Candidate profile: Lonnie Wilson

From Interstate 85, the route to Lonnie Wilson’s house takes one past the city of High Point’s fleet maintenance facility and Union Hill Elementary, a school with well-publicized academic troubles. As one turns onto Central Avenue, the palatial edifice of Williams Memorial CME Church, which houses Precinct H05, can be seen in the distance.

High Point’s Central Avenue is not the bustling urban thoroughfare of Los Angeles myth and reality. The end on which Wilson makes his home is sparsely populated, and his log house lies at the end of a gravel driveway hidden from view amidst a wooded grove. A semi-retired landscaper, the 67-year-old Wilson is a registered Republican who counts Ronald Reagan among his heroes.

“We’ve gone from a manufacturing economy to more of a service economy,” he says. “You can go through southeast High Point and see a lot of industrial buildings that are empty. I don’t know. It’s a changing world. Some people blame it on NAFTA. I don’t know.”

Wilson had not planned to run for the NC House District 60 seat currently occupied by Democrat Earl Jones, but rose to the challenge when he received a call from one of the conservative John Locke Foundation’s “Freedom Clubs” encouraging him to file to ensure that a Republican would be on the ballot. The district is drawn like a pyramid, with urban south Greensboro neighborhoods at its peak and a swath of rural southern Guilford County at its base, and with an arm that reaches into the heart of High Point to grab a handful of territory rich in Democratic and black voters.

With about 60 percent of its electorate African American and 65 percent registered Democrats, it’s safe to say that the district was drawn to ensure that a black Democrat would win. This might be a year that favors Republican candidates, but it’s a safe bet that the change in store for District 60 came from Marcus Brandon, a progressive Democratic political consultant almost half Wilson’s age. Brandon defeated incumbent Jones in a primary upset in May.

For Wilson to beat the odds, he says, “It would have to be the Lord’s will.”

Politics, in some sense, is always an arena governed by unfounded optimism. Wilson mentions a day when he was knocking on doors, which he typically does in the morning, when a woman answered the door.

“I said, ‘If I win this race, what do you want me to do down there in Raleigh?’” he recalls. “She said, ‘Don’t you say “if.” Say “when.”’”

From his conversations with voters, Wilson surmises that they’re leaning to the right this year, and some Democrats are even regretting their votes for Democrat Beverly Perdue in the 2008 gubernatorial contest because she signed a budget last year that included a sales tax increase. He also has run across a significant amount of hardship on the campaign trail.

“The man who is just above the poverty line is really struggling,” Wilson says. “He earns too much to qualify for welfare. He’s not getting any increases in his wages, and yet things are going up.

“The more you make, the more they take,” the candidate continues. “It destroys the incentive to save and make more money. According to the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute — have you heard of them? They’re my mentors — they say that’s why North Carolina is losing out to the neighboring states.”

Unemployment remains in the double digits throughout Guilford County, including High Point, and I pose the question to Wilson as to what state government should be doing to help put people back to work.

He gives a quiet laugh and takes a long pause, before finally saying, “Probably reduce taxes and regulations.”

Wilson’s positions on charter schools and annexation are standard-issue NC Republican Party and John Locke Foundation.

“I think they should lift the cap on charter schools,” he says. “Charter schools are public schools. Charter schools have a higher standard. Public schools need competition. A lot of people are putting their kids in private schools, and so they’re paying twice when they pay their county taxes. Maybe the money should follow that child.”

Wilson favors giving residents of unincorporated areas the right to a referendum to decide whether they want to be annexed by municipalities, and requiring cities to provide services before imposing taxes on newly annexed residents. Currently, North Carolina law allows for involuntary annexation.

The publicized scandals of former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, former Democratic House Speaker Jim Black and other North Carolina politicians prompts Wilson to say that corruption is a problem that needs to be addressed in Raleigh.

“Some people say, ‘I ain’t going to vote,’ and I can’t say their wrong,” Wilson says. “They say, ‘When we send ’em down there, what do they do? They tax us higher. They regulate us more. They take that lobbyist money. They feather their own nest.’ I guess if you picked up every rock in state government you’d see a lot of bugs running.”

Wilson says he’s attended two Tea Party rallies, one in High Point and another in Greensboro. He attended a candidate training offered by the John Locke Foundation, but hasn’t been in touch with anybody from the Guilford County Republican Party. He went to the Tea Party rallies to listen, and didn’t introduce himself to voters.

“I don’t have a full grasp of it,” he says. “I know it’s grassroots. Most of it, I thought, was about taxes and loss of freedom from existing government.”

He pauses for effect, and quips, “They just didn’t serve any tea.”

On the issue of illegal immigration, Wilson is neither a firebrand nor one to buck the prevailing sentiment within his party.

“They are illegal, but I like ’em,” he says. “I like those people. They have these existing laws. I don’t know why they don’t enforce them.

“A man told me today — he’s working a lot of them: ‘The Democrats want them for voters and the Republicans want them for workers,’” Wilson continues. “They are good workers. They can work in the sun. About all the landscaping people use them on golf courses.”

As for the Arizona law that allows local law enforcement officers to stop people on suspicion of being in the state illegally and that has inspired imitation legislation by conservative lawmakers across the country, Wilson says, “That is the law. They’re just enforcing federal law, aren’t they?”