Gerrymandered protection gone, one of NC’s most anti-abortion legislators is facing heat
It's now or never (at least until 2030)
Whether you’re thrilled by what happened on Super Tuesday or livid about the primary’s abrupt shift, we can all agree that democracy isn’t truly legitimate unless everyone can vote. Those interminable lines at Texas polling locations — some over five hours long — are a national scandal. The solution? Taking back state legislatures and passing new voters’ rights laws.
This week at Progressives Everywhere, we’re talking with a candidate in North Carolina who is running against one of the right-wing fanatics that has abused gerrymandering and voter suppression for years. But first, some important headlines!
During the lame-duck session after their 2018 thumping, Michigan Republicans rushed through a bunch of awful laws before Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took over. Medicaid work requirements, one of the most pernicious of them, just got struck down in federal court.
On the flip side, this story about how the health insurance companies that own Connecticut killed the state’s proposed public option plan is a snapshot of the fights to come.
Akilah Bacy, who we endorsed in February, took the top spot in her primary and is the favorite in the run-off in May. More good Texas news here.
Kentucky’s new Democratic governor is expediting the voter registration of the 150,000+ plus rehabilitated ex-felons who can now vote in the state.
The gerrymander is over. Now, let’s take down extremists.
Many modern GOP lawmakers are by nature whackjobs, but it’s their overwhelming job security that brings out the truly evil stuff. North Carolina, where a racist gerrymander allowed Republicans’ most reactionary lawmakers to run wild, is a prime example.
From the infamous “bathroom bill” to voter ID and abortion restrictions, it’s been a true conservative nightmare. Since 2015, State Senator Joyce Krawiec (R-SD-31) has taken advantage of her gerrymandered seat to push some of the worst Republican laws, including the noxious “born alive” anti-abortion bill, which she introduced and sponsored (it was later vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper).
Thankfully, the gerrymander was finally thrown out by a state court last fall, leading to redrawn maps that made her district significantly more competitive and gave Democratic challenger Terri LeGrand a real chance at flipping it.
LeGrand, a lawyer who has spent years working in higher education, ran for State House in 2018 and swung an extremely gerrymandered House district by 20 points; she made it competitive for the first time in years and drove its Republican into retirement this cycle. Now, in a fairer district, she’s got a chance to straight-up take down a far-right Republican and turn North Carolina blue.
“I always paid attention to politics, but before I ran in 2018, I just kind of assumed that there was a bold line between two groups of people and there were stark differences [between Democratic and Republican voters],” LeGrand tells Progressives Everywhere. “But as you're out on the trail and you're talking to voters and listening to voters, you realize that we're all united in far more ways than we're divided.”
CLICK HERE to donate to Terri LeGrand via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!
LeGrand hits all the litmus test positions for NC Democrats, including expanding Medicaid and drawing fair maps. But given her career background, it should come as little surprise that LeGrand spends a lot of time talking about education and the outrageous cost of attending college. North Carolina has one of the best public university systems in the nation, but a decade of spending cuts has led to steep tuition hikes and other unfair expenses being foisted on students and families who frequently can’t afford them.
Working in financial aid, she had a view of the front lines in an ongoing war on working families.
“I didn't realize it at the time, but that experience really informed how I understand the challenges that families face,” LeGrand says. “I got letters and phone calls all the time from families who had one set of experiences and circumstances when they made a commitment to send their child to our school, but then those circumstances changed. They get laid off with no severance. So many times we were working with families whose primary breadwinner was laid off from their good-paying job and the best job that they could find after a year or two years of looking was paying 50% less.”
Anything could devastate a parent’s ability to send their kid to school. Maybe unexpected medical bills after a car accident or bad diagnosis put them in $20,000 or more of debt. Or a contentious divorce wrecked both parents’ retirement savings. In some parts of North Carolina, looming natural disasters always threaten to create financial ones. LeGrand spent her days talking to people who are struggling to make ends meet and desperate to ensure that their kids can get the education they deserve.
“Those are things that I came to understand, how impactful those life circumstances could be,” she says. “They affect people's ability to pay for their kids’ college. They affect people's ability to pay for healthcare and pay for housing. And so all of those experiences have really formed how I look at the issues that I feel like we have to deal with at the state level.”
CLICK HERE to donate to Terri LeGrand via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!
So how does she think North Carolina should deal with the issues? Investing, for starters; the state pulled back on funding public education during the 2008 financial crisis and unlike many states, never truly re-invested. The teacher strikes of 2018 there made national headlines and helped return a bit of the financial backing, but there’s still a long way to go in order to satisfy’s the state constitution’s guarantee of public education.
LeGrand’s focus on public education is not only based on her professional experience, but it’s also reflective of her values. North Carolina’s legacy of voter suppression has played a major part in the state’s devastating funding cuts and assaults on minority and LGBTQ communities. A state court ruling temporarily tweaked the worst of the gerrymander for this election cycle, but if Democrats can’t take back at least one house of the state legislature, it’s likely that the GOP will install something just as bad once again. Preventing that from happening is LeGrand’s top priority; this may be Democrats’ last chance for a long time.
“The first thing we do is restore democracy by voting in an independent, nonpartisan redistricting committee,” she says. “Making sure that we ensure access to the ballot for every single North Carolinian, restoring our democracy, it’s gotta be number one because everything else can flow from that.”
From there, LeGrand cites increasing North Carolina’s miserable and miserly unemployment benefits, rewriting the rules limiting labor organizing, and reinvesting in the state’s devastated Department of Environmental Quality as other premium priorities.
Getting all these things done won’t be easy in a purple state, but the redistricting gives Democrats a fighting chance. In 2018, they won the major statewide elections and a majority of the legislative votes, so things are trending blue there. And LeGrand’s race was just named a DLCC spotlight race, indicating that national Democrats think she’s got a great chance of flipping the seat. She already sounds like a candidate determined to make sure that everyone in the district feels represented.
“It's a very, very diverse district. You've got some very rural areas, some farming communities, manufacturing, suburban areas, and then downtown Winston-Salem. It’s a district with lots of different viewpoints. My message is that we should figure out what we can all agree on and work together to find solutions that will work for the most people.”
CLICK HERE to donate to Terri LeGrand via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!
Read our other 2020 candidate interviews: TX-HD-138 | FL-HD-89 | TX-HD-28 | GA-HD-43
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