30 Minutes With Richard Vinroot

Editor’s Note: Former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot has just completed one of the hardest fought political campaigns that North Carolina has seen in many years. In the end, he came up a few percentage points short, but in the process he raised more money than any Republican in history, and he emerged as a more passionate and articulate spokesman for conservative values than he had been in past races. We recently sat down with him to do a "post mortem" on this political season, and to discuss what this election means for the future of North Carolina and the nation.

Warren Smith: What happened in North Carolina, particularly in your race, and do you think Mecklenburg County turned out to support you like you thought it would?

Richard Vinroot: Mecklenburg County did turn out, and did fine by me. George Bush and I essentially tied in Mecklenburg County, and among those voters that I had a reasonable chance of getting support from I did very well. Republicans, conservatives, and some moderate Democrats. I got about two-thirds of those votes.

What happened, by my analysis, is that the Democrats did a better job of getting their voters out both here and across the state. This was particularly true among black precincts, which – incidentally – I had done well in as a candidate for mayor, but did not do well in as a candidate for governor.

A great example would be the West Charlotte precinct. As a re-running candidate for mayor, I got about a third of the vote there. In the years since I’ve been mayor, I’ve been very involved in that community. There was nothing I did that changed their mind about me – at least I hope not. I think they simply went out and voted far more straight tickets than they had in previous elections, to my detriment. They certainly voted in higher percentages. But overall, I got about 60% of the vote across the state, except for black voters.

With respect to the allegation that I saw in your paper by Susan Burgess about negative campaigning, there are actually exit polls about that. The polls show the voters thought Mike Easley was more negative them me, but he won. One could conclude from that that he won because he was more negative, and I lost because I was not negative enough. I don’t believe that. I believe that Mike won because he was part of a Democratic candidate’s list that did a better job of getting out their votes.

WS: Nonetheless, negative campaigning got a bad rap. But if your opponent is doing something for which they need to be held accountable, how do you do that?

RV: For the record, we started this campaign in middle May, after the primaries. We ran ads, starting in June, with Dean Smith talking about me. Never mentioned anyone’s name but mine. Then we had me on the ads with ideas I have for improving public education. Teacher testing, better pay, more choice. Never mentioned Mike Easley. That was our first month and a half of campaign ads.

The first ads Mike Easley ran were attack ads against me. Then the campaign proceeded to a kind of ping-pong match. He said this about me; I responded. I said these things about his so-called public service ads; he responded. And on and on.

The truth is that we had a very good debate about the issues. And I regard telling the truth about his record and telling the truth about my record as part of the campaign. I don’t consider that negative. I consider that part of the legitimate debate about who should be governor of North Carolina, the debate about whose ideas are better. But if he comes out with an ad late in the campaign, as he did, that said Vinroot cut police pay, that’s a dishonest ad. We responded. We had the police chiefs at that time, and the mayor, come on television and say that’s not true. We attacked him for having a dishonest ad. But I would say that the ads we ran, from beginning to end, from the point in time where he attacked me, we responded with truthful ads about my record vs. his record. I don’t regard that as negative, as un-American. I regard that as good political debate that we ought to be having.

So while I respect anyone’s right to express an opinion, the fact is that Susan’s opinion is not based on fact. And if she knew more about it, I would like to think that she wouldn’t have said what she said.

WS: If the negative campaigning was not the reason for your loss, why did you lose?

RV: I think we lost, in the end, because this was not a particularly good year for Republicans. Both in this state and in other states. There were eleven contested governors’ races this year. We lost eight out of eleven. The three we won were Utah, Montana, and North Dakota. Republicans don’t lose in those states. Of the others, several of those states were very Democratic states, where we didn’t have a chance, but many of them were seriously contested. In Missouri, for example, the Republican governor led by six points on Friday night but lost on Tuesday. In North Carolina, according to our polls, we led by two points on Friday night, but we lost on Tuesday.

Something happened between Thursday or Friday of the last week and Tuesday across the country that took its toll on Republican candidates. Indeed, it even took its toll on George Bush, who lost the popular vote.

WS: What happened?

RV: I don’t know. Some say it was the DUI. Maybe it was all the undecided votes coming home to Gore. Some suggest it was the gender gap, with all the undecided women breaking for Gore. I don’t know. All I know is that it was a pretty universal trend that we were a part of here in North Carolina.

WS: To backtrack a bit, you got a third of the black vote in Charlotte during your second race for mayor, and at the Republican convention in the spring it seemed to many that Republicans were really reaching out to the African-American community. Yet nationwide the black vote went 90% Democratic, and locally perhaps it was even greater. Should Republicans give up, or will these efforts pay dividends later?

RV: Well, I’ve lived my life here since I got out of the service in 1968. I’ve been very involved in the inner city of Charlotte. Very involved as a Scoutmaster with a black troop for seven years. I’ve been very involved as the founder of a charter school in the inner city, that has predominantly black kids. I’ve been involved in fundraising for Johnson C. Smith University. I’ve done things across the board without regard to race. And I would bet you that the leaders in the black community would say to you that this is a Republican that we have supported. So there is nothing I can look and say, ‘Oh, it was this.’

WS: There are some who say that black power brokers in metropolitan areas – Arthur Griffin in Charlotte, for example – are playing the race card. They are consolidating their power base by encouraging straight ticket voting. Even when they know that a Republican will be fair and honest in representing the African-American community, they can’t afford to support you because in the long run it will erode their ability to broker those votes among Democratic candidates. Do you think that theory has merit?

RV: I don’t know. I would simply say that the Democratic Party has realized that black voters are the core of their base. That is a group that must be activated to win elections, and they have done that. There’s nothing wrong with that. Republicans have realized who their core voters are and do the very same thing. But we have to continue to reach across lines.

I do think it is a mistake, though, for African-American voters to put all of their eggs in one basket. That’s a dangerous thing. Ultimately, the Democratic Party will come to view black voters as votes they can’t lose. And the Republican Party will disregard black voters as a group they can’t win. That’s the sad conclusion. All voters should be listening to all candidates, and all candidates should be listening to all voters.

WS: The only Republican council of state candidate who won was pro-choice….

RV: That had nothing to do with that race. That election was determined by one fact. [Cherie Berry’s] opponent was a socialist. He had grown up as a socialist. That was fairly well publicized. She publicized it. Even Democrats couldn’t stomach supporting a socialist or – he claims – a reformed socialist. I don’t think there was enough publicity for that office or any council of state office for that race to distinguish itself.

I think what happened for her was the same thing that happened to George W. Bush. The Democrats turned out, but there were enough Democrats who were offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior that they abandoned Al Gore and supported George Bush. I think there were Democrats who came out who could not support a former socialist.

But I would be surprised to see any polling that said voters made a single-issue decision.

WS: If there was a single issue that could have determined the governor’s election, it was the use of public funds to pay for so-called public service announcements that significantly elevated Mike Easley’s name recognition. The state auditor, Ralph Campbell, investigated that issue but Campbell’s credibility is questionable for a variety of reasons. And now, after the election, we see that Campbell has hired the Associated Press reporter, Dennis Patterson, as his chief spokesman, causing me to wonder if the mainstream media in this state had any objectivity around this issue. Is anyone going to hold Mike Easley accountable for this?

RV: I think not. I think Ralph Campbell blinked. The Democratic Party realized that they have a candidate who did something that even they are embarrassed about. He took public money and used it to promote himself to become the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Party’s own lieutenant governor campaigned against him on that issue. There are Democrats all over the state who believe that what he did was wrong. I think he got away with it. He made himself an almost 100% known person at public expense. Dennis Wicker couldn’t get close to him because of that. We did get close, because we raised $8-million. But he raised $10-million. If you really want to go back and look at why we lost, maybe $2-million made the difference. That’s 20% more money.

But I’m inclined to believe that even if we spent $10-million each, given what happened in every other contested race, what happened probably would have happened.

But, yes, he got a pass on it. And it won’t happen again because the legislature has declared what he did wrong. He can’t do it next time.

WS: You took a lot of hits for spending all your time raising money and not being on the streets, at bar-b-qs and the like.

RV: I am perfectly content about the hits I took from the press about that. I don’t think the public really cared about that. The fact is that there are seven-and-a-half million people in North Carolina. If I had gone to a bar-b-q every night for 300 nights and seen 100 people at each bar-b-q, you can add up the numbers and see that it is a fairly low number. 30,000 people I would have seen during the campaign vs. the number of people watching television on those same nights.

Like it or not, most people get their news over that little box. If you’re not on that little box, you’re not going to be a serious candidate. I had no choice. I do not have personal wealth. If I was going to be a serious candidate, I had to raise money.

The other side of that is that I was in someone’s home every night. They came at the invitation of someone to hear me speak. And in most cases they gave $100, or $50, or $25, or sometimes even $1000. So I did both. I saw people every night, and I raised money every day and every night. Raised more money than any Republican ever raised running for governor, and it was still not close to what my Democratic opponent raised.

But if I did it again, I’d do it the same way. I’d have no choice. Anyone who wants to run for governor or senate, unless they have personal wealth, like John Edwards, that’s the only way they’re going to succeed.

WS: Is there anything about the campaign that you do regret?

RV: Losing. Other than that, no. I had the most wonderful people helping me. I had a wonderful leader of the campaign [Carter Wrenn]. I had wonderful support in my hometown. I had wonderful support across the state. You cannot believe the spiritual journey we have been on together for the past two years pursuing something we thought was worth pursuing. For reasons we thought were right and still think are right. Reforming education. Reforming government. Changing the way we deliver needed services to a whole lot of people who need a better result than the one they are currently getting from public institutions. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I am absolutely confident that things will change. We have elected a president who believes the same things I believe about many of these issues. I really do believe that ultimately the American principles of paying people based on their performance, as opposed to tenure, and the idea of teacher testing, will come to pass. I am absolutely confident that I will be proven right in the end. We just have to keep talking about these ideas, and I think that some who we today least expect to support our views will come around and support our views.

By that I mean that poor people in inner city areas are the people most hurt by the policies of Al Gore and Mike Easley. Even Joe Leiberman, running with Al Gore, proposed for the District of Columbia what I proposed here, scholarships for poor kids. These ideas will ultimately prevail.

WS: You mentioned that you have been on a spiritual journey these past two years. What do you mean by that?

RV: Everybody wants to use his or her life for some greater purpose. It’s not about how many beach houses you own. If you believe scripture, it is about love. I can’t think of a better opportunity to influence things that are important to people’s lives than being mayor of a city, or governor of a state. You have the ability to influence things that matter to people. Educating their children. Protecting them. Developing systems on which a strong economy can run. You can say that it’s important to have a big bank in Charlotte, and it is. But it’s even more important to have the systems in place that I just described.

The people who got involved in my campaign were investing in ideals. They ultimately believed they were supporting someone who would find ways to help us better love our neighbors. When that’s over, it’s darn tough to walk away and simply say ‘they rejected my ideas. I was wrong. So I’m going to go back to seeing how much money I can earn.’

Early in the campaign Carter gave me some great advice. Talk from your heart. Just tell people what is on your heart. So from that moment on, whether answering reporters’ questions, or concluding a debate, I tried to speak from my heart.

I hate like the dickens to lose, but I am proud to have stood on ground that I believe in. I said what I thought was right. It would have been easier to tell them that I was going to be a governor who would give them more things that government now gives too much of. I might have had a chance to win the election by out-bidding even Mike Easley. I didn’t want to do that. I’ll be content never being elected, but speaking my true beliefs about those issues.

Though I have to believe that in the end, truth wins. The things we are talking about will prevail, some how, some way.




			Richard Vinroot
	Speaking From The Heart Editor’s Note: Former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot has just completed one of the hardest fought political campaigns that North Carolina has seen in many years. In the end, he came up a few percentage points short, but in the process he raised more money than any Republican in history, and he emerged as a more passionate and articulate spokesman for conservative values than he had been in past races. We recently sat down with him to do a "post mortem" on this political season, and to discuss what this election means for the future of North Carolina and the nation. Warren Smith: What happened in North Carolina, particularly in your race, and do you think Mecklenburg County turned out to support you like you thought it would? Richard Vinroot: Mecklenburg County did turn out, and did fine by me. George Bush and I essentially tied in Mecklenburg County, and among those voters that I had a reasonable chance of getting support from I did very well. Republicans, conservatives, and some moderate Democrats. I got about two-thirds of those votes. What happened, by my analysis, is that the Democrats did a better job of getting their voters out both here and across the state. This was particularly true among black precincts, which – incidentally – I had done well in as a candidate for mayor, but did not do well in as a candidate for governor. A great example would be the West Charlotte precinct. As a re-running candidate for mayor, I got about a third of the vote there. In the years since I’ve been mayor, I’ve been very involved in that community. There was nothing I did that changed their mind about me – at least I hope not. I think they simply went out and voted far more straight tickets than they had in previous elections, to my detriment. They certainly voted in higher percentages. But overall, I got about 60% of the vote across the state, except for black voters. With respect to the allegation that I saw in your paper by Susan Burgess about negative campaigning, there are actually exit polls about that. The polls show the voters thought Mike Easley was more negative them me, but he won. One could conclude from that that he won because he was more negative, and I lost because I was not negative enough. I don’t believe that. I believe that Mike won because he was part of a Democratic candidate’s list that did a better job of getting out their votes. WS: Nonetheless, negative campaigning got a bad rap. But if your opponent is doing something for which they need to be held accountable, how do you do that? RV: For the record, we started this campaign in middle May, after the primaries. We ran ads, starting in June, with Dean Smith talking about me. Never mentioned anyone’s name but mine. Then we had me on the ads with ideas I have for improving public education. Teacher testing, better pay, more choice. Never mentioned Mike Easley. That was our first month and a half of campaign ads. The first ads Mike Easley ran were attack ads against me. Then the campaign proceeded to a kind of ping-pong match. He said this about me; I responded. I said these things about his so-called public service ads; he responded. And on and on. The truth is that we had a very good debate about the issues. And I regard telling the truth about his record and telling the truth about my record as part of the campaign. I don’t consider that negative. I consider that part of the legitimate debate about who should be governor of North Carolina, the debate about whose ideas are better. But if he comes out with an ad late in the campaign, as he did, that said Vinroot cut police pay, that’s a dishonest ad. We responded. We had the police chiefs at that time, and the mayor, come on television and say that’s not true. We attacked him for having a dishonest ad. But I would say that the ads we ran, from beginning to end, from the point in time where he attacked me, we responded with truthful ads about my record vs. his record. I don’t regard that as negative, as un-American. I regard that as good political debate that we ought to be having. So while I respect anyone’s right to express an opinion, the fact is that Susan’s opinion is not based on fact. And if she knew more about it, I would like to think that she wouldn’t have said what she said. WS: If the negative campaigning was not the reason for your loss, why did you lose? RV: I think we lost, in the end, because this was not a particularly good year for Republicans. Both in this state and in other states. There were eleven contested governors’ races this year. We lost eight out of eleven. The three we won were Utah, Montana, and North Dakota. Republicans don’t lose in those states. Of the others, several of those states were very Democratic states, where we didn’t have a chance, but many of them were seriously contested. In Missouri, for example, the Republican governor led by six points on Friday night but lost on Tuesday. In North Carolina, according to our polls, we led by two points on Friday night, but we lost on Tuesday. Something happened between Thursday or Friday of the last week and Tuesday across the country that took its toll on Republican candidates. Indeed, it even took its toll on George Bush, who lost the popular vote. WS: What happened? RV: I don’t know. Some say it was the DUI. Maybe it was all the undecided votes coming home to Gore. Some suggest it was the gender gap, with all the undecided women breaking for Gore. I don’t know. All I know is that it was a pretty universal trend that we were a part of here in North Carolina. WS: To backtrack a bit, you got a third of the black vote in Charlotte during your second race for mayor, and at the Republican convention in the spring it seemed to many that Republicans were really reaching out to the African-American community. Yet nationwide the black vote went 90% Democratic, and locally perhaps it was even greater. Should Republicans give up, or will these efforts pay dividends later? RV: Well, I’ve lived my life here since I got out of the service in 1968. I’ve been very involved in the inner city of Charlotte. Very involved as a Scoutmaster with a black troop for seven years. I’ve been very involved as the founder of a charter school in the inner city, that has predominantly black kids. I’ve been involved in fundraising for Johnson C. Smith University. I’ve done things across the board without regard to race. And I would bet you that the leaders in the black community would say to you that this is a Republican that we have supported. So there is nothing I can look and say, ‘Oh, it was this.’ WS: There are some who say that black power brokers in metropolitan areas – Arthur Griffin in Charlotte, for example – are playing the race card. They are consolidating their power base by encouraging straight ticket voting. Even when they know that a Republican will be fair and honest in representing the African-American community, they can’t afford to support you because in the long run it will erode their ability to broker those votes among Democratic candidates. Do you think that theory has merit? RV: I don’t know. I would simply say that the Democratic Party has realized that black voters are the core of their base. That is a group that must be activated to win elections, and they have done that. There’s nothing wrong with that. Republicans have realized who their core voters are and do the very same thing. But we have to continue to reach across lines. I do think it is a mistake, though, for African-American voters to put all of their eggs in one basket. That’s a dangerous thing. Ultimately, the Democratic Party will come to view black voters as votes they can’t lose. And the Republican Party will disregard black voters as a group they can’t win. That’s the sad conclusion. All voters should be listening to all candidates, and all candidates should be listening to all voters. WS: The only Republican council of state candidate who won was pro-choice…. RV: That had nothing to do with that race. That election was determined by one fact. [Cherie Berry’s] opponent was a socialist. He had grown up as a socialist. That was fairly well publicized. She publicized it. Even Democrats couldn’t stomach supporting a socialist or – he claims – a reformed socialist. I don’t think there was enough publicity for that office or any council of state office for that race to distinguish itself. I think what happened for her was the same thing that happened to George W. Bush. The Democrats turned out, but there were enough Democrats who were offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior that they abandoned Al Gore and supported George Bush. I think there were Democrats who came out who could not support a former socialist. But I would be surprised to see any polling that said voters made a single-issue decision. WS: If there was a single issue that could have determined the governor’s election, it was the use of public funds to pay for so-called public service announcements that significantly elevated Mike Easley’s name recognition. The state auditor, Ralph Campbell, investigated that issue but Campbell’s credibility is questionable for a variety of reasons. And now, after the election, we see that Campbell has hired the Associated Press reporter, Dennis Patterson, as his chief spokesman, causing me to wonder if the mainstream media in this state had any objectivity around this issue. Is anyone going to hold Mike Easley accountable for this? RV: I think not. I think Ralph Campbell blinked. The Democratic Party realized that they have a candidate who did something that even they are embarrassed about. He took public money and used it to promote himself to become the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Party’s own lieutenant governor campaigned against him on that issue. There are Democrats all over the state who believe that what he did was wrong. I think he got away with it. He made himself an almost 100% known person at public expense. Dennis Wicker couldn’t get close to him because of that. We did get close, because we raised $8-million. But he raised $10-million. If you really want to go back and look at why we lost, maybe $2-million made the difference. That’s 20% more money. But I’m inclined to believe that even if we spent $10-million each, given what happened in every other contested race, what happened probably would have happened. But, yes, he got a pass on it. And it won’t happen again because the legislature has declared what he did wrong. He can’t do it next time. WS: You took a lot of hits for spending all your time raising money and not being on the streets, at bar-b-qs and the like. RV: I am perfectly content about the hits I took from the press about that. I don’t think the public really cared about that. The fact is that there are seven-and-a-half million people in North Carolina. If I had gone to a bar-b-q every night for 300 nights and seen 100 people at each bar-b-q, you can add up the numbers and see that it is a fairly low number. 30,000 people I would have seen during the campaign vs. the number of people watching television on those same nights. Like it or not, most people get their news over that little box. If you’re not on that little box, you’re not going to be a serious candidate. I had no choice. I do not have personal wealth. If I was going to be a serious candidate, I had to raise money. The other side of that is that I was in someone’s home every night. They came at the invitation of someone to hear me speak. And in most cases they gave $100, or $50, or $25, or sometimes even $1000. So I did both. I saw people every night, and I raised money every day and every night. Raised more money than any Republican ever raised running for governor, and it was still not close to what my Democratic opponent raised. But if I did it again, I’d do it the same way. I’d have no choice. Anyone who wants to run for governor or senate, unless they have personal wealth, like John Edwards, that’s the only way they’re going to succeed. WS: Is there anything about the campaign that you do regret? RV: Losing. Other than that, no. I had the most wonderful people helping me. I had a wonderful leader of the campaign [Carter Wrenn]. I had wonderful support in my hometown. I had wonderful support across the state. You cannot believe the spiritual journey we have been on together for the past two years pursuing something we thought was worth pursuing. For reasons we thought were right and still think are right. Reforming education. Reforming government. Changing the way we deliver needed services to a whole lot of people who need a better result than the one they are currently getting from public institutions. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I am absolutely confident that things will change. We have elected a president who believes the same things I believe about many of these issues. I really do believe that ultimately the American principles of paying people based on their performance, as opposed to tenure, and the idea of teacher testing, will come to pass. I am absolutely confident that I will be proven right in the end. We just have to keep talking about these ideas, and I think that some who we today least expect to support our views will come around and support our views. By that I mean that poor people in inner city areas are the people most hurt by the policies of Al Gore and Mike Easley. Even Joe Leiberman, running with Al Gore, proposed for the District of Columbia what I proposed here, scholarships for poor kids. These ideas will ultimately prevail. WS: You mentioned that you have been on a spiritual journey these past two years. What do you mean by that? RV: Everybody wants to use his or her life for some greater purpose. It’s not about how many beach houses you own. If you believe scripture, it is about love. I can’t think of a better opportunity to influence things that are important to people’s lives than being mayor of a city, or governor of a state. You have the ability to influence things that matter to people. Educating their children. Protecting them. Developing systems on which a strong economy can run. You can say that it’s important to have a big bank in Charlotte, and it is. But it’s even more important to have the systems in place that I just described. The people who got involved in my campaign were investing in ideals. They ultimately believed they were supporting someone who would find ways to help us better love our neighbors. When that’s over, it’s darn tough to walk away and simply say ‘they rejected my ideas. I was wrong. So I’m going to go back to seeing how much money I can earn.’ Early in the campaign Carter gave me some great advice. Talk from your heart. Just tell people what is on your heart. So from that moment on, whether answering reporters’ questions, or concluding a debate, I tried to speak from my heart. I hate like the dickens to lose, but I am proud to have stood on ground that I believe in. I said what I thought was right. It would have been easier to tell them that I was going to be a governor who would give them more things that government now gives too much of. I might have had a chance to win the election by out-bidding even Mike Easley. I didn’t want to do that. I’ll be content never being elected, but speaking my true beliefs about those issues. Though I have to believe that in the end, truth wins. The things we are talking about will prevail, some how, some way.