N.C. Senate maps are altered for Sen. Clark's new house. In other news: Commissioner Jimmy Keefe ditches the Democrats, and a secret mayor election survey was conducted last week.

Democratic state Sen. Ben Clark of the Rockfish area in Hoke County has been critical of gerrymandering — the practice of drawing election maps with odd shapes to benefit one political side and harm the other.

This past week, Clark received what critics might call a gerrymander that benefits him.

But Clark said it was something the Republicans wanted to keep him out of Senate District 19, held by Republican Sen. Wesley Meredith.

Clark lives in District 21. He also recently built a second home in eastern Cumberland County in Meredith’s District 19. The new home spawned speculation that Clark would move there to run against Meredith. Clark said he has no plans to do so.

Still, this past week as the Republican-controlled legislature worked on revisions to the state House and Senate district boundaries, the Senate Redistricting Committee adjusted the boundaries of the proposed Senate 21 to encompass Clark’s new house.

The committee, including Clark, voted unanimously to add a wedged-shaped peninsula to Senate 21 that runs nearly 5 miles along N.C. 24 from the Cape Fear River to Baywood Road east of Interstate 95. This includes Clark’s new house near the Interstate 95 interchange at N.C. 24.

According to data from the 2010 Census, the Clark extension moves about 1,055 people out of the proposed Meredith Senate 19 district into the proposed Clark Senate 21 district.

Clark overall dislikes the proposed new legislative districts. He said they are gerrymandered to maintain the Republicans’ veto-proof super-majority control of the General Assembly despite the state’s voters being closer to 50-50 in their partisan voting for president, governor and other statewide elections.

“The inclusion of my second home within District 21 is a minor improvement to a still unacceptable plan,” Clark said Friday.

He is unhappy that the new District 21 does not have Spring Lake or the populated parts of Fort Bragg in it. He endorsed an alternative map that puts those communities in District 21 — and that does not have his second home in it.

Keefe ditches Democrats

Cumberland County Commissioner Jimmy Keefe quit the Democratic Party and has become a Republican.

Keefe announced his party switch in a written statement last week. He had been a Democrat since 1980 and three times has been elected as a Democrat to the Board of Commissioners.

“Like most Americans, I do not identify completely with either party,” Keefe said. “I agree with some things on both sides and am opposed to others.” Many decisions by elected officials have been swayed by bias and self-serving members of both parties, he said.

“The results of this legislation is not always in the best interest of the people we have sworn to defend by oath,” he said.

Early in Keefe’s career, he said, a local Democrat told him that if he didn’t vote for a specific issue, he wasn’t a “true Democrat.” “It was an epiphany moment ... as I thought, ‘Who gets to define a true Democrat?’”

Even though Keefe doesn't identify fully with either major party, he said he would be more comfortable as a Republican than registering as unaffiliated with any party. His party change was due in part to seeing government programs that are meant to help residents in poverty but instead keep them in poverty for generations, he said.

"I don't believe that throwing money at bad programs and putting more people into bad programs will make them better programs," Keefe said.

Secret mayor survey

Public Policy Polling of Raleigh late last week conducted an automated telephone survey in the Fayetteville mayoral race and of recent issues before the Fayetteville City Council.

The polling company declined on Friday to name the client who paid for the survey and said the results are unlikely to be made public.

Mayor Nat Robertson and his two major challengers in the election, city councilmen Kirk deViere and Mitch Colvin, all said they had not commissioned the survey.

Among the questions:

Whether the voter has favorable or unfavorable opinions of Robertson, deViere and Colvin, and which one the voter would pick in the election. Which issue of these two is more important for the next mayor to address: Creating jobs or reducing crime. Does the voter support or oppose the $33 million baseball stadium project downtown. It asked for demographic information about the voter, including age group, gender, race and political party affiliation.

The survey made no mention of Quancidine Gribble, who is the fourth candidate in the race. The narrator on the automated call also mispronounced “deViere.”

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