Fayetteville Observer 2/26/2005

By Michael Wagner
Staff writer

WASHINGTON, N.C. - Jerry Meek stepped through the back door of the King Chicken restaurant at 5:55 p.m. Wednesday. No one was there.

"I guess we're early," he said, rolling his eyes. "Or at the wrong place."

It had been a two-hour drive east from Raleigh to Washington, a town of about 10,000 in Beaufort County. Meek hoped he hadn't come on the wrong day. He smiled at the thought, both in embarrassment and amusement.

As it turned out, he was early. The meeting didn't start until 7 p.m.

The extra hour gave Meek time to return phone calls. His voice mail was nearly full, and his e-mail had 65 new messages. Two days earlier, he woke up to find more than 150 e-mails in his inbox - each one wishing him good luck and congratulations.

Meek intended to return each call, each message, personally.

A week ago, Meek was ending his race for chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party. His opponent, Ed Turlington, was a longtime Democratic organizer who had run campaigns for party stars such as former Gov. Jim Hunt and former Sen. John Edwards. Turlington was endorsed by nearly every elected Democrat in the state, including Gov. Mike Easley, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and most other members of the Council of State.

Meek's most prominent endorsement came from Insurance Commissioner Jim Long.

It was Easley's endorsement, though, that was supposed to carry the most weight. As the symbolic head of his party, the governor has historically prevailed in his choice for chairman. But last Saturday, the Democrats' 572-member executive committee bucked that trend and chose Meek, a 34-year-old Fayetteville lawyer who had made enough trips to places such as Beaufort County to get the support to win.

"I've supported him vigorously because I believe he means what he says," said Etles Henries, chairman of the Beaufort County Democratic Party. He said Turlington's supporters "did a lot of arm-twisting, but I made up my mind early in the game and I stuck with him. He's got all the youth and energy. And he's all over the state all the time."

Henries, who was still wearing his "I'm for Meek" button Wednesday, said he would have been surprised to see the state party chairman at the monthly Beaufort County Democratic Women's Club meeting four days after being elected if it were anyone other than Meek. But visiting the party's grass-roots organizations is what made Meek so popular among the party's rank-and-file to begin with.

"Within a week of his being elected, he's here," Henries said. "I know he's busy. But he still takes time to come to the little counties. It shows his determination. And it shows who he is."

Traveling man

At 6 feet, 8 inches tall, Meek towers over just about everyone he meets. His voice, a deep vibrato, singles him out even more. Yet somehow he blends right in at the Beaufort County Democratic Women's Club, where he makes a point to meet all 20 people in the room. He listens to a precinct chairwoman talk about her local party challenges, and he waits in line to buy a pair of raffle tickets for the night's drawing.

Meek, who is single, has had the flexibility to do a lot of traveling to Washington and other such places since he was elected the party's first vice chairman two years ago. Every month, he's logged about 6,000 miles driving around the state getting to know just about every county chairman. He's visited at least 80 of the state's 100 counties and has been told by more than one county chairman that he was the first state party official to visit.

His win last weekend at the party's annual Executive Committee meeting was the culmination of two years of work for the party, his opponents and his supporters contend. But those closest to Meek say his victory was inevitable given the kind of ambition he has shown throughout his life, starting at 13 when Meek thought he wanted to be an astronaut.

It was 1984, when U.S. Sen. John Glenn - the former astronaut - was running for president. Meek read everything he could find on Glenn and gradually found himself focusing more on his politics than on his space career. Soon, he realized he had more in common with Glenn's opponent, Walter Mondale.

So Meek established his first party organization - Cumberland County Democratic Youth for Mondale. Every year after that, until he went to college, was spent heading up some Democratic club: at 14, the Cumberland County Teen Democrats; at 15, the North Carolina State Teen Democrats; at 16, the national Teen Democrats of America. When he was 17, Meek beat the chairwoman of the New Hanover County Democratic Party to become the youngest delegate to a Democratic National Convention in party history.

At 25, Meek became chairman of the Cumberland County Democratic Party. At the same time, he juggled going to law school and working, both full time. He slept not more than three or four hours at a time.

"It was just Jerry being Jerry," said Lonnie Player, a Fayetteville lawyer who has known Meek since they were 6-year-old students at The Fayetteville Academy. "Whatever Jerry set his mind to, he did 150 percent. And politics engaged him early on. I think it was the challenge of it. He went at it with both barrels."

The two attended Duke University together. Player remembers how intense a student Meek was but still sociable and popular among his friends.

"Jerry would read a book and then chase down the footnote citations and read those, too," Player said. "He is extremely thorough. So knowing that the key to winning the chairmanship was to connect to the party at the county level, I knew that Jerry was criss-crossing the state on a daily basis and that that's what it would take."

Meek was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but his family moved to Fayetteville when he was 2. His father, Joe, was an orthopedic surgeon and conservative politically. His mother, Jane Duncan, was a homemaker. She was more liberal than her husband, but neither paid a lot of attention to politics except when it came time to vote.

If Meek inherited his love for politics from anyone it was his mother's father, John Seignious, who served on the county council in Charleston, S.C.

"Most of my family were Republicans," Duncan said. "My father was both, actually. He was a friend of Strom Thurmond's at one time. He eventually switched parties."

Duncan said she never discouraged her son's love of politics. She gave him a tremendous amount of freedom, he said, and allowed him to travel all over the state by himself to attend party meetings and functions. Meek remembers countless trips on the bus from Fayetteville to Raleigh, where he'd meet someone to drive him to wherever the event of the day was taking place, sometimes in Charlotte or Wilmington.

And each time, he would take the bus home from Raleigh. At the bus station in Fayetteville would be his mother, waiting for him. Sometimes it was 2 or 3 in the morning before he got home.

"The things we do for love," she said.

Starting young

On the way to Beaufort County, thinking about what he'd say to the Women's Club between cell phone calls from reporters and well-wishers, Meek talked about how he has been drawn to politics.

About a week before his 16th birthday, Meek called Walter Mondale's office in Washington. He said he was about to get his driver's license and wanted to drive to D.C. to meet the former vice president. Mondale's assistant told him to come on up.

They met for 20 minutes and talked about the teen Democrats and how to get young people engaged in the political process.

But on the way back to Fayetteville, Meek thought: "I am so unambitious to go for the vice president." So the following weekend, Meek took the second road trip of his life and drove to Plains, Ga., where he met Jimmy Carter.

Meek likes to point out that he's never voted for anyone, whether for president or county commissioner, whom he hasn't met in person.

In college, Meek decided to pursue a degree in economics and political science. Although he had some scholarship money, Meek worked throughout college, starting with the night shift at a local Taco Bell his freshman year.

Politics was his passion, but Meek was equally fascinated with government and philosophy. Between his freshman and sophomore years at Duke, Meek took an interest in Nicaragua and thought it would be "neat to watch" the Nicaraguan government's transition from an anti-U.S. government to a pro-U.S. government. He went to Managua that summer and spent three months at the university, tuition-free.

He spent most of the semester talking politics with his three Nicaraguan roommates and, to his surprise, defending U.S. foreign policy. But the experience taught him a critical lesson.

"I think that one of the most important things in politics is to be able to view the world from the perspective of somebody else," Meek said. "A lot of the views they had down there about the U.S. were startling and disturbing to me. But the reality is those are views that a lot of people in the world have. It's helpful to me to be able to understand where other people are coming from, and you have to be able to do that in politics."

After earning his degree from Duke, Meek attended graduate school on a fellowship at the University of Notre Dame, where he studied government. But he knew he wanted to go to law school, and he wanted to do it back home in North Carolina. When he finished at Notre Dame, he returned to Duke.

Power of persuasion

Wade Byrd met Meek by phone in 1998. Meek was calling to see whether Byrd would donate $100 to the party. He was so persuasive that Byrd offered to donate $1,000. Later that afternoon, they spoke again. By the end of the conversation, Byrd had offered Meek a job in his law firm.

"I just felt like he was mature beyond his years, so I hired him," Byrd said. "He finished out law school while working for me. In fact, I attended his graduation. You don't often get to do that with lawyers."

Meek took his only stab at a nonparty elected office that year, losing in a bid for an 18th District state House seat.

After that loss, he worked for Byrd until 1999, the same year he visited Dallas to take a deposition. He had read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a lawyer who did mental health malpractice litigation in Texas. Meek called him, they had drinks, and by the end of the meeting Meek had a job offer.

From 1999 to 2002, Meek was a partner with Skip Simpson, trying cases in 18 states.

He lived in Dallas for less than a year, eventually moving back to Fayetteville where he had friends and family. He commuted to Texas once a week but grew tired of the routine and came back to work for Byrd in 2002. But while he was in Texas, Meek also learned how to fly, something he was never able to afford on the stipend of a graduate student.

The skill proved useful when he returned to North Carolina and bought a small plane, which he used to cover the state and meet with county party officials. It was another tool at his disposal to influence his party, something that's never far from his mind.

Meek's mentors, friends and supporters say his passion for the party is unparalleled, and his focus on the people who make up the party is enviable.

"The grass-roots people need to know that the people at the top care about them and appreciate all of their efforts," Byrd said. "They don't get a lot of thanks. I think it may be a new day for the party in a very good way."

Meek's relationship with Byrd, though strong today, hit a bump when Byrd fired him over a political spat the year after Meek came back to work for him. Meek was running for state party chairman against Barbara Allen. Byrd supported Allen and told Meek to either drop out of the race or he'd fire him. Meek at first refused to drop out, and Byrd kept his word.

Today, Byrd said, he has no intention of firing Meek, who needs his job since he won't be earning a dime from his almost full-time work as state chairman. His duties at party headquarters will be in addition to his job as a medical malpractice lawyer. How they'll work it out, neither knows yet. Meek said he can work from home in Raleigh, where he rents an apartment a few blocks from party headquarters.

Local level

In Beaufort County, Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1. But on the county's Board of Commissioners, four of the seven seats are filled by Republicans.

Henries, the county chairman, said he thinks the reason is tied to national politics in a state that has consistently gone Republican in the presidential race.

"The (Democratic National Convention) writes North Carolina off the map," he tells Meek. "And that bleeds right down."

Joyce Cutler was chairwoman of the county party from 1989 to 1991. At the time, there were no Republicans holding elected office in the county. Today, she watches with disbelief as her party's hold slowly disappears.

"Have they lost interest?" she asked. "Did they assume people would keep electing them?"

Only one county commissioner attended Wednesday's meeting.

Cutler said the spark in the party at the local level is gone, and she hopes Meek can help rekindle it.

"He has all this energy, and, my goodness, he's come up through the ranks," Cutler said. "He knows what it's like at the county level."

The Women's Club meeting had about half the usual turnout because of a virus going around town. In his speech, made up on the fly from a few notes jotted down over a plate of beef tips and green beans, Meek gave a pep talk about the Democratic Party and what it stands for. But he also gave his listeners something to take home - ideas about recruiting volunteers, getting the party's message out to new voters, and using new technology to help grass-roots organizations like theirs to win elections.

And he reiterated the theme that won him the party chairmanship last week.

"No county in this state is going to be ignored anymore," he said. "The bottom line is, we cannot continue to win statewide races if we continue to ignore county commissioner races, register of deeds races, and sheriff's races."

Cutler just leaned back and smiled.

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JERRY MEEK CHRONOLOGY

1971: Born in Fort Worth, Texas

1973: Moves with family to Fayetteville

1984: Organizes Cumberland County Democratic Youth for Mondale

1985: Becomes president of the Cumberland County Teen Democrats

1986: Becomes president of the North Carolina Teen Democrats

1987: Becomes president of the national Teen Democrats of America

1988: At 17, becomes the youngest delegate ever to the Democratic National Convention

1989: Works as a Congressional page for Rep. Charlie Rose

1990: Spends a semester studying in Managua, Nicaragua

1992: Graduates Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude with an economics and political science degree from Duke University

1993: Backpacks through Europe and the Middle East from Cairo to London over six months

1995: Graduates from the University of Notre Dame with a masters degree in government

1997: Graduates from Duke University Law School

1997: Becomes chairman of the Cumberland County Democratic Party

1998: Goes to work for Fayetteville lawyer Wade Byrd practicing medical malpractice law

1998: Runs for the 18th District seat in the state House of Representatives

1999: Takes a job with a law firm in Dallas litigating mental health malpractice cases

2002: Returns to work for Wade Byrd in Fayetteville

2003: Announces run for chairman of the state Democratic Party, but steps aside at Gov. Easley’s request; wins first vice chairman job and becomes a member of the Democratic National Committee

2005: Runs for chairman of the state Democratic Party against Ed Turlington and wins.

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Staff writer Michael Wagner can be reached at wagnerm@fayettevillenc.com or (919)828-7641.
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