With less than five percent of voters bothering to turn out, incumbents carried the day in yesterday’s primary voting.

The one glimmer of change can be found in Matthew Ridenhour’s second-place finish in the Republican city council at-large race. Ridenhour’s run from the Tea Party movement as a first-time candidate managed to separate him from the pack somewhat. Other observations:

  • The Uptown paper is no doubt kicking itself that Georgia Belk won’t be on the ballot in November. The crazy Bill Belk narrative now cannot bleed over to election coverage. Darn!
  • Welcome back, Mr. Cannon, top vote-getter in the Dem at-large primary, over incumbent ding-bat Susan Burgess. Don’t know why there was such doubt about Cannon’s strength as a candidate this year.
  • Boy, East Charlotte is real upset with Nancy Carter, huh? Can it for a while, folks. You couldn’t even scrape up 1100 votes to beat her.
  • If I’m looking at the numbers right, out of 20,200 ballots cast, about half were for Democrats and half for Republicans. This was thanks to turnout roughly double that of the rest of the city in several South Charlotte GOP-heavy precincts.

Now let the real fun begin.