NC 08: One-Time Millworker Still Has a Chance to Topple Heir to Mill Fortune

Despite lingering anger over CAFTA, conventional wisdom said Rep. Hayes would skate by Kissell on election night. But the final vote showed Kissell trailing by only 350 votes.

The midterms are not over. In fact, in North Carolina’s 8th District, Larry Kissell, one of my favorite candidates, may still have a chance to topple the Republican incumbent, Rep. Robin Hayes. Kissell is a former textile worker and teacher, and Hayes is an heir to the Cannon Mills textile empire, which employed tens of thousands of people in the Piedmont region of North Carolina in its heyday. (Toward the end of the heyday, I lived in the 8th District during my high school years.)

Cannon Mills is gone now. It has been sold and renamed at least three times. The heirs to the fortune, including Rep. Hayes, sold out long ago. Still, Rep. Hayes caused a stir during the debate on CAFTA in June 2005. Just two years earlier, on July 30, 2003, the last vestige of the Cannon family’s empire, by now called Pillowtext, closed its mills, leaving around 4,000 of Rep. Hayes’ constituents jobless in a single blow. Voting for CAFTA could certainly cause more jobs to move overseas. But Rep. Hayes was apparently strong-armed by then House Majority Leader Tom Delay, on behalf of the White House political office, into voting for the treaty.

Despite lingering anger over CAFTA in his district, conventional wisdom said Rep. Hayes would skate by Kissell on election night. But the final vote showed Kissell trailing by only 350 votes. Two and a half weeks — and a couple of recounts — later, Kissell is still not ready to concde:

Voters in North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District will have to wait for a manual inspection of ballots next week to determine who will represent them in the 110th Congress, with four-term Republican Rep. Robin Hayes holding a mere 329-vote lead over Democratic challenger Larry Kissell.

A count of provisional ballots and a machine recount that ended Wednesday revealed that Hayes’ margin diminished by nearly 150 votes since he declared victory over Kissell on Election Night two weeks ago…

Johnnie McLean, the chief deputy director of North Carolina’s board of elections, said county elections officials will manually inspect ballots in 3 percent of precincts on Nov. 29 and 30. If the sampling reveals a statistical inconsistency, state officials may decide to pursue a districtwide manual recount.

Kissell ran as a populist which offered a stark contrast from Rep. Hayes, who embodies corporatism.

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NC 08: One-Time Millworker Still Has a Chance to Topple Heir to Mill Fortune

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Poetic Justice

Verbatim

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Numerati

1,000

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