Democrats Choose a New Minority Leader in the NC Senate

 

Sydney Batch with her husband
J. Patrick Williams and their two sons

The unthinkable has happened. Democrats in the NC Senate dumped their long-time leader Dan Blue in favor of Sen. Sydney Batch, also from Wake County. The word out of Raleigh is that the senators decided on a secret ballot for the voting, and Blue, reading the waves, stepped down rather than have the vote go against him. Apparently, at 76 he just wasn't putting up the muscular opposition to Phil Berger's bullying majority that his fellow Democrats wanted. Will Sydney Batch do better? Remains to be seen.

So who is Sydney Batch? I first followed her in 2018 when she ran for the seat in House Dist. 37 and won in that year's Blue Wave (here, scroll down). She lost the seat in 2020 to Republican Erin Pare. (Lesson: MAGA voters wreak havoc down-ballot when Trump is on the ballot.) When Democratic Sen. Sam Searcy left his Senate seat (Dist. 17) in January 2021, Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Batch to the rest of his unfinished term. She won reelection to that Senate seat in 2022 and again this November.

Batch is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, with both a master's degree in social work and a law degree. She and her husband J. Patrick Williams opened their own law firm in 2005. She has wide and intense experience in child welfare advocacy and family law.