North Carolina’s Democratic party chairwoman is urging President Biden’s reelection campaign to address its “showing up problem” in the state in the run-up to the 2024 election.
Anderson Clayton, who at 25 is the youngest state party leader, told Washington Post Live on Monday that Democrats were taking the wrong lesson from recent losses in the state.
“I think that the idea right now is that the Democratic Party has a messaging problem, and I really don’t believe that. I believe we have a showing up problem,” she told The Post’s Marianna Sotomayor.
Former President Trump won North Carolina by 74,481 votes in 2020, and Republicans retained control of an open Senate seat in 2022. However, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) has shown that Democrats can win in the state.
Clayton urged Biden and Vice President Harris to invest time in the state — which carries 15 electoral college votes — in the months ahead.
“I want Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to come to North Carolina and run strong on their record,” Clayton said. “And also, drum up that energy and excitement that we didn’t have in 2020 and 2022 here on the ground.”
Clayton pointed to efforts to expand internet connectivity and reduce the cost of insulin as important successes that need to be trumpeted by Biden’s campaign.
Leading up to the 2020 election, the Biden-Harris campaign hit North Carolina about 9 times, whereas the Trump-Pence campaign visited approximately 18 times, according to a Washington Post analysis.
A number of Democratic activists told Vox after the 2020 election that the party’s “Trump or else” strategy was a failure in the state, suggesting Democrats should focus on solutions to the challenges facing voters.
Though North Carolina is often considered a swing state, Biden’s loss was not unusual. Barack Obama was the only Democrat to win a presidential election in the state since 1980.
But Clayton pointed out that if more Democrats had voted in 2020 and 2022, when Cheri Beasley lost the Senate race, the results could have been flipped.
Democrats could be facing an even steeper climb if the GOP-led state Legislature is able to pass voting reforms that limit same-day voter registration and voting by mail. Cooper has vetoed previous versions of the bill, but Republicans now have veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
That bill is part of nationwide GOP efforts to restrict voting on college campuses and among other groups that have historically favored Democrats in North Carolina and elsewhere.
Clayton said mobilizing college campuses would be key to boosting the Democratic vote, however those efforts could be significantly curbed by the GOP legislation.