Chalk it up to misspent youth?
Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse is running for lieutenant governor in the Democratic primary, but Besse acknowledged Friday he's a convert, Mark Johnson reports.
He registered as a Republican in 1972, when he was 18, and stuck with that party until 1993.
He joined the GOP when the mountain moderate Republican tradition was still alive, he wrote in an e-mail. He hoped to help make the party "an effective moderate alternative to (Democrats') one-party control in the state."
"Well," he wrote, "that didn't work out."
That history might be enough of a problem to explain in a Democratic primary, but there's a little more. While a Republican living in New Bern, Besse gave $1,650 to Phil Walker, the GOP candidate for the state senate in 1990.
Who was Walker's Democratic opponent? That would be now-Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, who is running for governor and alongside whom Besse would expect to campaign if each won the primary.
Wouldn't that make for interesting conversation on the campaign bus?
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Re: Besse
For the record, I never voted for Jesse Helms, in any contest. I supported Harvey Gantt. More important than any blow-by-blow on who voted for whom when, though, is the basic rationale.
Long-time advocates for the environment in North Carolina are well aware that I used my official Republican registration status to get our point of view (stewardship of clean air, water, land, and public health) into the state Republican policy mix during the '80's and start of the '90's. Otherwise, I would not have been in position to help protect our coastal resources program during that time during a Republican state administration.
Hanging in as a registered Republican for that specific purpose, at a time when I had already determined that the GOP had been inescapably captured by advocates of social and economic policies I couldn't stand, was one of the toughest political things I've ever done. I used my Republican registration one last time in 1992, campaigning for the Clinton-Gore ticket as a "Republican for Clinton". In fact, I recall being introduced as such at a statewide Democratic rally during the 1992 campaign. It was a great personal relief, once that campaign was past, to be able to officially switch my registration to the Democratic party, where it has stayed for the 15 years since--and will continue to stay.
Some Democrats introduce themselves as Democrats since birth. I like to point out that my party registration is a matter of adult conversion. Not conversion of policy views--but of switching to the party registration which, it had become clear to me, best represents the values I have always held.