Elizabeth Warren Dreams Big in North Carolina

[TexasTowelie]

On the night before the general election in 2016, Hillary Clinton finished her campaign with a midnight rally at North Carolina State University. On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren stood just a few miles away at Broughton High School, on her first trip to North Carolina, with stops in Greensboro and Raleigh on her way down to South Carolina. By 6 p.m., the school’s gymnasium was packed to the gills—the campaign’s final estimate was 3,550 in attendance—with supporters mostly sporting Warren shirts and teal signs bearing the campaign’s slogan: “Dream Big, Fight Hard.”

For whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee, North Carolina will firmly be in the “fight hard” column. In 2016, the state was a top battleground in just about every way imaginable, seen as one of the most likely states to put either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump over the top; Trump ultimately won by over 170,000 votes. There was more than just the presidency at stake, too: On top of its role as a vital swing state, North Carolina had a competitive Senate race and razor-thin gubernatorial and attorney general elections.

Next year, on top of another likely close gubernatorial election and another likely competitive Senate race, the entire legislature is up for re-election, which will determine who controls the redistricting process. Given that voting rights groups and Democrats have spent much of the last eight years duking it out with Republicans over the gerrymandered maps the GOP drew in 2011 —this week, the legislature again began the court-ordered process of redrawing the congressional maps—2020 might be even more important locally than 2016.

Warren’s event was billed as a town hall but operated more like a rally with a brief question-and-answer session at the end. A number of North Carolina legislators were in attendance on Thursday, capped by Representative Deb Butler. In September, as North Carolina Republicans capitalized on an absence of House Democrats to override Governor Roy Cooper’s budget veto, a video of Butler forcefully condemning the process went viral. In endorsing Warren during the kickoff of the program, Butler alluded to the Massachusetts senator’s own 2017 fight against Mitch McConnell, which produced the now-infamous line “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Read more: https://prospect.org/politics/elizabeth-warren-dreams-big-in-north-carolina/
(American Prospect)

[Gothmog]

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