For Congressman Walter Jones, the Republican who has represented North Carolina’s 3rd District for 18 years, seniority matters.
“I say, whether we like it or not, we have a seniority system. That’s the way the Congress works,” Jones said. “The longer you’re there, you get to make friendships in both parties. They get to trust you. They get to see you, what type of person you are. Obviously, you build relationships and that’s how you get things done.”
He added: “That gives you an advantage that a freshman does not have.”
Democrat Erik Anderson, a 32-year-old former retail manager and ex-Marine from Winterville challenging Jones in this year’s general election, refutes that concept. He also disagrees that Jones has accomplished a great deal in the Capitol.
“I think the biggest issue is we need somebody new there,” Anderson said. “We’ve had Walter for 18 years and nothing is getting done…. Who cares how much political capital you have if you don’t get anything done?”
In separate interviews last week, Anderson and Jones cast widely different appraisals of the district’s federal leadership. Jones described himself as a highly rated and energetic legislator who takes care of his territory while Anderson claimed the district has felt neglect under an ineffective politician.
This election, 44 percent of Wilmington’s populace and most of Pender County’s will be able to participate in deciding whether the incumbent will serve a tenth term in Congress or make way for the newcomer.
But, as indicated by elections officials in each county, that may surprise a number of voters expecting a hand in a contest far more publicized in this market—the fight for the 7th Congressional District between Democratic incumbent Mike McIntyre and Republican challenger David Rouzer.
‘Little attention’ on D3
While the entire Wilmington area previously was in McIntyre’s District 7, last year’s redistricting process—done to balance the population imbalances documented in the 2010 census—split Wilmington between districts 7 and 3.
The latter district, which previously involved the counties around the Pamlico Sound and parts inland, now stretches down the North Carolina coast from the Virginia border to cover most of Pender County and parts of New Hanover, notably the downtown Wilmington area and other land around the county’s northwest. In all it includes 52,450 New Hanover residents and 30,964 from Pender.
District 3 does, though, maintain some of the coastal counties—Onslow, Carteret, Dare and Currituck among them—that Jones won by landslides in the 2010 election. Overall he received nearly 72 percent to defeat Democrat Johnny G. Rouse (25.75 percent) and Libertarian Darryl Holloman (2.39 percent) that year. In 2008, Jones took nearly 66 percent of the vote to fend off Democrat Craig Weber.
Both Jones, of Farmville, and Anderson reside in Pitt County, which gave Jones exactly 66 percent of the vote in 2010.
All told, District 3 is primarily eastern to northeastern North Carolina. How New Hanover and Pender counties in the southeast will vote will be for this year’s general election to show.
“This race has received little attention here as it is a very small portion of New Hanover County; 11 precincts out of 43,” said New Hanover County Republican Party Chairwoman Rhonda Amoroso. “I don’t know anything about Mr. Anderson. Congressman Jones has been down here but frankly his district spans from Wilmington all the way up to Currituck County on the Virginia border. I cannot speak for the Jones campaign but they have a huge territory to cover with some 22 counties.”
Making the rounds
Each candidate says he has reached out to the southeast portion to communicate that its needs will be met.
“I’ve been there seven times in the last nine days,” said Anderson, adding he will visit Wilmington again on Tuesday. “I try to do as much as I possibly can to be down there with everybody and listen to a totally new demographic to the 3rd Congressional District.”
Jones said he in September attended a Rotary Club meeting in New Hanover County and around the same time met with Pender County mayors. “It really wasn’t politicking,” Jones said. “I just wanted to go down there and meet with them and introduce myself and say, ‘Should I be fortunate enough to win in November and become your congressman, I just want you to know we’re going to do everything we can to make you feel like you’re part of the district.’”
Clash on delivery
Jones said his constituent work over the past two decades has “really been a humbling experience … because I will see people, I get notes from people: ‘Thank you for your staff helping me with this Social Security case, thank you for helping me with this veterans issue.’ That’s really the role of a congressman, anyway, is to take care of his district.”
That work, he noted, has earned him honors. In June 2010, The Hill, a newspaper focused specifically on Congress, ranked Jones as 17 on its “25 Hardest Working Lawmakers” list. That’s out of all 435 members of the House.
“In the last five years,” The Hill wrote, “Jones has signed his name more than 18,000 times on both pages of a two-page letter that has been sent to more than 9,200 people. The letters go to the immediate and extended families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The Hill quoted Jones as saying: “I regret voting (in 2002) to give President Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq.”
It added Jones’ routine grocery-store trips in Greenville often become meetings with constituents. “I never want anybody to think I don’t have time to listen to them,” the publication quoted of Jones. “That’s a major part of the job.”
But Anderson said listening isn’t everything. “Your constituent services is a large part of the job, but it’s not the only job, and that’s where Walter actually gets caught…. What has Walter Jones brought to eastern North Carolina?”
Anderson said Jones’ hometown of Farmville looks like a place left behind. “It looks like something out of the ‘50s or ‘60s or ‘70s where the buildings haven’t been restructured.”
According to the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, citing 2010 data, Farmville’s population is 4,654 and has a median household income of $27,120. Its poverty rate is 32 percent and child poverty rate is 51 percent.
U.S. Census Bureau data show 15.5 percent of District 3’s population lives below the poverty level. The median income is $46,404.
For comparison, District 7’s poverty figure is 20.5 percent with a median income of $40,410.
“You get to some of these counties and it’s just heartbreaking because there’s just no jobs,” Anderson said of District 3. “And it should have always been a focus of Walter’s.”
Policy
Jones described himself as a fiscal centrist when it comes to the needs of the people but a social conservative per a strong Christian background.
Asked what being a Republican means to him—Jones was a Democrat until 1994—he said he believed “personally in the social positions that the Republican party stands for—marriage, the unborn. I have always believed the unborn is a gift from God.”
Jones was one of the four Republicans who voted against the “Path to Prosperity” budget credited to Rep. Paul Ryan. “That certainly set me aside,” Jones said, “simply because I did not like the way Paul Ryan—he’s a very bright young man; he’s our candidate for the vice-presidency, he’s a very bright young man—but I did not agree with the voucher system” the budget supposedly proposed in a revamp of Medicare.
“I think I’m more of a Reagan Republican than some of the new Republicans, quite frankly,” Jones added.
In a discussion about the coast’s unique needs—erosion issues affect developed beaches all along the North Carolina coast—Jones said he’s been working with local government officials to find solutions. Increasingly, beach town officials, coastal county commissioners and state legislators alike say they anticipate having to play a greater role with projects like inlet dredgings as federal support grows thin.
“Let me be fair to the federal programs,” Jones said. “It’s not that they don’t want to help; they don’t have any money.”
He noted the United States is a “debtor nation” that can’t pay its bills “unless the Japanese, the Chinese loan us money.”
He added: “We are a nation in deep financial trouble. Deep trouble. That impacts on not just coastal programs but individuals across the nation. That’s one reason I’ve been preaching for almost 1o years: It’s time for America to stop spending so dag on much overseas and start spending that same money to rebuild America. And that means coastal projects too.”
Anderson had a much different take on the situation.
“That’s silly,” he said of any suggestion that state and local governments must assume beach management. “Because the federal government has the ability to do that. The Army Corps of Engineers, they have the funding. It’s just what we want to fund…. It’s so silly, because there’s no way that individual communities can keep paying to do that job.
“It should be the role of the federal government to do that…. I tend to be an Eisenhower Democrat.”
Anderson said a revised tax code could solve such problems.
“They talk about capital gains tax. Capital gains should be part of whatever is earned income. If you’re making your money, that is an earned income. A lot people say, ‘Oh, well, you’re investing.’ But there’s a lot of people that are actually hurting the economy.”
He said the solution for coastal funding and beyond could involve an expiration of the Bush tax cuts and eliminating deductions that he feels Americans do not need. For one, he noted the second-home mortgage deduction persons can claim on boats that have cabins. “Yes, that helps our boat builders,” Anderson said of the incentive, “but is it something that we need when we’re trying to figure out tough times, or we’re trying to figure out school lunches for kids, or police officers not having adequate pay or not getting a raise in the past four years. Can we really justify this deduction?”
He continued: “The money is there. It’s just what you’re allocating it to. You’re giving it back to people who don’t need a tax break, who are already millionaires or billionaires. They’re not going to buy another house. They’re going to sit on that capital. That’s what they do. And you have to find a way to reinvest that capital. And that’s through taxation.”
Jones said he doesn’t know Anderson well but reiterated the value of experience “that I think is necessary in these very difficult times. And the experience that I have I hope will help me make the right decisions for the American people, the people of eastern North Carolina, to get our country moving in the right direction.”
Contact Ben Brown at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
