Democrats have raised tens of millions of dollars in North Carolina, where key races for governor, state legislature and Supreme Court will be on November ballots. U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi came to Raleigh to help them raise even more.
North Carolina Democrats and former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shied away from the greatest source of disunity — President Joe Biden's status as the party's presumptive nominee — during Saturday's "Unity Dinner," instead focusing their ire towards Republicans and attempting to rally their own party.
Biden's name was not mentioned often and the controversy over his candidacy was not mentioned at all from the main stage, even if it was the topic of conversation in the halls. Biden appeared in a short video early in the event that highlighted his accomplishments as president.
Vice President Kamala Harris returned to North Carolina on Thursday, a week after her last visit here, and spoke to supporters at a campaign event in Fayetteville. This is Harris’s seventh visit to the Old North State this year, according to her campaign. It’s her second visit since President Joe Biden’s June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, who is speaking at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, the final night of the event.
Harris talked about the RNC and Trump making his pick for vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, saying Trump’s selection was trying to distract people from attention on Trump’s record as president and Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-written policy plan for a Trump presidency. She said Trump was suggesting that he and Vance “are going to prioritize the middle class. But we are not buying it.”
Harris also said that Republicans are trying to proclaim themselves as the party of unity, “but if you claim you stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word.” She criticized Republicans for abortion restrictions and those who wanted to overturn the 2020 election.
Democrat Nicole Sidman’s campaign is vastly outraising that of her controversial Republican opponent, Rep. Tricia Cotham, in their high-profile N.C. House race. Sidman, a congregational life director at Temple Beth El in Charlotte and the Democratic nominee for the southeast Mecklenburg County House District 105 seat, faces Cotham in November. From Feb. 18 to June 30, Sidman’s campaign raised $264,489.33 — more than four times as much as Cotham during the same period.
The money raised by each campaign becomes more important as both try to reach voters before November’s election in a district that favors Republicans but may be winnable for Democrats.
A former Democrat, Cotham made national headlines when she switched to the Republican Party in 2023, giving Republicans a veto-proof supermajority and helping to pass new restrictions on abortion. Since Cotham announced her reelection, Democrats have been eager to fill the seat with a member of their own party.
At the end of June, visual artist and visionary painter Molly Chopin perched under a tarp, rain trickling down the sidewalk as she brushed paint onto the pavement. Slowly but surely, small splotches of color transformed into a landscape of longleaf pines and swirling water, all centered around a single storm drain.
At the top of her mural were the words, “Keep our waterways clean and the earth evergreen,” a memo she selected to demonstrate the importance of keeping trash out of storm drains, which all lead to nearby creeks and eventually, Jordan Lake — a huge sourcing of drinking water for those in the Triangle.
Chopin’s art, alongside many other storm drain murals throughout Chapel Hill, was commissioned by the Town of Chapel Hill as a part of the Storm Drain Murals project, which started in 2022 as a collaboration between the Community Arts and Culture division and Stormwater Management. Since then, 11 artists have created unique public art, from a tangled, colorful pipe mural to various landscapes of the distinct N.C. deciduous forests. Chopin’s mural on Rosemary Street is the most recent addition.
About 1 million residents in the surrounding area get their drinking water from Jordan Lake.
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