By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM — The argument over the leadership of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People may not be over, but the group’s seven-term chairwoman isn’t intending to let her opponents monopolize the discussion.

On Tuesday the group issued a rare news release, “respectfully submitted” by Chairwoman Lavonia Allison, to announce plans to hold an annual meeting Jan. 24 at an as-yet-unspecified time and place.

The release also stressed that the group is eager to see “those who embrace the mission of this social-justice organization” join with the executive team elected Thursday to counter “factors that negatively impact the quality of life for citizens who are suffering from intractable racial disparities in economics, income, education, health, housing and justice.”

The wording of the release alluded to a comment Allison made Thursday to a supporter after she won re-election by a 15-3 vote of committee stalwarts on a night when more than 219 people showed up in hopes of participating.

Allison indicated then that she’d welcome the throng’s future involvement. “If we can get this crowd out for something other than an election, we can get things moving in the right direction,” she said.

The 18 who cast ballots Thusday were among 25 people who met an eligibility test the committee laid down in 2004, when it required people to attend meetings quarterly if they wished to qualify for the right to participate in leadership elections.

Allison faced a challenge Thursday from a local minister, the Rev. Melvin Whitley, who ran with support from Mayor Bill Bell and other black City Council members upset with how Allison handled endorsements in Durham’s recent city election.

Councilman Howard Clement said Tuesday he and his colleagues believed Allison undermined formal committee endorsements for Bell in the mayor’s race and Clement in the Ward 2 race, and helped swing its Ward 1 endorsement away from Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden.

Allison “encouraged the opposition” during the campaign, helping challengers “put together the phraseology that she thought would beat us” and egging on a late-hours general election write-in bid in Ward 2 by a candidate, Sylvester Williams, who’d lost the month before in the primary, Clement said.

She was also “very supportive” of political unknown and registered Republican Steven Williams’ bid to unseat Bell, Clement said.

Even after the group decided on its endorsements, Allison “was still working with the opposition in November, and that was just unheard-of,” Clement said. “This created ill will.”

The common theme challengers in the city election voiced was that officials had focused too heavily on redeveloping downtown and neglected nearby, majority-black neighborhoods.

The incumbents countered by noting that they’d steered tens of millions of dollars of public money into the neighborhoods, for projects like the Holton Career and Resource Center and the Eastway Village housing development.

Though Allison turned aside Whitley’s challenge on Thursday, Clement, Cole-McFadden and other elected officials were happy to highlight the narrowness of her support base.

That only 18 people cast ballots in Thursday’s meeting stood in sharp contrast to the fact that 517 people were able to do so in the 1997 balloting that first made Allison chairwoman.

But Allison’s strategy now appears to be one of co-opting potential opposition. And on Tuesday, a prominent political consultant said that approach could work.

As “a very skilled politician, she may be able to find a wedge issue and drive it home” to the council’s disadvantage, said Brad Crone, whose firm works with Democrats in statewide and local races.

Especially because the committee’s help will be important to Democrats in the 2010 legislative and congressional races, its “going from a position of weakness to a position of strength next year” is feasible, he said.

Crone — who made it clear he doesn’t agree with those who see the committee is a spent force — said his advice to council members “would be to try to find common ground” with the group.