Well, Jay Morrison will not be on the school board.

Morrison has withdrawn from the race citing an earlier Uptown paper of record report alleging he had engaged in a “scheme” to bilk credit reporting agencies by filing at least 18 lawsuits against them. Morrison maintains that filing the lawsuits was the only way to get credit agencies to correct errors in his credit history.

“It’s impossible for me to win with this type of smear out there,” Morrison told the Observer. “It would be a waste of my time and resources. I’ve got other things I can accomplish.”

He’s probably right about his electoral chances. School board races are about name ID and retail, press-the-flesh politics. The longer this story stayed alive, the higher his negatives would have been in a county-wide race. As long as Morrison could not disprove the allegations against him, he would be fighting uphill.

But wither the transit tax repeal?

Not by a long-shot.

Issues are not the same thing as personalities. Jay unquestionably kick-started the whole repeal movement by bothering to notice that the tax could actually be repealed via a referendum. Then he did the heavy lifting of finding and hiring petition-takers. There was no guarantee this would succeed. But it did.

Now — for the first time since CATS’ train-building started — local residents have the opportunity to voice their opinion on the current path. Is a $9 billion transit plan that will do virtually nothing to reduce congestion or improve air quality a good plan for Charlotte?

Jay Morrison figures into the answer not one bit, yea or nay.

Update: Kevin Siers predictably over-reaches today. Let’s see, in recent weeks tax repeal backers have been racists, cavemen, and now lagoon-dwellers. I keep waiting for Nazi so I can invoke Godwin’s Law.