North Carolina

In the first decade of the 21st century, North Carolina emerged as one of America’s leading-edge states, with a booming demography and vibrant culture that are in many ways typical of the way the nation was going—or wanted to go. North Carolina had the third-largest-percentage population increase in 2008, trailing only Utah and Arizona (and tying Texas and Colorado), and also experienced the biggest percentage increase in turnout in the 2008 presidential election. Four decades ago, few people picked North Carolina as a state that would chart a path to the future. It had no great central city, no Atlanta primed to become another Los Angeles or Chicago, but rather a series of small metropolitan areas spaced out over thickly settled countryside. It did not have what seemed to be cutting-edge industries. The biggest employer was textiles, typically an underdeveloped nation’s first industry, and the next two were stolid furniture and soon-to-be-disfavored tobacco. Geographically, it seemed to be off the nation’s main lines of commerce, and meteorologically, it was too steamy to be businesslike in the summer and too cold to be a resort in the winter. Yet North Carolina has emerged as one of America’s leading growth states. Its population nearly doubled from 1970 to 2008, from 5.1 million to 9.2 million, making it the 10th-largest state. Its economy has diversified and grown steadily, while businesses that dominated the state’s political dialogue 40 years ago have faded in importance. Textile jobs peaked in 1973. The government’s 2004 tobacco buyout, ending tobacco allotments, left in its wake only about 1,800 tobacco farmers and 11,500 tobacco workers. (State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler even quit growing tobacco.) Some former tobacco farmers have shifted to blueberries and pumpkins. High Point still hosts annual furniture-industry shows, but the furniture factories have been pressed by competition from China.

In place of farming and furniture, research and technology have taken root. One key has been the success of Research Triangle Park, which was established between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill—and their universities—in 1959. Its first breakthrough was the opening of a big IBM facility in 1965. Today, it’s one of the world’s leading biotech, pharmaceutical, medical device, and telecommunications centers. New investment in the state hit a record high in 2006. The Triangle’s core counties had 537,000 people in 1970 and 1.5 million in 2008. Its success has been echoed farther west in the Piedmont Research Triad between Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and High Point. And North Carolina has become one of the nation’s leading banking centers. Charlotte is the headquarters of Bank of America (formerly NationsBank and NCNB), which came out of the 2008 financial crisis a winner after purchasing Merrill Lynch. Not far away on Tryon Street is the headquarters of Wachovia, whose roots were in Winston-Salem. Wachovia merged with Charlotte’s First Union in 2001 and was acquired by Wells Fargo in 2008. Metro Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham have accounted for more than half of the state’s population growth for a generation, and they are now major metropolitan areas, with national sports franchises and huge hub airports. North Carolina has one of the nation’s least unionized workforces, something the state’s Democratic leaders have done little to change, and it has long been rated one of the best places to relocate a business. “Our biggest advantage over who we compete with—San Diego, San Francisco, Massachusetts, and the Maryland-Virginia area,” said former Gov. Mike Easley, “is that we can do everything they can do, if not more, but we can do it 20 to 25 percent cheaper when you look at labor and capital investment.” The unemployment rate was low enough that thousands of Latinos moved into North Carolina seeking jobs in construction and in meat and chicken factories. The state’s Hispanic population rose from 77,000 in 1990 to 638,000 in 2007. Yet for all its metropolitan growth, life in North Carolina has not lost its rural tone. The state is the nation’s No. 2 hog producer, with big feedlots and sewage lagoons. One is never out of sight of others, but there is also plenty of green space and reminders of rural roots, from barbecue stands to country Baptist churches to stock car tracks.

The forces behind the change are diverse and sometimes even hostile. North Carolina historically had a small and erudite elite, which looked for guidance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the liberal editors of the state’s newspapers, most prominently the Raleigh News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer. Quite different attitudes are nurtured by tradition-minded churches in a state where churchgoing is deeply ingrained, reinforced for years by Sunday blue laws and strengthened periodically by religious revivals. When North Carolina was an economically backward state, infant mortality was common, indoor plumbing was not, and religion was a fountain of hope and a source of discipline, as it is still for many in this now-bustling, air-conditioned, Internet-connected commonwealth.

North Carolina has grown with the aid of both its progressive and tradition-minded citizens, and in spite of—sometimes because of—the polarized politics that have developed between the two. North Carolina’s professionals tend to share progressive values; its businesspeople and conservative Protestants tend to share tradition-minded values. Both groups have contributed to the state’s economic dynamism and cultural energy. Liberal progressivism has provided an impetus toward building good schools and universities, as well as highways and amenities like the nation’s first state-funded symphony and state high schools for science, mathematics, and the arts. Religious conservatism has provided a communitarian spirit and charitable impulses, and a moral undertone that anchors those who might go astray. Each side also has its excesses: the historic racism that undergirded segregation, and the impulses that led black leaders and university professors to cheer on a rogue prosecutor when he brought a baseless case against three Duke lacrosse players.

From these two strands of North Carolina tradition there developed a polarized, increasingly party-line politics, waged partly on economic issues but even more on cultural attitudes. This politics was built on historic partisan patterns. Coastal North Carolina settlers tended to be British Anglicans who became Methodists, slaveholders who supported the Confederacy and voted Democratic. Piedmont settlers by contrast tended to be Scots-Irish Presbyterians, with a scattering of German sects; they were Union men in 1861 and Republicans ever after. The most effective paladins of both traditions for the last quarter-century, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms and Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, were each elected to statewide office five times over 25 years, and in 1984 waged what was then the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history. Once bitter rivals, they later reconciled. Hunt left office in 2000 but has remained active in state affairs. Helms did not seek re-election in 2002 and died in 2008 at age 86.

Over the last four decades, Republicans tended to win federal elections in North Carolina, and Democrats tended to do well in state elections. In five elections, Helms never got more than 55% of the vote. But Republicans carried the state for president in every election from 1968 to 2004, except 1976. George W. Bush won 56%-43% in 2000 and, despite the presence of North Carolinian John Edwards on the Democratic ticket, 56%-44% in 2004. At the same time, Democrats have continued to dominate state politics as they have not in other fast-growing Southern states, such as South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Virginia. Hunt was succeeded as governor by Republican Jim Martin in 1984, but in 1992 and 1996, Hunt won his third and fourth terms by solid margins. Democrat Michael Easley, a moderate from eastern North Carolina, was elected governor by solid margins in 2000 and 2004. Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue kept the governorship in Democratic hands by beating Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory in 2008. (There seems to be a Charlotte jinx in North Carolina: Two of McCrory’s predecessors as mayor, Republican Richard Vinroot and Democrat Harvey Gantt, also lost statewide races.) Most of the other statewide races were decided by similar margins. In general, these Democrats have followed Hunt’s lead in policies that are characterized as pro-business but also pro-environment, and in supporting increased spending on education but also insisting on testing and accountability.

The 2008 campaign may have been a turning point in North Carolina politics.