Any UNC students who say they weren’t asked to vote against Amendment One in North Carolina’s May primary was probably living under a rock.
Opposition to the discriminatory constitutional amendment, which banned same-sex marriage (already illegal in North Carolina) as well as civil unions, was everywhere.
And there’s a reason for that: Orange County is the epicenter of progressive politics in our state. Of the nearly 46,000 votes cast in Orange County in the May primary, 79 percent were against Amendment One — the highest percentage in any county opposing the amendment.
But Amendment One passed by a landslide statewide, with 61 percent of the more than 2 million North Carolinians who voted supporting the “traditional” definition of marriage.
In May, thousands of UNC students returned home after finals to North Carolina counties — even traditionally Democratic counties in the east — where Amendment One passed by whopping margins. Only eight of North Carolina’s 100 counties voted against the amendment, four of which were in the Triangle.
This geographic contrast should remind students leading up to the 2012 election that Orange County exists in a bubble.
Orange County has a history of liberal distinction. Carrboro elected the state’s first openly gay mayor in the 1990s. The county has led the state on environmental issues by aggressively protecting watersheds, adding bike lanes, preserving open spaces and increasing recycling.
The town’s public campaign finance program is the first of its kind in the state, but is now set to expire due to Republican opposition in the state legislature.
And while the number of unaffiliated voters has shot up since 2008, Orange County’s 54,095 registered Democrats still outnumber registered Republicans nearly three to one. President Barack Obama, who won North Carolina by less than 15,000 votes four years ago, took 72 percent of the vote in Orange County.
