Ran into political consultant Bill Burckley at Bluford Elementary School, Precinct G74 — serendipitous, to say the least. We’ve been trying to interview the guy for months. This season Burckley, who has been involved in Greensboro politics since he was a UNCG student in the politically charged era of the late '60s, has been advising several candidates including at-large candidate Nancy Vaughan and mayoral hopeful Bill Knight.
Knight’s campaign brought him out to Bluford today, he said.
“[Knight]’s gonna have to have a big turnout in the non-black precincts and the newly annexed precincts,” he said, and also with people who don’t turn out for city council elections but will for bond issues.
According to Burckley, the nature of this year’s bond, $20 million for the Natural Science Center, will draw white voters but that black voters will only turn out “marginally.”
“My feeling was that if we saw a drop in percentage of black voters, then he had a shot…. If the total percentage of black votes falls below 30 percent, Bill has a huge chance of winning. If it drops below 28 percent, it’s over.”
He dismissed the “Obama Factor” by saying that the increase in voter rolls brought on by last year’s presidential election would not affect this one.
“They won’t come out,” he said. “They registered to vote for Obama.”
Bluford, he said, is historically the precinct with the highest turnout of black voters, and he saw it as a sort of barometer for this election. If the numbers at Bluford were down, he reasoned, then black voter turnout would be down across the First District and perhaps the entire city.
“I’ve been hearing rumblings for about a year now that there were dissatisfactions with Yvonne Johnson in the black community,” he said.
Instead of voting against Yvonne, he figured, “they just wouldn’t come out. That’s what I’m trying to confirm. This precinct will confirm one way or another… it’s gonna tell me a whole lot.”
More gems from Bill Burckley:
“I have a formula for every election. It changes every year. This year I used people who voted in the 2007 general election, and I knocked them out if they didn’t vote in the 2008 general election. I added back in for the same people who voted in the 2009 primary.”
That number, he said, represents 95 to 98 percent of the people who will vote in this election.
In 2007, when Yvonne Johnson became the first black mayor of Greensboro, he deployed a different strategy.
“I had to look at black voters who had a history of voting in primaries in even years. I felt like these folks would be quite likely to come out in a city council election with a black candidate.”
He also looked at voters who had turned out for the 2003 elections, when a Guilford County Schools bond was on the ballot.
He said he has been acting in an advisory role in Nancy Vaughan’s at-large campaign, and that he has known her husband Don for many years.
He said he gave Nancy a special deal for his services. He usually gets paid up front, but for Vaughan he devised a bonus system: some money up front, more if she came out of the primary, more if she wins the general election and a final bonus if she becomes mayor pro tem. He did not give any actual numbers.
“We laid out a game plan months ago,” he said. “Every single thing we talked about worked.”
On at-large candidate Ryan Shell: “He did the opposite of everything I told him to do…. Men are more likely to have that attitude than women.”
On my pal District 1 candidate Ben Holder, AKA the Troublemaker: “I told Ben not to run.”
On District 1 incumbent Dianne Bellamy-Small: “I think she’s gonna be gone this time.”
On YES! Weekly News Editor Jordan Green: “Why does he always call me a ‘Republican consultant’? I’ve worked for [Guilford County Commissioner] Skip [Alston], [NC Rep.] Earl [Jones], [NC Rep.] Mel Watt… the funny thing is I do [Guilford County Commissoner] Bill Yow and I do Skip.” The two are generally considered political adversaries.
After our chat, Burckley conferred with G74 Precinct Judge Horace Sturdivant, who has been presiding at Bluford for almost 20 years. About 15 minutes before the polls closed, Sturdivant placed the daily vote total between 450 and 475, down from the 701 recorded last cycle.
“That conforms what I felt,” Burckley said, “that you’re not getting the turnout you did two years ago in the black precincts.”
— Brian Clarey
2 comments:
Brian: I read this earlier and it is great analysis. I would love to see an in-depth profile on this guy.
Political junkies would eat it up.
I agree. I'm working on it.
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