RALEIGH -- They're running for a chance to change the game, to be the Scott Brown of Wake County politics.
That is, the victor in the May 4 Republican Board of Commissioners primary, who'll face incumbent Lindy Brown in November, could wind up flipping the Democrat-controlled board to the GOP side.
Candidate Phil Matthews drew the comparison to Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown's upset election in January, which gave Senate Republicans enough votes to filibuster Democratic initiatives during the heat of the health care reform debate. Although Matthews' comparison assumes that the three incumbent GOP commissioners will keep their seats, he views his race as key.
"This is the make-it-or-break-it seat," Matthews said.
Matthews, 60, a former two-term Garner alderman, is running against former Wake Commissioner Phil Jeffreys, 72, and Raleigh real estate agent Champ Claris, 32, who waged an unsuccessful race for Raleigh City Council last year.
The comparison to Brown's role in national politics may sound like a stretch, but there's plenty at stake in the Board of Commissioners race, with voters most fired up about recent actions by the Wake County school board.
"It is an opportunity to look at neighborhood schools - everyone is excited about that," Matthews said. "The board hasn't been given a fair chance yet. Let's give them an opportunity to put the plan on the table."
District 2 curves from Garner to Holly Springs and is the home turf of school board member John Tedesco, a principal architect of the GOP-controlled school board's new direction - away from mandated diversity and toward community-based schools. Matthews, who attended the same April 15 tea party rally as Tedesco, backs the new board's efforts, but Jeffreys and Claris aren't as enthusiastic.
"The county commission and the school board, until they get to the position where they can sit down and speak to each other in a civil tone, they're not going to accomplish anything," Jeffreys said.
As a member of the Board of Commissioners from 2002 to 2006, Jeffreys says he was an early champion of a community-based assignment plan for county schools. But he doesn't believe Tedesco and other members of the school board's ruling majority are going about it in the right way.
Jeffreys says the county should be divided into nine school attendance zones that match the districts in which school board members run for office. Smaller zones would allow for smaller schools, making it easier to find large enough pieces of land for them, he said.
Another Republican on the Board of Commissioners could mean smoother sailing for the majority-GOP school board, which has to get its funding approved by the commissioners and faces a shortfall of at least $40 million.
In addition, Jeffreys would like to see the county take a much harder line on illegal immigrants and not allow them to attend Wake Tech.
As the youngest of the three candidates, Claris says not being "one of those old political-circle guys" means he can offer a fresh perspective on county issues such as government efficiency, unnecessary spending and the school board's system revamp.
"I'm going to hold them accountable, too," Claris said of the school board. "I'm going to investigate, and I want to see numbers and budgets and research that says that what we're doing is going to improve the situation."
Claris, with a degree in business management from N.C. State University, thinks he can help sort out the economic problems that Wake County faces.
"I'm going to be making every decision I make based on doing my homework and looking through a prism of common sense," he said.
"I think that we are looking at a pretty good budget gap in the next couple of years, and I think it takes somebody with a business mind that can really dissect a budget and come up with a plan to get us out of it."
Recently married and looking forward to starting a family, Claris said he has a lot at stake in the future of the county and its schools.
"We are hopefully going to be raising our kids in Wake County schools," he said. "I am hopefully going to help guide it in the right direction."
