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GREENSBORO It's a crapshoot as to whether voters cared what their commissioners wanted in the recent election.


What's the message here for elected officials? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

A district-by-district analysis of votes cast for Guilford County bonds last week showed that elected officials' stances did not always match how their constituents voted.

Last week, Guilford County voters approved $651.4 million in new borrowing to build schools, rebuild a burned high school, construct a jail and add another campus to GTCC. Voters rejected a quarter-cent sales tax that nearly every commissioner supported.

In District 5, covering southeastern Guilford County, Commissioner Billy Yow was outspoken in his opposition to bonds especially the two for Guilford schools but he supported a $114.6 million bond for the jail.

Voters there went with Yow on the jail. But they kept voting "yes" when it came to rebuilding Eastern Guilford High School for $45 million and spending another $412.3 million for other school construction.

So much for the influence of elected office.

"We've got some schools in dire need down here," said Yow, trying to explain why his constituents might have voted the way they did. He said he wasn't against building schools but didn't like the bond package as presented.

"The schools bond had a lot of fluff in it," Yow said of the larger bond.

As voters ran counter to Yow's plea against the school bonds, they really shut out the board chairman and District 4 commissioner, Kirk Perkins.

Perkins supported all the five bonds and the ballot measure seeking a quarter-cent sales tax.

Instead, voters in his district supported just the Eastern Guilford rebuilding. That school draws students from much of the area Perkins represents.

"You're elected to District 4 and answer to District 4, but you work for Guilford County," Perkins said, saying his stance on bonds was for the greater good.

"What's good for one part of Guilford County is generally good for another part of Guilford County," Perkins said.

But should an elected official choose stances based on the views of a constituency? And does it even matter when municipal bonds are at stake?

"The side that wins is usually the one that had the better advertising campaign," said Katy Harriger, chairwoman of Wake Forest University's political science department.

Harriger, whose husband teaches at UNCG, said she saw the billboards in Guilford supporting bond projects.

"The pro-bond group was real well-organized," she said. "I would've guessed by what I had seen that they would have been passed."

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com