DONALD ANDERSON: Election season is here, but there will be no winners

Early voting kicked off this week in municipalities around Scotland County and while this is usually exciting news for those who dabble in the political battlefield, for Laurinburg residents there appears to be nothing to gain from this round of elections even though two city council and the mayoral seats are on the line.

Why might you ask?

Well, it boils down to a simple observation. There is no effective political competition amongst candidates save for the race for Mayor, which I must digress is more of an uphill battle than a fair contest (I’ll circle back to that as Jen Psaki would say).

If you have been following the election filing articles from earlier this year, you will already know that no one other than incumbents in districts 1 and 2 filed for reelection for the coming four-year term. Without an opponent to contest this, both of the previous candidates will win their race by default, locking them in for another session. While their supporters have a lot to be cheerful about, those in opposition have no recourse because no one stepped forward to offer a valid platform for a different vision or direction as we still waiting for the “fresh ideas” we were promised from one of the last candidates elected.

Could this be a reflection that citizens are okay with the current direction of the city’s leadership or have the citizens of this city that really want change become victims of Learned Helplessness and accepted that no matter how hard they push back against the power dynamics of the small rural community, they are powerless to make any lasting impressions? I am leaning more towards the latter than the former.

On the surface Laurinburg appears to be thriving; bouncing back from the perils of NAFTA fallout, textile outsourcing, the 2008 recession, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and as of current finally investing in freight transportation and warehousing as a viable job market. However, below that shallow surface is the tension and frustration felt by community leaders not being accessible or present in the community, not communicating with their constituents, or listening to or implementing ideas from citizen input sessions.

Seven years have passed since the political fiasco that resulted in the building of the current city hall and some residents still remember yelling to the top of their lungs in opposition to the project, only to have a stiff-necked city council pass resolution after resolution to authorize its building. They witnessed during that time the county’s school consolidation project, experiencing numerous episodes where community leaders ignored the voices of residents, promising them cost savings and efficiency only to have both of these concepts crumble in front of them because of poor financial decisions.

When you factor this in with the prevalent crime issues in this city and the other aforementioned dilemmas that have occurred within this span of time, it is easy to understand why most residents are no longer motivated to participate in municipal elections and in some cases community events. To some degree, we are battered and broken from the past seven years and the leaders of our communities have failed to recognize this, reach out to us, keep us in good spirits, keep us motivated, get down in the trenches and struggle with us. Instead, they have ignored the plights of the community, built up facades of toxically positive innuendos and pseudos and divided the community against those in opposition to their self-serving agendas.

In particular to these such leaders is our current “beloved” mayor who spent more time in his first term harping about getting a COVID-19 vaccine than focusing on the wave of crime that was impacting Laurinburg at that time. As the city’s quasi-executive branch official, he should have been the frontline advocate for ensuring that city laws and ordnances were being enforced and also projecting such an attitude in the position of his office. However, he was too focused on denouncing that crime was even an issue in this city, being too ceremonious, overly diplomatic, and too busy rubbing elbows with state officials to include the North Carolina governor instead of going to bat for the needs of the community.

While his charm and charisma make him a tough opponent for even the most well-liked member of this city, his opponent should be weary that he tends to overshoot his contributions to the community, taking credit for over $25 million dollars in economic investments according to his political social media page where he screens comments and posts, none of which were achieved either by his influence or the official execution of his mayoral duties (these businesses just decided themselves to build in Laurinburg).

These types of political tactics should come as no surprise to anyone doing their homework as a quick search of most of the community leaders in key governmental positions in Scotland County are registered Democrats. While local municipal elections are mostly non-partisan, it is fair to say that the candidates elected still tend to bring their political beliefs and ideologies with them. Just because you are progressing, does not mean you are growing, as we have seen time and time again here.

If I were the mayor’s opponent, I would make sure to bring my best A game, my community connections, and pack a lunch, because she is going to need it in this race.

Yes, it is election season for Laurinburg, but you can be assured that there will be no winners in this year’s election except for the upper-crust crowd that is okay with the complacency and “comforts” of a city that sits on a hotbed of apathy and entropy. But I can assure you the real losers are the citizens of this city that will left to endure the depressing burdens of another two years of just kicking the can down the road.