1. County voters send an anti-tax message again!

Last night voters rejected tax increases in all 14 counties with tax increases on the ballot. It was the fourth time Harnett County voters defeated a commissioner-requested tax increase, this time by 79 percent. Person County voters said no by 79 percent also, and Cherokee County voters by 83 percent. The $40,000 of tax money spent by commissioners on a public "education" campaign did not work in Orange County; voters rejected the increase by 51 percent.

Carolina Journal‘s Mitch Kokai reports all of the results on the Locke Foundation’s blog here.

 

2. Democrats need to pay attention to the suburbs

Joel Kotkin reports on national trends here. He argues that in the future all political roads lead through the suburbs.

Ideologues may set the tone for the national debate, but geography and demography determine elections.

In America, the dominant geography continues to be suburbia — home to at least 60 percent of the population and probably more than that portion of the electorate. Roughly 220 congressional districts, or more than half the nation’s 435, are predominately suburban, according to a 2005 Congressional Quarterly study. This is likely to only increase in the next decade, as Millennials begin en masse to enter their 30s and move to the periphery.

So far Obama administration officials seem tone deaf. They risk losing more of the suburbs with their anti-suburb policies — light rail, high-speed rail, forced smart-growth land-use controls.

Much of the Obama policy agenda — from mass transit and high-speed rail to support for "smart growth" policies — appeals to city planners and urbanistas. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has spoken openly of "coercing" Americans out their cars and the Department of Housing and Urban Development is handing out grants to regions which support densification strategies that amount to forced urbanization of suburbs.

The next time you hear an anti-sprawl rant from a politician realize that the number of votes for him is dwindling.