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Explain yourself, Cal Cunningham
In an interview a week ago with the Editorial Board, U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham talked about why this U.S. Senate race is important for North Carolina.
“It’s about affirming who we are,” said Cunningham, the Democratic challenger to incumbent Thom Tillis. “It’s about love of state and love of country and doing my absolute level best to hear from you, to hear from the people of our state, absorb that, and try and exercise and give voice to the values of the people.”
Those values are important, but our voices are not what need to be heard right now. Cal Cunningham needs to speak up and explain himself.
The U.S. Senate challenger is tangled in the wrong kind of October surprise — revelations that he exchanged sexual messages with a woman who is not his wife. Cunningham, a father of two, sent the texts to Arlene Guzman Todd, a public relations strategist from California. More allegations are swirling as well, and North Carolinians are rightfully wondering exactly what’s going on.
But other than a brief statement late Friday acknowledging and apologizing for the messages — “The first step in repairing those relationships is taking complete responsibility, which I do,” he said — Cunningham has gone silent. He has not responded to an invitation to answer follow-up questions from the Editorial Board. He’s declined interviews with Raleigh News & Observer reporters. He canceled an appearance at a virtual town hall. That needs to change.
This board, like many North Carolinians, is troubled on several levels by Cunningham’s illicit messages. Beyond the obvious questions about morality and marriage, the messages show a concerning lack of judgment on Cunningham’s part. How could a U.S. Senate candidate risk so much, not only personally but in a race that could swing the balance of power in Congress?
The messages also hint at an arrogance and self-centeredness that we’ve seen too much of in Washington and in the White House. What mattered to Cunningham was himself, not the people counting on him and his candidacy. We know too well these days the dangers of leaders putting their own interests above the public’s. We’ve had enough of U.S. senators from North Carolina choosing what’s good for them instead of what’s best for their state and country.
Finally, there’s a concern that Cunningham — an Army reservist who talks regularly about honor, a husband who leverages his marriage as a campaign asset — may not be the person he says he is. Answering reporters’ questions might not put North Carolinians at ease about the decisions he’s made, but it at least would show that he is willing to stand up and be accountable for them. Honor, as Cunningham surely knows, isn’t only about making the right choices. It’s about fully owning up to the wrong ones.
Doing so also would show something about Cunningham the candidate. There will be moments in the next six years when a Sen. Cunningham would need to speak out on hard issues facing his state and country. If elected, he will cast controversial votes or be called on to address the words or actions of his party’s leadership. That’s never easy, politically, but it is a necessary, important obligation for the people who lead us.
Cunningham, if he remains silent, is offering a preview of who he might be when the inevitably uncomfortable parts of his job arrive. That might be a sound political strategy weeks before an election, but it’s not what North Carolina needs for the next six years. “I know that we deserve better,” he told us last week about the leadership North Carolina has in Washington. It’s time to show what kind of leader — and more about what kind of person — he is.
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