the 12th - a majority of black voters.
Like many other African-American politicians in the voting area, Wilkins fears the ultimate danger of a divisive congressional primary in which several black candidates fragment the delicately balanced voting majority in the political enclave that now stretches from the Virginia border to South Carolina. democratic party north carolina by CNB