By Ray Gronberg
gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648
DURHAM -- On a night when at least 219 people showed up to cast ballots, Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People Chairwoman Lavonia Allison won re-election to the group's top spot by a vote of 15-3.
Allison turned aside a challenge from Melvin Whitley, a local minister and ally of Mayor Bill Bell and other elected officials who were happy afterwards to highlight the discrepancy between the turnout and the number of ballots cast.
State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., D-Durham, joined several other meeting participants, including Allison, in confirming that only 25 people from the crowd had been ruled eligible to vote in Thursday night's election.
They met an eligibility test centered on quarterly attendance at the group's meetings, McKissick said.
"It is what it is," said City Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden, one of the elected officials who supported Whitley. "But it means people came out because they were interested in the plight of the Durham Committee. They will be back."
"We lost the ballot, but the war continues," added Councilman Howard Clement, another Whitley backer.
Allison took the high road afterward, noting her long experience with the Durham Committee, one of the city's big-three political groups and the main voice for local blacks.
She said she would continue to focus on education and health issues, and declined to say anything critical of Whitley or those who organized on his behalf.
"I'm privileged to serve an organization that I grew up with," Allison said. "It is an honor, it is hard work and I'm committed, I'm passionate about making a difference."
The challenge to Allison played out following a city election that saw the Durham Committee withhold its endorsement from Cole-McFadden in the Ward 1 council race and flirt with endorsing opponents of Bell and Clement in the mayoral and Ward 2 races.
Despite that, Bell and his colleagues won re-election by margins ranging upwards from Clement's 71 percent of the vote.
By getting behind Whitley, they let it be known that they were not happy about the Allison-led committee's having seriously considered supporting Steven Williams, the registered Republican who ran against Bell, and Sylvester Williams, an investment analyst and fundamentalist minister who was among those who challenged Clement.
The possibility that eligibility rules could affect the outcome of Thursday's vote by the committee membership was apparent going in. Similar rules helped swing the group's fall endorsement in the Ward 1 race to Cole-McFadden's opponent, Donald Hughes.
McKissick made a point of telling reporters he'd been ruled ineligible to vote despite having attended, by his estimate, 90 percent of the group's meetings.
He conceded the need for some rules to govern eligibility but said, "Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of being more restrictive than it needs to be."
Allison first won election as chairwoman in 1997, besting two challengers in a similar membership meeting by taking 304 votes to their combined 213.
The committee changed the eligibility rules in 2004. Clement and other participants said committee leaders hadn't been able to produce the minutes of the meeting where the change occurred. They were said to be in the hands of former N.C. Central University Provost Beverly Washington Jones, who was not in attendance Thursday.
But it appeared a number of people in the crowd were surprised by the eligibility restrictions. Several trickled out of the meeting room before the vote.
"It's not an efficient process," one man said when asked why he was leaving. "There's a new time and a new day for everything. It's not today."
McKissick had a quip for a wish-wisher as he left the meeting room. "We need to bring in Jimmy Carter," he said, referring to the former president's sometime role as an election observer. "He's good at that in foreign countries."
Whitley took the outcome in stride, saying that his three votes came from, among others, Bell and former County Commissioner Deborah Giles.
"When she looked out there and saw all those people, she knows change is in the air," Whitley said, referring to Allison.
Clement had voiced confidence beforehand about the outcome of Thursday's battle, saying, "We don't plan to lose." He voiced satisfaction afterward with how things had played out.
"Tonight was to get the lay of the land," he explained, adding that Whitley's supporters intend now to push for a change to the committee's voter-eligibility rules.
