North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue (D)
Right on the heels of Rep. Brad Miller saying he
wouldn't stand for reelection, a second North Carolina Democrat will also reportedly announce her retirement today. From the Research Triangle-based
News & Observer:
Gov. Bev Perdue is expected to announce today that she will not seek a second term as governor, two sources close to the Democrat's campaign tell The News & Observer.
Perdue is expected to make an announcement this afternoon, a N.C. Democratic Party spokesman said. Her campaign aides began telling top Democrats in the past 24 hours. Perdue campaign spokesman Marc Farinella could not be reached for comment.
Her departure sets up a scramble at the top of the Democratic ticket, about 15 weeks before the May primary election. A number of Democrats instantly rise to the short list of potential replacements but all face an uphill battle against likely Republican nominee Pat McCrory, the former longtime Charlotte mayor who matched Perdue's fundraising in this election cycle and sits with $2 million in the bank.
Because North Carolina is their home state, Public Policy Polling tests the waters there each and every month, so there may be no elected official whose demise was as regularly chronicled in the polls as Bev Perdue's. Her standing with voters went south almost from the moment she took office after a squeaker open-seat victory in 2008. While she underwent a small recovery last fall, her recent numbers have been terrible, which led me to ask just a week ago: "The election is now less than 10 months away. Does anyone think she can turn it around?"
Evidently, even Perdue herself ultimately decided the answer was "no," and it certainly does not come as a surprise. As Tom Jensen details in his post-mortem:
The biggest lesson of Bev Perdue's single term as Governor might be the importance of making a good first impression. The final time we found Perdue with a positive approval rating was in April of 2009 at 41/40, only 3 months after she took office. By July, after a disastrous legislative session where she appeared weak and indecisive, her approval rating was 25% with 55% of voters disapproving of her. She doomed her chances at reelection in those three months between April and July of 2009. She's been one of the most unpopular Governors in the country ever since then.
Perdue tried too hard to please all sides during that critical early period of her tenure and as a result just antagonized everybody. That July 2009 poll found that even Democrats disapproved of her, 38/40, and her numbers with independents (20/58) and Republicans (9/73) were abysmal.
Perdue became a better Governor after that and by the end of 2011 her net approval rating had improved 19 points from the summer of 2009 to a 37/48 spread. Her strong efforts in fighting Republican attempts to cut funding to education caused significant upticks in her support from Democrats (58/28) and independents (35/45). But it was too little too late.
Perdue trailed Pat McCrory by increasing margins of 9, 10, and 11 points over the last three months of our polling. Her chances at reelection were close to nil, and the party's chances at keeping the Governor's office are better without her than they were with her.
Better, yes, but as Tom points out, still not particularly good. McCrory is in a strong position to win regardless of which Democrat he faces: PPP has tested a whole bunch of alternatives and McCrory leads everyone, including State Attorney General Roy Cooper, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, former two-time Senate nominee Erskine Bowles, and State Rep. Bill Faison, who is probably the most likely to run.
Here's a question, though: How would Brad Miller feel about making the race? Perhaps we can solve two problems at once ...