Endorsements are the life blood of political campaigns — particularly in primary elections. For every one voter who invests serious time and effort in carefully studying the opposing candidates’ positions, backgrounds, and records, ten or more really just want to know whom the organizations they most trust and respect are endorsing.
That’s why this week’s People’s Alliance PAC endorsement of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, three-term State Senator Erica D. Smith, is a game-changer: because North Carolina Democrats know that PA PAC’s endorsement is different. PA’s endorsements aren’t decided in a closed-door board meeting by a small clutch of honchos you’ve never heard of, whose decisions are based on Byzantine political calculations and board members’ idiosyncratic takes on the pulse of the times. Rather, they’re decided by a direct vote open to the organization’s entire grassroots membership, after a long night of spirited town hall-style debate, starting with candidates’ responses to the organization’s endorsement questionnaire and taking off from there in whatever directions the people decide:
On Tuesday evening, January 14, members of the People’s Alliance PAC in Durham met to debate and decide which candidates running in 2020 would get the group’s endorsement. Approximately six hundred people attended the meeting, the largest in the PAC’s forty-five year history.
Endorsement decisions are made by the PAC membership at a meeting in advance of elections every year. At the meeting, PAC committees who have studied the candidates make recommendations, but ultimately the endorsement is decided by a vote of the members after rigorous debate. During Tuesday’s meeting, more than fifty people rose to speak just during the debate over county commissioner endorsements. The entire meeting ran late into the night, but members stayed until the last endorsement decision was made.
The People’s Alliance’s 2,000+ concerned citizen-members all hail from North Carolina’s most populous, bluest, and diverse region, the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill ‘Triangle’, ensuring that its endorsement decisions reflect the will of a highly representative cross-section of NC’s voting grassroots Dems. And the people, in every color of the rainbow, have spoken. Erica Smith’s positions, coupled with her proven legislative track record, are exactly what North Carolina progressives are hungry to support by turning out at the polls in droves. Erica’s full response to PA PAC’s exhaustive candidate questionnaire is too lengthy to reproduce here, but her reply to Question #1 alone will illustrate how she’s winning the hearts and minds of North Carolina’s grassroot Democrats:
Q 1: What are the three most important issues facing the nation? What are your top priorities in addressing those issues?
1. Equality. Equal justice under the law. Equal rights for people of every color, every faith or no faith, every social stratum, every ability or disability, every gender, identity, orientation, and every origin. Equal opportunity for all to build the best lives they can, including every zip code, ethnicity and income level.
2. Humanity. As Gandhi observed, “A nation is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Jesus likewise said,“What you have done for one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done for me.” My country’s soul is too great to be as inhumane as it so often is today. Healthcare is a human right. Equal pay for equal work is simple fairness. Access to a good, affordable education is the cornerstone of democracy. Families belong together, not thrown in cages. All God’s children have a basic right to a clean environment. Childhood nutrition and nurturing environments enable students to participate in their educations fully. All these are the foundation of a humane society.
3. Prosperity. The only guarantor of a healthy society is opportunity for all, according only to our innate abilities. To experience satisfaction, we all need the opportunity for meaningful work at a livable wage, stable enough for us to realistically hope to build a better future for ourselves and our children. Too many Americans today grow up and remain trapped in ‘job deserts,’ both urban and rural. We know how to promote economic development that creates and maintains good-paying jobs. We only need the will to roll up our sleeves and do it.
Erica Smith’s primary opponent was hand-picked by Democratic Party insiders, and is supported by conventional closed-door PACs and all the dark money they can bring to bear on this race.
The People’s Alliance can’t begin to compete with their dollars, or their star power. But the Alliance’s ‘boots in the roots’ are unrivaled here in the Democratic heartland of North Carolina: neighbors engaging neighbors in well-informed heart-to-heart discussions right now, as well as hordes of volunteers handing out tens of thousands of eagerly sought-after voter cards outside polling places throughout Early Voting (which begins Feb. 13th) and on Election Day (March 3rd).
This primary just became a contest between our too-often bumbling party plus its more familiar go-along-get-along PACs on the one hand, and the people on the other. That struggle will determine whether a Carolina Blue wave of turnout, driven by an inspiring and highly qualified woman of color, gets an honest chance to hand nationwide Dems a flipped Senate seat plus fifteen crucial Electoral College votes this November.
Because the people, united, can never be defeated.
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Shortly before publication time, North Carolina’s LGBTQ rights organization, Equality NC, has just announced its own endorsement of Erica Smith.
News will be breaking shortly regarding yet more important grassroots endorsements for this inspiring candidate. Follow me for the reveals as soon as they’re official.