With five days until the election, information is flowing and the candidates are pushing their campaigns hard. The last Public Policy Poll was showing the numbers close but there are other sets of numbers that the public is most interested in. The tension is around growth and the candidates that are most funded by big real estate have drawn the most scrutiny.
Well being the concerned citizens we are, New Raleigh has been down at the Campaign Finance offices also. You see, that’s the funny thing about local elections. The Campaign finance office just has big notebooks of photocopies of finance records. They either don’t have or refuse to share digital databases of the Wake County Campaign Finance Reports, to find out who has received what, you have to go down and check for yourself. Mr Lane and his Associates found the following:
Total Take | Take From Big Real Estate | % from | |
| AT-LARGE | |||
| Anderson | $23,108.43 | $11,225 | 49% |
| Baldwin | $23,280 | $15,075 | 65% |
| Best | $1,590.60 | $0 | 0% |
| Stephenson | $13,308.68 | $1,303.67 | 10% |
| Tart | $690 | $0 | 0% |
| Willams | $8,723.22 | $200 | 2% |
| DISTRICT A | |||
| Koopman | $11,013.28 | $308.28 | 3% |
| Taliaferro | $16,750.29 | $14,390.29 | 86% |
Lunsford Lane is reporting some extremely high percentages of Taliaferro, Baldwin and Anderson’s campaign contributions coming from real estate related sources. This is confirmed by a press release sent out by Rodger Koopman, Taliaferro’s opponent, showing her individual breakdown. Koopman’s own research put’s Taliaferro’s Real Estate based contributions at %93.3 for September and %77.2 overall.
Lets Just put everything together real quick, in case you haven’t been watching. It is my opinion that developers on the whole, want to push as many projects as possible through Council Approval. In fact some want to go so far as to ask for your tax dollars to fund their private development for their individual profit. What’s most strange about that- Taliaferro is a big supporter of that stupid idea.
Baldwin may be worse. She has received very large sums of money. While Lunsford’s numbers and the N&O’s (30%) may differ greatly, it can be assured that Baldwin will carry Real Estate loyalty to new levels. She has been actively coached by lobbyists for the real estate industry, and her talking point of “Balanced Growth” is the builder lobby motto. Elizabeth Dole’s treasurer has been involved in helping Baldwin to amass a war chest that is funding a smattering of signs all over public property (big on litter Baldwin?) as well as aggressive web advertising on WRAL.com, the state’s most heavily trafficked site.
The Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors even came out and endorsed these Candidates:
Tommy Craven, District A
Jesse Taliaferro, District B
Mary Ann Balwin, At-Large
Of Course I point out all of this because in the Public Policy poll- the Citizen’s polled overwhelmingly (81%) said they would not support developer funded candidates (candidates receiving large developer based donations). And funnily enough the three of them are all heavily funded along with Paul Anderson. Consider your alternatives when you vote next week:
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