This is going to be a long one, but I hope you’ll read to the end, because it’s important that we all sit with what happened last night.
The common wisdom holds that, in off-year elections, the party that controls the White House usually doesn’t do very well. The problems that affect us all are usually a little more complex than can be solved in two or three years, and it’s easy to blame the party in power when things don’t feel as different as you’d hoped they would.
So why did Democrats have such an amazing night last night?
Across the board, the results we saw in our off-year elections last night paint a very different picture than the common wisdom. Here in North Carolina, yes, we won in places like Mecklenburg and Guilford and Orange, where there’s no reason to expect Democrats not to win.
But you know what else? The little mill town of Cooleemee elected Jeff Smith as their new mayor—the first Democrat to hold that office in a long time. A Democrat, LaTrecia Glover, topped the ballot in Harrisburg and will be their new Mayor Pro-Tem. We won in places like Sparta and Burgaw and Walnut Cove and Waynesville and any number of other places that, by rights, Democrats aren’t supposed to win.
These aren’t blue enclaves in red counties—they’re places that reliably voted for Donald Trump and Republicans as recently as 2020. Roy Cooper got less than 30% of the vote in Cooleemee, but they just elected a Democrat as Mayor, and it wasn’t even close.
And nationally, we had an even better night. In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly chose to protect abortion rights. In Virginia, they flipped their legislature. And in Kentucky—yes, Kentucky!—they reelected their Democratic governor by a pretty comfortable margin.
What really won last night, John, was investing in our communities. Democrats won because we actually gave a damn, met voters where they were, and spoke to the issues that matter to them. And we didn’t have to sacrifice our moral positions to do it, either. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has been vocally standing against his legislature’s attacks on abortion rights and LGBT rights, and he still cruised to reelection. In Kentucky, of all places! My God. If we can win there, there’s no reason we can’t win here.
Because here’s the other thing that won last night: at the end of the day, every single one of these races was decided by hard work and commitment from supporters like you. In Harrisburg and Cooleemee and Waynesville and even in Kentucky, the real winner was good, old-fashioned elbow grease. LaTrecia Glover worked her tail off, and she had a world-class campaign team working their tails off right alongside her. They met voters where they were, they got the word out, and they won, and that was the story all over our state last night.
Our party has dropped the ball in North Carolina the last few elections, but last night shows that if we work hard, we have the opportunity to turn the page.
From day one, this campaign has been about investing in communities that have been left behind. You see, when I look at a place like Waynesville, or Burgaw, or Sparta, or Cooleemee, I can’t help but see the quiet streets of Taylorsville in my mind’s eye. Their struggles were the struggles I saw every day growing up, and I know how badly those places need someone who will fight for them.
I know that they just need a leg up and a fighting chance to reach their potential again, and last night shows that voters will respond when they know you’re in their corner.
But getting our message out to those communities won’t be easy. We’re going to need a lot of resources, a lot of manpower, and a lot of commitment from supporters like you. After last night, you’d better believe the Republican Party is going to throw everything they have at holding on in 2024, and it’s going to require a monumental effort to overcome them.
So if you want to help make sure we can give our communities a fighter next year—if you want to make sure that this campaign has the resources and manpower to get out into every small town and rural holler and meet voters where they are—if you believe that North Carolina Democrats can outvote Kentucky Democrats any day of the week, I need you to step up. We’re less than a year out: can I count you in to make a contribution to this campaign?
