Congress has cut federal funding for public media — an $800,000 loss for WFAE. We count on readers like you to protect our nonprofit newsroom. Become a monthly member and sustain local journalism.
North Carolina House Rep. Renée Price, D-Orange, used to go home feeling alone after a day in the Republican-run legislature. As a Democrat in a purple state, she sometimes felt like her comparably progressive ideas stranded her on an island by herself, even among members of her own party.
But with the creation of a Progressive House Caucus a few months ago, her island has gained 10 castaways.
Price is one of the small cohort of North Carolina House lawmakers who want to be “bolder” on issues without compromising the ability of the broader Democratic caucus to retain and recruit more moderate members.
[Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ alerts and weekend roundup newsletters]
“We can actually say something and say, ‘No, this is just what the Progressive House Caucus is saying. This is not all Democrats,’ and hopefully that would soften the blow,” Price said.
The PHC’s platform reads a lot like the general Democratic Party’s – it’s focused on fully funding public education, making health care more affordable, supporting reproductive rights, advocating for common-sense gun legislation and allowing workers to collectively bargain.
It’s not a separation from the broader Democratic caucus, but instead a complement, said Rep. Maria Cervania, D-Wake.
The caucus might speak out louder on issues that the broader North Carolina Democratic caucus tends not to highlight, like immigrant rights, environmental issues, LGBTQ+ rights, the balance of the Gaza and Israel conflict and other “issues that people think that are more to the left of center-right,” Cervania said.
In a political climate where a third of North Carolinian voters are unaffiliated, but politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are also popular, it’s important to make sure that all voices are platformed, she added.
PHC members want progressive North Carolinians to know that someone’s fighting for them, said Rep. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover.
“We have got to be able to speak with moral clarity about the things we care about,” she said. “And we just felt like this nucleus could do that articulately and well and without hesitation.”
Build it, and they will come
Butler and her multi-term colleagues have felt the pressure, as members of a near-super minority, to allow their core values to be “eroded” or “diluted” for the sake of political unity or leverage, she said.
She could not let that happen. So instead, several like-minded Democrats are choosing to lean further into their progressive beliefs. Since March, the group has doubled its membership.
Current members include Reps. Butler, Price, Cervania, Mary Belk, D-Mecklenburg, Kanika Brown, D-Forsyth, Laura Budd, D-Mecklenburg, Aisha Dew, D-Mecklenburg, Julia Greenfield, D-Mecklenburg, Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, Zack Hawkins, D-Durham, and Marcia Morey, D-Durham.
Don’t expect the PHC to pass any bills anytime soon. Even more moderate Democrats rarely have the leverage to have a bill with their name on it gain the Republican majority’s support.
When Carolina Public Press asked House leadership about their thoughts on the Progressive House Caucus, a spokesman for the NC House Republicans responded with one word: “Who?”
While the PHC may not be taken seriously by the majority, they’re looking to wield their influence in another way: fundraising.
Thus far, PHC’s political action committee has raised about $20,000 with one smaller and one larger event, Cervania said. They hope to raise enough in the coming months to support three to five progressive candidates with $5,000 to $25,000 in seed money for next year’s elections, when each of North Carolina’s 170 legislative seats will be up for grabs.
In the House, Democrats currently have 49 members to the Republicans’ 71 — one shy of the 72 seats needed for a veto-proof supermajority.
In theory, Democrats could use that one seat buffer to stop legislation they dislike from becoming law by blocking Republicans’ attempted overrides of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes. But in reality, a handful of swing Democrats have given Republicans a working supermajority on most issues.
The PHC is not in the business of supporting primary challengers to these swing Democrats, as frustrating as the situation may be, Butler said.
However, their fundraising may help Democrats widen the gap.
“My goal is that we pick up a substantial number of Democrats so that any one vote becomes less relevant,” Butler said. “I think we're on track to do that even in these damn gerrymandered districts that we're fighting in.”
While the caucus is small now, Butler thinks that as people see their work, they’ll come on board too. Just like in the famous sports movie "Field of Dreams," if they build it, people will come, Butler said.
Thus far, they’ve taken an educational field trip to Western North Carolina to listen to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee explain how they’ve developed successful schools, hospitals, a casino and dispensary in the region. They’ve conducted a virtual town hall, and are planning more. They might partner with entertainment, like a band or a comedian, to bring more people to community-building events, Cervania said.
“I often say we're in the front row seat of some of the most horrible things that you can see,” she said. “I don't want any more days like that. The more we can get like-minded people to be sitting with me in that chamber, the better likelihood that we don't have to see that.”
Progressive House Caucus on the budget
In May, about half of House Democrats made a statement by standing behind the House’s version of the budget.
It’s not that they liked the budget, crafted by the Republican majority; it’s that they thought the Senate budget was so bad, it was worth offering their support to give the House an edge in ongoing budget negotiations.
But most PHC members voted against the budget. They’re not going to choose the “lesser of two evils,” Cervania said.
“I’m not in the business of giving North Carolinians a half-baked pie,” she said. “They deserve a full, fully baked pie. And look, I respect our governor to no end, but he’s choosing the House budget because the Senate one is so draconian that makes the House one look tolerable. It's really not.”
Four months later, the House and Senate have yet to come to an agreement on a full budget, although they’ve passed a mini-budget accounting for urgent needs.
The primary point of contention is tax policy. The Senate wants to move more quickly toward elimination of the personal income tax, even though the state narrowly missed the threshold to drop rates from 3.49% to 2.99% in 2028. On the other hand, the House wants to effectively pause income tax rate reductions for now by raising revenue thresholds between 2027 and 2034.
The state’s tax policy is unsustainable, Cervania said. The state has to fund public education and support services like SNAP and Medicaid, and it needs tax revenue to do so, especially with looming federal cuts, she said.
According to the Office of State Budget and Management, North Carolina is heading toward a “fiscal cliff” if it continues to lower tax rates.
“And now you're trying to fill these gaps with gambling money and lottery money and increasing fees at the DMV,” Cervania said. “This is regressive. It affects poor people.”
The mini-budget falls short of the need, Price said. While it provided $600 million for a Medicaid rebase, that still is several hundred million dollars less than needed to sustain North Carolinians as the federal government caps provider taxes and cuts a program the state’s hospitals rely on to pay for the state’s recent Medicaid expansion, she said.
Not to mention the ongoing need in Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Helene, Cervania said.
Butler said they would “spare no expense to condemn promises made, promises not kept” by the Trump administration in an effort to get more progressive Democrats in office.
“I am just desperate for independent thought, and I don't see it,” she said. “And it's not even that they are sycophants to the (House) Speaker (Destin Hall), they’re sycophants to Trump and all of his chaos. You would think at a point somebody would say, ‘Gee, that is enough.’”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.