Un-Trumping North Carolina: 2nd Tier of Potential Dem Pickups in NC Senate

North Carolina Democrats need a net gain of five seats to remove Phil Berger as president pro-tem of the NC Senate. If we count the gain of two seats that seem very probable (last post down-column), and assuming no losses among Democratic freshmen senators, then three more flips of Republican districts would end Mr. Berger's baleful reign. Here are the three who have grappled their way to the top of the list:

Dist. 7 (Wayne and Lenoir counties)

Democrat Donna Lake v. Republican Jim Perry, for an open seat

Open because ... incumbent Republican Louis Pate resigned mid-term because of declining health. Perry appointed to finish out the term.

Rated both "Lean Republican" and "Competitive, Republican Favored." Trump took 53.49% of vote in 2016. (Michael Bitzer)

"Race to Watch" (RealFactsNC and Long Leaf Pine Slate)

Lake is a 64-year-old retired USAF Colonel and health-care professional. She announced her candidacy for the North Carolina Senate last year on July 29th. She's another of a distinct trend among new, insurgent Democratic candidates in the Age of Trump: A woman combat vet with two Bronze Stars stepping forward to run in a forbidding new combat zone. Donna Lake also holds a freakin' Ph.D. to boot in Health Care Management and works as a clinical nursing professor at the ECU College of Nursing where she says she's taught 450 students, not to mention another 85 faculty, in patient safety principles, leadership, and finance skills. Her expertise in health care management contributed to the awarding of a $5M grant to train and place "advanced practice registered nurses" into primary care facilities in Eastern North Carolina rural communities. A vital and motivating statistic for Donna Lake: Of the 41 Eastern NC counties combined, 28 (68.3%) have fewer than 5 primary care physicians per 10,000 residents. She wants to change that, and her work is an answer to Jim Perry's complaint that there aren't enough primary care providers for the expansion of Medicaid.

Her Republican opponent, Jim Perry from Kinston, is a retired rep for the dental industry, CEO of a "Dental Service Org with 240 locations in 40 states and over 2,500 employees," and personnel consultant for the Acute Care Industry. He opposes the expansion of Medicaid. In his short time in the Senate, he became a big supporter of HB 370 -- a law that would force county sheriffs in North Carolina to do the work of ICE agents, with specific provisions to make sheriffs subject to removal from office for refusing to help ICE -- the bill which Governor Cooper vetoed on August 21.

Dist. 31 (eastern Forsyth plus Davie counties)

Democrat Terri LeGrand v. Republican Joyce Krawiec (1st elected 2014)

Recently remapped (which lost it Yadkin Co.) and now rated both "Lean Republican" and "Competitive, Republican Favored." Trump won the district with 53.61% of the vote. (Michael Bitzer)

"Pivotal District." The partisan lean has shifted 14 points to the left after remapping (FlipNC.org). RealFactsNC lists it as a race to watch along with Long Leaf Pine Slate.

LeGrand trained as a lawyer and is a 1993 graduate of the Wake Forest School of Law.  She works as a financial aid administrator at Wake Forest University.  In 2018 she ran a very active race in House District 74, improving Democratic performance to 45%, which was better than expected, and she proved to have impressive fundraising chops. She was a founder of the Piedmont Environmental Alliance, serves on the Women's Leadership Council of the United Way, and served on the public utilities commission for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.

Her opponent, Joyce Krawiec, is a Tea-Party Trumpist with all the identifying pockmarks.

Dist. 11 (Nash and nearly half of Johnston counties)

Democrat Allen Wellons v. Lisa Stone Barnes, for an open seat  

Open because ... incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Horner (1st elected in 2016) decided not to run again after the most recent remapping made the seat more Democratic-friendly. “Much to my regret, it simply is not in the best interest of my family to seek re-election in 2020.”

"Lean Republican" and "Competitive, Republican Favored." Trump won the district with 53.97% of the vote in 2016. (Michael Bitzer) After remapping it's 4 points more favorable for Dems: "The pool of untapped voters in this district – registered voters who did not vote in 2016 or 2018 – is also sharply Democratic leaning, suggesting that a strong candidate could flip the district if Democrats can energize their base in 2020" (FlipNC.org).

A "race to watch" (both RealFactsNC and Long Leaf Pine Slate). A "Pivotal Race" (FlipNC.org).

Allen Wellons, a 70-year-old baby-boomer born in 1949, is a Smithfield lawyer with Wilkins Wellons Coats. He's a 1971 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill with a B.A. and a 1975 graduate of NC Central School of Law in 1975. He formerly served three terms in the NC Senate so long ago -- from 1996 to 2002 -- that few voters younger than the boomer class might remember him. He was decisively defeated for reelection to his 4th term in 2002 by Republican Fred Smith, and he's been out of public life ever since. The Long Leaf Pine Slate says that Wellons is a powerful local name. In the Year of Biden, Wellons also seems safe and stable, which may be the winning formula this year.

His Republican opponent, Lisa Stone Barnes, has been a rising star in her party and qualifies as something of a "moderate." Will that hurt her? She previously served a couple of terms as a Nash County commissioner and then moved up to the NC House (District 7) in the elections of 2018, defeating incumbent Democrat Bobbie Richardson in the rare blue-to-red flip that year. It didn't take her long to opt for further advancement when Rick Horner announced his retirement. She's also clearly somewhat out of step with other North Carolina Republicans because she nowhere plays the Trump card and she doesn't parade the label "conservative." She strikes a much more moderate tone and is clearly more interested in economic development for her rural district than she is in conservative social hot-buttons (she's pushed the expansion of broadband in rural areas). That does not mean, however, that she's ever shown any interest in bucking her Republican caucus in the NC General Assembly.

Another Significant Republican Retirement From the NC House

News and Observer reporter Dawn B. Vaughan said on Twitter that NC House Rep. Debra Conrad of Forsyth County (District 74) will not seek reelection. I've looked everywhere to find Conrad's statement, but it's not on her Twitter feed nor her depopulated Facebook page. Plus her website is no longer available. Sure does look like a general shutdown.

Conrad is chair of both the banking and the finance committees in the House and has held her seat since 2012. She used to be considered "invulnerable," but Democrat Terri LeGrand gave her a scare in 2018. Plus Conrad's district has been remapped. She lost over 3% of her Republican constituency, a not insignificant diminution considering that LeGrand came within 5 percentage points of beating Conrad in 2018.

LeGrand has moved on for next year to run for a Forsyth senate seat (District 31). Conrad's retirement is a great pickup opportunity for the right candidate. The district has been listed as one of the most flippable red-to-blue in 2020.

Terri LeGrand Is In for the NCS31

I was enthusiastic about the candidacy of Forsyth County educator Terri LeGrand in 2018. She was running for the NC House (District 74) against incumbent Repubican queen bee Debra Conrad. I wrote about LeGrand in March of 2018 and again in July as she was displaying some fundraising chops (I contributed a modest amount to her campaign).

LeGrand lost that race but earned a very respectable 45% of the vote against an entrenched incumbent.

LeGrand announced yesterday that she's going for it again in 2020 but not for that northern Forsyth House district but rather this time for the NC Senate District 31 against another incumbent Republican queen bee, Joyce Krawiec. NCS31 has been considerably reconfigured by the most recent remapping and is friendlier to an insurgent Democrat.

LeGrand will make an exciting contest of it!

Shivving Winston-Salem ... Because They Can

Rep. Donny Lambeth,
forcing himself to smile

Currently, the city of Winston-Salem elects eight members to its city council (plus a mayor who only votes to break ties). Currently, seven of them are Democrats and one is a Republican. Currently, four are white and four are black. Forsyth County Republican reps in the General Assembly filed a vicious little bill last Thursday (March 28) to change that council in radical ways.

The bill would reduce council districts (wards) from eight to five. Three black incumbent women (D.D. Adams, Vivian Burke, and Annette Scippio) would be shoved into the same district, to run against each other. Incumbent white male Dan Besse would also be double-bunked with the lone Republican. The three dissolved ward seats would become "at large" council seats, the mayor would be given a vote on every measure before the council, and all terms of office would be reduced to two years.

Chaos.

The two House sponsors of this snide innovation, Donny Lambeth and Debra Conrad, might relish the punishment they're meting out to their partisan enemies in the urban core of Winston-Salem. But they might want to take note of what happened in Guilford County after a vicious little attempt to upend the Greensboro city council in a similar way (see last paragraph below). Neither Lambeth nor Conrad won reelection last fall by unassailable margins. As a matter of fact, Lambeth beat his Democratic opponent, Dan Besse (where have I heard that name before?), by just over 2,000 votes, and Debra Conrad's Dem opponent, Terri LeGrand, came within 3,200 votes in a much more rural section of Forsyth. (Full disclosure: I contributed to both the Besse and the LeGrand campaigns.)

One of the black council women targeted with triple-bunking, D.D. Adams, ran against 5th District Congresswoman Virginia Foxx last fall, and she "emphatically denounced" Lambeth and Conrad to the Winston-Salem Journal "for what she described as a racist payback for the Democratic activism of black women":

"Everybody thinks we are going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya — it's not going to happen that way," Adams said a day after learning of the bill. "This is one of those times when we are going to have to fight."

Her message to Lambeth and Conrad: "How dare you?" ... repeated. "How dare you!"

Said Dan Besse: "It is no coincidence that they drew me into the only Republican-leaning district ... When you look at the fact that I challenged Donny, and D.D. challenged Virginia Foxx -- that has to flag the city on the radar of the Republican party structure."

No kidding, the arrogance. "I don't know what problem they are trying to solve," said the lone Republican on the council, Robert Clark, referring to Lambeth and Conrad. "I think the city council should be consulted before anything moves forward. They don't talk with anybody, they just do it ... I am absolutely puzzled." That's what the Republican thought.

Remember that Republicans in Raleigh also overreached for partisan advantage in a proposal to redistrict the city government of Greensboro. How did that attempt work out for them? In this last election, Guilford County saw a net gain of one Democrat in the NC House (Ashton Clemmons) and one Democrat in the NC Senate (Michael Garrett). Garrett actually beat the author of the Greensboro redistricting attempt, Sen. Trudy Wade, a comeuppance that could instill a little humility in Lambeth and Conrad.

Terri LeGrand, Igniting in NC House District 74

NC House District 74 is a wrap-around. It packs itself into the northern nooks of Forsyth County and forms a vise around the urban core of Winston-Salem. It's reportedly 82.34% white. It nevertheless contains plenty of what gets defined as suburbia. It has a three-term Republican rep in the NC House, Debra Conrad, who is the kind of well groomed, country club Republican that Forsyth tends to elect and reelect over and over.

Then comes Democrat Terri LeGrand in 2018, just one of the large group of energized Democratic insurgents storming the Bastille of the Raleigh General Assembly. I wrote about LeGrand's prospects way back in March.

Terri LeGrand

How's she doing? You might say ... just fine! She's outraising Debra Conrad by a country mile. According to a press release from the LeGrand campaign, she raised $86,497 in the second quarter compared to $23,015 raised by Conrad. And she's gots boots on the ground, demonstrating once again that in 2018, newly minted Democratic candidates are out-raising, out-hustling, and out-door-knocking the matrix.

When I wrote about this race back in March, my impression of District 74 made it one of the hardest nuts to crack in this year's insurgency. Actual statistics soften that view (ht, KR): 18,616 Dem, 23,949 Reps, and 17,505 Unaffiliateds. In other words, and quite obviously, the winning margin for LeGrand in District 74 = the independents. Not to mention that when the Dems get energized, that 5 thousand voter-registration advantage of the Rs can deplenish itself quickly.

One cautionary note on LeGrand's fundraising superiority: We know from the Jonathan Jordan example in District 93 that outside groups -- third parties and super pacs -- always step in for their favored Republican incumbents. Jonathan Jordan is a lazy fundraiser, but his Dem opponent always seems to get plenty of nasty negative abuse. That'll likely be the same for LeGrand.

Bottomline this year: money is no advantage over enthusiasm anyway, and boots on the ground. Money's essential, but it's the army of volunteers who'll always take down the castle.

Terri LeGrand Could Surprise an "Invulnerable" Republican Incumbent

NC House District 74 takes in northern Forsyth County and includes suburbs north of Winston-Salem and the small towns of Belews Creek, Walkertown, Bethania, Pfafftown, Tobaccoville, Rural Hall. It's been considered safely suburban Republican, but it's exactly the kind of voting district that has been turning suddenly bluish in the Age of Trump, and in unlikely places, from deepest Alabama to the rusted hills of Pennsylvania. House District 74 contains a higher than average number of well educated voters, which has become in 2018 an index to Republican nervousness.

Democratic insurgent Terri LeGrand --

Terri LeGrand

I initially heard about LeGrand on the first day of this new year and mentioned her here among the first crop of really exciting new candidates running for the NC General Assembly. LeGrand has a well developed website and looks like she's built a campaign infrastructure that can generate enthusiastic volunteers.

LeGrand grew up in Galax, Virginia, in the "make-do" culture of small-town America and has translated those values to her current job at Wake Forest University, which is helping poorer students get financial aid to attend and succeed at an expensive private university. She tells her advisees, "Only borrow what you absolutely have to borrow. Work hard to finish so that you do not accumulate debt without a degree to show for it."

She trained as a lawyer and is a 1993 graduate of the Wake Forest School of Law. (She also studied Russian because she wanted to be a spy. "Then the Cold War ended.") "I became a community activist…and a mom, two roles I am passionate about. I have also been a lawyer and an advocate for children and feel fortunate to have landed in a career I love at Wake Forest University. Currently, I work hard every day so that poor kids can go to a great college and so that families that have worked hard, saved and sacrificed to send their kids to Wake Forest can keep them there even in the face of job loss, catastrophic illness or divorce. As a lawyer and through social work, I advocated for children and at-risk youth and their families, helping them navigate complex education, judicial, and social services systems."

She was a founder of the Piedmont Environmental Alliance, serves on the Women's Leadership Council of the United Way, and served on the public utilities commission for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.

Debra Conrad

Republican incumbent Debra Conrad was first elected to the chamber in 2012, first beating the incumbent Republican male in a primary. She faced female Democratic opponents in both 2014 and 2016 and easily won reelection with over 60% of the vote both times. Prior to her election to the NC House, she served for 18 years as a Forsyth County commissioner. She looks politically invulnerable.

She earned a BS in medical technology at Wake Forest in 1974 and owns Conrad Marketing Strategies. She's a doctrinaire conservative Republican ... opposes the expansion of Medicaid, opposes increasing the minimum wage, attacks "liberal activist judges" for overturning Amendment One, hedges about increased support for public education. According to realfactsnc.com, Conrad voted against funding for schools, libraries, and health care during her 18 years as a Forsyth County Commissioner, and during the Tea Party uprising of 2010 she self-defined as "a Tea Party person before there was a Tea Party.” She's virulently anti-abortion and has voted for every limitation to abortion rights that has come before the General Assembly.

In other words, she's exactly the sort of Republican incumbent who's ripe for getting surprised.