News-Record.com

This week's column (an expanded version).

Who ya gonna call?

Odds are, if you're running for something, Bill Burckley
.
The former city councilman and political consultant has worked for nearly everybody who is somebody among local elected officials.

His list of clients over the years includes candidates of every size, gender, color and political stripe: Mary Rakestraw, Mike Barber, Billy Yow, Skip Alston, Earl Jones, Mike Winstead, Alma Adams, Trudy Wade, Mel Watt, Howard Coble.

Burckley, a Republican, has crunched numbers and handled mailings for the state Republican and Democratic parties.

He was a major force behind the strong but ultimately failed effort to block the downtown baseball stadium in Greensboro.

He has consulted with the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in downtown Greensboro and the Simkins PAC, a feared and powerful force in local politics.

And he engineered the campaign of former County Commissioner Wade, who won the seat of longtime District 5 City Council incumbent Sandy Carmany, in a smashmouth assault that included mailers, blazing color ads and caricatures of Carmany that poked fun at her record.
The only thing worse than having him on your team, say some local politicians, is not having him on your team.

He's tenacious, thorough, a bespectacled pit bull of a campaigner who relishes a good fight and is flattered by comparisons to Karl Rove.

Burckley, 63, a former paratrooper (small wonder) and a CPA by trade, provides detailed mailing and phone lists for some clients. For others, he orchestrates entire campaigns, from stem to stern.

Wade's campaign was "the total package," he says
.
"We were dealing with an incumbent with 16 years under her belt -- and a 16-year track record," he says of Carmany, who defeated him for the same seat as a challenger in 1991. "I looked at those 16 years -- what she said versus what she accomplished."

As for the biting caricatures of Carmany, Burckley says, "Most people found them to be hilarious. I'm sure Sandy Carmany didn't find them hilarious. People started to look forward to the next one."

And he doesn't apologize for the hardball tactics he used against Carmany on Wade's behalf. In fact, he says he was simply borrowing a page from Carmany's playbook in 1991.

He produces as evidence a T-shirt emblazoned with the headline "Buckley lays an egg." A cartoon under it depicts Burckley with the body of a chicken, being choked by a smiling Carmany.

"Bill gets choked up on his positions," type under the cartoon adds. "Carmany stands firm."

Burckley has a long memory and he obviously relished the payback victory over her. But don't be shocked if he winds up running a campaign for Carmany some day.

Burckley even has plied his trade for a local competitor, Florence Gatten, a political consultant who has schooled her share of candidates -- and a candidate against whom he has run oppositon campaigns.

When Gatten was struggling to survive in 2005, finishing a disappointing fourth for three available seats in the at-large City Council primary, it was Burckley who helped engineer her comeback. Gatten surged to a third-place finish, grabbing the final seat from a fellow incumbent, Don Vaughan.

"Oh yes, dear Bill," Gatten says when asked about Burckley. "I always use Bill for my voter lists. He's an empiricist. He believes that absolute perfect data exists and he uses that as his Holy Grail."

Gatten won't go so far as to credit her reversal of fortunes to Burckley. She believes the News & Record's endorsement mattered more. But she remains a long-time and satisfied customer.
"I always use him when I can," she says. "I send people to him."

Adds former City Council candidate and Parks and Recreation Commission Chairman David Hoggard: "He understands politics as well as anyone I've ever spoken to. If I was running, I'd want him working for me."

After the anti-ballpark campaign, Burckley had all but disappeared from the public eye. Now he's everywhere.