WRAL’s Willie Daniely spoke to her and has the story.

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In my years observing politics and hurricanes at The Miami Herald I frequently rewatched the 1948 thriller “Key Largo,” which combined the two subjects in a classic hero-versus-villain story.  The hero, played by Humphrey Bogart, was a decorated World War II veteran. The villain, a mob boss named Johnny Rocco who controlled rackets and local politicians, was played by Edward G. Robinson.

The two were thrown together in a Florida Keys hotel as a killer hurricane bore down and people huddled inside, terrorized by the storm and Rocco’s gun-wielding gangsters. My favorite scene came when Robinson’s Rocco brags of how he bends local government to his malevolent will. 

“I make [politicians] out of whole cloth, just like a tailor makes a suit,” Rocco sneers. “…I get them on the ballot, then after the election we count the votes. And if they don’t turn out right, we recount them. And recount them again. Until they do.”

The North Carolina Republican Party could teach some new tricks to Johnny Rocco.

In recent months, mostly obscured from public view, the GOP has seized control of the state’s election system in ways that would make Rocco envious. Not only has the party shown a propensity to count and count again (Jefferson Griffin vs. Allison Riggs for a state Supreme Court seat), but it has backed that up with legislative and judicial muscle.

This doesn’t just impact what goes on in Raleigh. By the end of June, it will hit with hurricane force in Buncombe and other counties when the GOP completes the process of having placed loyalists in position to oversee the ballot counting in the 2026 elections. 

“When you talk about rigging elections,” Buncombe County Board of Elections chairman Jake Quinn told me as he described all that has occurred in recent months, “the question people will have is how North Carolina became ground zero for doing that.”

How we got to “ground zero” is the story that remains largely untold. 

Here’s a scenario to help picture the situation that awaits us in future elections: Had the state Republican Party had this machinery in place during last year’s judicial elections, Griffin likely would be on the state Supreme Court among an 8-1 Republican majority despite losing by 734 meticulously counted votes to Justice Riggs, a Democrat. 

How? Because a GOP-majority state Board of Elections, backed by a GOP-majority Supreme Court, would have erased the ballots of 66,000 voters – disproportionately Democratic ones – on the tenuous claim they failed to provide appropriate voter ID. 

 The Republican leadership has captured North Carolina’s elections machinery with nary a public outcry, at least not yet. It was orchestrated like a chess game with the different pieces moving in multiple directions at once until checkmate.   

Power shift began in December

The first move occurred in December, six weeks after Democrat Josh Stein won election as governor and the General Assembly – still with the GOP’s veto-proof majority –  was seeking ways to weaken his authority.  

Using a Tropical Storm Helene-relief bill for cover, the Republican leadership rammed through a veto-proof amendment stripping the governor of authority to administer North Carolina’s state and county election boards and appoint their chairmen. 

By statute, each board has five members: two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their parties, plus the governor’s pick as chairman, typically a fellow party member. With Stein’s victory, the certain result would have been boards with three Democrats and two Republicans.  

For the Republicans to implement the takeover, that law had to change.

Within 24 hours and without legislative deliberation or public input, a new section was tacked on to Senate Bill 382 shifting these election board appointments from Stein to newly elected state Auditor Dave Boliek whose primary qualification for the new assignment appeared to be that he is a Republican who says he was “inspired” by President Trump to run.  

Boliek, an ex-Democrat, is a lawyer and former head of the UNC Board of Trustees who boasts of his efforts to “eliminate woke diversity and equity policies” from the university. But he acknowledges being clueless about how he was gifted this newly found executive power to administer North Carolina elections. 

“It’s not something I asked for; it’s certainly not something that I expected,” he says. 

Despite this utter lack of preparation, Boliek has seized this mantle with zeal. On May 7, a week after the new law took effect, Boliek fired the state elections board’s award-winning executive director Karen Brinson Bell, who had just been elected president of the non-partisan National Elections Association. 

But Brinson Bell had drawn withering fire from Republicans for recommending certification of Riggs’s narrow victory over Griffin. Boliek also appointed two new Republican board members whom the Democratic Party immediately labeled as extremists: retired Marine Corps pilot Francis X. DeLuca and former state Sen. Bob Rucho.

DeLuca formerly headed the arch-conservative Civitas Foundation which, among other initiatives, attempted to eliminate early-voting on Sundays and same-day voter registration, reforms that have increased turnout among low-income voters who tend to support Democratic candidates. 

Rucho earned the dubious nickname “Senator Gerrymander” for crafting a pro-Republican district-election map that one state appellate court said had been drawn with “surgical precision” to ensure GOP control. A determining feature of Rucho’s maps included diluting the collective voting strength of Blacks who tend to vote for Democrats. 

Yet in 2019 his map passed muster with the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case titled Rucho v. Common Cause. The 5-4 majority conceded that the map was “incompatible with democratic principles.” But Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that such partisan matters as gerrymandering were not within the jurisdiction of federal courts and should be left up to the states. 

So here we are in North Carolina with a gerrymandered General Assembly, a gerrymandered congressional delegation, and the state’s appellate and Supreme Court with lopsided Republican majorities. 

Gov. Stein’s failed attempt to regain administrative authority over the election machinery exemplifies how effectively the GOP can now exercise power. Days after his inauguration, Stein filed suit to strike the section of Senate Bill 382 stripping him of executive authority over elections.

A three-judge panel in Wake County composed of two Republicans and one Democrat heard the case. In a 2-1 decision – the Democrat and one Republican – the court declared the section to be unconstitutional, thus returning authority to the governor.

But Boliek appealed that decision to the state’s Republican-dominated appellate court. The appellate judges reversed the result and gave a green light to the auditor’s takeover.  

Notably, this court’s decision was rendered anonymously and without comment, the judicial equivalent of a back-handed slap at the Wake County district judges. Stein’s appeal to the state Supreme Court, with its 7-2 Republican majority, went unheard and it died in silence. The new law took effect May 1. 

The full impact of this change remains to be felt in Buncombe and the state’s other 99 counties. Boliek has until June 30 to appoint the heads of these county boards and to certify appointments of their members. 

Let me return to Buncombe County Board Chairman Quinn whom I quoted earlier characterizing the state as “ground zero for vote rigging.” As a Democrat, he expects to be ousted from the leadership post and perhaps as a board member, which he admits he will lament. Yet two things trouble him more than his own plight. 

One has been the role that many (though not all) Republican state judges have played in enabling this partisan power grab.

“I have no faith any longer in the North Carolina courts,” Quinn said.  “We’re at a stage where we have to pray for judges to make decisions upholding free and fair elections.”

The second has been that this bulldozing of the elections system has been carried out with hardly any public knowledge or outcry, and deliberately so. “Only election nerds like me know about this,” Quinn said.

Johnny Rocco would applaud.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Tom Fiedler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter and dean emeritus from Boston University who lives in Asheville. Email him at tfiedler@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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Original article

The post How the state GOP seized control of North Carolina’s elections boards could be a ready-for-Hollywood thriller • Asheville Watchdog appeared first on avlwatchdog.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content critiques Republican control over election administration in North Carolina, highlighting concerns about partisan manipulation and voter suppression efforts predominantly credited to GOP actions. The article emphasizes the Republican Party’s consolidation of election oversight and judicial support to maintain power, while portraying Democratic actors and election officials as marginalized or undermined. The language and framing suggest a critical stance toward conservative policies and practices, aligning it with a center-left perspective that is wary of right-wing political maneuvers affecting democratic processes.

by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
May 21, 2025

When Anderson Clayton took control of the North Carolina Democratic Party at 25 years old, she knew she needed to make some changes. The previous election cycle, Democrats had left a quarter of the state’s legislative seats unchallenged, giving Republicans a free ride to Raleigh. From her viewpoint, that couldn’t happen again. 

Clayton’s plan was simple: find a Democratic candidate to run in every legislative race in 2024. The execution was harder. Convincing Democrats, often political newcomers, to face off against strong Republican incumbents in largely gerrymandered districts? Not easy. Add in public scrutiny and slim to zero odds of winning in some of those districts? An even tougher sell. 

Through extensive travel and promises of party support, Clayton got the buy-in she needed. By filing deadline, Democrats had thrown in their hats in all but three of the state’s 170 legislative races. Upon receiving the news, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper called Clayton, exuberant. 

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But all Clayton did was apologize. In the push to fill legislative races, she had left two congressional seats uncontested. 

Many political watchers have credited Clayton’s leadership for statewide Democratic successes last year — chief among them, breaking the Republican veto-proof supermajority in the state House, handing Democratic Justice Allison Riggs a narrow victory in a hotly contested state Supreme Court race and winning the governor’s race and half of the council of state seats.  

But now is not the time to rest on her laurels. Clayton is already setting the stage for 2026 and beyond. On a recent Friday afternoon, she sat down with Carolina Public Press to talk Democratic strategy. 

Clayton’s strategic origin story

Growing up in Roxboro, a rural town of about 8,000 people in north central North Carolina, Clayton never considered becoming a political leader. She wanted to be the next Anderson Cooper. 

But in 2016, while she was attending Appalachian State University, the Watauga County Democratic Party sued the State Board of Elections to keep a voting site on campus. The party claimed Republicans wanted to remove the site to make it harder for students to vote. 

Clayton watched the county party fight in court, and also on campus to register student voters. That year, when North Carolina went red, Watauga County went blue. 

“I got to see what it was like when a party really put their money where their mouth was and invested in young people, and it helped them win an entire county,” she said. 

The seeds of Clayton’s organizing strategy were planted then. They were watered later: first, when she worked on U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning’s 2018 campaign against then U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and learned firsthand that “you can’t out-organize a gerrymander.” And again in 2020 when she knocked on doors for then-Sen. Kamala Harris ahead of the Iowa caucuses and realized voters were not as polarized as they’re often painted. 

“Everybody really is somebody worth talking to at the end of the day about issues, about a candidate,” Clayton said.

“Targeting works, but it shouldn’t be the only people that you talk to. It made me believe in rural organizing again. It made me believe in rural people more than I ever had. And it made me be like, ‘God, I want to put up a fight.’”

Short-term losses, long-term gains for Democrats

Gaston County Democratic Party third vice chair Sydnie Hutchinson couldn’t find a Democrat to run against 17-year Republican incumbent State Rep. John Torbett in 2024. 

So, she did it herself.

When lawmakers redistricted, they divided Gastonia, the Democratic urban center of Gaston County, between three state House districts. As a result, Democrats don’t stand much of a chance in any of them. That near-certain failure, as well as safety concerns, kept anyone from seriously considering running, Hutchinson said. 

“I can’t tell you how many people came up to me at events or out at the polls that were like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know a Democrat existed in this county, I didn’t know I had a choice,’” she said. 

Hutchinson was one of many young people to take on Republicans in previously uncontested districts. Justin Matthews was another. He went to the Board of Elections between college exams to file for candidacy against Gaston County Republican Kelly Hastings, who had run unopposed five of the six previous election cycles. 

These younger candidates share the same convictions as Clayton: to win the long game, Democrats have to talk to everyone and be everywhere, even when the odds are stacked against them. 

Hutchinson lost her race. So did Matthews and most of the Democrats who stepped up. And so did former Vice President Kamala Harris, who trailed three points behind President Donald Trump in North Carolina. 

For some, that can make it feel like it was all for nothing, Clayton said. But they’re wrong, she emphasized. 

Just being in places Democrats have neglected is changing the narrative, she said. The party’s absence has given Republicans free rein to define Democrats in a way that benefits them.

By reintegrating into rural communities, Democrats can switch up the messaging; they are friends, community members and neighbors “instead of what Fox News is telling them that we are,” Clayton said. 

They can also build — or rebuild — infrastructure. Democrats can’t drop into a county a year before an election and expect to win; they’ve got to invest over time in the county party and the people, Clayton said. Last year, the state party invested. They gave legislative candidates free access to organizing technology, made websites and logos and offered strategic, moral — and sometimes, financial — support. 

The party did secure a few key statewide victories, too. Justice Riggs kept her seat on the state Supreme Court, the Democrats broke a Republican supermajority by one seat in the state House and won half of the Council of State seats.

Not to mention Gaston County, where Hutchinson and Matthews ran, which shifted three percentage points bluer from 2020, the fifth-largest Democratic shift in the state. 

That wouldn’t have happened without candidates knocking on doors across the state, not only for their races but also for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, Clayton said. In North Carolina, margins matter. She intends to widen them in her party’s favor. 

Three M’s of midterms

Heading into 2026, Clayton has a few objectives on her list.  

MONEY: First thing’s first, she’s got to raise a lot of money. Like, a lot. Since becoming party chair, Clayton said she’s learned a lot about money. To get anything done, she needs talented people, and talented people cost a lot. Of her approximately $2.9 million operational budget, about $2.6 million goes toward staff salaries, she said. 

Plus, the party just spent $3 million on a state Supreme Court election fight. 

To keep the party in the black, Clayton needs to figure out how to build a better fundraising machine. When she talks to donors, they don’t always understand that donations toward each of North Carolina’s 10 Council of State races may be just as important to success as money for congressional candidates. 

In the meantime, the Democratic National Committee will help Clayton maintain a bigger staff in the off year. In late April, new DNC chair Ken Martin announced that state parties would get an additional $60,000 a year through its new four-year strategy, and North Carolina would get another $60,000 on top of that since it’s largely Republican-controlled. 

MOBILIZING: Clayton has to recruit quality candidates — candidates who people can genuinely believe in. 

After 2024’s successes, Clayton isn’t finding it as hard to get people to buy in. Interest in running for municipal races has skyrocketed, and she doesn’t foresee any issues getting congressional candidates on board. 

As the State Senate Democratic Whip, Sen. Jay Chaudhuri spends a lot of his time providing support and raising money for candidates in competitive seats. His top concern for 2026 is recruiting candidates that reflect the socioeconomic and educational makeup of their community. 

The party should develop more working-class candidates to be competitive, he said. 

“The moment you include members of your Senate caucus that come from a working class background, that also translates into a broader Democratic agenda that hopefully puts the needs of middle class and working class families first,” Chaudhuri said. 

MESSAGING: Clayton believes Democrats have the best message for rural North Carolinians in 2026. For the many years in which they were largely in power, they invested in public education, the “great equalizer” that allows everyone a chance to secure a well-paying job, she said. 

Now, if they’re given power again, there’s an opportunity to use that educational infrastructure to develop an economy that works for everybody, regardless of where they live. In contrast, Clayton thinks state Republicans are focusing more on defunding public education and reversing the progress her party made in the name of tax cuts and private school vouchers. 

It’s unclear whether that message from the Democrats will stick. Nationally, Democratic messaging was a disaster in the 2024 election. 

Democrats didn’t do a great job of educating people on how former President Joe Biden’s economic policies would help the middle and lower class in the long run, Clayton said. 

Meanwhile, Republicans have quietly constructed a media ecosystem with clear, organized, conservative messaging. The national Democratic party hasn’t quite figured out how to compete, Clayton said. 

“People are asking us to defeat something in four years that Republicans built over 40 years, and I don’t know that that is exactly possible,” she said. “I think we have to infiltrate before we can defeat.” 

She’s not counting on Republicans having a bad year, either, even though historically, the party who holds the presidency during midterm elections tends to perform worse. While people may be harmed by Trump actions, that doesn’t mean they’ll flip their vote. 

“Angry in 2025 is not angry in 2026,” she said. 

Democrats hope to outwit, outplay, outlast

Clayton can see the 2026 political board and all the pieces in front of her. But she’s not just thinking about her next move; she’s already thinking about the next game, and the game after that. 

She sees underinvestment in Southern states as a grave mistake for Democrats nationally in the long run, and wants to create a system where Southern parties can pool resources to deploy wherever they’re most impactful. 

Chaudhuri agrees that the national party should step up. 

“The National Democratic Party has tended to ring the alarm bell when we get closer to the end of the decade, because we know we have to take control of legislatures to redraw congressional districts,” he said. “But we need to make that a priority now.” 

In 2026, she thinks Democrats can gain five more state House seats, primarily in areas where Harris won but the state Democrat didn’t. She’s less confident about potentially breaking the Republican supermajority in the state Senate. 

But perhaps the most critical race is North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls’ seat. Earls, one of two Democrats on the court, is up for reelection. 

Back in her early campaigning days, Clayton learned she couldn’t out-organize a gerrymander. So, instead, her goal is to remove the obstacle, and take away Republicans’ power to implement maps drawn in their favor. 

“The plan has been to take back our courts and then be able to repeal partisan and racial gerrymandering from the state,” Clayton said. “Once we do that, you’ll have a much better chance at looking at fairness.” 

Keeping Earls’ seat is the second step of a three-part plan to do just that before 2030 and 2032 redistricting fights commence. The first step was retaining Riggs’ seat. The third is flipping at least two of the three seats held by Republican justices when they are up for reelection in 2028. 

The judicial fight will not be easy. After Riggs’ win, Republicans are taking the Democrats’ plans to retake court control more seriously, Clayton said. Next time, they’ll spend more. 

In December, Republicans changed campaign finance laws to allow parties to pay people out of their building fund, effectively adding to potential campaign spending. Now, Clayton has to figure out how to leverage that to benefit her party as well. 

“Every obstacle we’re gonna have, there is also an answer to it, if we are thinking smart, if we are playing hard,” she said.

“But all the sauce has got to work too. Everything’s got to go just according to plan.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Democrats seek recipe for success in upcoming NC elections appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content predominantly portrays the Democratic Party in a positive light, highlighting its strategic efforts, grassroots organizing, and focus on inclusivity and public education, which aligns with center-left values. While it acknowledges challenges faced by Democrats and critiques their past messaging, the tone remains generally supportive and emphasizes Democratic goals and perspectives without harsh partisanship or extreme rhetoric. The coverage is detailed and largely sympathetic to Democratic strategies and candidates, which situates this piece in a center-left bias.