Welcome to a big Sunday evening edition of Progress Report.
Tonight, we’re going to dive into the nitty gritty of the handful of elections that will decide the fate of abortion access for millions of people in the South. But before that, here are a few notable headlines for you:
A new investigation makes it abundantly clear that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used state money to lure and kidnap desperate asylum seekers for his idiotic, inhumane migrant delivery stunt a few weeks back in Martha’s Vineyard.
As if that weren’t bad enough, DeSantis also used the stunt to send $1 million in taxpayer dollars to a former client and frequent patron of his good pal Matt Gaetz, who knows a thing or two about child trafficking.
Will this finally force the media to focus on DeSantis’s crimes and cruelty instead of examining everything in the context of his presidential run? TBD, but our billboard goes up blocks from the Florida governor’s mansion tomorrow, which should generate some nice press and buzz.
Democrats are finally embracing the message that I’ve been harping on for the past six years: Republicans are terrorists.
By endlessly focusing on bipartisanship, Democrats were giving the media a clear pass to treat Republicans like legitimate political actors, no matter how insane and dangerous they became.
Now, Democrats are finally underscoring the stakes without pulling punches, forcing coverage that has to pay attention to the GOP’s violent extremism and hammering home the clear truth for voters.
For all the focus on the huge amount of money pouring into elections that will decide the fate of abortion rights, it’s grassroots activism that’s going to decide the ultimate outcome.
In Michigan, people who have never been involved in politics before are diving into the process and using relational organizing to ensure that reproductive freedom is codified into the state constitution this fall.
OK, without further ado…
Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: Nick, Julie, Amrita, Pat, Ann, Enid, Susan, Ramie, Mojisola, and Ann!
With just a little over month left before the midterm elections, we find ourselves in uncharted territory: The stakes have never been higher — we’re talking the future of civil rights and American democracy here — and the outcome has never been more uncertain.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights and Republicans’ unhinged assault on everything from children to reality itself have conspired to throw an almost guaranteed red wave into extreme doubt. Complicating matters further is the fact that every state has very different political and cultural dynamics, not to mention new legislative lines from this most recent round of redistricting.
With so much up in the air, Progress Report is going to spend the next few weeks zooming in on key races in key states, with help from local politicos, activists, and experts. After taking a look at the long-term progressive rural organizing going on in North Carolina a few weeks back, today we’re diving deep into the state’s upcoming elections, with a look at the issues at play and districts in the crosshairs.
For the inside word, we turned to Blair Reeves, the executive director of the progressive organization Carolina Forward and its 501(c)(4). Carolina Forward has become a major player in NC politics, which has long been dominated by Republicans who are slowly losing their grip on power.
North Carolina is now a true toss-up state; Republicans hold an edge in the legislature, Democrats control the statewide offices, and the state Supreme Court sits at 4-3, with several sets up in November. All that’s at stake in what will be extremely close elections are the individual freedoms of millions and the ongoing existence of free democracy. The state also has a marquee US Senate rave, between former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley and Rep. Ted Budd, but we’ll focus today on down ballot races.
Progress Report: I know Medicaid expansion is a huge deal in North Carolina, but first and foremost, abortion rights are at play, right?
Blair Reeves: Right now, we are probably the most important state in the country for choice. North Carolina has a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, but every other southern state is about to [outright] ban abortion. So North Carolina is going to be a haven for every woman from Miami, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans — all of them. And if Republicans win a supermajority in our legislature, then that goes away and then it's Virginia [that is the closest state for abortion access]. So North Carolina is really the frontline state here.
How far do you think Republicans would take it if they won a veto-proof majority?
If the Republicans win a supermajority of the legislature, my guess is that what they'll do is pass a six week abortion ban and position it as the “compromise” solution.
We’re putting about $30-40,000 behind a new ad on abortion. We tried to take a lesson from the Kansas playbook — the Kansas people, what they did is went very “traditional” in that they had a white male doctor in a suit saying something like “I need to be able to treat my patients.” It worked in Kansas, so we tried to take a page out of that book.
We're basically the only group doing that, and we actually did some audience testing on it, which showed that [the ad] outperformed in persuasion in terms of getting people to vote for choice and also getting people to vote for Democrats.
The pathway for them to ban abortion is winning a supermajority in the Senate, and then the legislation goes back down to the House. There are maybe two Democrats who we can't really count on for this kind of thing, so if it comes down to those two votes and they can split those off, then they can override a veto [from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper].
Is North Carolina experiencing the same kind of uprising against the threat of an abortion ban (and the current extreme lack of access to care)? Do you think it could mark a major realignment?
Just anecdotally, we do events all the time, and we’re getting 50, 60, 75, 100 women at these events. They’re affluent white women, not really political, people who — I hate to say it — don't really care about a lot of things. And one of our challenges is we have to figure out how do we get these women pissed off about Medicaid expansion next? This is like this is a big on-ramp. This is like the organic version of what the other side was trying to do with schools: rally pissed off suburban women. And they're all coming to us right now, which is very exciting.
The state Supreme Court ordered new maps, so what’s the playing field look like in terms of competitive seats?
Republicans are three seats away in the House and two seats away in the Senate. Back when the midterm was going to be a Republican wave, they promised donors, they promised their supporters, they promised everybody a supermajority.
But what we're seeing now, though, is that with the seats that they'd have to flip to do that, there's no pathway to it in the House. In the Senate, it's gonna come down to one or two seats. If we have a really good night, it's more than that.
So now you’re suddenly trying to go on the offense instead of just playing defense. Let’s start there — which seats do you think Democrats could possibly pick up?
There is a really exciting race in southern Wake County, which is the Raleigh area. State Rep. Erin Paré of District 37 is the only Republican seat left in Wake County. In redistricting, Republicans surgically drew this district for her, with the edge of the county like a fortress.
She's a very white suburban mom, seemingly very non-threatening, but actually insane. It’s an R +5 district, but we got some leaked Republican polls that showed that she was actually behind by a point to the Democrat who is running there [Holly Springs town council member] Christine Kelly. And then we've done some subsequent polling as well, with similar results.
The most important Senate race is probably District 18, which is Northern Wake County and Granville County. It's a new Senate district, so there’s no incumbent. Wake County is where all the people live and Granville County is much more sparsely populated. That's really the decision maker. It's a 50-50 district. The Republican candidate is this Christian nationalist guy, while Mary Wills Bode, the Democrat, is a great young candidate, a super dynamic woman.
Let’s get ambitious: Any reach races that Democrats could swipe on a real good night?
There are two other races that are really interesting. I think they're probably 60-40 races for the Republicans, but both have pretty legitimate challengers. One of those is down in Wilmington in New Hanover County, which went for Biden by a couple of points. [Incumbent state Sen. Michael Lee won by one point, 50.5-49.5, in 2020].
Wilmington has trended hard towards Democrats, which is a big problem for Republicans because they currently hold the one House seat and one Senate seat in just New Hanover, which is the smallest county in North Carolina. If they lose that, they’re screwed and we have really good candidates down there.
There’s one in Winston-Salem, southeastern Forsyth County — District 74. Carla Catalán Day is running and she’s raised a shitload of money. They’re putting probably a quarter-million dollars into mailers over there, in an R+5. And I have to preface that by saying that Republicans here in North Carolina probably have a shitload of money so they can afford to be super aggressive in some of these places.
Which districts are Republicans gunning for right now? Which are most likely to flip their way on a bad night?
We do have some seats that we're defending that are pretty important. There’s Ricky Hurtado in Alamance County, for example. I feel pretty good — these are 60-40 races for us, so if the Republicans have a good night, they can win some of our seats, but I don't see them flipping the D+5 districts in this cycle.
One of the ones I'd be concerned about is a Democrat in northern Wake County named Terence Everitt. He’s a really good incumbent and a hard worker who raises money. They changed his district around so it's like a D+2 or something like that. The guy he's running against is a total fucking whacko. He ran last time, too. He's a self-professed Christian nationalist, an ultra-MAGA, one of those guys.
What they were hoping for six months ago was to just write off some of these races as completely non-competitive. They were planning to go after the D+4, D+5, and D+6 districts. That was their plan, and right now we're seeing the mailers that mean they're spending heavily on R+2 and R+3 districts.
How much do those Christian nationalist, MAGA, Trump-acolyte bullshit issues still connect right now? Are people still fired up about the “stolen” election? And are Democrats equally as motivated?
I read something recently that resonated well for me, which was that we're facing dual wave elections. Republican voters are super jacked up about inflation and cost of living, which are issues of convenience for them, because they just hate Biden. There's still a little bit of schools and masks and that stuff, but that's basically all gone away. Everyone thinks the economy's terrible, but North Carolina's unemployment rate is 3.5%, or something like that. It’s stupid, but inflation and the economy are big ones for them.
For Democrats, it's choice, it's abortion up and down the ballot. And then there's radicalism and extremism, that factors into it as well. It's really hard to poll on that, we’ve found, because it means something so different to everybody.
So where are people on racist obsessions like Critical Race Theory? Is that still a big factor?
It’s completely evaporated. We looked at Google Trends for “Critical Race Theory” in North Carolina and it just collapsed. No one’s talking about it anymore. You see it come up occasionally in some of these right-wing Facebook groups around folks running for school boards, but that's basically it. None of the legislative candidates are talking about it. All of the mailers we're seeing from Republicans in legislative races here, it's all inflation and it's crime.
The other thing we were seeing actually, we've seen them go back to “Defund the Police.” That's appearing on a bunch of mailers as well, and we see that as a good thing because it just shows that they don't have anything right now. They're going back to playing the hits, you know?
So are you seeing big school board races? Are you getting involved?
One of the premiere races is happening here is in Wake County. Wake County is the largest metro area in the state and its school system is actually the 14th largest in the country. And they have MAGA-heads challenging every single one of the school board districts, because all nine districts are up for reelection. They're getting national funding from Moms for Liberty and those kinds of people, and I think that they're all going to fail. I think they're all going to lose.
School board races in North Carolina are nominally nonpartisan. But over the last six years, the General Assembly has transitioned about a third of those to become partisan races. it's incredibly unpopular. We polled on it and everyone hates partisan school board races, but they do it anyway.
Wait, Before You Leave!
Progress Report has raised over $6.6 million dollars raised for progressive candidates and causes. We’ve also brought invaluable attention to issues in communities that are ignored by the national media. Isn’t that cool?
None of that money goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out there. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So to make this sustainable, hire new writers, and expand, I need your help.
For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:
Premium member-only newsletters
Exclusive interviews with progressive leaders.
Financing new projects and paying new reporters
You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in an upcoming edition of the big newsletter!