Candidate profile: Becky Smothers

A lot of candidates don’t exactly care for campaigning, but try to project exactly the opposite. High Point Mayor Becky Smothers makes no bones about it: “I don’t enjoy the process at all. I never have liked asking for money. Times are really rough, and I think there are better ways to spend money.”

As a sitting mayor with 16 years of experience on the job, at least she doesn’t have to worry about letting voters know who she is. The 71-year-old Smothers acknowledges the advantage, but is quick to find a downside.

“The disadvantage is people tend to remember the times they disagreed with you,” she said this morning during at interview at her office at High Point City Hall.

“The national economy has all of us worried,” she added. “Good things are happening in High Point though. It’s important that folks understand that there’s clear evidence High Point is a good place to invest, a good place to raise a family.”

Smothers has two challengers this year. One, Dwayne Hemingway-El, has generated interest with his eccentricity considering his admission that his primary motivation is a dispute with the city over whether the Washitaw Moors sect should be considered exempt from state traffic laws. The other, a 42-year old lawyer named Jay Wagner, has created a more perceptible challenge.

Wagner has been hitting Smothers with a tough series of mass e-mail messages questioning her record and criticizing her the loss of employment and investment in the city, even going so far as to say that Oak Hollow Mall is saddled with a national reputation as a “dead mall,” and faulting the city council under her leadership for not moving quickly enough on core city revitalization. When the mayor drew up a document tallying the city’s successes that was called “A record to be proud of,” Wagner countered with a document of his own called, “The whole truth,” and accused her “half truths and distortions.” Wagner’s passion and relative youth has generated support from some, but has raised eyebrows in a city with a famously collegial brand of politics.

Smothers pointedly states, “I refuse to take responsibility for the national economy because I didn’t cause the problem. That problem has permeated every community in the nation.”

The mayoral incumbent argues that her most viable challenger hasn’t articulated a credible alternative.

“To play to the notion that change is what we need can be appealing,” she said, “but if there’s no assurance of how you get to that change or what the change is, you’re probably buying a pig in a poke.”

The record Smothers touts runs counter to the perception of High Point as being a depressed economic backwater in the Triad that is lagging behind its more populous neighbors, Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Smothers cites Census figures showing that median household income in High Point exceeds that of both Greensboro and Winston-Salem, although she acknowledged in an interview that the comparison might be skewed by the fact that High Point has a slight edge over its neighbors in the number of people living under one roof.

Some observers may also be surprised to learn that High Point leads its neighbors in population growth. In response to the observation that High Point has a lot of underutilized warehouses, manufacturing plants and other buildings, Smothers points to the Phillips Collection’s recent acquisition of the Rose Furniture building on Business 85.

Smothers boasts that 6,668 news jobs have been created or announced from 2007 to 2009, including 176 new jobs at High Point University. The city’s economic development corporation regularly ticks off announcements about companies relocating to High Point or pledging news jobs, including Harland-Clarke, Anco-Eaglin and TransTech Pharma.

Wagner counters that the figure is misleading because it includes jobs “that don’t actually exist, but have been promised sometime in the future and may not be actually created. In fact, Wagner says, NC Employment Security Commission statistics indicate that High Point residents suffered a net loss of 2,985 jobs from January 2007 to December 2009.

Smothers acknowledges that the city has put plans for public investment in the core city on hold, but pointed to more nuts-and-bolts initiatives that she predicts will lay a strong foundation for economic growth.

“What we have remained committed to is rebuilding infrastructure, including water and sewer lines and failing outfall lines,” she said. “We’ve finished upgrading one of our wastewater plants and we’re ready to start upgrading the other one. That gives us some basic strengths for the future. Industries come where they can get water, sewer, solid waste disposal. They’re looking for an environment where people want to work and where there are reasonable taxes. We’ve got that. Our tax rate has been held steady for three years.

“This is not data I dreamed up,” Smothers added. “And it has not been challenged until Mr. Wagner made fodder of it for a campaign.”

Notwithstanding Wagner’s campaign statements about a sense that the city is not moving forward quickly enough, Smothers argues that High Point is on the right track with its steady, conservative pace.

“I don’t have city envy,” she said. “I’m proud that Greensboro has the facilities that they do. Winston-Salem has fantastic facilities. Both of those cities have coliseums. We can’t afford those types of amenities.”

High Point also continues to add sidewalks, focusing on connecting points of destination and areas with bus stops. The city recently added sidewalks on both sides of Hartley Drive, and Smothers said she was surprised to see six different people walking them at one time recently.

She tied neighborhood walkability and quality of life to the city’s drama-minimal police department and nationally acclaimed Communities Against Violence program.

“Our violent crime has been reduced by 46 percent since 1997,” Smothers said. “That encouraged people to get outside and get to know their neighbors. That builds community and a sense of place. That statistic occurs with citizen involvement. We have a nationally recognized program we’re real proud of and that I’m real proud of.”