The new North Carolina Democratic party chair: Is her record as strong as she says?

This article originally appeared in WFAE reporter Steve Harrison's weekly newsletter Inside Politics. Sign up here and get the news straight to your inbox first.

Earlier this month, North Carolina Democrats made a big change: They rejected 73-year-old Bobbie Richardson as state party chair in favor of 25-year-old Anderson Clayton.

The move came after a disappointing 2022 election, in which Republicans gained seats in the state House and Senate, swept all statewide judicial races and won the U.S. Senate race.

The uprising was led by the party’s young, progressive members, who were swayed by Clayton’s energetic campaign and pledge to compete in all 100 counties. Richardson had the backing of Gov. Roy Cooper, Attorney General Josh Stein, Rep. Jeff Jackson and other heavy hitters.

Clayton — who was the party chair in Person County — was a month ago an unknown figure on the statewide stage.

Now she is leading Democrats in one of the nation’s biggest swing states.

After making such a big bet on change, here are three questions about Clayton’s past and future.

1) Are her North Carolina accomplishments as impressive as she says?

On Clayton’s website promoting her candidacy, it says “within two years, Anderson led Person County to flip the Roxboro City Council and flip a seat in the N.C. House — one of just two red-to-blue flips in the House in ’22.”

Clayton was indeed in charge of the Person County Democrats when control of the Roxboro City Council flipped from red to blue.

But the red-to-blue state House flip had little to do with local Democratic Party organizing — and everything to do with the new House map drawn by the GOP.

The seat in question — House District 2 — used to cover Person County and Granville County. President Trump won both counties twice.

Jennifer Lang

After redistricting, House District 2 still includes all of Person County. It no longer has Republican-leaning Granville County and instead added part of heavily Democratic Durham County.

Joe Biden won the precincts in this new district by more than 10 percentage points, so a Democratic candidate started with a tremendous advantage.

In an interview, I asked Clayton about flipping the seat. She said, “I never really said that.”

She then added: “The lines were drawn in our favor. But we did unseat a Republican who had been there for 10 years. Person County was able to get out more voters.”

That is true, as Person County turnout increased from 55% in 2018 to 56.3% in 2022. But it doesn’t appear Democrats benefited much from that.

In the 2022 election, the Democratic state House candidate, Ray Jeffers, received 6,163 votes in Person County. In the 2018 election, the Democratic House candidate, Darryl Moss, received 6,133 votes.

That’s an increase of 0.5%.

The 2022 state Senate race in Person County was not close, as Democrat Graig Meyer easily won the three-county contest. But he did not get a boost out of Person, getting 5,719 votes. That’s 13% fewer than Democrat Mike Woodard received in Person in 2018.

In Congress, the U.S. House Democratic candidate in 2022, Valerie Foushee, also received significantly fewer votes than the Democratic candidate in 2018, Ryan Watts.

In 2018, Democrat Anita Earls got 6,047 votes out of Person for the state Supreme Court. In 2022, Democrats Lucy Inman (6,049 votes) and Sam Ervin (5,919 votes) did about the same in losing efforts.

The 2018 midterms were a very favorable environment for Democrats.

But there is little evidence that there was anything special happening in Person County in 2022 in races for the state Senate, state House, Congress or state Supreme Court.

Western Carolina political science professor Chris Cooper says the quality of the candidate — not a county organizer — is most important.

“When things go well, a county director may get too much credit,” he said. “And when they don’t go well, they probably get too much blame.”

2) She was nearly impeached as SGA president at Appalachian State in 2018. Is that a big deal – or just petty college politics?

A story in The Appalachian said that 51% of the student government association voted in favor of starting an “impeachment review” against Clayton five years ago, which fell short of the two-thirds needed for removal. The charges against her included: “Malfeasance in office,” “Failing to execute the responsibilities of the Executive” and “Showing a willful contempt for rules and due process.”

Jared Mark brought the impeachment charges. He said by text message this week that “Unfortunately, I am unable to provide a comment on that at this time. However, I’m incredibly proud of Anderson in this accomplishment and wish her the best of luck. Beating an incumbent is no easy feat!”

In an interview with Inside Politics, Clayton said that “students have every right to bring forth (an impeachment)” but she noted the effort failed. She said the dispute stemmed from her decision to deny student senators name tags.

The Appalachian reports that last year’s SGA president and vice president were impeached, so perhaps it’s now relatively common to try and remove the student leader.

Is it fair to write about a failed impeachment attempt that happened in college?

If she were 35 years old, the answer would probably be no. But since it happened less than five years ago, Inside Politics thought it was relevant.

Before becoming Person County Democratic party chair, Clayton volunteered as an organizer for Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. She also was a rural field director for Amy McGrath’s campaign against Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky in 2018.

It should also be noted that Anderson’s biggest accomplishment may be putting together a coalition to defeat an incumbent for party chair. She entered the race as a clear underdog — with all of the party’s leaders lining up for Richardson.

“She ran the most impressive campaign for a state party office in recent memory,” said Democratic activist Sam Spencer of Charlotte. “She raised money, traveled the state, had a persuasive message, and delivered her message effectively.”

3) Talking about rigged elections – is that good for democracy?

In an interview with freelance North Carolina journalist Bryan Anderson last week, Clayton said: “The only way that Republicans can stay in power is if they're rigging elections. That's what people in this state need to understand. We didn't give a supermajority to the Republicans, and they're taking advantage of it right now.”

Is this inspiring talk to gin up the Democratic base?

Or flirting with Trump-style election denialism?

Clayton said she was referring to Republican gerrymandering when she talked about rigged elections.

The problem with Clayton’s statement is that Republicans have stayed in power for the last 12 years under a variety of scenarios. They won in 2010 under maps drawn by Democrats. They gained supermajorities under maps gerrymandered to their advantage.

They lost supermajorities in 2018 after courts ordered new maps, but still easily remained the majority in both the House and Senate.

In the 2022 election, several Democrats voted for the final state House map that Republicans drew. The courts upheld it.

The GOP gained two seats in the House, though fell one short of a supermajority.

The state Senate map was contested by Democrats. The same courts that overturned the Congressional map upheld it, however, and allowed it to stand in the 2022 election. The GOP picked up two seats and have a supermajority in that chamber.

(The state Supreme Court later invalidated that Senate map.)

ACLU parts ways with Charlotte activist after explicit Twitter attack

A week ago, Charlotte activist and ALCU staff member Kristie Puckett-Williams launched a Twitter attack on radio talk show host Pete Kaliner.

The two had gotten into an online dispute about the General Assembly’s deliberation over the controversial bill the “Parent’s Bill of Rights.”

Puckett-Williams said the bill was debated in the “cloak of the night.” Kaliner said it was 7 p.m., which he said was reasonable.

The feud escalated. Kaliner told her to stop being stupid.

Jennifer Lang

Puckett-Williams then repeatedly said he should fellate an imaginary phallus on her body and urged him to continue that act because she was nearing orgasm.

The ACLU of North Carolina’s initial statement after the Twitter exchange was that “statements made by employees of the ACLU of North Carolina do not reflect the opinions or policies of our organization. We respect the right of everyone, including employees of ACLU of NC, to exercise the constitutional right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment, which includes the right to express their views as individuals on their own personal social media platforms.”

But a week later, Puckett-Williams was gone, the ACLU confirmed. Her cellphone was not accepting calls.

Corine Mack, the chair of the Charlotte NAACP said Puckett-Williams told her she had been fired. Mack was upset by the move, saying a Black woman needed to be able to defend herself.

Puckett-Williams tweeted Wednesday that she was “fresh off the plantation. Let’s get to freedom!”

She then tweeted Thursday that “The ACLU's official policy is "we have represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone.”