The Action in HD 105: Cotham v. Sidwell

 

A 501.c.4., Majority Rising North Carolina, put out a smart mailer hitting turncoat House member Tricia Cotham as a Judas, whose 30 pieces of silver came in a tiny poke of power. Republican Speaker of the House Tim Moore, totally smitten with her, killed a fatted calf to welcome Cotham into his fold.

Majority Rising has obvious strong ties to the progressive side of the North Carolina Democratic Party, listing former Wake County DemsParty Chair Mack Paul, House member and progressive lion Rick Glazier, and Obama's former body man and native of Charlotte Reggie Love among its board members.

Tricia Cotham's rap sheet

She defected to the enemy. She gave the Republicans their veto-proof super-majority in the House, and quickly voted with her new pals to chisel away at abortion rights and open a bigger pipeline to funnel public education money into private schooling where accountability doesn't matter.

She was serving -- still is until people vote on Nov. 5th -- HD 112, a majority Democratic Mecklenburg district which she was never going to win again as a Republican. So Destin Hall and his committee obligingly drew Cotham's home into a new District 105, which is said to be 51.3% Republican vs. 46.5% Democratic and 2.2% "Other" (Dave's Redistricting). 

Sometimes a newly adopted political party doesn't trust the turncoat any more than her old political party, and the flyer above does a pretty good job of raising the issue of trustworthiness.

Democratic candidate Nicole Sidman is said to be outraising Cotham, so she's got the money to pile on against Cotham with the same message aimed at the 2.2% Other group, and at those suburban "soft" Republican women. The Sidman campaign is low-key so far, though I see that her team has been holding weekly canvasses, and she's got vols. on the phones. She's teamed up for boots on the ground with overlapping NC Senate candidate Woodson Bradley, and the energy seems as pumped there as it is everywhere else. I'm feeling more confident about Democratic prospects in HD 105.

Money Isn't Everything, But It's Better Than Nothing

 

Article in yesterday's News and Observer highlights fundraising reports in the marquee NC House race between Democrat Nicole Sidman and turncoat Tricia Cotham:

Sidman, a congregational life director at Temple Beth El in Charlotte and the Democratic nominee for the southeast Mecklenburg County House District 105 seat, faces Cotham in November. From Feb. 18 to June 30, Sidman’s campaign raised $264,489.33 — more than four times as much as Cotham during the same period. 

Sidman has raised $317,597.60 this election season, compared to $151,230.49 for Cotham. Contributors to Sidman’s campaign were largely individual donors, while most of Cotham’s money during the period came from political action committees.

Money's not the end-all, be-all of political campaigns, but it's very often a sign of energy, and looking at Nicole Sidman's Facebook page reassures me that she does have boots on the ground because of a large and enthusiastic volunteer base. Meanwhile, Cotham has sugar-daddies whose pudge would preclude any hiking and door-knocking.

Who Will Take On Tricia Cotham? Does It Even Matter?

Two novice Dems and one who's run before but lost (to Tricia Cotham, incidentally) are running now in the HD 105 primary to take on Tricia Cotham this fall: Nicole Sidman, Terry Lansdell, and Yolonda Holmes, all of whom I first profiled here last December 18, 2023, noting at the time that Sidman had high-level connections in the Party for fundraising (from when she ran Christy Clark's successful upset of Republican John Bradford in 2018). She has indeed raised the most money. According to the Charlotte Ledger, prominent local Democrats "seem to be rallying around Sidman," and the Charlotte Observer endorsed her. She's fairly active on Facebook and she's done at least some canvassing for support. Sidman is a lawyer and outreach director at Temple Beth El in Charlotte.

Yolonda Holmes 

N.C. House District 105 contains Matthews, Mint Hill, and parts of south Charlotte. Sidman's chief rival for the nomination appears to be Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools community engagement employee Yolonda Holmes. (The mainstream media spells her first name Yolanda, but it's Yolonda on the candidate's social media.)

Back last December I couldn't find a website or any social media presence for the third candidate in the primary, nonprofit executive Terry Lansdell, and still can't as of today.

The Democrats are hot to get revenge on Tricia Cotham for her treachery, but can any of these three rally the base and win the Unaffiliated?

Yolonda Holmes is quite active on Twitter (where Sidman isn't), likes to be called "Dr. Yo" ("on the GLOW with Dr. Yo!"), and is a "featured" and "targeted" primary candidate for Lillian's List of North Carolina. That gives one pause. So much for the "establishment" support Sidman supposedly enjoys. Why did Lillian's List endorse Yolonda over Nicole?

Holmes has also been endorsed by the Progressive Caucus of NC.

She told the audience at a candidate forum recently that her campaign strategy "is a secret." “Our campaign has been very diligent and strategic, and we have been very secretive in our strategy and will remain that as much,” Holmes said.

The last time we heard about high-level "secret strategies," Richard M. Nixon was president.

Update on the DemPrimary To Oust Tricia Cotham

 

Sidman, Holmes, and Lansdell

Previously, none of the three Democrats in the March primary in House District 105 had any campaign infrastructure or social media presence. Here's what I discover today.

Nicole Sidman

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554729969533
https://twitter.com/nicolefornc
https://www.nicolefornc.com/

Terry Lansdell

No website nor social media found

Yolonda Holmes

https://www.facebook.com/yholmesfornc
https://twitter.com/NcYolonda
https://www.yolondaholmes4nc.com/

Holmes (who seems to have settled how her name must be spelled, with two o's) has the best website, with plenty of platform issues. Holmes also has the most active Facebook and Twitter feeds. Very hard to tell -- impossible from this distance -- who's most active on the ground, knocking doors, making calls, activating the base.

Yolonda Holmes reported about $8,000 cash on hand to the State Board of Elections (SBOE) in May 2022, after she had lost the Democratic primary to now-incumbent Tricia Cotham (at the time, also a Democrat) -- likely leftover cash from that campaign. There's been no fundraising report since then.

Lansdell filed a disclosure report with the SBOE covering only three days in December, listed minimal expenses, and no fundraising as of yet.

Sidwell hasn't filed a Statement of Organization with the SBOE nor any disclosure reports. Strange.

The Democrats Vying To Take on Tricia Cotham

 

The Democrats in the primary for HD 105:
Nicole Sidman, Yolanda Holmes, and Terry Lansdell

Short story: There's no seasoned Democratic star running to take Cotham's purloined House seat away from her. But one of these three will have to emerge and catch fire in a big way. Because Cotham's new gerrymandered district leans Republican. Trump won it in 2020, but so did Roy Cooper.

They predict it'll be the most expensive race for a General Assembly seat in all of North Carolina. The uber-notorious Tricia Cotham will face one of these three Democrats come November, depending on the outcome of the March primary.

I'll be following this race avidly. So far, info on the three is currently rather sparse. As they crank up their campaigns -- i.e., raise money -- we'll see more of their personalities and their plans.

Yolanda Holmes

Yolanda Holmes was first to file, and her name will appear first on the March primary ballot. She spells the first name with two o's -- "Yolonda" -- on Twitter (an account that hasn't been active since May 2022), but everywhere else in the press and on the State Board of Elections site, she's "Yolanda," so I'm confused. The differences in spelling may account for her relative invisibility on-line. So far, I can't find active social media nor a website for her under either spelling.

Holmes ran before in the 2022 primary against Tricia Cotham, who was still a putative Democrat at the time. Holmes came in second to Cotham in a 4-way contest. Cotham, who was making a return to the House as a progressive in a very progressive district, got almost 48% of the vote to Holmes's 31%. (This race was in what was then HD 112, which has been very studiously gerrymandered to help Cotham in 2024.) 

This is what I could find out about Holmes in March of 2022:

Yolanda Holmes is elusive on social media. She has a Facebook page which provides a link to a website, which is locked. The Facebook page is singularly uninformative. Found on the Internet: "The Rev. Dr. Yolanda Holmes, who grew up in the Charleston public schools and is a retired Department of Defense employee, is employed as Family and Community Engagement Coordinator with the CMS Family and Community Engagement office. She is associate pastor of New St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte. She earned a BS degree at Voorhees College, an MS in criminology at Indiana State, another MA in management, then a Ph.D. from Capella University." She works for the Charlotte Meck school system. She's a member of the long-running Mecklenburg County Women’s Advisory Board, an official county-appointed office.

Terry Lansdell

Lansdell didn't file for the seat until Friday morning, sort of at the last minute. "He’s a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission and executive director of BikeWalkNC" (Steve Harrison, WFAE). His Linked In page lists a long history of civic volunteerism with service on numerous boards and commissions invested in clean air, public transportation, and recreation.

When Lansdell was named executive director of BikeWalkNC in 2018, the org. itself published this profile:

In addition to his work with Clean Air Carolina, Terry has extensive experience with non-profits, including work with both Trips for Kids and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Terry’s work to advance sustainability is well known and was recognized by Sustain Charlotte in 2015 when he received their Outstanding Leader Award. His experience with large-scale event planning as well as grant writing will be invaluable to BikeWalk NC as we continue to grow as an organization. Terry’s background with bicycle advocacy is substantial, and his passion for both sustainable transportation and a cleaner environment made him the ideal person for the job. Terry is also an accomplished distance cyclist who has competed in four solo Race Across America events (RAAM), the Race Across the West on a fixed gear bicycle and holds the UMCA state record for North Carolina.

So far as I can discover, Lansdell has no social media nor a website (as of yet).

Nicole Sidman

Sidman beat Lansdell to filing but only by a day. According to Steve Harrison, "She hasn’t run for office before, though she ran Christy Clark’s successful 2018 state House race against Republican John Bradford. Originally from New York, she has been in Charlotte since 2017. She is the director of congregational life at Temple Beth El."

“I saw somebody who had promised her constituents one thing and then within a number of months completely flipped and it was not a decision she made without consequences,” Sidman said. “It was not just a political choice she made. By doing that she has really impacted people’s lives in so many ways.”

Sidman added: “I just felt like this was the opposite of what democracy is supposed to look like. You are supposed to be able to count on the people you voted for.”

Reporter Harrison: Sidman "does have connections, having hosted a fundraiser for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein earlier this year. Will he respond in kind?"

No social media infrastructure for Sidman yet. As she's a veteran operative (the Christy Clark campaign in 2018), she'll surely roll out a whole panoply soon.