I didn’t share oyabun Hood’s enthusiasm for the lengthy UPoR profile of The Group last weekend for a couple reasons.
One, too many denials over the years — some to my face — that such a clubby little power structure in Charlotte existed for me to forget and forgive. Two, I liked The Group notion and a possible leadership vaccum better when Tara Servatius brought it up years ago. And three, and by far the most important, by focusing on personalities and titles this touchy-feely approach overlooked the elephant inside 277: the Money.
There is a reason Uptown was doing handsprings over a that $6m. dollars that Wells Fargo doled out the other day. It was a tangible sign that Wells, for one, will continue to underwrite the non-profits the Uptown crowd depends on to get things done. Although those funds did not come from the now merged Wachovia-Wells Fargo Foundation, never forget that the Golden West deal funded the then-Wachovia Foundation with $370m. back in 2006. Millions of those dollars flowed to local groups since then and that money was looked upon with awe and wonder. (In hindsight, the kickback was probably Ken Thompson’s primary motivation in doing that horrible deal, so he could impress his Eastover neighbors.) Add in the United Way debacle and the Uptown crowd has been sweating bullets over non-profit funding for all of 2009.
So of course they have been looking for a “new” model, for “new leadership.” But it is very important to understand what that means. It means a new open checkbook, or at least confirmation that they’ll have access to the old ones going forward. There is no intention of broadening and diversifying the power base. And so sorry sensei I do not believe there will be “robust political competition and frequent shifts in electoral momentum, particularly at the county level.”
The opposition party at present cannot even muster the will and tactics to compel votes on festering problems with county management and wanton disregard of ethics strictures at the commission’s own ABC Board. The Group may be gone, but what they built — a closed, oligarchic system of local control and government expansion — seems in no danger of breakdown.