President Donald Trump defeated then candidate Joe Biden in North Carolina in the 2020 presidential election by 1.4%, or roughly 74,000 votes. Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, is hoping to flip that script in a Biden-Trump rematch this November, and believes eastern North Carolina is key to the effort.
Clayton, who’s in the midst of a tour of rural counties in the eastern part of the state, reminded about 50 local Democrats at the Pasquotank courthouse earlier this week that they’ve already shown other Democrats in the region what winning looks like. Biden defeated Trump in Pasquotank by 62 votes. The only nearby eastern North Carolina counties Biden won in 2020 were Bertie and Washington.
“In 2020, y’all were the only little county out here in eastern North Carolina in the tippy tippy top of the northeast that went blue for Joe Biden,” she said Monday. “That’s why we chose to make this the first of many stops we’re going to make in eastern North Carolina as part of our Rural Eastern North Carolina tour.”
Joining Clayton at Monday’s event were fellow Democrats Howard Hunter, a former state representative running for election in the state House District 5; state Auditor Jessica Holmes, who’s seeking election to the post she was appointed to by Gov. Roy Cooper last November; and Sarah Taber, a Cumberland County resident who’s seeking to unseat GOP Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler.
Clayton said the state Democratic party, which she was elected to head last year as the youngest state chair in the country, knows that eastern North Carolina is now “our battleground zone” and a “place that Democrats have got to get back to.”
“Just because for the last 10 years this General Assembly has been disenfranchising and gerrymandering y’all ... does not mean that we’ve got to give up and cede ground to a party anywhere right now that has fully endorsed white supremacy, that wants to see the demise of our democracy and that fundamentally does not believe in rights for anyone who is not white, straight and male,” she said, an apparent reference to the state Republican party.
Clayton said eastern North Carolina “can’t live under a Donald Trump presidency again.”
“We’ve seen how this man attacks our communities, how he attacks rural North Carolina and he has made it very clear that he does not have the people’s interest at heart,” she said.
Conversely, Biden and his administration have been investing in rural North Carolina during his first four years in office, she said. Clayton noted that Elizabeth City State University, for example, is getting $15 million in federal infrastructure funding.
“Folks need to understand that this administration is the first one in federal history that’s invested in rural communities,” Clayton said. “It’s the reason why places like Pasquotank County can say, ‘I can see the next 50 years from now. I don’t have to think it’s possible. I know it is.’”
Clayton, who’s 26 and grew up in Roxboro and graduated from Appalachian State University, said the state university system that Democrats built over 40 years and which is “our identity as a state” is now something “Republicans every day are threatening.”
“The UNC system, this great thing that produces Research Triangle Park, that allows young people to go back to their home communities and create and innovate in our state — what made that possible were Democrats ... like Gov. Jim Hunt and Gov. Terry Sanford, the folks that came from eastern North Carolina,” she said.
Republicans know that history of Democratic strength in eastern North Carolina, too, Clayton said, adding it’s why the region has been gerrymandered to elect GOP candidates.
“That’s why they have strategically and structurally taken away your representation, because they know where the heart of our party comes from,” she said.
But even if Democrats successfully re-elect Biden president and elect Attorney General Josh Stein, the party’s gubernatorial candidate, in November, “we still have got one hell of a fight in our state legislature right now,” Clayton said. She pointed to last year’s decision by the N.C. Supreme Court, which now has a 5-2 Republican majority, to overturn its own past ruling that said partisan gerrymandering is illegal. The decision cleared the way for the Republican-led majorities in both the state House and Senate last year to redraw congressional and legislative districts that favor GOP candidates.
“It (the ruling) said we’re allowed to practice disenfranchising Black and brown voters when 20 counties in North Carolina are still minority-majority counties and only two of them are urban,” Clayton said. “We’re looking at rural North Carolina that’s being impacted by this (gerrymandering) the most.”
That’s part of the mission during Clayton’s rural tour — to point out what Democrats say are the unfair ways Republicans have manipulated voting districts. The other part is to remind rural voters of what Democrats have accomplished for their communities in the past.
“We lost the 2020 election statewide by 74,000 votes. We’re going into every single part of the state and emphasizing what Democrats have done and that we care about people voting in these communities,” Clayton said.
But Clayton said simply electing a Democratic governor won’t be enough. She noted that Republican supermajorities in the Legislature voted to strip Cooper of many powers after he took office in 2017. She also noted that North Carolina’s governor constitutionally is already the “weakest” in the country when it comes to wielding power.
“We don’t want just a Democratic governor. We want a Democratic governor with some power behind him,” she said.
One way to help ensure the governor can act more effectively is to provide him more support on the Council of State, and the way to do that is by upending Democrats’ current 6-4 minority on the Council by electing the party’s candidates like agriculture commissioner candidate Taber, Maurice “Mo” Green, who’s running for state schools superintendent, and by re-electing Holmes, she said.
“We’ve got 6-4 minority for Democrats on the Council of State that doesn’t look too hot when we look at all the places that need help right now,” Clayton said. “Gov. Cooper declares a state of emergency and can’t do anything about it right now because he doesn’t have the power behind him.”
Clayton said North Carolina has always served as a “beacon of the South,” but that’s not true anymore with Republicans in control. She’s hoping that will change after November.
“In November, ... we’re going to say ain’t happy with what North Carolina is turning into,” she said. “We’re proud of the state that Democrats created and we want to go back to the state that recognized and respected public education, that ... (cares) about somebody’s right to their own body and that cares about and expands voting rights.”
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