Primary Campaign Hangover

1. Watauga Conservatives PAC, the outfit behind the Kanoy/Trivette/Cornett yard signs, registered with the State Board of Elections on April 27, with Janet L. Woods listed as treasurer. They reported $1,000 raised, all of it given by Paula Medley who was herself present at some polling stations yesterday promoting the conservative School Board candidates. The PAC appears to have spent most of that $1,000 on those yard signs.

2. The State Board of Elections website last night was error-ridden and prone to crashing. News outlets in major cities were reduced to calling local county boards of elections to get accurate polling results. Heck of a job, SBOE.

3. In the 24th Prosecutorial District Attorney primary, also-ran third-place finished Nathan Miller (who got 19% of the vote district-wide) told the Watauga Democrat, "I'm disappointed that Watauga County Republicans did not show up at the polls." Well, they did show up in what may well turn out to be record numbers, eclipsing the Republican primary turnout of 2010. But unaffiliated voters also showed up, and the majority of them chose a Republican ballot to vote:

Republican ballots pulled: 3,832 (59.12%)
Democratic ballots pulled: 2,547 (39.29%)
Unaffiliated ballots pulled: 81 (1.25%)
Libertarian ballots pulled: 22 (.34%)

We don't yet have the total number of unaffiliated voters who showed up, but anecdotally we can conclude that they were not coming in to vote for Mr. Miller. Although he carried Watauga by -- what? -- some 46%, more votes were cast against him in Watauga than for him. #NathanMillerismFail

4. Before we leave the statistics directly above, and even without knowing how many total unaffiliated voters went to the polls in this primary, one thing is pretty clear: the local Republican Party has a big problem with independent voters. Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson won Watauga County easily, Nathan Miller lost, and three progressive School Board candidates were in the top four finishers in that race. Unaffiliated voters don't tend to like the direction that the local GOP has been heading, especially perhaps in the matters of cronyism, voting rights, and the mismanagement of the local Board of Elections. #FourEggersismFail

5. The turnout of Appalachian State University students was de minimis. The local conservatives dependably blame student voters for their electoral failures, but they can't hide behind that lame excuse in this present case. #AnneMarieYatesismFail

Some Watauga Numbers

On the Democratic side, Obama won his match-up with Clinton in early voting, where some 3,185 votes were cast (including mail-in absentees), 1,974 of those for Obama to 1,174 for Clinton. That winning margin for Obama could not be overcome in precinct voting today, even though 11 of 20 precincts today went for Clinton.

Generally speaking, Clinton was strongest in the more rural parts of the county but not everywhere. For example, Elk and North Fork tipped to Obama. Watauga precinct (Foscoe and Valle Crucis) went for Obama. The three Boone precincts and New River 1 went for Obama. Blowing Rock and Blue Ridge turned in dead-even ties between Clinton and Obama.

Fifth Dist. congressional candidate Roy Carter carried Watauga by some 1,300 votes but appears to be slightly behind Diane Hamby district-wide (as of this writing).

U.S. senatorial candidate Jim Neal had an impressive showing in Watauga (2,291 votes), though he lost to Kay Hagan by a thousand votes in the county and to Hagan state-wide by a huge margin. Watauga was probably one of his best counties, perhaps because he made two visits here prior to the voting.

Likewise, Dan Besse came in second to Walter Dalton in Watauga. Good showing for Besse here, while he was losing the rest of the state.

On the Republican side, the most astounding local numbers were local dentist Jerry Butler's loss of his own county to Alexander Co. resident Dwight Shook in the State Senate Dist. 45 primary. Shades of Virginia Foxx! Butler can't carry his own county but wins the district and will be facing incumbent Senator Steve Goss this fall.

Oh, and Ron Paul didn't win the Republican presidential primary, though with 367 Watauga votes, he did out-poll "No Preference."

A total of 2,660 Republican ballots were cast, to 7,081 Democratic ballots. That may turn out to be the most significant bellwether of the night.

Signs

Word from several Watauga County precincts this a.m. says that the Republicans are AWOL. No poll-greeters spotted for any Republican candidates, not even Paularoids (though, clearly, from the count of yard signs alone, Ron Paul is in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination. Apparently, true Paularoids are expecting a Big Uprising at the Republican National Convention this summer that will reject John McCain and sweep Ron Paul into the nomination. BTW, we want whatever it is they're smoking).

The most active Democratic campaigns locally -- from an unscientific count of poll-greeters working key precincts this morning -- would be the Bev Perdue campaign, Team Roy Carter, the Tim Futrelle committee, and both the Clinton and the Obama campaigns.

Turn-out has been steady though not in the overwhelming numbers we've seen reported from other parts of the state.