The Fight for the NC Democratic Party

As soon as current Chair David Young announced that he would not be seeking another term as titular head of the NC Democratic Party, Iredell County attorney David Parker, who's a member of the Democratic National Committee and was a "super-delegate" to the 2008 nominating convention, jumped out as the first announced candidate.

That news was first posted on the News&Observer site at 2 a.m. Thursday morning. Before the Parker announcement had time to circulate far and wide, party activist and consultant Chris Church posted on his Facebook page at 4:07 a.m. that morning that he thought David Parker "would make a great chairman." At 8:32 a.m. former state party Chair Jerry Meek came back at Church with this comment: "I think he would be a disaster. All talk and no action."

Whoa.

Since Jerry Meek was the most effective chair of the state party that we've personally had any experience with, his opinion carries considerable weight in our immediate vicinity. He turned "Party Dead-Quarters" in Raleigh into a happening place, implementing Howard Dean's 50-state strategy on the state level with remarkable results in 2006. He was unfailingly available to county parties, and he was out there in the public press every time the Republicans did something stupid, which was pretty much every day. He also stood up to Gov. Easley and pissed the guv off, which in hindsight may have been the smartest political move of his tenure.

If we don't get another Jerry Meek, Party Dead-Quarters is going to become Zombieland indeed.