Meeker razzes GOP school board majority

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker seemingly can't get enough of the Wake County school board.

As he began a brief speech at an arts award ceremony Wednesday night, the Capital City's five-term mayor joked about the board's contentious meeting the previous night, when it scrapped a zone-based assignment plan after board Vice Chairwoman Debra Goldman broke with the Republican majority.

Meeker's wife, Dr. Anne McLaurin, is a member of the Democratic minority.

"I'm also pleased to be here with my wife, Anne McLaurin, who survived last night's school board meeting," Meeker said. "And I want you to know she was not called a 'prom queen,' whatever that means in New Jersey."

Meeker was referring to a heated exchange between Goldman and John Tedesco, the chief architect of the assignment plan Goldman thwarted. Tedesco, who is from New Jersey, had derisively called Goldman a "prom queen."

Tedesco has apologized for the remark. Goldman says she was never a prom queen.

This isn't the first time that Meeker, a native of Washington, D.C., who moved to Raleigh in 1975, has taken shots at the Republican school board majority for not being from around here. In June, he said the five Republican board members "are not from the area" and "don't share our values."

Pluralistic protest

A small band that protested at Tuesday's board meeting grew considerably at a downtown rally Thursday to support public education.

Groups engaged in the school board struggle, including N.C. HEAT (Heroes Emerging Amongst Teens), were joined by protesters of the U.S. role in Afghanistan, a coalition fighting for full access to education for undocumented students, advocates for child services and Chapel Hill-based Feminist Students United.

The crowd for the march and rally Thursday was at least five times the dozen or so who showed up Tuesday. Among the protesters was UNC student Ben Carroll, who spoke against cuts to public education.

"They make these cuts on the backs of students, not on the backs of banks and corporations," Carroll said.

'Instant runoff' tryout

Durham residents are invited to a dry run in instant-runoff voting, from 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Durham Public Library. It's sort of an experiment to familiarize people with a rare method of voting, before the real thing starts two days later.

"It's new, it's a change, there's going to be some confusion," said Elections Director Mike Ashe.

Early voting in this fall's elections opens Thursday. Voting in most of the contests will go the conventional way, but in the race for one seat on the state Court of Appeals, voters will be asked to mark three names: first, second and third choice.

The method has been tried in some local elections, but this is the first time a state has ever used it in a statewide election, Ashe said.

Here's how it works: If no candidate gets a majority of first choices, the top two go into an instant runoff, with their second- and third-place votes counted in. Winner takes all; no need for a second election.

State law requires the instant-runoff method when an office is vacated after the candidate-filing period has closed. This year, Appeals Court Judge Jim Wynn was appointed to the federal bench after the filing period, leaving a vacancy to be filled this fall. Thirteen candidates signed up, making an instant-runoff mandatory.

Everyone who comes to the mock-vote exercise next week takes part in the voting and counting, Ashe said, but the race is simplified, with only four candidates: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Betsy Ross and George Washington.

School board seat filled

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board tapped former member Jean Hamilton on Thursday to fill the seat left vacant by Joe Green.

Green resigned last month to take a job in Wisconsin. Hamilton served one term, from 2005 to 2009, and did not seek-re-election.

The board was scheduled to discuss only what process would be used to select a new board member: Either to appoint a former board member or to invite applications from the public and conduct interviews. Neither state law nor board policy specifies a process for filling the seat.

Several board members cited concerns over the "learning curve" required of a new board member and the coming search for a new superintendent.

"When I was newly elected, I thought, 'Oh, I've got this locked. I've been watching the district for 10 years; I know what's going on,'" board member Mia Burroughs said. "I was wrong. There is a learning curve."

Political Trails

The Wake County Republican Party will hold a "Fire Up the Voters Rally" at 5 p.m. next Saturday at Five County Stadium in Zebulon. Admission is free. There will be speakers, fireworks, music and a pumpkin decorating contest.

Compiled by staff writers Ray Martin, T. Keung Hui and Jim Wise, and correspondent Maria Magher