As the first person anywhere in the state of North Carolina to call for Jim Black to resign from public office let me say how incredibly underwhelmed I am at the prospect of Black pleading guilty to a single felony charge of accepting illegal gratuities. This guy’s entire career was about accepting favors and then spreading some of the goody around in order to maximize his power.
He did so in plain view, for years, and no one cared. Locally, he ignored vital road and criminal justice needs in favor of handouts to connected insiders — a Johnson & Wales here, a $45 million UNCC building Uptown there — and no one cared. In fact, Black was cheered. This pattern would have gone on indefinately were it not for Black’s legal woes.
Luckily, Black is not very smart. He confused political power with legal immunity and increasingly acted like an autocrat. His bid to give his optometrist buddies a windfall via new mandatory school-age eye exams did not exactly fool anyone. The slimy way in which Black called a state lottery into being gave pause even to his liberal apologists eager to get their hands on lotto revenue. Black, like many in positions of power in Raleigh and locally, did not seem to grasp the power of the Internet and alt-media to keep his activities under scrutiny and in front of the public.
Black truly believed he only had a PR problem with a handful of reporters in Raleigh, as his infamous “sack of bleep” quip showed. An insider to the core, Black did not understand that backroom deals would not stay in the backroom.
And let’s not forget the eternal shame that the Uptown paper of record has covered itself in with regard to Black. The Observer steadfastly refused to take the lead on documenting Black’s various transgressions and was more than willing to buy into the notion that a Speaker from Mecklenburg — even a corrupt enabler of the Down East kleptocracy — was a great boon to Charlotte.
The paper’s editorial page was among the last in the state to call for Black to resign the speakership. On the news pages, the aim seemed to be to help Black explain and manage his various scandals, not get the truth out to local voters. This stance is evident in the still unexplained decision to ask Jim Black about an affair with former aide Meredith Norris, but never report the question — and Black’s denial — until the matter came up in open court, months later. In effect, the Observer gave Black a secret “head’s up” about the rumors swirling around Raleigh. How many other times did this happen?
Now Black exits at the very moment bus loads of Charlotte residents, including the mayor, are in Raleigh pleading with the Down East kleptocracy to fund the state’s obligations to Mecklenburg. Real change or a deeply ironic, mostly symbolic one? We shall see.
In the meantime, Gov. Mike Whatshisname will soon pick someone to fill Black’s seat. The governor’s track record with such interim picks is not (cough-Nifong-cough) stellar, but he has a chance to send a strong message here. Another crony we do not need.
The Jim Black era is over.
