Bev Perdue already faces rocky road

by Melanie Mason

So much for the honeymoon period.

Six months into her first term as North Carolina governor, Democrat Bev Perdue is facing dismal poll numbers that rank her as one of the most unpopular governors in the nation.

Perdue’s approval rating has dropped precipitously since she took office, falling from a high of 60 percent in mid-January to an anemic 25 percent in mid-July, according to Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm.

“It’s as ugly as I’ve ever seen for any governor at any time in our state,” says Dean Debnam, president of PPP.

Perdue, it seems, has been hit by a perfect political storm, generated by forces beyond her control but exacerbated by her own actions. The economic downturn has led to a sharp and swift rise in unemployment rates and forced Perdue to deal with imposing budget shortfalls almost right out of the gate.

In April, she was required to close a budget gap by ordering mandatory furloughs for state employees and public school teachers — two groups that happen to be a cornerstone of the Democratic base.

Teachers responded by staging rallies and marches in downtown Raleigh.

“Our members were quite upset, and I think we certainly let the governor and governor’s office know that,” says Sheri Strickland, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators. “Since that time, our members continue to be upset. That’s not something they easily forget or put behind them.”

Not long after the furloughs came rancorous negotiations over the current budget, marked by Perdue’s call for the Democratic-controlled legislature to come up with as much as $1.5 billion in new taxes, though she did not specify what those taxes should be.

With the furloughs, “she made half of the electorate mad,” says Gary Pearce, a veteran Democratic strategist, who worked for former Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt. “Then she went and proposed tax increases, just to make the other half mad.”

Perdue adviser Mac McCorkle said under the circumstances, it was nearly impossible to make everyone — or anyone — happy.

“The dilemma of many governors is the reality regarding the need to raise taxes, but not being able to raise them sufficiently to protect social services in such a crisis time,” McCorkle says.

Complicating matters, Perdue has had to contend with fallout from scandals surrounding her unpopular two-term Democratic predecessor, Mike Easley. While Perdue wasn’t close to Easley — and was elected separately from him — she served as his lieutenant governor for eight years.

“No one who’s watching this is saying, ‘Oh, Bev’s connected to it,” says one prominent Democratic strategist in the state. “But it is clearly a damper. That atmosphere ain’t good.”

Mostly, though, Perdue’s predicament is rooted in the state’s economic woes, which are marked by a sharp decline in revenues and a spike in unemployment rates — from 4.7 percent just two years ago to 11.1 percent now.

“She’s been in office for six months, and she’s had to deal with budget cutting for the last fiscal year and new fiscal year. So she hasn’t had the time to deliver anything that a governor that’s been in office for most of a term would have had,” said Ferrel Guillory, a longtime North Carolina political reporter who now serves as director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at the University of North Carolina.

“This is a state that was really speeding along, and suddenly it had the brakes slammed on it,” he said. “It’s almost like a trap door sprung open. We lost a lot of jobs in a hurry.”

Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, says the state’s sudden reversal of fortune has taken an emotional toll on voters.

“Everyone, including our members, is shocked that North Carolina found itself in an economic situation that would cause them such distress,” Cope says. “It’s shock, and the knee-jerk reaction is to blame whoever is the latest in charge.”

While acknowledging the difficult hand Perdue’s been dealt in her first eight months in office, many observers on both the left and the right also point to an inconsistent voice emanating from the governor’s office.

“She doesn’t really stand for anything,” said Debnam. “She won’t put her stake in the ground and say these are things that she is going to fight for.”

Republican consultant Carter Wrenn was equally blunt in his assessment.

“She’s zig-zagged enough that she’s managed to make the base mad, conservatives mad and moderates mad,” he said.

Perdue adviser McCorkle said the grim economic environment makes consistent messaging nearly impossible to accomplish.

“To say that there’s an easy way to formulate a message that doesn’t have to change and adapt to circumstances while you’re governing in a crisis time? Good luck,” he says.

Because Perdue’s free-fall in the polls has occurred in her first year in office, there is plenty of time to turn her fortunes around before she faces the voters again.

But first, said Guillory, Perdue must make a better case for her fiscal policies.

“She’s got to articulate what she’s protecting,” he says. “It can’t be a tax increase in a vacuum or a tax increase to fill a budget hole. It’s got to be ‘these taxes protected things. It would be worse without them.’ And that’s a hard message to deliver.”

“She’s got an opportunity to show and define for people what was protected, what didn’t get cut, how damage was minimized,” Guillory added. “She’s got to show that she can get on top of what the challenges are. And I think she can. But it’s going to be a good test for her.”

GOP consultant Wrenn is decidedly less optimistic.

“It would take some real political brilliance over a long time to turn these numbers around,” Wrenn says. “In politics, you never say never. Miracles happen, and Lazarus will raise from the dead. But I think she’s pretty close to a terminal condition politically.”