The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has jumped into the North Carolina Senate primary. They followed EMILY’s List’s endorsement of Deborah Ross, further indicating that Ross is about to show a healthy end-of-year report. The national Democratic establishment has found their candidate and they want to make sure she gets through the primary.
The endorsements of both organizations are signals to donors, not voters. They’re telling big Democratic contributors, both in North Carolina and across the nation, that Ross is running a good campaign and their money will be well spent. They are also signaling that they want to seriously contest Richard Burr’s seat.
Ross’ opponents Kevin Griffen and Chris Rey immediately pushed back on the DSCC’s endorsement. Both released statement criticizing Ross as beholden to the establishment and casting themselves as outsiders willing to take on the system. In a year when Bernie Sanders is proving a thorn in the side of the establishment, running against the establishment seems to be a pretty good bet.
Contrary to the article, the DSCC’s involvement in primaries is not that rare. They have a long history of choosing sides in primaries, not always to their advantage. In 2010, the DSCC endorsed Cal Cunningham against Elaine Marshall. I was running Marshall’s campaign at the time and we made Marshall the outsider while casting the DSCC as meddlers in state politics. Marshall came out on top.
However, the 2010 race was far different. Marshall was a known quantity who started the race with a big lead. We created her outsider profile over a period of five months, not just two. And Marshall also raised a $1 million to make her case. For either Rey or Griffen to make their argument stick, they need money. Unless they surprise with a big haul in their 4th quarter reports, their complaints against the establishment won’t reach many of the 800,000 or more people who will vote in March.
Ross seems to be building a formidable operation. With low name recognition among all the Democratic Senate candidates, money is really the only thing that matters. She’ll have the resources to get her name known and some basic message to Democratic voters. Add that to her natural advantage as the only woman in a race where almost 60% of the electorate will be women and Ross looks pretty solid going into the final two months of the race.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Many people give up couponing simply for this reason.
I can understand the difference between Ross’s standing compared to the two other Democratic contenders and that of Elaine Marshall versus Cal Cunningham in 2010. Nevertheless, primary voters should be allowed to express their preference before the DSCC jumps in with a premature endorsement. There will be plenty of time for the Washington power brokers to get behind whoever is the nominee after the primary — especially with the primary now two months earlier than it used to be.
Hey, why let the democratic process play out. We can’t trust Democrats to pick the right candidate on their own. They might get confused and wrong.
We have to help the poor dears govern themselves, because we know what’s best for them, even if they don’t.
And what’s ALWAYS best is that they vote for the candidate that can raise the most money, because we need more money in our political system.
Think what a benefit the election of Ross will be to North Carolina: to business and to our battered reputation.
She’ll most likely coast through the primary against the other Dems, but the general is an entirely different matter. While Burr has to deal with the Brannon insurgency that Tillis dealt with, Burr will still have a formidable war chest should he succeed. Couple that with a national organization that has plenty of money to defend the Senate majority and an electorate that’s trending GOP (albeit by a small margin), it would take a formidable Dem national ticket AND a weak GOP ticket to swing NC her way. If Brannon succeeds, then we’ve got a whole different ballgame.
IMO, state donors would be better served trying to upend McCrory than spend money on the Senate race.
Why is it an either/or choice between supporting Ross or getting rid of McCrory? If it is just money, then NC Democrats need to re-think how they are looking at this election. What happens in DC has an enormous impact on NC, just as what happens in Raleigh does. Isn’t it time to start fighting for every seat, and really contesting every race? We should remember just how long Jesse Helms represented this state in the US Senate and what enormous damage his votes often did to even moderate issues.
Allow me to clarify before anything else: I am a conservative, not a liberal, and am offering a relatively objective view. In terms of national organizations, Democrats have been losing the money race for the last year, if not longer, and been losing it badly. Should Burr prevail in the primary, he has enough money to bury Ross in ads and will surely raise millions more. Sending one vote to DC won’t make nearly enough of a difference versus electing a Dem governor.
That being said, Kay Hagan’s votes in 6 years caused an absurd amount of damage to NC. Helms votes accomplished a great many things during his tenure and he was able to work across the aisle on numerous issues under Republican and Democrat presidents. He was able to get Clinton to sign legislation reducing America’s role in the UN while working with the same man who gave the eulogy at his funeral: then-Sen. Joe Biden. He was probably the most principled conservative ever to represent North Carolina and I consider among the most accomplished Senators in recent history.
If Hagan, did anything at all, one way or another, she would have certainly gotten plenty of help from the GOP. All I ever saw out of her was pride in her “bipartisanship” to the point as an ostensible Democrat, I wondered what exactly I might need her for. Her endorsement of the Keystone Pipeline took the cake, or left me with no option but to write in my own name and commence my failure of a campaign. (We will see how well I do founding a viable Transcendian party before I am dead.)
As far as Helms is concerned, whatever he did other than know how to run an office, typical of old school Republicans who responded to requests from constituents for help with our bureaucracy pretty well marked the Eastern part of the state as still at war with the Union.
The attacks on the UN didn’t need Helms to wreck it. Support for Zionism and the Korean War pretty well did that job. The US overreach in its aim to be the Government of Governments isn’t working out well for the US or the rest of the world.
You are correct that electing a Democratic Governor would be a better thing than continuing with a Republican. Not that Roy Cooper is of any account as any inspiration. We might at least hope for some end to the anti union stance intended to make clear labor is pliant and desperate for work and government leaders will do all possible to sell them out for the benefit of those at the top.
Of course realistically that is just hope, already Cooper came to the rescue of the Governor with fears of refugee women and children out of a war zone.
Whatever it is that would improve the mental landscape in a state where poverty exists for at least a quarter of the citizenry doesn’t look like it will be altered anytime soon.
You do have to have money to spend it and money comes to the majority from work that pays enough so they can pay the taxes Democrats and Republicans fight over how to spend.
Burr had the good sense to aim to see Transportation bill dollars go towards the all important improvement of the highway connection from Morehead City to I-40 and I-95. That deepwater port will accommodate the newer container ships running at 13 hundred feet long.
How wherever you live functions as a vital port means prosperity and power.
Regardless of whatever isn’t in place for NC, there is so much that is, it is obvious that what leadership sees as important and spend their time and energy on, ideology entrenched in either party is what is at fault and works well at maintaining an atmosphere of depression, fear, and despair.
Poverty does that. There is a lot of it in NC.
If Republican ideology is so great, how come where the majority of the people they hate live is where land prices are though the roof?
I think you are misinterpreting my words: I fully support re-electing Governor McCrory. I am simply stating, objectively, that I believe state Democrats would have their money better utilized supporting Cooper’s effort than Ross’.
My person experience with Jesse Helms was the rudeness with which I was always treated (in at least one instance being flat out hung up on) any time I called his office and voiced an opinion that did not reflect his or those of the people who worked for him.
Go Deborah, Go! Great Democrat pick up opportunity. People are ready for a change from Burr.