Marshall sounds economic populist notes in Democratic primary

Elaine Marshall (center) appeared at the Guilford County Democratic Party Convention today. (photo by Quentin L. Richardson)

I showed up late for the Guilford County Democratic Party Convention at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Greensboro today, due to a prior commitment to work on a voter education project with my friend, Sharon Hightower.

The interest among Guilford County Democrats this spring is, naturally, on which of the three frontrunners in the party primary for US Senate – Cal Cunningham, or Ken Lewis or Elaine Marshall – should get the nomination. When I arrived, Lewis’ wife Holly had just addressed the group on her husband’s behalf.

An enthusiastic Lewis volunteer from Durham was on the stoop in front of the fellowship hall talking up her candidate. DJ Hardy, a candidate last year for Greensboro City Council last year, was circulating in the assembly wearing a Lewis badge. Those details color my impression that Lewis enjoys a lot of support among Guilford County Democrats.

I missed Cunningham, who spoke around 10:30 a.m. Cunningham, who lives in Lexington and practices law in Winston-Salem, appears to be the favored candidate of President Obama and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He has also lined up support from Triad Democrats such as NC Rep. Pricey Harrison, Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse and Wayne Abraham, Democratic chair for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District.

First impression of Elaine Marshall: more energetic, friendly and confident in person than I had gathered from her web presence, photographs and a North Carolina Public Radio profile.

Marshall is the NC secretary of state. She talks about defying the odds by getting elected to state senate from a rural community and disproving predictions that she couldn’t beat Republican Richard Petty “in NASCAR country.”

In her seven-minute speech, Marshall framed the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an uncompleted revolution, and put forward a populist counterweight to the grassroots fervor of Republican calls to repeal healthcare reform.

We voted for change in 2008, and until very recently we haven’t seen much movement in that direction. I got into this race based on where we are as a group of people right now. We’re in the midst of the worst recession any of us have ever experienced. And in the last 30 years the gap between the rich and the poor has grown ever larger and the resolve to do anything about it has grown ever smaller, I’m sorry to say. Today, more than ever, we need people who can be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Today, we need leadership. When people look at Washington, they see one side saying no, the other side just running scared. That’s not leadership. They see votes being taken based on the next election rather than the long-range future of this country. And that’s not leadership. And they have seen special interests write bills behind closed doors that enhance corporate bottom lines at the expense of you and me. And that’s not leadership. When Americans look at Washington they see politicians and corporate interests standing in the way. Whose voice has been left out during all of the discussions the last year to year and a half? It’s been the voice of the ordinary people. Franklin Roosevelt talked about the "forgotten man." Today, we would talk about the voice of the forgotten man and woman – the people who make this country strong, the people who get up every day, go to work, work hard and want America to work for them. They have no stronger desire than to live a good life, educate their children, turn over a world that’s a little bit better than what they had, and to not have to worry about their shrinking dollars, their cost of healthcare, their ability to get healthcare….

Marshall garnered her one major applause line in the middle of her speech with a dig at the Republican incumbent, Richard Burr.

“Senator Burr has said his main campaign theme is going to be to repeal the healthcare bill,” she said. “That’s why we have set up a website called ‘Repeal Richard Burr.’”