Cabarrus Cheap Seats

About 1,000 days ago, I said this to someone who was tired of the lies that made up the basis of the political debate in Cabarrus County:

“When Harold Smith posts something - I’ll post something”

That was the original mission statement of “The View From the Cheap Seats”. After some research and discussions, I started a site on Blogspot.

On May 29, 2005: I’d joined the ranks of bloggers, reluctantly. In 2004, I’d been involved in a very successful school bond campaign. As anyone involved with campaigns knows - success takes time and that campaign took a lot of mine. On top of that, I hadn’t been married a year when it started. As anyone who’s been married knows - you need more time with your spouse that first year than you’d have imagined when you said “I do”. So, I wasn’t looking for more to do in the public policy realm.

As I would be asked many a night when an article took longer to write than I’d expected: “Why did I start this thing?”

In 1996, Cabarrus County passed a school bond by a pretty solid margin. The powers-that-were put together a committee to study the issue and come up with a long-term funding solution. The solution involved a sales tax and what amounted to a real-estate transfer tax. Through a combination of bad electoral moves (holding the referendum on a “special” date when turnout would be low) and loads of money from the developer and real-estate communities - the measure failed. A group of candidates rode this momentum to the 1998 election and beyond.

They would come to form the Cabarrus Taxpayers Association. Through misleading ads and political chicanery - this group would undo the work from 1996 and plunge the county into a borrow-and-spend policy that we’re paying for today.

In May of 2005, smart people I respected saw that threat regathering; and I thought I’d be doing my part in helping to fight it by starting a blog. The purpose of this blog was simple: to frustrate the corruption that Coy Privette was cultivating by countering the public claims of his mindless followers: Harold Smith and the Cabarrus Taxpayers’ Association. I would do this by referencing verifiable and published facts, and engaging anyone who would listen.

In the time between now and then, I got a little more than I bargained for. In addition to blogging and doing the hours of research it required: I wrote letters to the editor, campaigned for candidates in primaries, served as Chair of the County Parks & Rec Board for a spell and hosted guest bloggers and hundreds of comments. I also found my involvement in the GOP increase. I was elected to the local GOP Executive Board, I frustrated a rigged election at the local GOP Men’s Club, got elected as their Treasurer and the Treasurer of the North Carolina Federation of Republican Men. Oh, yeah, and there was that night in October.

In the mean time, my work responsibilities increased, I was named as a deacon at my church (I’m still the youngest), and I became a daddy - squared.

The point is that things have changed. I have less time, now. As for the “objectives” of this blog:

1. “GoHaroldSmith.com” was once a well-read, referenced source for political rants updated a few times every week. Now, some domain squatter firm has bought it because it scores some hits from search engines.

2. Coy Privette went from being a respected leader of a local political machine to a punchline. I wonder if the local papers will even bother investigating his living arrangements or have stories about Coy Privette committing fraud reached the point of diminishing returns?

3. The Cabarrus Taxpayers’ Association didn’t report spending or raising a dime last year. Funny thing: they took out a full-page ad on me; but didn’t meet the letter of North Carolina Election Law by neglecting to properly report it. Quite frankly, probably the best thing I ever did since I got involved in this was to be a human shield. The money for that ad could have been used against a worthy candidate in this race; but it got used on a private citizen. I would be surprised to see another ad out of that bunch this election cycle; and - if they did - the results would only verify their own impotence.

In other words: “Mission Accomplished” Coy Privette and his cronies will be footnotes in this community’s history; and I’m proud to have lent a helping hand to stopping the venal corruption.

My work here is done. And, as such, I’m making the following announcement as to the status of this blog.

Over the next week, some changes - which have been about a year in the making - will be coming to this blog. The raison d’etre of this blog won’t be what it was; because then I’d just quit. Rather, this will be the design basis of this blog:

Spirited discussion of life in Cabarrus County from its residents.

However, I’ve spent the past year or so trying to get Wordpress to work in a multi-user environment and I’ll be integrating some changes to make that a reality.

Bottom line: there will be increasingly less of me and more of you. I would imagine that the discussion will have some political flavor for some time, and that’s cool. It will be easier to post material up here and I’m going to work hard to include as many different voices as possible.

It’s a strange experiment, actually. The vast majority of blogs are written by one person, there are a number of group blogs, and I know of only one - BlueNC.com - that allows for anyone to sign-up and post material.

However, there will be a number of key differences between the Cheap Seats and BlueNC.com. BlueNC is geared around a certain political ideology (they call it “progressive”, because “liberal” sounds bad), it’s statewide, and they’ve got this funky “front-page” where all of the “groundlings” post to some pages of lesser prominence until either a post is anointed by an administrator or if they were elevated as users to being a “front-pager”. At the Cheap Seats everyone is a “front-pager”, it host thoughts around live in Cabarrus County - not statewide, and I’ll be inviting people from across the spectrum.

As many of you know, the Cheap Seats has already had an open policy on readers blogging (9 posts from people other than me). Well, over the next week - I’ll be enhancing that. The continued existence of this thing will be determined by how this works out. Don’t worry - I’ve got like 8 months left on the account - if this doesn’t work…the blog won’t pop - it will fade slowly.

Let me explain why I’m doing this. In the course of 443 posts and nearly three years of blogging, I’ve worked hard to cultivate an audience. About 70 people currently subscribe via e-mail or RSS feed, and the “Absolute Unique Visitor” count was around 900 people for the past month.

It would be a shame not to share that. About 2 dozen people have filed for the May primary and they are going to campaign hard in an election where a few dozen votes could determine the outcome. They will be competing for your attention with the national candidates and post-writers strike TV. It’s not fair that they will put up websites that - if they’re lucky - 100 or so of you will find before election day. In addition to that, there are plenty of talented writers and commentators that probably won’t want to deal with the hassle that comes with a blog (SEO, links, moderating comments, hosting issues, layout, etc.).

This is an experiment; but I hope y’all will take me up on the offer and check out the changes as they unfold over the next week or so.