It's a technicality, but one that can kill a candidacy.
Chelsea White, the newest Democrat to announce (on Sept. 19) that she would enter the 2022 Democratic primary in NC11, has discovered that she didn't change her voter registration from Unaffiliated to Democrat within the 90-day window before announcing.
Per North Carolina General Statute 163-106.1, a candidate must be affiliated with a party “for at least 90 days as of the date of that person filing such notice of candidacy.”
So she's withdrawn before ever really getting started.
There are still seven other Democrats all contending to be The One to take on Madison Cawthorn in 2022.
Community organizer Chelsea White has announced that she will seek the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 11th CD next spring. According to Ballotpedia, she's the 8th Democratic candidate in the primary. Here are the first 7, with links to WataugaWatch's profile of them:
Chelsea Whiteis the Western Regional Organizer and Communications Coordinator for Transform NC, a labor and climate statewide coalition. Since August, she has also been involved in the We Are WNC community group dedicated to flood recovery in Cruso and Canton.
She has a Twitter account but not much else yet for campaign infrastructure.
White made her announcement of candidacy on Sunday at a rally against Congressman Cawthorn at the Haywood County courthouse. A group of Haywood County Republicans held a counter-rally at the same location.
Katie Dean trained as an engineer at the University of Georgia and owns an auto-repair business with her husband in Swannanoa. She has a website and a professional looking video introduction:
Brooker Smith is so far a name on a list with no internet presence that I can find.
J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.
