"Generation Now" Needs To Saddle Up

 

Younger Democrats are chafing at and increasingly complaining about what they see as the feebleness of the old guard’s efforts to push back against President Trump .... In other words, the younger generation is done with deference.

 --Shane Goldmacher

The truth of that last sentence will be proven when candidate filing for 2026 opens in North Carolina less than nine months from now (on December 1st). I want to see younger Democrats filing for offices up and down the ballot, but wait! I intend they be young Democrats smart enough to gather a team and a strategic plan for raising unholy hell, which will include raising unholy money. 

I don't mean starry-eyed moon children who've never been involved in any political activity and who all-too-often think too much and do too little, who in fact sometimes mistake thought for action. I want the young Democrats who've participated already in the trenches, as campaign operatives or volunteers, who understand what's involved and have innovative ideas about thinking outta the box. That's actually a respectable number of young people in North Carolina, experienced political operatives under the age of 30. That's who I'm talking about.

Here's the catch: Sometimes the talented ranks of young organizers aren't always also gifted with speaking abilities and a talent for connecting with people.

Here's the other catch (aside from lack of money, which is a killer catch): Young Democrats experienced in the political arts, particularly in gerrymandered districts where Democrats don't win -- their knowledge of local reality makes the very thought of running a joke. 

Totally understandable. And forgivable. I'm a realist (at least on Saturdays).

But there are districts on the cusp, not necessarily in Western North Carolina -- those semi-urban and suburban NCHouse and Senate districts all over the state that I've written about since 2018. Those districts might be rated R+5, but in a backlash year -- anger/disappointment/indifference for the whole of the NCGOP and their caesar(s) --that +5 can turn mirage very quickly.

Anderson Clayton Will Continue

 

The best NCDemParty Chair we've seen in maybe decades, AppState grad Anderson Clayton, who took the reins of the NCDP two years ago, has just announced that she's running for another term.

She has a website up, from which I borrow:

Anderson Clayton is an organizer by trade, a proud rural North Carolinian, and the current Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. After winning election (and becoming the youngest state party chair in the country) in 2023, she has spent the last two years working to build a better, more responsive NC Democratic Party.

Under Anderson’s tenure, the NCDP has invested in year-round, local organizing; recruiting and supporting candidates who understand that good politicians are good public servants first; and building the infrastructure to win back Democratic power in NC within the next decade.

Anderson has been unstoppable -- quite literally, in motion all the time, visiting all the far-flung county parties had have struggled to redefine themselves in this new dark age, duplicating the Howard Dean model of carrying the banner of the Democratic Party to every red corner. After she took the reins, Clayton immediately became a media presence whose power for communicating far exceeds anything we're remotely used to or could have imagined. She's quick-witted, always prepared, with a common touch and a country accent that puts me in mind of Nashville at its most honest. This line in her announcement letter also caught my attention and represents the heaviest lifting a state party chair has to do:

North Carolina Democrats believe in ceding no ground to the Republican Party, and I promise that we will continue to aggressively recruit candidates to contest every single race.

No one can touch her. No one will run against her. We've got another two super-charged years ahead of us with Anderson at the helm.

A Little Cloud About the Size of a Man's Hand

 

Finally the seventh time, his servant told him, “I saw a little cloud about the size of a man's hand rising from the sea.” Then Elijah shouted, “Hurry to Ahab and tell him, 'Climb into your chariot and go back home. If you don't hurry, the rain will stop you!' "

--I Kings 18:44-46 

A week or so ago, we published Jack Yordy's report, "Election Excitment," because I take seriously any on-the-ground, in-the-trenches reports on "Democratic performance" upcoming, i.e., enthusiasm for voting and getting other people to vote. "Enthusiasm" can be gauged by registration drives, door-knocking, phone-calling, lit drops, and other voter out-reach -- all of which takes numerous volunteers willing to spend their time on a cause.

I'd like to get more such reports, especially from Democratic parties in Franklin, Nash, Vance, New Hanover, Buncombe, and Cabarrus counties, where the great Chance of 2024 seems to lie, the Democratic goal of breaking the veto-proof Republican majority in both NC House and Senate. I've done some looking at specific county DemsParty websites and their social media presence, and done the inevitable but odorous comparison to the WataugaDems website/media.

Some counties have far more to look at than others -- more info, more evidence of activity, more links for volunteers. Not so surprising that some county parties offer no detailed calendar, or only anemic "events" pages. Watauga's, for example is skimpy and clearly not up to date. Doesn't look like much going on, but here's what you have to realize if you're judging voter enthusiasm by a county party's outward appearance: Some counties, like most certainly Watauga, do not share their ground-game activities outside the bubble of the volunteer base.

Another reason for skimpy info/evidence of life: Most Dem web masters and social media admins are volunteers, whose other lives often limit their daily postings for the Party, or they don't think strategically about PR.

Any county party, especially in this Year of Our Lord 2024, should always have more going on than meets the eye, mainly because of what Party Chair Anderson Clayton (the great) identified as her goal, which ought to be our side's motto: "I don’t want anybody to see me coming." In glaring contrast, we see very clearly the Trump mechanism coming for us, like a D-10 dozer. But we have ways to take the tracks off that  contraption. And we benefit from seeming a mere blur of rainy weather on the distant horizon.

The Party Unifies

By Jack Yordy, guest-posting:

This past Saturday, July 20th, I went to the North Carolina Democratic Party Unity Dinner, along with 900 delegates, elected officials, staffers, volunteers, donors, and Democrats. The energy at the event was very positive, even before the news of Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race. Democrats at the Unity Dinner were excited. The speakers, including our electric party chair Anderson Clayton, and the formidable former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, energized the crowd and reinforced our commitment to working hard and winning elections in 2024. Unity was the right word to describe the atmosphere. We knew the odds were tough and the road to winning would be hard, but together, we were ready for it.

The very next day, President Joe Biden announced his decision to drop out of the presidential election and the meaning of the word unity changed. Before, we were unified in our determination to beat the odds and fight what many were starting to believe was a losing battle. It was a convicted, resolute, stubborn unity, but not a very hopeful one. Today, we are unified not only in our convictions and fortitude. We are unified in hope. Democrats are feeling reinvigorated. We young Democrats in particular finally have a vision for the future, something to fight toward rather than against. 

The highlighted message of the Republican National Convention last week was that Donald Trump would be a new man, ready to unify the country. Of course, nothing new came from him at the RNC. He is the same man spouting the same hateful rhetoric. Before Biden dropped out of the race, Democrats couldn’t substantively dispute those claims despite Trump’s continued divisiveness. We were airing out all our dirty laundry for the world to see, riddled with panic and division over questions about Joe Biden’s capabilities. Now the Democrats are showing the world how unity is done. 

State delegations, elected officials, power brokers, and grassroots organizers have unified around Vice President Harris. The party is ready to make her the next president of the United States. Not just because we must beat Donald Trump, not just because we must beat Project 2025, but because she is capable of bringing our country into a new era of prosperity, progress, and, yes, unity. 

Money Isn't Everything But It Beats 2nd Place

 

Kudos to the youngest Democratic party chair in the nation. Anderson Clayton deserves much of the credit for excellent fundraising, as she has brought a new energy and a bright vision, and she seems downright indefatigable criss-crossing the state, holding events, cheering on the troops especially in formerly neglected counties where Democrats have in some cases just given up all hope.

Colin Campbell reported:

So far this election cycle, the state Democratic party has raised $5.26 million for its state and federal campaign accounts. The state Republican Party, meanwhile, has raised over $3.34 million across its accounts.

As of the latest campaign finance reports in February, the N.C. Democratic Party had $2.44 million on hand, while the NCGOP had $871,000.

This success is naturally driving MAGA mad. Anderson's personal mantra of "outwork, out-organize, outlast" has them rattled, and they are trying to tear her down. Someone even posted that she looked a lot older than 26, implying ... what? That she's a 50-year-old political ringer brought in to impersonate a vivacious and successful political organizer in her mid-20s who refuses to accept that the North Carolina Democratic Party was finished after the election of 2020. Suck it, GOP.

Clayton will be holding an April 14th fundraiser for the Watauga Democratic Party at Ski Mountain resort between Boone and Blowing Rock. You can get tickets to come see and hear her rousing message of rock-'em, sock-'em for 2024 here.

Nothing Wrong With Democratic "Performance" During Filing

 

I'm indebted to Bryan Anderson and his Substack feature "Anderson Alerts" for this piece of intel: As of yesterday noon (the close of candidate filing in NC), of "120 seats in the NC House, 50 in the NC Senate, 14 U.S. House seats, 10 in Council of State races and four statewide judicial contests, a Democrat will be running in all but four of the 198 races."

That's incredible. Especially considering everything the Republicans have done to gerrymander Democrats into a tiny corner and pass other vote-suppression measures intended to keep the GOP in power forever.

Much of the credit goes to Anderson Clayton, the new Chair of the Party, whose very presence at the helm has inspired so much renewed energy and resolve to keep up the fight even against terrible odds.

The Wheel of Fortune

 

The following headline first appeared in the NandO on August 31st -- last Thursday -- but I didn't clap my eyes on it until yesterday: "How US allowed pandemic relief to go to NC companies involved in politics and lobbying." Whoa, Nelly! How did that get past me?

And it was well worth reading, too! Danielle Battaglia reports on a number of political consulting "shops" in North Carolina, both Republican and Democrat, that on-the-face-of-it violated longstanding Federal Small Business Admin rules to get their hands on sizable chunks of what turned out to be "free money" -- big loans under the COVID-inspired Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), loans that got forgiven:

When Congress authorized the PPP loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration to help companies harmed by shutdowns as COVID-19 spread, a longstanding Small Business Administration rule still applied that excluded those primarily engaged in lobbying or political activities from applying for agency loans. It was believed that federal tax money should not be invested into those activities. 

The rules allowed some firms in those industries to apply, but only if lobbying or political activity were not their “primary” lines of work. [Italics added]

A good part of Battaglia's long article includes quotes from various high-ranking political operatives arguing that their loans were perfectly legal and aboveboard because only 49.5% of their paid work is actual politics -- something like that. Something hilarious. But I'm less interested in that argument -- because the underlying SBA rule against political activity seems arbitrary -- than I am in the professional details of someone who looms large in my world.

The Democratic consultants exposed by Battaglia, primarily "the Governor's man" Morgan Jackson, have remained largely anonymous to the general public. They're the invisible hands of any government that's politically constituted. They guide policy and decide on personnel at all the levels that matter, from who gets to be on the State Board of Elections to how a statewide campaign for governor will be run.

Morgan Jackson is the Democrat's guy. So I want to know about him, and Danielle Battaglia scratched my itch. Everything below is 100% the reporting of Battaglia:

On April 27, 2020, Nexus Strategies received an $82,747 PPP loan, later forgiven with interest. Scott Falmlen and Morgan Jackson, partners at Nexus Strategies, that year worked with campaigns in North Carolina for Democratic candidates such as Joe Biden, Gov. Roy Cooper and failed U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham.

Jackson said most of their business is based in public affairs, not politics.

“I’m not sure how you differentiate from advising a sitting governor, and politics,” said Jane Pinsky, director of the North Carolina Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform.

Hall added that Nexus does a lot of compliance work for Democratic campaigns.

In 2019, Nexus Strategies was registered with the North Carolina secretary of state’s office as doing “Political/Government Affairs Consulting.” After 2019, the company registered as “Political/Public Affairs Consulting.”

The firm received its PPP loan after listing the company under the category of “all other professional, scientific, and technical.” Nexus Strategies said in its application that it employed four people. Three of the four employee profiles on its website highlight their work in politics.

On the Nexus website, Falmlen’s profile states he is active in public service and advising elected officials and policy makers at the federal, state and local levels.

Jackson’s profile lists him as “a veteran of a number of high profile political and public policy efforts” and that he has served in senior roles for presidential, gubernatorial and congressional candidates. It also states that he advises government officials from the governor to legislative leaders and everyone in between. He stresses that he’s a longtime adviser to Cooper.

Jackson said his organization was within its rights to apply. “We qualified due to the fact that the majority of our business is derived from public affairs and communications and not from political consulting,” Jackson told McClatchy.

Jackson had told The Charlotte Observer for a story in May 2020 that the company would not be applying for the loan.

Hopeless Target: Moore County (Or Not)

 

Moore County (with its small towns of Carthage, Pinehurst, Southern Pines, and other white-shoe enclaves) does not vote for Democrats unless they're running unopposed (it's happened twice in the last dozen years), and according to records kept by the State Board of Elections, the last time straight-ticket voting was allowed in 2010, some 66.64% of Moore County voters voted straight Republican. Moore is also, incidentally, the home county for Brant Clifton and The Daily Haymaker, the epitome of hard-right Republican acid-bath.

Into such forbidding terrain comes last Monday Anderson Clayton, the 20-something new chair of the NC Democratic Party, in her quest to awaken progressive grassroots in all 100 counties, even the most discouraging ones. This was her reception on the early evening of July 18th in the courtyard next to the Pinehurst Village Hall, gathering the corps of what could become the 2024 ground troops all across the state.

We're constantly reminded of the courage of Howard Dean's "50-state strategy" when he was chair of the DNC, the courage it took and the results it showed. 2006 was the first year Democrats in Watauga County swept the county commission.

We also note that a coalition of progressive orgs is bringing next Monday, July 24, the #UniteNC "accountability tour town hall" to the county seat of Carthage. These town halls, sponsored by Common Cause, NAACP, League of Women Voters, and others, aim to rally opposition to the multitude of regressive and oppressive actions taken by the Republican General Assembly in Raleigh, from regressive court rulings, a new redistricting cycle, and all-important ballot-access,

There are a bunch of other deep-red counties like Moore, and may The Awakening continue.

BREAKING: Anderson Clayton Elected Chair of the NCDP

 

T. Keung Hui, for the Charlotte Observer:

A 25-year-old activist has ousted an incumbent who had backing from the state’s top party leaders to become the new chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. 

Anderson Clayton, the Person County Democratic Party chair and president of the state party chairs’ association, was elected Saturday to a two-year term as party chair by the N.C. Democratic Party’s Executive Committee, according to multiple sources in the party. 

Clayton had campaigned on the need for change following last fall’s Democratic losses in state races. Democrats lost control of the N.C. Supreme Court, were swept in the N.C. Court of Appeals and lost seats in the General Assembly. Clayton beat incumbent chair Bobbie Richardson, who had been backed by party leaders such as Gov. Roy Cooper and state Attorney General Josh Stein. Richardson, a former state lawmaker, had become the N.C. Democratic Party’s first Black chair in 2021.

Sisyphus Was a Bad Democrat (In Which I Sass Thomas Mills)

 

Most all troubles come from having standards.

--Thomas Berger, Little Big Man

We Democrats are deciduous. We fade, lose heart, become torpid, languish, then the sap rises again and we are passionate.

--Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat

Democrats are always characterized by their gene for unrequited conciliation.

--Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close To Call

Jerry Meek, 2007

Democratic blogger and political consultant Thomas Mills dropped a turd in the punchbowl yesterday -- "The Low Stakes of State Party Chair" -- in which he argues that even if the reformist insurgency of Anderson Clayton wins the election for party chair today, it won't make any difference. Oh, it'll produce a momentary high for the young and the restless. But then, deflation. "The party chair only has as much power as the establishment, both here and in Washington, allows," Mills concludes. "The chair will either cooperate and become an arm of that establishment and have money, or they will buck the establishment and have none."

I pay attention to Thomas Mills, even when he makes me wince. He's a righteous Democrat, gives off the aura of a scrappy street-fighter, but generally speaking, he's moderate to the point of caution. Mills helped recruit Dan McCready to run for Congress in 2017 and worked as a paid consultant on that 2018 campaign. McCready wrote the definitive book on caution. He's not currently in Congress.

Mills remembers the last insurgency that took over the state party differently from me, the administration of Jerry Meek, but Mills was in a better position to observe and knew the insiders better than I, so I don't discount his recitation of facts: 

While he was popular with the party base, Meek never established much of a working relationship with Easley. Not much really changed within party headquarters. The executive director, who oversees the day-to-day operation of the party, stayed the same and kept his working relationship with the governor, which in turn kept the funds necessary to keep the party operational. The state house and state senate caucuses continued to operate as if nothing had happened. Meek was able to tamp down the restlessness among the party faithful, but he couldn’t change the fundamental reality of politics: it takes money, and lots of it.

One correction: Our "restlessness" with the state party in Watauga was more than "tamped down" during those Jerry Meek years. From our perspective, we had a much more open road, paved with cooperation from Raleigh, leading directly to the total sweep of president, governor, and US Senator in 2008 because we had tested and perfected an intense, data-driven field operation (Meek himself came to one of our canvasses to learn). I give Jerry Meek credit for turning several county parties around between 2004 and 2008, because he was deliberately pursuing a "hundred-county strategy" inspired by Howard Dean's "fifty-state strategy." 

Yet Mills doesn't think his impact amounted to much. Maybe he's right. But I'm pretty dug in with my lived experience.

Mills's downer post isn't just about seeing political history differently. It's also about declaring that the current enthusiasm for change in the party is doomed from the get-go, that "not much is going to change regardless of who is state party chair" because of the stranglehold of a self-interested Establishment. The money grip is iron -- eternal, ineluctable, and insidious. 

Much of the dissatisfaction of the party is far beyond anybody’s control. Those who believe Democrats need a year-round organizing operation have never said how they plan to fund it. The state Democratic Party is dependent on the support of the governor or from some organizational component of the national party. There’s no independent funding base for the North Carolina Democratic Party itself.

[Current party chair Bobbie] Richardson is getting blamed for not implementing a robust statewide field program during the 2022 cycle, but that’s not her fault. All of those operations are funded by national money and have been for decades. In 2022, those folks largely took a pass on North Carolina. Field programs are expensive and take millions of dollars to implement in a state the size of North Carolina.

Money, of course, but also whatcha gonna do with money once you get it?

If I believed that no amount of reform, even reform mixed with a widespread willingness to spend sweat equity, was bound to fail, even as it was being born, how the hell could I go on as a party activist? Hell, how could I go on paying the bills as a simple functioning member of a community held together by a social contract?

Yeah, I'm a fucking idealist.

What's Wrong With NC Democrats?

 

Jeffrey Billman is the best hoof journalist in the state. I first read his writing in Indy Week, where he was editor-in-chief for several years. I followed him to an emailed (sometimes daily) political newsletter, "Primer North Carolina," where I learned significant facts about consequential goings-on and admired his clarity, his depth, his instinct for finding the pulse of things, the greatest talent of any good investigative journalist. Billman's a prolific freelance now, and thank gawd for new internet publications like The Assembly, willing to underwrite good investigative journalism. (Subscriptions are more than reasonable and worth it.)

Jeffrey Billman has produced for The Assembly the most revealing investigation of the current fight for the chairmanship of the NCDP, between a 73-year-old incumbent blamed by many grassroots activists for the 2022 debacle and a 25-year-old upstart with proven skills for winning unlikely campaigns. (I've written extensively about both Bobbie Richardson and Anderson Clayton and don't intend to write more. Use the search function up top, if you don't believe me.)

For his article on the Democrats, "Tangled Up in Blue," Billman interviewed a lot of people, but the interview he landed with Morgan Jackson is by far the most diagnostic of what's gone wrong with the Democrats. Morgan Jackson is Chief Political Strategist for Governor Cooper and also for Josh Stein ("Governor in '24!"), and the state Party has traditionally spent money the way the chief political strategist for the governor wanted it spent. So in the current struggle for the chairmanship, you don't get any more establishment than Morgan Jackson. Jackson has his own consulting firm, Nexus Strategies. He has a clear financial stake in the status quo, which happens to be the reelection of Bobbie Richardson. for it's in his interest and in the collective interests of his guys to make sure the gears are turning correctly down at the state Democratic Party HDQs. 

"It all begins and ends with money," Jackson told Billman. Which ... no kidding!

So the big establishment doubt about Anderson Clayton, the insurgent, is pecuniary. Can a 25-year-old upstart be able to raise the money? Billman says the party under Richardson's management raised a record $29 million in the '21-'22 cycle. Can Anderson Clayton do as well? Or even rake in a more average $20 million? She'll actually need more than that to mount a sustenance plan for activist organizing in the rural counties.

You betcha the money will come for Anderson Clayton!  I feel it myself. I don't think I've ever given anything directly to the state Dems (except my sweat and my blood), but with a new leader who has both a vision and a clue, I would be generous. Others would too. The fecklessness of the Raleigh apparatus frankly caused me to resent the county party's assessment for "the sustaining fund," which all county parties are required to pay to the central office. What's the money going to? 

Clayton doesn't lack for confidence in herself. She forecast to Billman that "donors will open their wallets if there’s a clear vision for how to make North Carolina a beacon of the South.” I agree. 

Jonah Garson, the young Chapel Hill lawyer who ran for the NC House in 2020 in the Democratic primary and is a past chair of the Orange County Democratic Party and is currently running for one of the vice-chairmanships of the state party, told Billman:

“I know from being in conversations with donors, mainly in the context of resourcing legislative campaigns, but also as chair of the Orange County Democrats, that there are a number of donors in state and out of state who would love to fund and feel a part of aggressive, on-the-ground field operations,” he said. “But you just need a strong, credible vehicle for building out strategies and executing plans.”

 "Aggressive, on-the-ground field operations." 

Orange County Senator Graig Meyer agreed that the state party has lacked a taste for blood, shying away from aggressive politics and "too dependent on outside groups to attack Republicans instead of doing it themselves." For example, Ted Budd never got successfully tagged as the good ole boy extremist he was.

Anderson Clayton gets the last word: "This party needs bite again."

We'll find out Saturday.

North Carolina Democrats Will Decide Their Future This Weekend

 

Paige Masten put together a good article focusing on the current fight for the leadership of the NC Democratic Party, "After string of losses, some NC Democrats are seeking a new direction," to which a chorus in my immediate vicinity said, "No kidding!" The vote by the Democratic State Executive Committee (SEC) will be this Saturday in a virtual meeting.

Masten's article highlighted the insurgent challenge for the chairmanship of a badly damaged party by Anderson Clayton, about whom I've already written (and cheered) and for whom I feel some grasping hope for the future of the NCDP. The race between Clayton and current chair Bobbie Richardson has certainly turned into Establishment vs. Grassroots Activist, with all the big establishment dogs lining up behind Richardson -- Gov. Cooper, Josh Stein, Cheri Beasley, Jeff Jackson (a particularly disappointing endorsement, because it signals that the congressman is very comfortable with how elections are currently managed in North Carolina, off-brand for Jackson). I wrote it earlier: Richardson has shown little discernible introspection about what's not working in the Party's current iteration. When asked at the Progressive Dems candidate forum what ideas she found useful coming from her competitors, she couldn't think of a thing.

Late yesterday, Indy Week editor Jane Porter announced her publication's endorsement of Clayton, and Carolina Forward director Blair Reeves published an editorial, "Are NC Democrats Ready for a Reckoning?" in which he complains about "the party’s low-energy, battleplan-by-faculty-committee approach." It's all an implicit attack on Bobbie Richardson's administration, though he never mentions her name, and he never comes out and endorses Anderson Clayton (maybe he supports one of the other candidates. There are now four, I believe. There had been five. One of them, Eva Lee of Raleigh, ran as an insurgent progressive with bold ideas for reform but announced on Facebook on January 31 that she was dropping out and endorsing Richardson. Lee included a lengthy explanation for her change of heart in which she admits that she was conclusively swayed by Roy Cooper and the other bigwigs. So much for The Crusade. That Facebook post appears to have disappeared.

I'm clearly a partisan in this race, though I have no vote. Watauga County as a whole has four SEC votes. But it's the big counties of Wake and Mecklenburg and Forsyth and Guilford that have the majority of the 800 SEC votes, because county allotments are made on the basis of total number of votes for governor in the last election. (You see how this pie is baked.) In other words, if delegates are unwilling to buck the Establishment, like Eva Lee, Richardson wins.

Anderson Clayton deserves to win. She's traveled to county parties all over the state, gathering intel on what the more rural counties think and what they want and what they've learned, and through very effective social media she's energized Gen Z with a fire for doing the hard work. I worry actively about where all that new energy goes if Clayton doesn't win. Who wants the same old thing, the top-down (and trickle-down) distribution of party assets? Who wants more of the same? We stand to lose volunteers. Without volunteers, there's no ground game. People will leave not out of spite and anger (oh some will be spiteful and angry) but out of depressive hopelessness that anything is gonna come from the effort.

Time for New Leadership at the NCDP

 

I wasn't gonna flap my fat lip about insider Democratic Party stuff -- at least not right now -- but Governor Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein -- Democrats both -- force my hand by endorsing Bobbie Richardson for another term as chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. Following that disastrous election. Josh Stein just yesterday allowed Richardson to put his picture and his endorsement on her social media, and Gov. Cooper endorsed her a couple of days before that.

Meanwhile, Anderson Clayton of Person County has been endorsed (according to her own website) by over 90 Democratic leaders, particularly young electeds and Party activists in rural counties looking for a different kind of losing proposition, maybe even a winning formula.  (There are others in the race for Chair; see below.)

Why Cooper and Stein did their endorsements I don't know -- I'm planning to guess, by-'n'-by -- but it certainly brands the coming election of Party leadership as Establishment v. The Folks With Pitchforks and Big Jugs of Vinegar. The State Executive Committee (SEC), made up of over 800 voting members from all (?) the 100 counties, will elect the Party chair (and several other sub-chairs) at a regular Winter Meeting on February 11.

The last time the establishment candidate for party chair lost the SEC election was in 2005. That was the year of Jerry Meek, who was the insurgent reformer running against the establishment candidate Ed Turlington. Governor Mike Easley had endorsed Turlington. But Meek won. It was a surprise, apparently, and the Howard Dean-inspired upstarts made some real gains in 2006 and 2008. Jerry Meek was, in my long experience with the NCDP, the best state Party chair of this century. Whoever wrote his Wikipedia entry got it right:

As State Chair, Meek worked aggressively to rebuild the State Party’s grassroots network, to expand services and support to local party organizations, to make better use of technology, and to encourage new people – especially young people – to become active in the Democratic Party. He retired as party chair in 2009....

Meek got measurable results in the general elections of both 2006 and 2008, when Barack Obama and Bev Perdue and Kay Hagan all won the state. The general elections of 2006, in rural counties in western North Carolina, were a no less stunningly good year, because County parties that had been fading away got their gumption back, and fought back, and took local offices (don't ask me for exact numbers, except this one: In Watauga County in 2006, Democrats swept all the local races, from sheriff to county commission, and helped elect Steve Goss to the Senate and Cullie Tarleton to the House. During his tenure as chair, Meek came to Watauga more than once, learned how we do canvassing by going canvassing with us, and he convened the one and only -- far as I know -- round-table for progressive bloggers at Party HDQs in Raleigh, where I met some of the activists still kicking.

So the point is, an insurgent candidate like Anderson Clayton could surprise everyone. And do us a world of good.

Why Anderson Clayton?

Right off the bat I've got to admit that I've known her for years, and I know the tactical incubator that birthed her. Anderson was a rising leader in the AppState Student Government Assoc. at the same time Watauga Democrats were perfecting their staffing model for field and for mobilizing young voters. Anderson rose in the SGA Senate, won president of SGA in 2017, because she had the qualities of born leadership, and good political instincts, and she was key in galvanizing the college cohort to participate in our democracy. 

She's still young (25), vivacious, smart -- she majored in poly sci and journalism at AppState. Grew up in Roxboro in Person County (up along the northern border with Virginia), and when she got back there after AppState, she immediately took the reins of the Person County Democratic Party, "at a crisis point .... Within two years, Anderson led Person County to flip the Roxboro City Council and flip a seat in the NC House—one of just two red-to-blue flips in the House in ’22" (Clayton website).

On her Linked-In page, Clayton names Rural Innovation Network (RIN) as her current employer, working as a "broadband analyst," which captures some of RIN's focus on helping develop tech infrastructure in rural county cultures. RIN's website says the org has developed outposts in 34 different counties across the nation, including one in Wilkes County, where "local leaders are focused on educating and training local residents in tech skills (especially those traditionally excluded from the tech industry), employing them in new economy jobs, and empowering them to launch startups that will drive a prosperous 21st-century economy."

Anderson promises, "We can break the cycle of Democratic decline," a flash of both hopefulness and frankness that's required when the current Party leadership seems loath to admit anything could have been done differently or better in the future. I understand why gentlemen at the top of the ticket might want control of the State Party -- the so-called "coordinated campaigns" run by the state party have always been skewed to the messaging strategy and tactics of the Top Dog, usually the Guv, which Josh Stein is trying to be.

Stein's surprising, even electrifying preemptive attack on Mark Robinson in his announcement video earlier this week -- that rallied me for a Governor candidate who's going to be under vicious attack constantly. But Stein's endorsement of Richardson sends exactly the opposite message for me, that he's nervous about grassroots and progressive energy in this Party. Granted, the grassroots can sometimes grow stinky weeds. I'm willing to admit it. But a Party stuck in neutral, doing the same things again, that's not for me.

Others in the Race for Chair

Aside from incumbent Chair Bobbie Richardson (about whom I expressed an opinion back in December)....

Eric Terashima (website), a retired career Marine, former chair of the Brunswick County Party, and a losing candidate for the NC House.

LeVon Barnes ran for Durham City Council in 2017 and for the Durham County Board of Commish in 2020 and lost both times in the primaries.

Scott Huffman (2022 congressional candidate website) has become something of a perennial candidate, running for Congress in NC-8 in the Democratic primary in 2018, in the 2020 congressional election in NC-13, and in the NC-8 congressional election in 2022. He lost all of those.

Eva Lee, Wake County activist who toyed with running both a senatorial campaign and a campaign for state Labor Commissioner in 2020 (according to Ballotpedia) but never put her name on the ballot.

And there may well be additional candidates in the days ahead before February 11th.

How To Fall Upstairs and Find God

 

NC Democratic Party Chair Bobbie Richardson has published a post-election statement, and I rather wish she hadn't. Because she has also apparently stated her intent to run in a few months for reelection to another two-year term as State Party Chair, and the editorial she published does not reflect any critical understanding of, nor interest in, why North Carolina failed to achieve more success in the last elections or even what might be done differently. If Richardson stays as the leader, there's no apparent path for change in how the NCDP runs and wins campaigns.

I saw Richardson's statement in the Indy Week, headlined "In This Year's Midterm Election, Democracy Won." I think it must have been "exclusive" to Indy Week, because a quick Google search finds it nada. If it's published on the NCDP website, even, it's well hidden. In other words, it's not a piece of post-election analysis that's likely to get any play.

In fact, it's not a piece of post-election analysis at all. The whole thing celebrates every other state that went blue or purple because of their passion to save women's rights and turn back MAGA extremism, and that kind of celebration really leaves North Carolina out, because here things most certainly got redder, devastatingly so. "The American people did our part," Richardson writes, but why didn’t North Carolina? Cheerleading about the voting power of "Americans" seems a bit tone-deaf.

What happened in North Carolina looks like bloodshed compared to the other states of blessed moment.

Richardson gets as close as she dares to the unpleasantness way down in paragraph 6, but even then she wants to bury the bad news at the end of the paragraph:

North Carolinians chose election denier Ted Budd to serve in the U.S. Senate, and voters elected a conservative majority to the state supreme court. These losses are devastating for our democracy, but we must not grow weary. Our democracy is worth fighting for, and we will never give up on it.

But that's it, so far as introspection, or acknowledging failed technique, strategy, or messaging, and with no hint of even a curiosity about what we might do better in the future as a Party.

Granted, the duties of the top leadership of the state Democratic Party tilt more to the ceremonial, which includes rah-rah morale boosts, than to supervision of daily Party operations, data management, targeting, messaging, let alone the arduous, almost impossible task of recruiting candidates in every NC House and Senate district, among other races. Party Chairs are more figureheads than strategists, more fundraisers than accountants, more cheerleaders than the callers of plays, and they rely entirely on a staff that they have hiring and firing power over. And hence the power to mandate new directions, new "best practices."

The Executive Director runs the operation and has a staff with titles like "Political Director," "Finance Director, " "Coordinated Development Director," etc. There is no "Data Director" currently listed, and one of the frequent complaints in 2022 against the State Party involved reduced access to targeting data, and a problematic lag sometimes in getting it, as though State Party operations don't trust a county like Watauga to manage its own data and messaging.

A major change in "operations" at the State Party can't happen without, first, acknowledgement that some things need changing. Without it, doing the same things over again like they were done in 2022 seems likely for the NCDP, like a longer version of the movie "Memento" in which the hero/victim leads his life in perpetual reverse.

Bobbie Richardson's reelection as NCDP chair, or not, will occur at the winter SEC (State Executive Committee) meeting in a couple of months. I have heard of at least one challenger.

Just How Bad Was Democratic Performance in 2022 in NC?

 

Michael Bitzer, the numbers man at Catawba College, published a graph-heavy assessment of turnout in last month's election. Jane Porter, for the Indy Week newsletter, extracted some bottomlines (for which I'm most grateful). The sum and substance ain't pretty. The Democrats need to reassess what they've been doing and do something very differently.

3.7 million North Carolinians cast a ballot in last month's election, or 51 percent of all of the state's registered voters

58.4 percent of registered Republicans turned out
51.2 percent of registered Democrats turned out
44.7 percent of registered Unaffiliated voters turned out
54 percent of registered Greens and 30 percent of registered Libertarians turned out

58 percent of white non-Hispanic voters turned out
42 percent of Black/African American non-Hispanic voters turned out
26 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters turned out
37 percent of all other non-Hispanic races turned out
34 percent of voters whose race was unreported turned out

24 percent of Gen Z voters (ages 18-25) turned out
35 percent of registered Millennial voters (ages 26-41) turned out
55 percent Generation X voters (ages 42-57) turned out
71 percent of Boomers (ages 58 to 76) turned out
66 percent of Silent Generation voters (ages 77 to 111) turned out

47 percent of voters living in central cities turned out
54 percent of voters living in urban suburbs turned out
52 percent of voters living in surrounding suburban counties turned out
51 percent of voters living in rural counties turned out

Bitzer calls this mid-term's crop of voters "Whiter, older, more Republican." Here are his conclusions:

For Republicans, it's simple: keep doing what you do. In the short-run, higher turnout rates for key GOP groups will continue to see you win the "competitive but stuck" battleground electoral environment, at least state-wide.

For Democrats, it's also simple: if you want to keep your federal candidates getting 48 to 49 percent of the vote, but lose to Republicans by the narrowest of margins time after time, keep doing what you are doing. Keep getting your registered partisans to show up just at the state-level, but allow your partisan opponents to show up at a higher rate. Ignore turning out voters under 40 years old, ignore turning out out core Black/African American voters, and ignore your regional dominance in the central cities.

In the end, it wasn't that Democrats like Cheri Beasley did as well as she did in what was presented as a classic mid-term environment, but rather she did as well despite the fact that core Democratic voting blocks has abysmal turnout rates.

And it may seem like we say this every election cycle, but in North Carolina, it's true: it's all about who shows up and turns out. Once again, 2022 repeats the consistency of North Carolina's electoral politics as a 'stuck battleground' state, and in the end, turnout matters.

 

Demands Being Made of the NCDP

 

So I was indulging my daily graze of the InnerWebs, when I was arrested by this headline: "Backtalk: NCDP is a concentrated pool of ineptitude ... And other things our readers told us this week."

"NCDP" being the North Carolina Democratic Party. So naturally, waxing either narcissistic or masochistic -- take your pick! -- I clicked. The article is a compilation of comments solicited by Jane Porter, editor of the Indy Weekly who invited subscribers of the Indy Week newsletter for "ideas about how progressives can do better in turning out rural voters and rural voters of color in 2024 and beyond."

Working 2022 in a largely rural county, even one with a university, in the western NC mtns, has given us some 30 years of experience in motivating the vote, naturally with some successes and some whopping failures. Sad to say, with that experience in mind, we ended this campaign season feeling not just let down by the state Party but actually hindered at times, deliberately. I won't get into the technicals, the databases and their access. But as a very active and organized county Party, Watauga has long turned jaundiced eyes on "Coordinated Campaigns," which tend to rule the flow of resources in a General Election cycle. We have not found "Coordinated Campaigns" coordinated. They more often come with top-down dictums that only have the top of the ticket's message in mind -- the governor's or the president's or, in 2022, Cheri Beasley's. Those top campaigns, run by consultants and strategists and contractors who are all making money on it, often have little salience in a rural county, relying way too much on paper postcard excess and TV saturation and not enough on on-going, on the ground voter registration and engagement.

Down Home North Carolina, founded in 2017 and so far well funded, has a new model of paid canvassers, and because they are paid, they are also trained to engage in conversations at the door about stuff that animates wage workers. Any canvassing is essential, of course, though sometimes the training is de minimis. Many county parties and individual candidate campaigns have mounted big canvasses, and will continue to do so, but sustaining a purely volunteer force year and after is very tough, and the difficulty of replacing those who age out is the curse of rural America. So a paid force carrying a unified message and technique offers an appealing alternative to giving so much of the money to consultants and contractors.

Dustin Ingalls, one of the commenters on Indy Weekly, included Down Home in a longer list of brand new orgs who are doing good work in rural NC, all of them with a crying need for more financial backing: "We need to scale up programs that already exist from organizations like Down Home, New Rural Project, New NC Project, NCLCV Foundation, and A. Philip Randolph Institute. They’re already on the ground doing the work to register and regularly communicate with voters of color and white rural voters who might align with progressive values, but they don’t have enough money to hire enough staff to recruit and train enough volunteers and knock enough doors." An '07 graduate of UNC, Ingalls is the political director of the Environmental Defense Fund NC chapter, and lists a long, impressive string of activist immersions in progressive causes.

Paying volunteers? In some circles, it's a radical idea -- "Why, how come we have to pay people to do the right thing for the future of America?" But we have some evidence that maybe, seems like, the state Party might give it a try, diverting some of the large budget from professional consultants to paid volunteer recruitment, training, and employment. Wouldn't take that much in the blessed scheme of things.

"More consistent organizing," to be implemented and led --  somehow, someway -- by the state Party, that is the overriding theme of the criticism.

We Need Another Stacey Abrams in North Carolina

 

Next month, the state executive committee of the North Carolina Democratic Party will vote on a new chair for the state party. The only announced candidate for the job right now is Bobbie Richardson, who is currently 1st vice chair and a former member of the NC House. She was appointed to the Dist. 7 House seat in 2013, won reelection in 2014 and 2016 but lost her seat (by a large margin) in the elections of 2018, after redistricting dissolved her old constituency and replaced it with a much whiter, more Republican electorate. 

(The old Dist. 7 had been considered one of the most racially gerrymandered in the state. While redistricting generally across NC in 2018 made Democratic gains in the General Assembly possible, that redistricting hurt a handful of Democratic incumbents, and Richardson was one of those.)

Could Richardson be our Stacey Abrams? Would she have the vision and the juice to mount aggressive voter registration and outreach to find and motivate the people who haven't been participating in our civic contract? While Black voter turnout in North Carolina increased 4.1 points last fall over 2016, it wasn’t enough for Democrats to flip the state for Biden or to flip at least one chamber in the General Assembly. Some 68.4% of North Carolina’s Black voters cast a ballot in the 2020 elections, compared to 78.8% of white voters. That's the winning margin right there, all those votes left untapped.

Richardson spent 35 years teaching in North Carolina schools, with a wealth of preparation behind her including a doctorate in education leadership from UNC-Chapel Hill. She's been a stand-out leader in her community (which is clear from reading her bio), but can she bring a Stacey Abrams level of organizing and reform to the North Carolina Democratic Party?

Ignore The Hot Takes: Georgia And North Carolina Are Both Purple States

Guest Blogging: Drayton Aldridge

Election 2020 is drawing to a close, and the same pundits who predicted a Biden landslide are churning out their pieces on the momentous Democratic victory in Georgia, as well as the red wave that swept through states like North Carolina. There’s no doubt that Georgia showed up this year, and Democrats across the country owe tremendous gratitude to the efforts of organizers and volunteers throughout the state. 

Carolyn Bordeaux

As of this writing Joe Biden appears poised to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes and turn the state blue for the first time since 1992. Democrats also flipped a suburban Atlanta congressional seat in one of their few pickups of the night (Carolyn Bordeaux in the 7th CD). Georgia may even rescue Democratic hopes of a Senate majority in the January runoff elections. 

Meanwhile North Carolina Democrats once again lost to Donald Trump, blew an eminently winnable Senate race, lost every competitive congressional election, lost crucial judicial races, and came up short in their efforts to flip the state legislature before next year’s redistricting. Particularly due to the ramifications of that last point, Democrats in North Carolina are feeling deeply dispirited as they begin to assess their daunting path forward.

While the wins and losses in both states are very real, the narratives forming around them are mostly hogwash. When all the votes are counted, Georgia will very narrowly go for Biden and North Carolina will very narrowly go for Trump. Results from other statewide races reinforce the fact that both states remain closely divided.

Looking ahead to the future, both states will be central to Democrats’ path to the presidency in the next election, taking the place of traditional swing states like Ohio and Florida that are clearly trending red. North Carolina’s Senate election will be one of the marquee races of the 2022 midterms, as will Georgia’s senate race and gubernatorial election. Both states are highly competitive and changing quickly, yet continue to be dominated by ultra-regressive Republicans who lie, cheat, gerrymander, and vote-suppress their way into power. So far this has worked swimmingly for Republicans and it will continue to work for them until it doesn’t. Take a look at Virginia if you want to know how this story eventually ends.

I've Got To Get Hold of Myself

 

Okay, I'll confess. After the Ray Russell loss in the NC House District 93 race Tuesday night, I went to bed for 24 hours. Didn't necessarily sleep. Turned off all electronic devices, including WETS, but still developed a throb in my temples. Hugged my pillow and shrugged off Jake, who wanted a walk bad. Finally, this a.m., I still ain't pretty to look at, but at least I'm standing on my feet.

Researching in depth this morning what went down in North Carolina (see previous post down-column), it's like body blows to see that Christy Clark and Sydney Batch lost their House seats and J.D. Wooten and Terri LeGrand couldn't quite win their Senate races. (Setting aside for the moment the many other body blows we sustained in both Federal races and statewide in Council of State contests.) I've spent over three years researching and writing about the brave Democrats -- those folks I just mentioned and many more -- who were breaking into the Republican pods in our General Assembly, or trying to break in. It's demoralizing to see what gerrymanding continues to dish up.

It ain't just gerrymandering. Of course, maps count, but the larger fact is that overwhelming majorities in some locales, not all, have watched the Phil Berger/Tim Moore regime in Raleigh (I'll get to the Trump regime below) and consciously asked for another big helpin' of it. They're perfectly okay with the strangling of public education and the back-handing of the unemployed, the poor, and the sick. They're super okay with the coddling and the privileging of the rich at the expense of the middle class. They're just fine with the power-grabs, the deliberate suppression of black and young voters, the petty vendettas against a Democratic governor, and the attempted manipulation of the mechanics of voting to maintain their power. Worst of all perhaps, they're partisan enablers of a pandemic, libertarians with the public health. That's the government the people around me want (actually, more the voters in the County of Ashe -- the prime movers in Ray Russell's loss -- cause Watauga's blue). That majoritarian reality dominates many isolated progressives marooned in many other North Carolina counties.

Our local reality in North Carolina is one thing. Nationally, the shit is even deeper, even if Biden ekes out a win. Largely, in fact, because Biden ekes out a win. You think Trump goes away at all, or goes away without a big public stink? It'll be like trying to induce an unwilling spider monkey back into his cage. He ain't going until he's caused a big enough spotlight to guarantee the financial success of his next commercial enterprise, perhaps his own television network to rival Fox. The charm of a snake-oil drummer will not go wasted, along with the inherent gullibility of low-information voters, who also ain't gonna take losing gracefully. 

Trumpism is here forever. It's always been here, truth to tell. Trump has just awakened it with pure blarney -- "The hatreds and resentments you feel are the right hatreds and resentments to feed, and I'm here to help puff you up by insulting your enemies. Listening to me proves how smart you are!" Selling that line of bullshit takes the unmitigated skill of the carnival barker. Once hooked, the gulls are entertained by the spills and thrills of Trump's immorality and cruelty. "Owning the libs," dissing this media, and torturing illegal immigrants is great rippin' sport. 

Meanwhile, the Trump show is the Republican Party, and its elected officials going forward will probably now be even more leery of bucking the Trumpists. McConnell is still king of the Senate (you think he won't treat Biden the way he treated Obama?). But the Republican Party is also now a co-respondent in an unhappy marriage with Qanon and the KKK, the Proud Boys and militia dudes everywhere. Kids in cages was not just Trump public policy. It was irresistible catnip for the bloody-minded -- validation and flattery for their grudges.

That's the harsh reality in 2020 for North Carolina. It'll be even worse for Democrats in the Midterms of 2022. 

In Outing a Bribery Scheme, Mike Causey Is a Credit to His Office

Read WRAL reporter Travis Fain's wrap-up of the Greg Lindberg bribery case down in Durham. Read it and weep. Because billionaire Greg Lindberg is one of those "masters of the universe" who are single-handedly capable of shoving enough money at politicians to cast an ethical cloud over whole departments of government. For those public officials who accepted great heaps of his cash, they raise suspicions about personal integrity and suggest once again that the love/lure of money is the root of all evil.

Lindberg gave money to both the Republican and the Democratic parties. He gave money to Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer as well as to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He gave 6 figures to Tim Moore, for his House Republican Caucus fund. He gave $50,000 to state Senator Wesley Meredith who was introducing an insurance law rewrite in the General Assembly that would have advantaged Lindberg (the law went nowhere). Most striking of all, Lindberg gave over $2 million to support Dan Forest for governor, a "strategic" expenditure in case Forest should become governor.

Lindberg isn't the first nor will he be the last, to grow his tendrils everywhere, from Raleigh power-centers to Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac. We've always had these guys who respect no bounds to get what they want. And elected officials with their hands out.

Except for NC Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey. (You can read about what Lindberg wanted out of the Insurance Commissioner on your own. I'm not going to summarize all that here. It's beside the point anyway.) Mike Causey, Republican, cooperated with the FBI to expose a bribery scandal involving both billionaire Lindberg and Robin Hayes, Chair of the NCGOP. Mike Causey resisted the attempted bribery and exposed it all. Mike Causey is a civic hero.

Travis Fain found evidence that the Lindberg gang thought Commissioner Causey was also "dense," a kind of Gomer Pyle lame-brain. That Causey always seemed to agree to their quid pro quos and then dragged his feet and appeared to forget his assigned duties and never delivered what Lindberg thought he'd agreed to. All the time Causey was playing Lindberg, wearing at various times both hidden microphones and videocameras and gathering the evidence that led to Lindberg's conviction last Thursday (March 5). Robin Hayes had already pled guilty for participating and is awaiting sentencing.

Some North Carolina Democrats get tarred with the same Lindberg tar. Nobody's accused them of wrongdoing, but it's not a good look. What's documented is some $750,000 that Lindberg gave to the NC Democratic Party in 2018 while it was chaired by Wayne Goodwin, the previous Insurance Commissioner. In fact, according to Fain, Goodwin was Lindberg's "first." Lindberg had spent "more than $340,000 between Goodwin's campaign [to become Insurance Commissioner] and a separate political action committee that supported his re-election."

That's what Fain documents. What's undocumented is the money Lindberg gave to "dark money" groups, of which there was apparently a generous helping given to both sides. Including an unspecified amount to a 501(c)(4) group supporting Gov. Cooper's 2016 campaign.

What set off the whole bribery scene?

Goodwin had given the Lindberg insurance companies an advantage that appears to have been out of the ordinary. Causey's department after January of 2017 began reversing that policy. Lindberg was putting pressure on Causey to go easy on him.

Under Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, the department allowed Lindberg's insurance companies to keep investing up to 40% of their assets, cash from policyholder premiums, into other companies that Lindberg owns. When Mike Causey took over as Insurance Commissioner, his team, led in part by Jackie Obusek, a senior deputy commissioner, insisted on "unwinding" what Goodwin had given Lindberg -- lowering that 40% and thus Lindberg's control over the companies' cash.

Lindberg wanted Jackie Obusek fired. That's what he was willing to buy from Mike Causey, along with of course a more generally lenient regulatory regime overseeing his activities.