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RALEIGH Six months after taking office, Gov. Bev Perdue's political honeymoon is over.
Perdue has been politically whipsawed from the left and the right. Teachers, state employees and advocates for the poor have taken to the streets, upset about state budget cuts and furloughs. Conservatives, outraged over her proposal to raise taxes by $1.5billion, have taken up protest signs.
Their anger has taken a toll on Perdue, to the point that she is now among the nation's most unpopular governors.
Comparing polls assessing the performance of governors is imprecise at best, but apparently only three governors – Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, David Paterson of New York and Jim Gibbons of Nevada – have lower job-approval ratings than Perdue.
In response, Perdue has hit the campaign trail again, hoping to revive an administration that has been battered by the state's worst fiscal crisis in generations. In rallies across the state in recent days, Perdue has called for tax increases to avoid deep cuts to public schools. She has also sought to reinvigorate North Carolina's progressive spirit, reminding voters how far the state has come from its humble roots. At times, she compares herself to former Gov. Terry Sanford, an icon for Tar Heel liberals, who raised taxes to improve public education.
She said criticisms of her leadership should be viewed in the context of the times.
“The economy has collapsed around our people,” Perdue said in an interview. “I've been governor for five and half months. I've had furloughs. I've had to do things no other governor has done before to pay the bills. It is what it is. There will be better days.”
It is unclear how Perdue's call for sacrifice will play with an increasingly surly public, angry over an 11.1 percent unemployment rate, a record $4.7billion budget shortfall and a raft of investigations of Democrats in the state capital (none of them involving Perdue's administration).
Perdue took a series of austerity measures to keep state government operating for the fiscal year ending June 30. And she has proposed some tough medicine to help close a shortfall for the fiscal year that began July 1.
Most governors across the country have sharply dropped in popularity after making politically difficult choices to cut government programs, lay off state employees or raise taxes.
But few have fallen as far as Perdue.
Perdue's job approval rating since she took office in January has fallen from 60 percent to 30 percent, according to Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm based in Raleigh. The poll found that 54 percent disapproved of the job she was doing, while 17 percent had no opinion. Other recent polls have shown her approval rating only slightly higher.
At former Gov. Mike Easley's lowest ebb during the 2002 recession, he dropped to a 40 percent approval rating. But the 2002 recession was not as deep as the current economic crisis, and the budget measures Easley took were not as severe.
“She faced a deficit in our state that is unheard of,'' said Senate leader Marc Basnight, a Democratic ally. “She had to make reductions that were very, very unpopular. She knew when she talked to me that this was going to cause a great deal of pain for people who are now employed in this state, particularly the teachers.”
Perdue, who was elected with the strong support of the N.C. Association of Educators, the influential teachers' advocacy group, has seen her biggest falloff in support among teacher and state employees. The decision to cut a half percent of pay for teachers at the end of the school year hit a political nerve – partly because it was delivered at the last moment by a political ally.
Her support among self-described liberals has dropped from 66 percent to 46 percent, said Tom Jensen, a Democratic pollster. She is the only governor in the country for whom a majority of voters of her own party do not approve of the job she is doing, Jensen said.
“Our members have been very angry about that, and many continue to be angry about that,” said Sheri Strickland, president of the state's largest teachers organization. “They felt like the governor is someone we worked very hard to elect.''
Perdue has sought to remedy her decline by holding rallies in Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte, Asheville, Wilmington and Greenville to garner support for a $1.5billion tax increase, which she argues is needed to prevent teacher layoffs and avoid increasing the number of children in each classroom.
The rallies were mainly attended by teachers, but their reaction was often subdued.
“I think she's just trying to make sure we're not totally mad at her,” Bonnie Stebnicki, a preschool teacher, said at a rally in Greenville. “Teachers are the ones who stood out in the rain for her for all those hours (at the polls).”
Conservative critics, meanwhile, say Perdue's proposal for new taxes is wrong in a struggling economy. They say that Perdue sometimes acts as if she is, in the words of state GOP chairman Tom Fetzer, politically “tone-deaf.''
“It is hard to believe Governor Perdue is serious about cutting wasteful state spending when she jets off on a taxpayer-funded, five-city ‘Tax Hike Tour' in a state airplane,'' Senate Republican leader Phil Berger, an Eden lawyer, said at a news conference last week.
Perdue dismissed the criticism as routine politics.
“One day I was criticized for not doing anything and the next day I was criticized for doing too much,” Perdue said. “It just doesn't matter.
Senate Democratic leader Tony Rand of Fayetteville warns against reading too much into Perdue's predicament. When the economy is going badly, she gets disproportionate blame, he said, and when it turns around she will get disproportionate credit.
“The lesson,'' Rand said, “is don't get elected when the bottom is falling out.''
