NC Democratic Party was asleep at the wheel in 2022. How did your state party do?

[Persondem]

For this election cycle the North Carolina Democratic Party apparently did little to recruit candidates for the state legislature. A quick count showed that republicans won 14 seats in the state senate and 29 seats in the state house UNOPPOSED. As a comparison I checked 2020 to see if this was "normal". It is most definitely NOT normal. In 2020 democrats fielded candidates in all senate districts and all but 2 house districts. The state party's prime responsibilities are to (#1) recruit candidates and then (#2) support those candidates. As a result the GOP in NC now is one House vote away from having veto proof majorities for the next 2 years.

I saw something similar happen in 2009-2010. In 2009 the NCDP elected a vapid non-entity as state chair. In 2010 rich old white guy bought republicans majorities in the legislature; they gerrymandered the state all to hell, and we have been fighting uphill ever since. Leadership failed then and NCDP leadership failed in 2022. As the saying goes "elections have consequences", especially elections where one party is asleep at the wheel.

New, energetic leadership is definitely called for. The next set of NCDP chairs will be elected in 2023; they will be the party's leaders in 2024, and we cannot afford another election with such lackadaisical, laissez-faire "leadership". Giving away 25% of the legislature is unacceptable.

How would you rate your state party's performance in 2022?

[Geechie]

1. Fla Dem party has been comatose for decades nt

[ms liberty]

2. What I think about the NCDP is best left unsaid.

[Persondem]

34. Tease! ... but I get it :) nt

[blm]

3. Dr Bobbie Richardson is a nice person, but not a good leader.

Wayne Goodwin was a real workhorse.

Mecklenburg County Dems won 95% of their races.

[yellowdogintexas]

4. we worked ourselves to death, and managed to keep all our seats in

the State House and the US House.

No statewide offices flipped at all.

Our county party was awesome

Democrats again did not turn out enough numbers.

[Persondem]

35. I take it you are in Texas so that

is indeed a job well done.

Yeah, non-presidential years are tougher for turnout.

[LisaM]

5. I feel as if the Washington party was abandoned by voters long ago.

It's difficult for a party to survive when the people it wants to represent abandon it. Here in Seattle we have an absolutely poisonous city council person (Sawant) who is doing her best to divide Democrats. Like many of her ilk, she is harder on Democrats than she is on Republicans.

The Republicans are in disarray and coming apart at the seams, but it's difficult to convince people that the Democrats are an option. Here, the left wing is clinging to the caucus model, they are ripping the city apart to build shoddy housing for tech workers, they claim to be pro union but buy Teslas and support Amazon, the list goes on. They don't give a rip about blue collar middle class people. And they act as if the Democratic party is culpable in all this.

We (happily) elected a full Democratic slate here last election but I still think it would be difficult to get people to admit that they are proud Democrats. So what's a party to do?

[Persondem]

36. Probably more complicated than this ...

.. but a good start maybe to get a sensible Dem to run against that poisonous council-person. Other than than that see if the county party can get t-shirts printed and have a few events - candidate forums, book drives, fund raisers etc. Make it a good thing to be a Dem.

[catbyte]

6. Ours was firing on all cylinders. It was a blue tsunami here in Michigan.

I'm still happy but wish other states would follow our lead.

[LeftinOH]

7. Ohio here. What is this "Democratic Party" you speak of? n/t

[inwiththenew]

10. LOL - Tim Ryan wasn't bad

But Nan Whaley's campaign was so bad DeWine may as well have been running unopposed.

[LisaL]

17. Tim Ryan didn't even try to appeal to Democrats.

His Republican opponent had to keep pointing out that Tim Ryan actually was a democrat.

[AggressiveCanary]

32. I agree

It was like Tim Ryan was trying to make us forget he was a Democrat.

Also he apparently thinks the entire state worships football quarterbacks judging by his ads.

[Boomerproud]

25. 100% true.

I have called the number for the Franklin County Democratic Party HQ and no one has ever answered...seriously.

[Persondem]

37. Sounds bleak. Shame as it seems like there are votes ...

... to be had in OH. I take it the state party is run by good ole boys (and possibly girls) who don't really do much?

[4Q2u2]

8. No heavy lifting required

In Mass this year, not a single Puke had a chance. Crazy how an educated populace doesn't buy into their BS.

[Kaleva]

9. Michigan A+

[Persondem]

38. Yes!! MI rocked it this time. nt

[maxsolomon]

11. WA gets a A-

Picked up a Congressional seat, held a Senate seat, increased majorities in both state houses, and flipped the SoS for the 1st time in decades. Dems run this state top to bottom.

A- because the loathsome Cathy McMorris Rogers was returned to Congress. I know it's Spokane, but any Repukes winning anything is bad.

[peggysue2]

12. Pennsylvania did what it had to . . . WIN!

We flipped PA's House, have ourselves a superb new Governor, Josh Shapiro, new Lt. Governor, Austin Davis and an exciting, ready-to-go senator--John Fetterman.

Pennsy did good!

[LisaL]

18. Yes, you guys did good.

[Amishman]

23. we did pretty well, but we were also aided by the PA Pubs deciding to eat paint chips

I'm not just talking about Mastriano and Oz, they ran some really poor candidates down ballot in a lot of places too.

[peggysue2]

33. Cannot deny that, Amishman.

If the Republicans choose to continue to sabotage themselves, I'm willing to give them a



That being said, Dems worked hard for these wins pounding the sidewalks, whipping the weeds for votes, raising money and flagging the outright lies the goobers were spreading. Mastriano was headed for defeat the moment he won the primary, a total loon. Oz on the other hand was a more polished opportunist then many of the crazies and Fetterman's stroke was a black swan event. A lesser candidate, one who hadn't done the incredible state-campaign-infrastructure work long before the medical event would probably have lost this race. But then Fetterman is Fetterman, an original candidate who managed to catch lightning in a bottle.

The stars aligned for us.

[MineralMan]

14. In Minnesota, we were able to take back our state Senate,

giving us complete control over state government for the first time in a long time.

[Persondem]

39. Nice to hear this. nt

[Bettie]

15. I'm not entirely certain that Iowa has a state Democratic party

I've seen no evidence of it being effective or even visible.

[evilclown]

21. Totally agree

Iowa is not as red as it looks. Democrats failed to address or play to issues of our rural population and small towns. We continue to see school consolidations and our rural medical treatment is practically gone. Our gun laws are so extreme that preventing the mentally ill from getting guns is a joke. Iowa is big on supporting law enforcement and we gave that issue to the gop. We will not win back our State by catering to our few larger cities. No National democratic leaders gave iowa any appearance help and we let the GOP demonize Biden and Our House speaker without telling the other side of the story. In fact where was Vilsack and other prominent local dems—

[Bettie]

22. Exactly

Heck, most of the Democrats in our county didn't even know that we had a candidate for Governor!

With Kim's new voucher program, I fear that our local school will be gone pretty quickly and that is the heart of the community. I still have a kid in school with five more years to go, but now they will absolutely have the votes to decimate public schools and rural health care and the other few decent things left in this state.

[SharonClark]

28. The threat to rural schools is real and yet rural Iowans voted for Reynolds anyway.

They must have found her messsage of white Iowa more appealing then their kid's future.

[SharonClark]

26. The Iowa Democratic Party has no real power - the power is at the county level

where the local volunteers are. Dems in Polk County worked their butts off and did fairly well but it is hard to fight off the rural areas full of so-called christians who hate abortion, gays, liberals, and cities.

[Persondem]

40. Dem US Senate candidates in NC tend to do the same ...

"Democrats failed to address or play to issues of our rural population and small towns."

They stick to the cities and suburbs along the interstates and forget about the rural counties. The only successful Dem candidate we have had in 22 years made such an effort and it paid off in the Obama wave of 2008.

[Bettie]

46. Yep, they try to run up margins in cities

and just ignore the rural areas.

Rural Democrats exist, but state parties don't think so.

[HAB911]

16. Florida non-existent

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

19. Dems could have kept the House if California dems had worked a bit harder

[Persondem]

41. Do Dems in CA sort of take their "Blueness" for granted? nt

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

49. yes we do..have to be more vigilante. GOP has decided school boards are the way to have influence

in a very blue state where GOp is wiped out. didn't make much progress this election, but building infrastructure to run crazy candidates. There is a recent article about this.

When dems not looking... gop try to get crazy school boards - crazy judges in

[Elessar Zappa]

20. New Mexico

Ours is fairly good but it’s kind of in auto-pilot mode because we’ve controlled everything for a long time now. It could use some revitalization.

[Norbert]

24. We flipped at least one seat in the lower House, but Ohio is becoming what Missouri is.

I Honestly believe that if Herschel Walker ran for Rob Portman's seat he would have won.

[ananda]

27. In Texas, fucking lousy!

!!!

[Persondem]

43. Sorry to hear that. Any idea when Latinx voters are going to step up? nt

[In It to Win It]

29. I'm in Florida so.................... not great. ZERO on a sale of 1 to 10

[Persondem]

47. Yeah, FL has been a bit of a surprise. I had hoped FL would at least ....

... stay purple. Was Crist really that weak of a candidate? Or is it more on the state party? Any sign of local organizing?

[In It to Win It]

48. It's hard to solely say that Crist was a bad candidate

because all statewide Democratic candidates performed around the same. Val Demings, Charlie Crist, and Aramis Ayala performed as equally bad. All of the Republican candidates won in landslides. All vote percentages for each race were about 60/40 in the GOP’s favor.

Personally, I think our primary is extremely late in the cycle, leaving our candidates very little time to fundraise for the general election and little time to actually campaign for the general election. It didn’t help that we had a hurricane. That, understandably, took up a lot of oxygen in the news cycle and gave a lot of news coverage to the incumbent. For quite some time, it seemed like our candidates were invisible. We weren’t hearing from them at all.

There was no sign of cohesive organizing locally or statewide. Democratic turnout was so bad. All of our usual big blue areas now look red because turnout among Democrats was so low. I live in a blue county in Florida that usually goes at least 65% for Democrats and we performed lower than usual in my county. Democrats we’re not running up the numbers like they were usually do where they needed to.

Also, outside of our candidates, it doesn’t help that a lot of Republicans have moved here in the last 4 years and they keep coming. I’m not seeing that same enthusiasm from Democrats. The Democrats have to rebuild numbers otherwise the state will be lost for a long time to come.

There are enough voters to make Florida a blue state. We have 14 million registered voters only about 50% of them actually turned out. There is room to grow the Party but people have to invest in the state and turn these people into consistent voters. Republicans in Florida have just been better at getting their voters to turnout consistently.

[edhopper]

30. NY

We won on the State level, but lost 5 seats in Congress and gave the House to the GOP.

[Persondem]

44. Yeah, the House seats flipping just stinks.

If NY and CA had done a bit more seems like we could have kept the House.

Your state party asleep as well?

[edhopper]

50. The Dems drew a Dem friendly map

the GOP sued. Unlike Southern GOP States where courts ruled the maps were unconstitutional, but let them stand anyway, a conservative court here in NY with Judges appointed by Andrew Cuomo (he appointed conservative judges to show how "centrist" he was) overturned the map and put in a GOP friendly one instead. Cost us 4 or 5 seats.

[lees1975]

31. Illinois did great

Re-elected Governor Pritzker and Senator Duckworth, added one more Democrat to Congress in spite of having to re-draw congressional districts and losing a seat, so we're still +1. Legislature that leans progressive Democrat.

I live in a precinct where 88% of the voters cast a ballot for Democrats, 6% for Libertarians and under 4% for Republicans. Don't be jealous.

[Persondem]

45. Good deal IL!! Nice to have you looking more solid Blue again. nt

[MissMillie]

42. We flipped the Governorship--but that was widely expected

Massachusetts

Never-Trumper GOP Governor Charlie Baker declined to run for another term. The GOP nominated a Trump-backed election denier to run against a very popular Attorney General.

Especially nice: Women elected for big State offices: Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General.

[PragmaticLiberal]

51. I live in Maryland.

Enuff said. 😀