Democrats trumpet efforts during Carter-Kennedy Celebration

Credit: Regan Hill photo

Diane Hamby leads local democrats in saluting the North Carolina flag after last night's pledge of allegiance the United States flag during Friday night's Carter-Kennedy Celebration at the Fox Den Country Club.

By: Jim Mcnally | Statesville Record & Landmark
Published: March 27, 2010

In few counties around the country are the symbols for the nation's top two political parties more representative than in Iredell.
With a full slate of Republicans on the Board of Commissioners and a dominance by the GOP in most other elected positions, the elephant's trumpet is the loudest political sound in the county.
But the Democrats' donkey does its best to make its bray heard.
And such was the case Friday at the Iredell County Democratic Party's Carter-Kennedy Celebration.
"Times have changed from when I first moved here," said said Diane Hamby, Iredell's Democratic Party chairperson. "When I first got here, it was solidly Democratic. I didn't know any Republicans."
About 100 people attended the event at the Fox Den Country Club. That's roughly one-fifth the size of the crowd that made it to the Republican Party's Reagan Day Dinner last month at the Statesville Civic Center.
But the Democrats are nonetheless a proud bunch.
"Every great thing that has ever happened in America has happened because of the work of Democrats," said Diane Hamby, the last Democrat to hold a seat on the county's Board of Commissioners.
Hamby noted the two former presidents for whom the event is named -- John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter -- and said both of those men did great things.
In the case of Kennedy, Hamby dedicated more time to speaking about the president's brother, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died last summer.
"It saddens me to think that we have lost that kind of public servant," she said.
Of Carter, Hamby said: "He did so much and he is still doing so much. There is no one on the other side like him."
Kennedy and Carter are also the names of the present and most recent former Democratic candidates for the 5th Congressional District seat, now held by Rep. Virginia Foxx.
In 2008, Roy Carter -- an Ashe County educator -- beat Hamby in the Democratic primary and lost to Foxx in the general election.
This year, Watauga County cabinetmaker and radio personality Billy Kennedy is taking on Foxx.
Kennedy followed up with what Hamby said about the party's advances in social matters.
"All the progress we've made in this country is because Democrats have always looked ahead and not backwards," Kennedy said.
He said the recently-passed health care legislation was an example of that progress.
"Getting that bill through has gone a long way toward making health care in this country a right and not a privilege," Kennedy said.
Other Democratic candidates, including Anne Fischer, an educator from Burke County who is one of two Democratic candidates for the 10th Congressional District seat currently held by Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry, also spoke at the Kennedy-Carter event, which included a DJ, and light hors d'oeuvres.

Democrats trumpet efforts during Carter-Kennedy Celebration

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