Calling himself the Jesse Ventura of Durham politics, Michael Peterson paid a filing fee of $156.70 and became a candidate for the office of mayor on August 5, 1999. Peterson was one of five contenders on the ballot vying for the position in an October 5 primary. The two top vote-getters would then go head-to-head in a general election on November 2.
The leader of the pack was 48-year-old Nick Tennyson, the incumbent mayor. He had won the seat in 1997 against four other candidates. In addition to serving as mayor, he was the executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Durham and Orange Counties.
Brenda Burnette, a city councilwoman representing Ward I was the first person to file on July 2. The 50-year-old single African-American mother had announced her intentions to run in January soon after she had been evicted from her publicly subsidized housing for failure to pay rent. When it came to her fellow candidate, Michael Peterson, she carried a big chip on her shoulder. He often referred to her and her fellow city councilmen as “dwarfs” in his columns. And he singled her out as “brain challenged.”
58-year-old Ralph McKinney, Jr., filed the same day as Peterson. He was a familiar face at the meetings of the city council and the county commissioners. Although he had never held public office, this was not his first foray into a political race. He finished third in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 1996 and garnered 520 votes in the mayoral primary race in 1997. He was vocal on issues of racism and sexism—even calling out NBA star Michael Jordan on accusations of discrimination against black customers at his automobile dealerships.
Floyd McKissick, a self-employed attorney, rounded out the list of choices for mayor. The 43-year-old African-American had served on the city council since 1993. His current term was set to expire in 2001. That summer, he had come under fire for a trip he had taken to his alma mater in New England at city expense. With degrees from Duke, Harvard and the University of North Carolina, coupled with his political experience, this Durham native sold himself as the most experienced candidate.
It was a lot of competition for a demanding part-time job that paid only $15,362 per year. At least three of the candidates spent more than twice the annual salary for this two-year job during their campaigns.
To avoid any conflicts of interest The Herald-Sun pulled Michael Peterson’s columns from their pages after his announcement to run. The candidate responded by purchasing ad space to run his column on Friday each week in the Durham section of the paper. He also posted the weekly column on his Web site.
The site was designed and maintained by a Durham newcomer, Guy Seaberg, a former federal prosecutor and private attorney in Maine. He came to North Carolina in July 1999 after suffering a major setback in court the month before.
Seaberg took on a civil case for Lori D’Amico. He missed key filing dates and, despite numerous warnings from the court, continued to tell his client that all was well. D’Amico’s case was thrown out of court because of these late filings and she sued Seaberg.
Maine Superior Court Judge Thomas R. Warren found Seaberg liable for breach of contract, professional negligence and breach of fiduciary responsibility. He awarded Lori D’Amico $1.1 million in actual damages and punitive damages of $25,000. D’Amico said that Seaberg moved to North Carolina where his wages could not be garnished on this judgment.
Peterson ran a tough, no-nonsense campaign, gathering new supporters every day. Fifty-nine percent of his campaign coffer of over $37,000 came from small donors who made contributions of $100 or less. In contrast, the incumbent Tennyson garnered 61 percent of his funding from larger gifts, many of which came from real estate developers and builders.
In the fliers Peterson distributed throughout the city, he proclaimed he’d be a full-time mayor and promised “every citizen will be my special interest.” His four-point platform promised that he would stand up against drugs, gangs and illegal weapons, promote racial harmony, merge city and county governments and return the power to the people. He declared that his 120 columns demonstrated that he always told the truth.
To add warmth and local appeal to the advertising bulletin, he had a photograph posed with his wife and five children on the cover, and he wrote “I love Durham. It has been my home for 38 years. My children have grown up here.” Conveniently, he neglected to mention that much of that time he was, in fact, away from his home and living overseas.
One of the other issues he put on the table was the need to press Duke University to give back more to the community of Durham. He claimed his criticism of the university’s lack of financial commitment to the city did not arise from any animosity caused by his son’s incarceration in 1994. To the contrary, he insisted that he attended football games, had given money to the school, donated items to the Rare Book Room and encouraged his three girls to attend Duke.
On another front, he urged the city to realize the necessity of having a full-time mayor and a full-time city council who were all compensated as professionals. He added that if elected, he would not request a pay increase before 2001. Many thought it odd that he would ask for one at all, since he was a strong critic of the city council’s recent request for a salary increase.
His issues sparked positive feedback from the voters and he gained some ground drumming up grassroots support. Then, at the end of September, Peterson’s public persona collided with reality. He had claimed he had earned two Purple Hearts in combat in Vietnam. He said that he received one because he took shrapnel in his leg when his radio operator stepped on a mine. In truth, the injury in question was the result of an automobile accident when he was stationed in Japan.
When a reporter confronted him with the fact that there was no record of his Purple Hearts, Peterson admitted his story was not true. In parting, he said, “Now I’ll have to go home and tell my wife.”
Like Patty before her, Kathleen stood by her man. When confronted by a friend about Michael’s lies, she walked out of that woman’s house and never entered it again.
With the election only days away, Peterson tried to repair the damage with a paid political column published on September 24. Peterson’s column was too little, too late. To most of the electorate, it was nothing more than political entertainment. His credibility had been slashed and burned beyond reconstitution in the few days that remained before Election Day.
He still had support in the African-American community, the country club set and the artsy crowd, but the perception of Mike’s public persona in other quarters dashed all hopes of salvaging the election. The cynical image Mike presented in his columns splashed on Kathleen, too. Many people in Durham who did not know them personally saw both as somewhat difficult and diffident people with arrogance toward the community.
On September 30, opponent Ralph McKinney was quoted in The Chronicle, the Duke University student newspaper, calling for Peterson to withdraw from the race and to “… inform his citizens that they have someone they can vote for that wasn’t a coward, a traitor or had a yellow streak down his back and that’s myself.”
That same day, all five mayoral candidates participated in a political forum at the offices of The Herald-Sun. Of the 280 people in attendance, twelve had the opportunity to ask a broad range of questions. One asked each of the hopefuls how they would work with the city council. Four of them talked about developing interpersonal relationships, building consensus, creating a climate of amicability and using bargaining skills. Michael Peterson, though, brushed that query aside. He predicted that his voter mandate would be so large that the city council would have to follow his leadership. The important question, he said, was “How will they work with me?”
After the forum, Peterson and his supporters fled the persistent drone of Purple Heart questions by shoving cameramen and reporters out of the way without comment. The heat of media scrutiny cooled down the ardor of all but Peterson’s core constituency. Tennyson got 39 percent of the vote, McKissick 30 percent. Michael Peterson came in third, losing to McKissick by 600 votes or 3 percent of the total. The two top finishers went on to the general election in November. Tennyson predicted that Peterson’s supporters would vote for him. He was right—he won that race with 62 percent of the vote.