Reform from the inside out: Perdue's status as insider will help speed reform in state

Throughout her campaign for governor, Bev Perdue was attacked by both the right and left for being too close to the Raleigh political establishment. Republicans tried to tie her, as well as the entire Democratic leadership, to scandals like the one that brought down House Speaker Jim Black. Some reform-minded Democrats endorsed her Republican opponent, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, because they felt Perdue was too beholden to special interests and power brokers to institute the change needed in state government.

The critics were half right. Perdue is a product of the North Carolina political establishment. Before being elected lieutenant governor in 2000, she served in both the state House and Senate, where she was part of Senate boss Marc Basnight's leadership team. Consequently, Perdue is a political insider who knows all the players, those who are ethically challenged, those who pursue power for power's sake and those who want to serve the public good.

But on the salient points, the critics were wrong. Perdue has no history of corruption and she is now at the top of the only ladder she seems interested in climbing. The special interests and power brokers need her more than she needs them (or, in the case of the legislature, as much as she needs them).

And for the pundits and observers who assumed a Perdue administration would mean business as usual, the new governor had a surprise waiting. On her first day in office, Perdue signed a series of executive orders that will institute substantial changes in the way government in Raleigh works. The most significant order will reform the Department of Transportation by shifting decision-making powers from the appointed DOT board to the professionals who run the department.

Now Perdue is calling for nothing short of an overhaul of state government. She has already restructured the top of our education system to add accountability and to clarify the confusing roles of the State Board of Education and superintendent of public instruction. She also inherited serious problems with the state pension and health care plans, broken mental health and probation systems, and a $2 billion hole in the budget -- all in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Her answer is to "change the way we do business in North Carolina."

What Perdue's critics didn't, and probably still don't, understand is that the type of reform North Carolina needs can best come from an insider. The governor has had a front-row seat to state government for 20 years. She knows how it works and where it has failed. Fixing state government will take an abundance of political capital and solid relationships in the legislative branch. She has both.

But Perdue will have to do more than just persuade or muscle the Raleigh insiders. She'll have to convince the people of the state that the reforms she has in mind are in their best interests. If her election is any indication, she has those skills, too.

While Obama's coattails certainly helped her, Perdue scored a substantial victory in her own right. In addition to places with large African American populations, she won in areas that are overwhelmingly white and conservative, like western North Carolina. She won in the rural east and in population centers like the Triangle and Charlotte, McCrory's home base. The overarching ideological battle in North Carolina is not liberal versus conservative but rural versus urban/suburban, and the governor proved she can communicate with both audiences.

True and lasting reform takes great political skill and experience. Outsiders rarely succeed without building strong support from the establishment. Jimmy Carter and the Georgia Mafia never understood the culture of Washington. Bill Clinton's first two years were marred by defeats and gridlock even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Obama seems to have learned from history and, as a relative outsider, has put together a team with extensive Washington resumes.

In North Carolina, no Republican could institute dramatic reform with a solidly Democratic legislature. In fact, no Democrat could succeed without strong ties to the legislative leadership. Perdue might not exemplify the type of leader that most progressive reformers envision, but she does exemplify the type of leader who can make the reform stick.

Perdue sees an opportunity to leave a legacy that most politicians only dream about. Like Obama channeling Lincoln, Perdue is channeling Gov. O. Max Gardner. Gardner reformed and restructured state government during the Great Depression. Like Gardner, she views the current crisis as an opportunity. And like Gardner, she is a former lieutenant governor and legislator, a consummate political insider who wants to use what she learned from the establishment to change the status quo from the inside out.

Thomas Mills is president of Thomas Mills Communications, a Democratic direct mail and strategic consulting firm with offices in North Carolina and Washington, D.C.