A Peculiar Democratic Primary in House District 66

 

The newly drawn NC House District 66 is wholly in Wake County and heavily weighted with Democrats. As Dallas Woodhouse said, "Republicans can’t win this seat, no matter how good 2022 is for them."

So perhaps it's no wonder that three Democrats have filed to run in the May primary, as the winner will most likely take the seat in November.

One of those three is a first-time candidate. The second ran unsuccessfully for the Wake County Commission in 2018. And the third is currently an elected member of the NC Senate who is abandoning her senate district to run in this House district, a jump that is both unusual and debilitating to the Democratic goal of keeping Republicans from winning a super-majority in the Senate.

Wesley Knott

Knott is a 26-year-old Democratic Party precinct chair. He trained in accounting and economics (where? he doesn't say) and has worked as an auditor for PwC, a tax and auditing service. He says he "stepped away" from that job to run for this office. His website is thin on specifics and biography (maybe we'd expect that from a 26-year-old running for the first time), but I like this personal statement:

"I’m a mixed-race progressive who grew up in the Deep South. Politics isn’t abstract to me. I didn’t need critical race theory to learn about racism, and I didn’t need a policy analysis to know the importance of Medicaid. So when I talk about policy, it’s from a place of shared experience. I know what’s on the line. That’s why I’m running."

As an observer who believes that the rise of "mixed race" perspectives and personalities could save us from the toxicity of white nationalism, I welcome his candidacy.

Frank Pierce

He says he's a small business owner (landscaping) who decided to make a personal sacrifice when schools began to come out of the pandemic:

When Wake County went back to school full time this year, they where faced with a shortage of staff from teachers to bus drivers and everything in between. While most people stood on the side and yelled to help them, I actually stepped up to help our students and their teachers. I applied and received a temporary license to teach in WCPSS this year and make a difference in a child's life. I did this at a great cost to me and my business. Yet in this life, you should be measured by the deeds you do not the money you make. I would not change anything about my choice. I am now running to be the difference maker in the NC House and bring that “get it done” attitude to public office. Children are our future! It is time we put a leader in the legislature that puts others before himself.

Pierce is 36 years old and has also been active in the Wake Democratic Party. I found more personal info on him from his 2018 run for the Wake Commission.

Sarah Crawford

Crawford right now holds the NC Senate seat in District 18. I wrote a lot about her back in late 2019 (here and here). I was mildly critical of her vanilla presentation and her eschewing of progressive platform positions, even though she was endorsed by Lillian's List. She won that Senate seat easily. When she made it known less than a month ago that she would run for a House seat instead of for reelection to her Senate seat, Republican operative Dallas Woodhouse could not stop himself from chortling derisively about her pursuit of "self-interest" in the switch, implying she would have a much tougher race for reelection to the Senate.

Interestingly, she doesn't say a word about being a state senator on her revamped website. Big guns in the NC Democratic Party are lining up to support her. First Lady Kristin Cooper and Secretary of State Elaine Marshall are co-hosting a fundraiser for her next month.

Un-Trumping North Carolina: Two Easy Peasy Dem Pickups in the NC Senate

Let's count our chickens before they're hatched. Because that's never unlucky.

The people I read and pay attention to consider NC Senate districts 18 and 39 lead-pipe cinches for flipping to Democrat.

Dist. 39 (southern Mecklenburg)

Democrat DeAndrea Salvador v. Republican Josh Niday for an open seat.

 

Open because ... former incumbent Republican Dan Bishop was elected to Congress to represent the 9th CD. Then Republican Rob Bryan, appointed to serve out Bishop's term in Senate, was subsequently mapped out of Dist. 39 by the last court-ordered redistricting.

Now rated (after remapping) as "Safe Democratic." Trump took only 38.l1% of the vote in 2016. (Prof. Michael Bitzer)

"Easy Pickup" (FlipNC.org)

Salvador is a 29-year-old millennial (born 1990) without political experience but with demonstrated commitment to community-building. She graduated from UNC-Charlotte (econ and anthro), studied energy and environmental design with the U.S. Green Building Council, and founded the Renewable Energy Transition Initiative (RETI) to help educate low-income households to cope with high energy costs. She did a TED talk about that effort in 2018 which was perhaps stronger on inspiration than on science.

Profiled on WataugaWatch before the primary. I complained at the time that her web presence was de minimis, but now she has all the campaign bells 'n' whistles. 

Her Republican opponent, Josh Niday. is 26, born in 1993. Niday previously ran for the NC House in 2018 in District 99, getting just over 17% of the vote against Democrat Nasif Majeed. He graduated from UNC-Charlotte in 2016 with a degree in poly sci.

Dist. 18 (northeastern Wake and Franklin counties)

Democrat Sarah Crawford v. Republican Larry Norman for an open seat (Libertarian also running)

Open because ... incumbent Republican John Alexander opted to retire following the last map-drawing.

Rated (after remapping) as "Toss-Up" and then as "Competitive, Democrat Favored." In 2016 Clinton (48.61%) actually edged out Trump (48.31%). (Michael Bitzer)

"Easy Pickup" (FlipNC.org)

Crawford is not a political neophyte. She ran against Republican incumbent Chad Barefoot in 2014 in what was then Senate District 18, and she carried 47.1% of the vote -- a very respectable showing -- finishing 3,785 votes behind Barefoot out of 65,507 votes cast. (In 2018, Barefoot voluntarily stepped down and allowed his "double-bunkee" John Alexander to take the seat. Alexander had been serving in the Senate since 2014, representing Senate District 15. He got remapped out of 15 and into 18. Redrawing maps to screw with people seems to happen a lot to this North Raleigh and Franklin County district.

Her Republican opponent, Larry Norman, a Louisburg lawyer, waited until the last minute to file, which forced a primary, which Norman narrowly won.

The Elections of March: Democratic Primary in NCS18

District 18 of the North Carolina Senate, which covers parts of Wake and Franklin counties, ought to be a fairly easy net pickup for Democrats next November, though Michael Bitzer still calculates it as "competitive." The incumbent Republican, Sen. John Alexander, got redistricted in an unhelpful way. Dist. 18 is now majority Democratic. So Alexander opted to retire. The primary on March 3rd -- actually, on both sides -- could be determinative.

The Democratic Primary -- Sarah Crawford v. Angela Bridgman

Because this is the perfect NC Senate pickup opportunity for Democrats next year, there's been an avid game of thrones among potential and even declared candidates, including Mack Paul, who ran in 2018 and came very close and could have won next year, but who stepped aside in favor of Wake School Board member Christine Kushner, who lo and behold got drawn out of the district before she could run in it.

Then came Sarah Crawford. I wrote about her back on October 2 and was pretty hard on her campaign -- the message and how it was being delivered. She's now been endorsed by Lillian's List and by a group calling itself Now Or Never North Carolina: "We are committed North Carolinians who know our state to be a place of reason and moderation." In keeping with that vision, Crawford is running a safe campaign (with extra vanilla), a dialed back, almost somnolent campaign that eschews progressive hot-buttons. She must be pro-choice -- Lillian's List ain't somnolent -- but she nowhere admits that on her campaign page.

So Angela Bridgman presents a decided contrast. If Crawford is establishment, Bridgman is non-establishment and decidedly insurgent in the ways of progressivism in this Age of Trump. Bridgman is out there. She's very publicly transgender. The News and Observer recently profiled her and a transgender man also running for the state senate, and Bridgman is using the publicity to raise money. She was vocal back in the day about HB2 and is of course still strong on LGBTQ rights. She's been a precinct chair for the Wake Dems but has never run for office before. She has a "home business" (?).

And she really doesn't look ready for this campaign. Very little infrastructure except for a barebones website and a Facebook page. No Twitter at all.


The Republican Primary -- Scott McKaig v. Larry Norman

Scott McKaig

Scott McKaig is a trained lawyer (Campbell University Law School) and is general counsel and CFO for the Lincoln Network, a 501(c)3 nonprofit specializing in messaging, "analytics," and web design -- which doesn't really reveal much. Wikipedia does better: Lincoln Network is a member org of the Koch-funded State Policy Network (SPN) -- "a web of right-wing 'think tanks' and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. As of October 2019, SPN's membership totals 162. Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party."

McKaig has a Facebook page . He mocks "social justice warriors" and makes bold to list his favorite Xmas movies: "1. Die Hard 2. Christmas Vacation 3. Charlie Brown Christmas 4. Rocky IV 5. Love Actually (I know, I know)." What does he know? He's embarrassed to like Love Actually? If he has a website, I can't find it, nor a Twitter feed.

Fellow Republican Larry Norman (as Scott McKaig points out) waited until the last minute to file, which doesn't sometimes betoken greater preparation ... because the Larry Norman for Senate campaign is plenty invisible on the World Wide Web. I can't find out anything about him. No website. No FB. No Twitter.

Gosh, it's almost like the Republicans aren't even trying for this seat.


Third-Party Candidate

Whoever wins the primaries above will also face Libertarian Jason Loeback next November.  Loeback is also a blank page.

Sarah Crawford Is Running in the Redrawn 18th NC Senate District

Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer lists the remapped 18th Senate District (northern Wake and Franklin County) as "Competitive, Democratic Favored." His analysis found the predicted Democratic vote share in 2020 at 51% against the predicted Republican vote share of 49%.

This is the district that incumbent Republican John Alexander still represents, but he said after the most recent remapping made it clear that his district was becoming more Democratic, he wouldn't be running again.

Sarah Crawford

Democrat Mack Paul came perilously close to ousting Alexander in the elections of 2018, but Mack Paul -- who could have run again as the odds-on contender -- deferred to Christine Kushner, a Wake School Board member, who announced she would be running way back in April of this year. When the newest remapping threw Kushner out of the district, Democrat Sarah Crawford stepped forward.

Sarah Crawford is now the odds-on Democratic frontrunner for the 18th Senate District.

Crawford is not a political neophyte. She ran against Republican incumbent Chad Barefoot in 2014 in what was then Senate District 18, and she carried 47.1% of the vote -- a very respectable showing -- finishing 3,785 votes behind Barefoot out of 65,507 votes cast. (In 2018, Barefoot voluntarily stepped down and allowed his "double-bunkee" John Alexander to take the seat. Alexander had been serving in the Senate since 2014, representing Senate District 15. He got remapped out of 15 and into 18. Redrawing maps to screw with people seems to happen a lot to this North Raleigh and Franklin County district. Don't you think?)

Crawford was well known in those Raleigh and Franklin County neighborhoods in 2014 and may still be a familiar name. But "political time" is like dog years, and six years off the field is a whole generation of new voters. She only just announced via Twitter on Monday of this week, so her campaign infrastructure (a website, a Twitter feed, a Facebook page) seems like political khaki -- standard issue and colorless. I've seen her campaign video from 2014. I hope she'll rethink static "talking-head" presentations (soooo 2006!). We're in a new age of innovative ways to tell a candidate's story. I imagine the introductory video for "Sarah Crawford 2020" that is right now, even as I write this, a magnificant gleam in some video developer's eye. (See "A Modest Proposal" below)  Hint: Crawford has a resume of "super-volunteerism" and the chops of an effective community organizer with clear eleemosynary instincts and energies. That's a story worth telling about a would-be public servant.

While the 18th Senate District was still the old map, and Christine Kushner was gearing up to run (before getting mapped out), another Democrat, Matt Cox, a veteran of the US Navy and a businessman, had also announced he would run a primary for the seat against Kushner. Since the remapping, Matt Cox has gone dark. He hasn't posted anything on Twitter since Sept. 13. Same silence on his Facebook page. Suggests  he also got drawn out of the district or has otherwise changed his mind.

A MODEST PROPOSAL
The North Carolina Democratic Party needs to budget the resources to put Putnam Partners (with the great Frank Eaton) on retainer to do candidate videos and other advertising chores for Democratic candidates for NC House and Senate, particularly.