In a lot of ways, Democrats had a shockingly good 2023. It wasn’t that long ago that off-year elections were a nightmare for us—but we’ve seen a real turning of the tide. Last year, in our municipal races and across the country, Democratic values won in places they hadn’t in a very long time. For the past two decades, our party’s base has skewed increasingly urban. No one was all that surprised when we won big in High Point or Durham or Charlotte.
But we also won in Davie County. And Allegheny County. And Pender County. And Haywood County. And Cabarrus County.. And so many other places I couldn’t even name them all. Abortion and recreational marijuana won big in Ohio. A Democrat won reelection as the Governor of Kentucky.
These aren’t places where we’re “supposed” to have a shot at victory—but good people believed in our message, organized around it in their rural communities, and shocked our whole state and nation.
Because here’s the thing: rural voters are feeling the squeeze from the last decade of Republican governance too. They’re feeling the crumbling infrastructure. They’re feeling the difficulty in retaining good educators and other state employees. They’re feeling the property tax increases.
And now that the GOP have shown that they aren’t kidding about taking away people’s rights, we have a chance to make serious inroads with voters who’ve previously dismissed our party.
Traditional wisdom has led many of our candidates in past years to shy away from being loud and proud Democrats out of a fear that rural voters would view our positions as too extreme. But 2023 showed that we can run on our Democratic values and win in rural North Carolina—but only if we show up and put in the work.
This afternoon, my team and I are meeting to discuss our strategy leading into the primary election on March 5th. This time of year is always a bit of a balancing act for any candidate with a primary opponent: you want to start laying the organizing groundwork to win in November now, but you can’t focus on it too much or you risk not making it through the primary in the first place. You’ve got to make sure you campaign aggressively enough to win the primary, but then you can’t go so hard that you’ve got nothing left in your warchest and have to start over from scratch for the general election.
We had a great fundraising year in 2023—especially with our big push in December, supporters like you ensured we were able to fund a significant portion of our budget to get through the primary election. But now, it’s time for us to start looking ahead toward the funds we need to raise for the general election.
Because the more cushion we build now, the less we’ll have to hold back over the next 61 days, and the better positioned I’ll be to hit the ground running as your Democratic nominee on March 6th.
