There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Tuesday’s local primary elections.For starters, we in the media tend to overestimate the importance of endorsements, including those that we make, and the value of news coverage on the choices voters make on Election Day.
Six of the 10 candidates the R&L endorsed prevailed in an assortment of local races. That’s not a bad batting average in baseball, but when you factor in the fact that two of the county commissioner candidates we endorsed finished dead last in five-candidate races for the Republican and Democratic nominations, that number seems a little inflated.
The endorsements of three of the most popular Iredell County politicians in the past decade — Sheriff Phil Redmond and Commissioners Sara Haire Tice and Steve Johnson — didn’t carry that much weight either.
Redmond, like the R&L, endorsed Alan Martin in the district attorney’s race. And Redmond, Tice and Johnson all backed the unsuccessful candidacy of developer Brad Howard for county commissioner.
Even more surprising is that Barbara Orr was the top vote-getter in the Democratic commissioner primary. Orr was out of the country for a significant portion of the weeks leading up to the primary and missed out on several opportunities to connect with the electorate at numerous candidates forums and other public events. As a result, we gave her little chance to advance to the general election.
The 28,463 voters who cast ballots in Tuesday’s elections provided a very powerful lesson: In the end, theirs is the only opinion that really counts for much.
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