The New Rural Project's Model

 

60,000 registered voters of color in North Carolina didn’t vote in 2020. "Those are the kind of numbers that change elections."

--Cynthia Wallace, New Rural Project

Since 2021, failed Democratic candidates Cynthia Wallace (she ran against Dan Bishop in 2020 in CD9) and Helen Propst Mills (ran twice in 2018 and 2020 for a NCSenate seat) launched The New Rural Project deliberately targeting "civic engagement" in the Black community, particularly that (large) segment not even registered to vote who tend to live in rural areas. Wallace and Mills formed a 501(c)(4) non-profit, recruited staff and volunteers, and adopted a "down home" approach as opposed to typical political advocacy. "They knocked on doors, sat on front porches, huddled in barber shops, and listened more than they talked" (CardinalAndPine.com). The New Rural Project originally targeted seven North Carolina counties — Moore, Hoke, Robeson, Union, Anson, Richmond, and Scotland. Wallace said, “What we really are focused on is giving voice to those who feel voiceless and helping those that feel unseen be seen and heard,”

Barbershop conversation. New Rural Project website

In 2022, the New Rural Project had the very productive idea of using Black barbershops for meet-ups and "deep conversations" with men in the community who had experience and opinions about entrepreneurship, jobs and wages, crime and the criminal justice system. One of the leaders of the barbershop conversations, barber Garrett Snuggs, ran for Wadesboro town council in 2023 and was the leading vote-getter. Three other Black candidates for municipal offices in the Project's target region also won their races.

This success in advancing Black candidates by rallying Black voters got expansion as the New Rural Project began beauty shop conversations to complement the barbershop meetups. “Every Black woman I know has spent her share of time in a beauty salon,” Wallace said. “And we’ve seen that happen in those beauty salons that the barriers kind of break down and you’re in a space that’s familiar, comfortable, and talking about your issues and your concerns .... We connect the dots between whatever their issue is and their civic life,” she said, “[bringing] it back full circle to why your civic engagement can actually solve these issues that you care about.”

Un-Trumping North Carolina: 3rd Tier of Potential Red-to-Blue Flips in NC Senate

Dist. 1 (Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington, Chowan, Perquimans, Pasquotank, Camden, Currituck, Gates, and Hertford counties)

Democrat Tess Judge v. Republican Bob Steinburg (incumbent finishing 1st term in Senate, previously served 3 terms in NC House)

Rated "Lean Republican." Trump took the district with 54.84% of the vote in 2016. (Michael Bitzer)

A "Pivotal Race" and "extremely competitive" (FlipNC.org). RealFactsNC and Long Leaf Pine Slate agree it's a "race to watch."

We were keen about Tess Judge when she ran in 2018 in NC House District 6. She has worked in hospitality management her entire career and is well known in the coastal community for serving on the Board of Directors of the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce. She and her late husband Warren were named Co-Citizens of the Year by the Chamber in 2011. She also currently serves on the Board of the Outer Banks Hospital and is Chair of the Outer Banks Hospital Development Council. Her concern over environmental protections for a fragile coast sets her apart from most candidates on the other side. Long Leaf Pine Slate: "Judge's deep connections with communities across Eastern NC will prove invaluable in dislodging a widely unloved incumbent who is relying on Raleigh PAC money to fund his campaign."

That "widely unloved incumbent," Bob Steinburg, has a rap sheet. Wikipedia: "Steinburg has been arrested twice, once for disorderly conduct and once for assault on his opponent's campaign manager. The charges were later dismissed. He has received heavy criticism for his temper, even being called 'unfit for state Senate seat' by Senator Bill Cook. Cook, R-Beaufort, chose not to seek re-election [in 2018] after court-ordered redistricting put him outside of a redrawn Senate District 1. Cook endorsed Steinburg's primary opponent Clark Twiddy and contributed money to his campaign .... Steinburg missed 1 out of 5 votes during the 2014-2015 and 2017-2018 sessions in the NC House. The only members of the House of Representatives who have missed more votes were Representatives who resigned while in the middle of their term or those appointed to fill the remaining term. His missed votes were due to his absence during the House session." Just today, the Long Leaf Pine Slate exposed the "dark, sad swamp" of Steinburg's Facebook page, which is filled with "racism, conspiracy theory and extremism — but mostly racism."

Dist. 24 (Alamance and the eastern half of Guilford counties)

Democrat J.D. Wooten v. Republican Amy Galey, for an open seat

Open because ... five-term incumbent Republican Rick Gunn waited until two weeks before filing began last December to announce he wouldn't be running for reelection in 2020. 

Rated "Lean Republican." Trump took the district with 54.93% of the vote. (Bitzer)

A race to watch for both RealFactsNC and Long Leaf Pine Slate.

I enthusiastically followed Wooten's attempt to gain the seat in the blue wave of 2018. He got 46.14% of the vote against Tea Party incumbent Rick Gunn -- a loss by 6,000 votes, a sobering number. But a damn good base to build on, and Wooten seemed willing to do the work when he announced he would try again in 2020.

The trend with partisan shifts in 2018 -- the higher the income and/or the education, the more likely the flip from Republican to Democratic -- that trend is expected to hold in 2020, and the burgeoning suburban sprawl along the I-40 and I-85 corridors which slice through the district would appear to fit the bill. Wooten himself lives in the I-40 corridor in eastern Guilford, the little suburb of Whitsett. Over in Alamance, Burlington and Graham are the major urban centers. In terms of income, Alamance's richest township is Coble, south of I-40, followed in wealth by Melville Township (both I-40 and I-85 adjacent), Albright, and Boone Station. Boone Station also shows up in the statistics as the most educated in the county.

In 2018 Wooten evidently ran an active campaign, and an effective one, or he wouldn't have done as well. He had a pretty relentless canvassing program (judging from Facebook posts) and was effective raising money enough to be a threat to an incumbent who had probably grown a little complacent. Republican Gunn had easily won reelection in 2016 and didn't even have a Democratic opponent in 2014. Is it not telling that he dropped out at the last minute rather than run again in 2020?

Wooten's Republican opponent this November, Amy Galey, looks formidable. Galey is a young 52. She ran for the Alamance Commission first time in the 2016 Republican primary, fell short by 40 votes, but won a special election the next year for an unexpired commissioner's seat and was promptly elected chair of the commission. She won reelection in her own right in 2018 as the top vote-getter. Alamance is a very red county, though Galey sounds like a moderate: "I have supported public education while expecting accountability for taxpayer investment, supported farmland preservation, and worked on smart growth answers to Alamance County’s challenges." Talks like a pro-growth Democrat -- the importance of education, farmland preservation, and "smart growth." According to Isaac Groves, Galey is "often the swing vote" on the Alamance County Commission, "sometimes siding with the conservatives on the board" (interesting way to put it). "She also joined the 3–2 majority in June to approve an 8-cent property tax rate increase to fund the voter-approved $189.6 million education bond package and long-range capital plan County Manager Bryan Hagood introduced." Not the type of rural Republican we're used to these days. More of an urban type.

Dist. 25 (Anson, Richmond, Moore, and Scotland counties)

Democrat Helen Probst Mills v. 3-term Republican incumbent Tom McInnis

Rated "Safe Republican" by Bitzer (ouch). Trump took the district with 56.30% of the vote.

Nevertheless, RealFactsNC considers this a race to watch.

We followed Helen Probst Mills when she ran the first time for this seat in 2018. She did not quite make it to 43% of the vote that year. She trained as an attorney in Illinois and lives now in Pinehurst. She entered the race in 2018, she said, in part to simply provide an option. “The reality is that I walk in on Election Day to the polling booth here in Pinehurst and there are no Democrats for me to check. We need a choice." Mills says she grew up a daughter to a single mother and is herself the mother of three and a cancer survivor who moved to North Carolina with her husband, Stuart, in 2006. In 2017, Mills was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper to the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees. She also serves on the college’s Foundation Board, where she helped develop a program allowing high school graduates to attend for two years without having to pay tuition. She serves as development chair for the Northern Moore Family Resource Center in Robbins, which has opened a preschool and is developing a community center. She credits the overcoming of breast cancer to having health insurance: “Everyone, no matter their background or how much money they make, should have access to affordable, quality health care. Yet too many politicians in Raleigh put petty partisan politics over policies that would help thousands. That is wrong for my community and for North Carolina.”

Her Republican opponent, Tom McInnis, is a good ole boy auctioneer not above cutting deals, and he drew a primary challenge in 2018 from the very conservative mayor of Whispering Pines in Moore County (which had been added to McInnis's district by remapping). According to VoteSmart.org, McInnis never took a college class, and his only education above the high school level was auctioneer school. Curiously, he lists no religious nor denominational affiliation,

 

These Candidates Could Break the Republican Super-Majority in the NC Senate

Dems #ncga Candidates Catching Fire All Across the State

I wrote about Democratic NC House candidate Terri LeGrand showing some fundraising strength in Forsyth County yesterday. Today brings plenty more fundraising news in that same vein. If campaign fundraising is a barometer -- and it is -- then these General Assembly candidates below are looking gooder and gooder for this November.

In House District 52, Lowell Simon out-raised Republican incumbent Jamie Boles $11,987.68 to $8,450 during the Second Quarter of 2018. Those are low numbers on both sides but still interesting. Boles may be suffering from over-confidence, since he's had no opponent at all for ten years. But he's lugging some serious baggage -- evidence of self-dealing and other corruption.

Democrat Lowell Simon looks viable. He is a recently retired high school math teacher, a profession he came to late in his career after many years in business. First in New York state and then in North Carolina, he managed chains of convenience stores. He was vice president of operations for Quick Chek, a chain of about 30 convenience stores based in Troy, which brought him and his family to Seven Lakes to live. He later bought into Southern Pines based Fuel Mate, which had six BP stores. During his time teaching math at Union Pines High School, the superintendent tapped him to start an entrepreneurship program for students. "Simon has served on the boards of Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. A political appointee of three different state House speakers from both parties, he has helped draft key legislation, including the formation of the NC Lottery .... He currently serves on the boards of Moore Regional Hospital and Moore Forward, and is president emeritus of the Sandhills Jewish Congregation" (ThePilot.com).

In Senate District 1, Democrat D. Cole Phelps raised $73,788.04 to Republican opponent Bob Steinburg's $48,417.50 during he Second Quarter. Senate District 1 hugs the coast in the northeastern corner of the state. Steinburg is currently a member of the NC House looking to move up in the world. Tea partiers consider him a cuck.

Democrat Cole Phelps is a young lawyer. How young? When he was elected to the county commission of Washington County at 24, he was the youngest member of any county commission in the state. He's serving his second term now at the age of 29. He was the first in his family to go to college, first to East Carolina for a degree in Family and Community Services and then to NC Central School of Law. He got a leg up to get that good education, and it says something about him that he immediately turned around and established a scholarship program for deserving first-generation, college-bound students in several east Carolina counties. From his very first campaign for county commission, he was pumping education and the need to keep kids in school and make college more possible. He's been named a William C. Friday Fellow. That's a prestigious group of 200 citizens deemed crucial leaders in their local communities. For the record (and this particular issue looks decisive on the coast), he's an outspoken opponent of Twitterman's scheme to drill for oil in North Carolina waters.

In Senate District 25, Democrat Helen Probst Mills outraised Republican incumbent Tom McInnis $87,933.80 to $64,642.52 in the Second Quarter. McInnis is propped up by PAC money. He was also propped up by the Republican leadership in the House during a destructive primary in May against Tea Party opposition. When you're propped up that much, you run the risk of becoming a prop.

Democrat Helen Probst Mills has been on our radar since the second week of February. She's an attorney from Pinehurst and entered politics this year, she says, in part to simply provide an option. “The reality is that I walk in on Election Day to the polling booth here in Pinehurst and there are no Democrats for me to check. We need a choice,” Mills said. “There needs to be an opportunity for an individual to stand up and to make him crystalize his position on issues and policies and to defend the votes he has taken.” Mills says she grew up a daughter to a single mother and is herself the mother of three and a cancer survivor who moved to North Carolina with her husband, Stuart, in 2006. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois. Last year, Mills was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper to the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees. She also serves on the college’s Foundation Board, where she helped develop a program allowing high school graduates to attend for two years tuition-free. She serves as development chair for the Northern Moore Family Resource Center in Robbins, which has opened a preschool and is developing a community center. She credits the overcoming of breast cancer to having health insurance: “Everyone, no matter their background or how much money they make, should have access to affordable, quality health care. Yet too many politicians in Raleigh put petty partisan politics over policies that would help thousands. That is wrong for my community and for North Carolina.” (Republican incumbent McInnis opposed, like most other Republicans in Phil Berger's senate, the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.)

In House District 36, Democrat Julie von Haefen outraised Republican incumbent and powerful chair of the House Budget Committee Nelson Dollar $70,281.64 to $38,800 in the Second Quarter. Rep. Dollar, in terms of what his pelt will fetch, is a rhino, a bull elephant, and a giraffe all in one. This is a Wake County district that was spitefully redrawn to cut out Democratic stars who had wanted to run against him, leaving the current Democratic challenger to screw up her courage and step forward to the challenge.

Democrat Julie von Haefen is president of the Wake County PTA Council and has three school-age children in the Wake County public schools. She scorched Dollar in her filing announcement for what his state budgets have done to public education: "From the expansion of school vouchers and charter schools to the failure to pay our teachers and principals what they deserve, Representative Dollar and his legislature have harmed our students and our schools. Most recently, their reckless and unfunded K-3 class size mandate caused unnecessary stress for school districts across the state. It is time to put our teachers and our children ahead of partisan politics. North Carolina's students deserve better than they are getting from our legislature. They deserve increased funding for school counselors and nurses. And they deserve a public school system with the funding and resources it needs to prepare them for the future. We owe it to our students, and to the economy, and to the state." Von Haefen is married to an NC State professor, and they have lived in Apex for the last 13 years. She trained as a lawyer and practiced law for 10 years.

In House District 51, Democrat Lisa Mathis has seriously outraised Republican incumbent John Sauls during both quarters of 2018 -- $24,963.53 to $3,500 in the First Quarter, and $49,495.26 to $5,050 in the Second Quarter.

Lisa Mathis was a "military kid" who says that repeatedly moving all over the country taught her "courage, adaptability, and a deep respect for the sacrifices of our service members and their families." She trained as an artist and graphic designer and opened a small graphic design business in Sanford, N.C. Deeply involved in community and profoundly appreciative of putting down deep roots in a single place, she started a second small business in 2003, ArtStudio in downtown Sanford, "a place for children and adults to explore their creativity." Especially children. She is a strong advocate for education spending and for expanding Medicaid. She talks on her website about helping working families and encouraging small businesses, especially in areas previously devastated by the Bush recession. She's got boots on the ground -- a good following of willing volunteers -- and a field organizer. Always a good sign.

In Senate District 9, Democrat Harper Peterson raised $52,316.03 to Republican incumbent Mike Lee's $36,300 in the Second Quarter. Lee had 20 Second Quarter donors, 11 of which were special interest PACs.

Democrat Harper Peterson has been a leader in the reaction to the GenX pollution crisis and helped start the community watchdog group Clean Cape Fear. He's also a former mayor of Wilmington and city councilman. He announced that he was running for this seat back last September. He says, "Unfortunately, in recent years, the basic needs and guaranteed rights of North Carolinians have taken a backseat to the interests of politicians and their big donors. Specifically, they have spread distrust among North Carolinians while trading to their donors our excellent public schools, quality healthcare and natural resources for tax giveaways. The games at our expense have to stop. I now have the time and energy and the full support of my family and friends to serve and be a voice for common sense in our state legislature." Peterson is critical of current Republican legislative priorities: "Too many of our representatives ignored the governor’s request for $2.6 million in emergency funds for the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services to vigorously address GenX and other cancer-causing compounds that have been dumped into our river. Additionally, tax giveaways to corporate interests have been paid for through slashed budgets and staffing for the state agencies who could have been proactive in defending us from this poison in our water." He also wants to bring back the film industry, which the General Assembly essentially ran out of North Carolina in one of its budget bills.

In Senate District 41, Democrat Natasha Marcus raised $113,802.53 from 375 donors during the First Quarter, while the Republican incumbent Jeff Tarte raised $35,456.34 from 53 donors. In the Second Quarter, Tarte went ahead of Marcus by $7,300, but for the year Marcus is still ahead of Tarte. She has hundreds of donors. Tarte has far fewer, many of which are special interest PACs.

Democrat Natasha Marcus has been on my radar since early in February. She made an unsuccessful bid for the state House in her Cornelius neighborhood in 2014, when Republican John Bradford III defeated her 55 to 45 percent. “The policies that touch our lives most closely often come from the state level,” Marcus told WUNC. “Federal politics is important, but what happens at the General Assembly in Raleigh – from public school funding, to healthcare, to whether we’re going to have to pay tolls here in the North Mecklenburg area is also important." According to Ballotpedia, Marcus earned her B.A. in public policy from Hamilton College and her J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 1994. Her professional experience includes working as a lawyer for Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard; as Judicial Clerk for the Honorable Frank W. Bullock, Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Greensboro; and as a founding member of DavidsonLearns, a non-profit providing senior citizen learning and enrichment. Marcus intends a fight for the seat: “Cuts to public pre-K through higher education, unconstitutional laws, politicians who put polluters over our clean air and water, policies that make healthcare more expensive and less accessible, and expensive toll lanes on I-77 have taken us backwards. Like many people in our community, I am fed up with being ignored by Raleigh Republicans and am ready to take a stand.”

Two of the candidates above -- Lisa Mathis and Cole Phelps -- are new to this blog. I've written about the others before and -- full disclosure -- I have cannibilized those earlier postings for the one above.

Republican Fratricide in NC Senate District 25

Helen Probst Mills

I wrote about Helen Probst Mills, the Pinehurst lawyer recently appointed to the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees, back early in February when the only Republican in that race for NC Senate District 25 was the incumbent, Tom McInnis.

A lot has happened since then.

Helen Probst Mills is still the strong Democratic candidate, in a race no one thinks she can win. But that's the enduring narrative of 2018: impossible odds, overcome suddenly and without much warning.

Senate District 25 has been seriously redrawn in court-ordered redistricting, and the crowd that elected Tom McInnis in 2014 no longer exists. Less than half of the voters in the new District 25 have ever seen McInnis's name on their ballot before. Mainly because the new district now contains all of Moore County, by far the center of population for the district, and Moore County pulsates as a hotbed of rabidly conservative politics (home of the Daily Haymaker) -- Republican voters who'll throw out a Republican incumbent at the drop of a bumpersticker.

So naturally, Tom McInnis has a Republican primary opponent, the mayor of Whispering Pines, Michelle Lexo.



Michelle Lexo --
She pins herself with neon words. From her website: "Mother. Christian. Conservative." Those periods are assertive, let alone the words. Ready for a fight.

Michelle Lexo

She spent her career in health-care services. Her last job was the assistant director of radiology at a large trauma hospital. She retired to Whispering Pines (pop. 3,000) and was soon tapped for the village council. She's known, apparently, as a know-it-all, being the one official in the room sure to have read every scrap of information available on a subject and to have developed a strong opinion about the whole shooting match. A strong opinion in synch, that is, with "Mother. Christian. Conservative."

She's strongly endorsed by Brant Clifton's "common sense conservative" website, "The Daily Haymaker."

Lexo ... is regularly attacked by incumbent senator Tom McInnis and his supporters as a “lightweight.” Never mind her advanced training in the medical field and her career as a senior hospital executive. Never mind that her hometown has experienced some of its most dramatic growth on her watch as mayor. McInnis supporters have worked overtime to paint Lexo as mentally unstable and not very smart.

Mentally unstable and not very smart?

Meanwhile, Lexo has compared and contrasted herself and McInnis on the issues: He supported the HB2 “repeal” / “compromise.” She didn’t like it. He supports the tier system in economic development. She does not. He supports government subsidies for solar and wind energy companies. She does not.

Got it.


Incumbent Republican Tom McInnis --

Tom McInnis

McInnis is a good ole boy auctioneer not above cutting deals. (Lexo is the deal. She doesn't cut them. Meanwhile, have you ever met an honest auctioneer, strictly speaking?)

According to VoteSmart.org, McInnis never took a college class, and his only education above the  high school level was auctioneer school. He's got native smarts, especially for sharp dealing, and he knows how to go along for a ride and how to milk a moment. Curiously, he lists no religious nor denominational affiliation, which might be an opening for Mother. Christian. Conservative.

Clearly, Lexo is making insurgent gains against him, because the Republican establishment has rushed in mailers for McInnis -- both the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and the NC Chamber of Commerce. Jonathan Kappler tweeted that McInnis was taking Lexo very seriously indeed: "I hear he's been in Moore county a lot and I saw lots of signs and billboards for him in the area."

McInnis campaign photo

Jonathan Kappler also dubbed McInnis "the pop heavy-weight" in the primary race, but if Brant Clifton at The Daily Haymaker thinks you're a fake, then you might be in trouble with other Moore County Republicans likely to vote in a primary.

So McInnis is going heavy on the crypto gun lover bit in his social media and posing as devoutly Christian in a kind of Trumpian way, tweeting out the text of John 3:16 on Easter Sunday.

If the Republicans of District 25 throw over McInnis for the mentally unstable and not very smart Michelle Lexo, then indeed the blue wave could crash there too.

Four Strong Women Running Against Four Republican Men for NC Senate

Natasha Marcus, running in the NC Senate District 41

District 41 is in suburban north Mecklenburg County and is considered the "swingy-est" of the four Senate seats covered by this post.

Incumbent Republican: Jeff Tarte won by a 21 percent margin in his last non-presidential election. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in econ and has worked as a top-level exec for a number of multimillion-dollar companies. He has served as the mayor of Cornelius. (Civic office in Cornelius has been a repeat springboard for many prominent Republicans.) Tarte first ran for the senate in 2012, narrowly winning the Republican primary but running unopposed that November. He did have Democratic opponents in 2014 and 2016. In the latter, Tarte's winning percentage (54.48%) looked a little soft compared to 2014. On some topics, Tarte has at least sounded moderate. On the disruption to the state erupting out of HB2 (the bathroom bill), he told the Charlotte Observer: "Transgenders in bathrooms were not a problem." He opposed the transfer of tax

Natasha Marcus

revenues from urban to rural counties, but he is also a cheerleader for shifting the tax burden increasingly onto "consumers." He openly opposed his Republican Gov. McCrory over the I-77 toll lanes.

Democrat Natasha Marcus made an unsuccessful bid for the state House in the Cornelius neighborhood in 2014, when Republican John Bradford III defeated her 55 to 45 percent. “The policies that touch our lives most closely often come from the state level,” Marcus told WUNC. “Federal politics is important, but what happens at the General Assembly in Raleigh – from public school funding, to healthcare, to whether we’re going to have to pay tolls here in the North Mecklenburg area is also important." According to Ballotpedia, Marcus earned her B.A. in public policy from Hamilton College and her J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 1994. Her professional experience includes working as a lawyer for Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard; as Judicial Clerk for the Honorable Frank W. Bullock, Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Greensboro; and as a founding member of DavidsonLearns, a non-profit providing senior citizen learning and enrichment. Marcus intends a fight for the seat: “Cuts to public pre-K through higher education, unconstitutional laws, politicians who put polluters over our clean air and water, policies that make healthcare more expensive and less accessible, and expensive toll lanes on I-77 have taken us backwards. Like many people in our community, I am fed up with being ignored by Raleigh Republicans and am ready to take a stand.”


Eleanor Erickson, running in the NC Senate District 8

District 8 is coastal and includes parts of New Hanover, Brunwsick, Pender, and Bladen counties.

Incumbent Republican: Bill Rabon is considered Senate leader Phil Berger’s right-hand man. Rabon first entered the chamber in the Tea Party wave of 2010 and by the 2016 General Election, he was unopposed by any Democrat. He succeeded the retiring Rules Committee dictator Tom Apodaca as the master controller of legislation entering and exiting the senate. He is a Southport veterinarian and a partner in several animal hospitals. He is said to have been mentored by former Senator Bob Rucho, so there's an air of conservative toxicity about Rabon, though some of that may be emanating from capo dei capi Phil Berger. Rabon reportedly cussed Governor McCrory's wife Ann and her goddamn "puppy mill" ban bill in 2014, saying over his dead body would it ever pass the senate. (Remember, he's the owner of animal hospitals.) He publicly criticized Ann McCrory for lobbying the General Assembly for the bill, saying at the time that she was breaking "all kinds of laws." But Rabon himself is not above steering taxpayer money to powerful business interests, particularly those that also

funnel campaign cash his way. Rabon filed the bill that would limit all judges, from the district level on up, to two-year terms in office. That jolly piece of horseshit would turn every judgeship into a partisan circus, with judges having to raise money and run every two years.

Democrat Eleanor Erickson Erickson is a long-time resident of Brunswick who works as the general manager of a local hotel. She is so new at this "candidate thing" that she doesn't yet have web
infrastructure, but it's clear that she's planning to make the pollution of the Cape Fear River an issue along with the deterioration of support for public education in the Republican dominated General Assembly. (Republicans say they love education and have lavished billions at least on the public schools, but their love looks a lot more like involuntary suffocation.) Erickson has some local renown in Brunswick County as "a pillar of the community who took initiative and built a new playground at a local park instead of waiting around for others." She is co-founder of the nonprofit group Where We Live, which raised the money for the playground and which has branched out into organizing music and arts events around Bolivia, NC, and Southport, along with regular weekly activities for working families. Through Where We Live, social media, and the Rotary Club, Erickson has become a leader among younger professionals in the county.


Ginger Garner, running in the NC Senate District 2

District 2 = Carteret, Craven, and Pamlico counties on the coast.

Republican incumbent: Norm Sanderson is a three-term senator, first elected in 2012. In 2014 and 2016, Sanderson won with about 60 percent of the vote. According to Ballotpedia, Sanderson received a B.A. in Christian education from Logos University in 2002. Logos is an on-line, Bible-based, "interdenominational" education-dispensary based in Jacksonville, Florida. Sanderson's professional experience includes working as a sheriff's deputy and a real estate business owner. He currently owns Kids Heaven School Age Care Center. In 2017, Sanderson proposed a poisonous anti-

Ginger Garner

immigrant sanctuary city law to punish the state's cities if they won't participate in rounding up brown people. Sanderson is a conservative true believer in Phil Bergerism. He has said that North Carolina is a much better place now and ever since Republican took over in Raleigh in 2011.

Democrat Ginger Garner is a doctor of physical therapy and a longtime orthopaedic clinician serving the healthcare needs of new mothers and the military (Cherry Point is in her district). She says she was born in Asheboro "to teenage parents," hardworking Republicans who instilled in her the values of hard work and thriftiness which she brings with her into running for office as a Democrat. She received her Doctor of Physical Therapy and Master of Physical Therapy degrees from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She is the founder of the Professional Yoga Therapy Institute (2000), the first interdisciplinary, medical yoga program in the world. Also established the first doctoral level medical yoga curricula, now adopted by medical schools throughout the US and Canada. She says on her website, "My story speaks for itself: for 20 years I have served our coastal community as a physical therapist, as an aid and Christian mission worker, as a volunteer, as a CEO and small business owner, and as a wife and mother of three." She mentions the opioid epidemic as a major concern of hers along with protection of the North Carolina coast from offshore drilling. 

 

Helen Probst Mills, running in the NC Senate District 25

District 25 takes in a swath of Moore, Richmond, Anson, and Scotland counties and two dozen little towns including Hamlet and Laurinberg.

Republican incumbent: Tom McInnis was first elected to the senate in 2014 by the skin of his teeth (50.4%). In 2016 he did considerably better against Democrat Dannie Montgomery, taking almost 64% of the vote. He makes his living as an auctioneer (Iron Horse Auction Company), real estate

Helen Probst Mills

broker, and used automobile dealer. He previously served eight years on the Richmond County Board of Education. A standard-issue conservative.

 

Democrat Helen Probst Mills is an attorney from Pinehurst and enters the race, she says, in part to simply provide an option.“The reality is that I walk in on Election Day to the polling booth here in Pinehurst and there are no Democrats for me to check. We need a choice,” Mills said. “There needs to be an opportunity for an individual to stand up and to make him crystalize his position on issues and policies and to defend the votes he has taken.” Mills says she grew up a daughter to a single mother and is herself the mother of three and a cancer survivor who moved to North Carolina with her husband, Stuart, in 2006. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois. Last year, Mills was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper to the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees. She also serves on the college’s Foundation Board, where she helped develop a program allowing high school graduates to attend for two years without having to pay tuition. She serves as development chair for the Northern Moore Family Resource Center in Robbins, which has opened a preschool and is developing a community center. She credits the overcoming of breast cancer to having health insurance:  “Everyone, no matter their background or how much money they make, should have access to affordable, quality health care. Yet too many politicians in Raleigh put petty partisan politics over policies that would help thousands. That is wrong for my community and for North Carolina.” (Republican incumbent McInnis has opposed, like most other Republicans in Phil Berger's senate, the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act because he's afraid of catching Obama cooties.)