thank you for helping us understand North Carolina politics a little better. I wager most citizens cannot identify their elected officials. We need to be better informed, and vote accordingly.
Steve Luking is the Democrat candidate who will run against Sam Page in November .Steve is a respected retired physician from Rockingham County who ran a stellar campaign against Phil Berger in 2024. He has been a strong advocate for Medicaid expansion long before Berger was willing to consider it, and after damage spiraled to rural medical services under Berger's watch. Steve also advocated for public school support, and opposed vouchers for private schools for the wealthy. Steve Luking will be a solid choice for those willing to vote for progressive and positive policies for all North Carolinians.
Berger and his cronies in the NC GOP have been systematically destroying our public schools, driving up fees for everything as they cater to corporations and the wealthy. The NC GOP has seen to it that Duke Energy can guarantee their shareholders 10% or better return at the expense of rate payers. They even make us fund their capital investments in more fossil fuels as well as the ongoing rising fuel costs. That ain't how capitalism works. Shareholders should be earning those dividends by financing Duke's capital investments. They will never get serious about renewable clean energy as long as they can pass their fuel costs onto customers.
“Sam Page will likely represent Rockingham and parts of Guilford County in the state Senate next year.”
I guess the democrats can’t be bothered to put up worthy opponent so we just give up? Page is no spring chicken. Seems like a great opportunity to run young democrat!
Thanks again and greatly appreciate your support! I will definitely look at the links. I have some time now and I do plan to contribute. I don’t agree with spending a lot of time and money on trying to overturn gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is a symptom of the loss of the voting base and if the party is serious about regaining it has to change minds. This requires policy and messaging.
I agree that will take time but anybody contributing funds to the party has to understand how democrats plan to do that? It’s great there’s a focus on smaller and rural communities. Part of the reason I and others are critical is because I don’t see how it is building unity across a diverse and divided party and left. I feel like the party brushed off more left leaning voters and lost them in 2024. Where and how do we unite and grow across a few key policies?
There is a Democrat running against him. Since I'm nowhere near the district, I'm not familiar with his opponent, but he sounds like a "worthy" candidate (based on KathyNC's post above). However, the district is extremely gerrymandered (along with the rest of the state) so a Democratic win is unlikely.
But Berger wasted a lot of money on his primary that might otherwise have been shared with other GOP senate candidates**, so maybe Democrats will pick up a seat or two that they might not otherwise have been able to pick up and make sure that the GOP isn't in the supermajority in the Senate next term. [They are currently one seat short of a supermajority in the House, although defections by several members of the house cost Governor Stein several vetoes that otherwise would have held].
Thanks. I don’t think democrats can continue to think they are out due to gerrymandering. We have seen what is happening in other states where democrats have been winning in deep red areas. Gerrymandering is a result of democrats having no answer to republicans for more than a decade and Republicans have mastered the communication of triggers. Democrats must learn how to change the dynamics to hammer on key issues that are impacting. The democrats must find new ways to recapture middle and rural voters.
I agree with you about the Democratic Party in NC prior to the election of Anderson Clayton as state party chair. Prior to her tenure, the NCDP definitely neglected rural districts. But I don't think you are giving the current NCDP enough credit. It takes time to reverse several decades of neglect.
Are you involved in any "boots on the ground" organizing activities? If you were, you might not be so dismissive of the challenges of gerrymandering and what is being done to combat them.
I am involved and I also personally know several current incumbents in the NCGA as well as several candidates who ran and came up short against GOP incumbents (in 2024 specifically).
I am also a monthly $$ contributor to several grassroots organizations involved with working class and rural voters in NC:
FYI, most of those Democratic wins in deep red areas that you cite have been in special elections which usually only turn out the most activated voters. They don't automatically translate to general elections - especially not the last presidential election.
People forget that Democrats held the Legislature for a century working with both Republican and Democratic governors until NC along with Wisconsin got hit with Koch Bros and Heritage big money as test cases to make inroads to start pulling their libertarian and right wing elements together that would ultimately begin the erosion of the kind of politics many of us grew up with. They used ginned up outrage over the ACA as their wedge and the shrill ugliness we see today was born. Tillis, Berger-all products of Heritage and card-carrying members of that “far, right wing conspiracy” that they all made fun of back in the day.
It’s been a long road and good riddance to the bad rubbish that did concede. I’m like many here. He’s not done doing damage yet. He’s still young. He’ll scuttle off under his bridge, dry his powder out and re-emerge to see what he can get into next.
As a gay North Carolinian, I cannot forgive Berger for Amendment One and HB2 (the Bathroom Bill). As for Berger exercising full control of his caucus in the North Carolina Senate, I recall sitting in the gallery watching Dan Forest scooting around the Senate floor trying to undermine the compromise that Berger had reached with Roy Cooper on how HB2 would be rescinded. I suppose one might give credit to Berger for finally acknowledging that HB2 was a stupid ass thing to do.
Phil Berger is the worse thing to happen to NC in the last 15 years but I’m grateful he didn’t draw the recounts out any longer . His policies have and will continue to hurt NC in the future
I do not see how anyone could have any level of "grudging respect" for Berger. He has come near to destroying democracy in NC, thumbed his nose at our Constitution (with a wink from our Supreme Court) and has unbalanced our state government. Good riddance.
I doubt he is done. He could well make a comeback in two years, as I doubt Page will amount to much. On the broader point, I mostly disagree. Beating the Berger won’t get much, but Democrats have the worst political instincts in politics. They lack meanness and ruthlessness when it matters, and that’s why they are on the cliff of irrelevance in the Assembly.
I’m glad it didn’t come down to another battle to the last stand like the Allison Riggs v. Alfred E. Neuman SC race did. But I confess, that’s what I thought would happen.
So I thank him for not making a(nother) spectacle out of a race he lost, but I won’t miss him when he’s gone. If I had any grudging respect left for him, it evaporated in November of 2024 when he and his minions sold out Western NC, using them as bait in a naked power grab. I’ll never forgive him for that, and neither should anyone else.
We’ll have to see what changes this brings to the power dynamic in the NCGA. I suspect it will be bigger than simply losing one seat in the senate. But there is a broad spectrum of ideology up in there, and without the gravitational force Berger brought to the chamber, it’ll be interesting to see how well the caucus holds together.
Ultimately, he was pushed out. There's an interesting factoid buried in The New York Times article about his concession, describing a Zoom call prior to the primary in which Thom Tillis chimed in, saying that Berger was power hungry and needed to go. There was a lot of inside baseball going on in that race, with long knives out to kill the Berger King. He finally saw the light. I personally do not believe that his seemingly dignified departure is the end of the story.
thank you for helping us understand North Carolina politics a little better. I wager most citizens cannot identify their elected officials. We need to be better informed, and vote accordingly.
Steve Luking is the Democrat candidate who will run against Sam Page in November .Steve is a respected retired physician from Rockingham County who ran a stellar campaign against Phil Berger in 2024. He has been a strong advocate for Medicaid expansion long before Berger was willing to consider it, and after damage spiraled to rural medical services under Berger's watch. Steve also advocated for public school support, and opposed vouchers for private schools for the wealthy. Steve Luking will be a solid choice for those willing to vote for progressive and positive policies for all North Carolinians.
Berger and his cronies in the NC GOP have been systematically destroying our public schools, driving up fees for everything as they cater to corporations and the wealthy. The NC GOP has seen to it that Duke Energy can guarantee their shareholders 10% or better return at the expense of rate payers. They even make us fund their capital investments in more fossil fuels as well as the ongoing rising fuel costs. That ain't how capitalism works. Shareholders should be earning those dividends by financing Duke's capital investments. They will never get serious about renewable clean energy as long as they can pass their fuel costs onto customers.
“Sam Page will likely represent Rockingham and parts of Guilford County in the state Senate next year.”
I guess the democrats can’t be bothered to put up worthy opponent so we just give up? Page is no spring chicken. Seems like a great opportunity to run young democrat!
Thanks again and greatly appreciate your support! I will definitely look at the links. I have some time now and I do plan to contribute. I don’t agree with spending a lot of time and money on trying to overturn gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is a symptom of the loss of the voting base and if the party is serious about regaining it has to change minds. This requires policy and messaging.
I agree that will take time but anybody contributing funds to the party has to understand how democrats plan to do that? It’s great there’s a focus on smaller and rural communities. Part of the reason I and others are critical is because I don’t see how it is building unity across a diverse and divided party and left. I feel like the party brushed off more left leaning voters and lost them in 2024. Where and how do we unite and grow across a few key policies?
There is a Democrat running against him. Since I'm nowhere near the district, I'm not familiar with his opponent, but he sounds like a "worthy" candidate (based on KathyNC's post above). However, the district is extremely gerrymandered (along with the rest of the state) so a Democratic win is unlikely.
But Berger wasted a lot of money on his primary that might otherwise have been shared with other GOP senate candidates**, so maybe Democrats will pick up a seat or two that they might not otherwise have been able to pick up and make sure that the GOP isn't in the supermajority in the Senate next term. [They are currently one seat short of a supermajority in the House, although defections by several members of the house cost Governor Stein several vetoes that otherwise would have held].
** https://www.politicsnc.com/p/ten-million-down-and-two-votes-shy
Thanks. I don’t think democrats can continue to think they are out due to gerrymandering. We have seen what is happening in other states where democrats have been winning in deep red areas. Gerrymandering is a result of democrats having no answer to republicans for more than a decade and Republicans have mastered the communication of triggers. Democrats must learn how to change the dynamics to hammer on key issues that are impacting. The democrats must find new ways to recapture middle and rural voters.
I agree with you about the Democratic Party in NC prior to the election of Anderson Clayton as state party chair. Prior to her tenure, the NCDP definitely neglected rural districts. But I don't think you are giving the current NCDP enough credit. It takes time to reverse several decades of neglect.
Are you involved in any "boots on the ground" organizing activities? If you were, you might not be so dismissive of the challenges of gerrymandering and what is being done to combat them.
I am involved and I also personally know several current incumbents in the NCGA as well as several candidates who ran and came up short against GOP incumbents (in 2024 specifically).
I am also a monthly $$ contributor to several grassroots organizations involved with working class and rural voters in NC:
* New Rural Project (www.newruralproject.org)
* Down Home North Carolina (https://downhomenc.org/)
* Center for Common Ground (https://www.centerforcommonground.org/) **
** not exclusively working in NC
FYI, most of those Democratic wins in deep red areas that you cite have been in special elections which usually only turn out the most activated voters. They don't automatically translate to general elections - especially not the last presidential election.
I fully agree
People forget that Democrats held the Legislature for a century working with both Republican and Democratic governors until NC along with Wisconsin got hit with Koch Bros and Heritage big money as test cases to make inroads to start pulling their libertarian and right wing elements together that would ultimately begin the erosion of the kind of politics many of us grew up with. They used ginned up outrage over the ACA as their wedge and the shrill ugliness we see today was born. Tillis, Berger-all products of Heritage and card-carrying members of that “far, right wing conspiracy” that they all made fun of back in the day.
It’s been a long road and good riddance to the bad rubbish that did concede. I’m like many here. He’s not done doing damage yet. He’s still young. He’ll scuttle off under his bridge, dry his powder out and re-emerge to see what he can get into next.
As a gay North Carolinian, I cannot forgive Berger for Amendment One and HB2 (the Bathroom Bill). As for Berger exercising full control of his caucus in the North Carolina Senate, I recall sitting in the gallery watching Dan Forest scooting around the Senate floor trying to undermine the compromise that Berger had reached with Roy Cooper on how HB2 would be rescinded. I suppose one might give credit to Berger for finally acknowledging that HB2 was a stupid ass thing to do.
Happy he lost. But more work needs to be done to fix the harm inflicted upon NC in a lot of areas.
Phil Berger is the worse thing to happen to NC in the last 15 years but I’m grateful he didn’t draw the recounts out any longer . His policies have and will continue to hurt NC in the future
"It’s not really a patriotic party anymore."
Well said.
I do not see how anyone could have any level of "grudging respect" for Berger. He has come near to destroying democracy in NC, thumbed his nose at our Constitution (with a wink from our Supreme Court) and has unbalanced our state government. Good riddance.
I doubt he is done. He could well make a comeback in two years, as I doubt Page will amount to much. On the broader point, I mostly disagree. Beating the Berger won’t get much, but Democrats have the worst political instincts in politics. They lack meanness and ruthlessness when it matters, and that’s why they are on the cliff of irrelevance in the Assembly.
Dems on the "cliff of irrelevance" .... Berger's insane gerrymandering might have something to do with that.
Absolutely does. NC is not even a democracy anymore.
I’m glad it didn’t come down to another battle to the last stand like the Allison Riggs v. Alfred E. Neuman SC race did. But I confess, that’s what I thought would happen.
So I thank him for not making a(nother) spectacle out of a race he lost, but I won’t miss him when he’s gone. If I had any grudging respect left for him, it evaporated in November of 2024 when he and his minions sold out Western NC, using them as bait in a naked power grab. I’ll never forgive him for that, and neither should anyone else.
We’ll have to see what changes this brings to the power dynamic in the NCGA. I suspect it will be bigger than simply losing one seat in the senate. But there is a broad spectrum of ideology up in there, and without the gravitational force Berger brought to the chamber, it’ll be interesting to see how well the caucus holds together.
Yes, he and Tillis/Moore imposed an incredible amount of discipline on their caucuses. It could be a catfish for awhile. #🍿
Or catfight (d'oh)
Ultimately, he was pushed out. There's an interesting factoid buried in The New York Times article about his concession, describing a Zoom call prior to the primary in which Thom Tillis chimed in, saying that Berger was power hungry and needed to go. There was a lot of inside baseball going on in that race, with long knives out to kill the Berger King. He finally saw the light. I personally do not believe that his seemingly dignified departure is the end of the story.
The notion of Tillis calling anybody power-hungry is… amusing.
Good news, sort of.
Hooray! Berger’s out of office!