Colin Seeberger: Hey everyone, welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Colin Seeberger, and unfortunately—classic case of Thanksgiving—all of my colleagues are sick. I’m wishing them a speedy recovery.
That said, we did have a killer conversation this week with Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, and really want you to hear this conversation. Think she had a lot of powerful and energizing ideas about where the Democratic Party should go following the 2024 elections. And so I hope you’ll take time and listen to this important conversation.
Seeberger: Anderson Clayton is the chair of the Democratic Party in North Carolina. She’s the youngest chair of any state Democratic Party ever. Before leading the party, Anderson worked on a number of presidential and congressional campaigns for candidates like Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Amy McGrath. Anderson grew up in Roxboro, North Carolina, where she still lives today.
Anderson Clayton, thanks so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Anderson Clayton: Thanks for having us.
Seeberger: So, the Democratic Party in North Carolina had a rock star year outside of the presidential. We saw Democrats win up and down the ballot. Last month, they swept nearly all of their major races.
Why is that? What actually worked in your home state in North Carolina? And, I’m curious from both a messaging perspective and a candidate perspective, what sort of unique organizing approach maybe did you take that helped get you across the finish line in some of those downballot races?
Clayton: I think when you look at what happened in North Carolina, obviously margins matter. Mark Robinson (R) definitely destroyed himself in a governor’s race against Josh Stein (D), but that was not the only race—
Seeberger: You can say that.
Clayton: You can say that. I mean, genuinely, the man that called himself, quote, “a Black Nazi.” But I think that the rest of the downballot where you saw—and actually, polling’s come out now too, that’s shown this is—that Mark Robinson did not have the downballot impact that a lot of people perceived him to.
And I think from our perspective as a state party, what we always try to emphasize—and the races down the ballot were always the most important for us, not just for our organizing program, but for how we campaigned across the state, for how our messaging and our digital guidance went out to people and went out to our volunteers, went out to our county parties. We made it a very decentralized, at least in my opinion, 100-county strategy. And it’s something that made every county feel like there was something that they could do to be able to impact statewide races in North Carolina. And we saw that with the [state] Supreme Court justice race.
So, North Carolina is a unique state. We are one of 11 states in the country that elect a full council-of-state roster. Which means that our legislative branch and our judicial branches are those two things, right? Our executive branch holds 10 offices in the state of North Carolina. And many people don’t know that because not a lot of states always elect their attorney general or their lieutenant governor. Some of them appoint them. Some of them have other ways in which they hold those titles.
And so it’s interesting to see that North Carolina had 15 statewide races on election night. I mean, not a lot of people, I think, really knew that or heard us say that the entire last two years that we’ve been in this job or that I’ve been in this job. Because the idea is that you could have a way to emphasize everybody on the ballot, because everybody speaks to a different sort of issue. And we knew that people’s issues are what drove people to the ballot box this year in so many ways.
But I say that about a Supreme Court justice race because in 2020 when we lost our Supreme Court justice race to Paul Newby against Cheri Beasley, who was the Democrat that was running at that point in time, we lost that race by 401 votes at the statewide level. This year, turn the page to 2020, and we have won a Supreme Court justice race by 722 votes.
And that, to me, I think is the difference in an effective ground game and effective organizing infrastructure from a state party that can really come in and help those downballot candidates that are not getting the same attention as a national level campaign can provide to those folks.
Seeberger: No doubt. No doubt.
I am curious, though. North Carolina is going to play an especially critical role as we look to the next decade and beyond. In 2030, there’s going to be redistricting following the census. And we’re anticipating seeing some decline in the electoral vote share in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, right?
And so the path to 270 for Democrats will really necessitate their success in states like North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona. And so I’m curious to get your perspective as the chair of the Democratic Party in North Carolina: What is it going to take for Democrats to win, to be successful at the presidential level in a state like North Carolina?
Clayton: Investing in places where they might lose originally. And I think that North Carolina was the great white whale for a lot of people in our party for a long time. And I’m like, yeah, in this cycle, North Carolina became the swing state that swung to the right the second least behind Wisconsin. And we were the least-invested battleground state out of any state in that in that roster of the seven.
And I think that’s important for also people to understand, is that North Carolina’s statewide trajectory—we didn’t have a lot of the same resources, even though we had a lot. And I’m thankful for that every single day. But I just think the contextualization of that is important when you understand that North Carolina got added in battleground state category.
I was an expansion state originally. I was not a state that people expected to really have that get-up-and-go about them. And then all of a sudden when you had the vice president come at the top of the ticket, people really started to see North Carolina as this bright beacon.
And I’m like, we couldn’t have done that had we not been building for a year and a half to be able to have that excitement and that infrastructure and everything else that she brought to the table to come in. And I think it’s really important that folks understand the South has got something to say in so many ways still. Because I believe that the future of this party runs through places like North Carolina, but also like Mississippi and Louisiana and Georgia and the places where 55 percent of Black Americans live right now. Because the base of our party is under gerrymandered maps for their state legislatures. They are being disenfranchised out of their votes. And I think that if we as a party really want to care about empowering the base of our party, we would look at where those folks live geographically.
And I think the South has been the most divested region in the country from the Democratic Party, based on where our total vote share is coming from in so many ways. And that’s because it’s hard, right? Gerrymandered maps are hard to get over, and it’s hard to deal with, and it is hard to come up with the plans to be able to execute in those states. And that’s something where, right now, as a southern strategy, we would like to see built, I think, as state party chairs from across the South, as young people from across the South.
When you look at people like Maxwell Frost (D-FL) and Justin Jones (D-TN) and Justin Pearson (D-TN) and Ruwa Roman (D-GA) and all these other really amazing young elected officials, they’re coming from the South. And I think that that is also something we’ve got to take note of. And they’re also young!
Seeberger: This is music to my Texas ears. So, I hear you.
Seeberger: Yes. Yes. Well, I don’t necessarily buy into the messaging that we’re hearing from President-elect Trump on him having this overwhelming commanding mandate. I mean, he’s under 50 percent, right? Democrats actually gained a House seat. The last race was called earlier this week. Every Democratic Senate incumbent in nearly every battleground state ended up actually eking out a win.
Yet, he did particularly well in rural areas in this country. And as somebody from a rural community in Roxboro, I’m curious to get your perspective about—what is it about Trump and his ability to connect with voters in rural parts of our country? And, what do you think Democrats have got to do in order to win them back?
Clayton: It doesn’t happen over an election cycle, I’ll tell you that. And I think that rural communities are a place where you’re going to have to work at them. And a lot of the time, I think we sacrifice the time that it takes to go out and actually campaign in those areas because we don’t see it as a worthwhile investment.
And I would argue every day that it is a worthwhile investment because rural communities right now, just like everybody, this election cycle should have shown people one thing—that how you’re registered to vote does not always equivalent with how you are going to vote and who you’re going to vote for.
And I’m hoping that we look a little bit less at partisanship, honestly, going forward, and we look a little bit more at how to be helping communities and how are we explaining that to people on the ground about why we’re doing that. And I think that it is like the party of service. Democrats used to be really, really good at constituency services, making their presence known in communities.
And I think that our governor, Roy Cooper (D), has done an amazing job of it, honestly. A guy that’s got a 60 percent approval rating in rural North Carolina right now, even after you kept mask mandates in place. There was a large reaction to COVID-19 across rural America, right? We saw a huge sort of wave of people that were angry at the isolationism they felt during that timeframe. Also didn’t fully understand it right, because when you look at the education opportunities that exist in those communities, they are lessened. And so you had less information that was coming in about this crisis.
And Kamala Harris honestly defeated a post-pandemic economy in the way in which she was able to campaign and how she did so, I think, in states like the seven battlegrounds that we saw. But I really do think it involves showing up there. It involves a political realignment of how we even see these voters as being people worth talking to. I’m never somebody that’s going to write people off, and I just don’t know why anybody in our party, or the mentality, would be that.
And I don’t think that you can walk and chew gum at the same time. I know now from being a state party chair, resources are finite. There are places and there are things that you are not going to be able to do. But setting a baseline level of, “Here is how we’re going to do this in every single community, at least,” and have a baseline level of services that you provide to county parties, to infrastructure in these places, I don’t think is impossible to ask, to be honest with you.
Seeberger: And, these voters are also not a monolith, too, right? They’re diverse. They’re young. They’re old. They have—
Clayton: Well, and it’s funny, because I think when people picture that, I picture that, when you say the word “rural,” that is what I picture. I think when people are talking, the reason why you’re having to explain it to people right now is that everybody else listening to this would consider “rural” to be white. And I’m like, no.
Clayton: Yeah, and old. And it’s like, no. And the places where we have been campaigning the most, we have 18 majority minority counties in North Carolina that are rural. And they’re in the eastern part of the state. Don Davis won a huge amount of them. That helped get him back over the line in a very tough congressional seat this year.
Seeberger: I want to dig into—you mentioned North Carolina’s Supreme Court race this year ended up going to, I think her name is Allison Riggs, by 700-some odd votes, as you mentioned. Can you give us a sense for the impact of these kinds of races? So, the actions that the North Carolina Supreme Court took before to green light an extreme partisan gerrymander in the state wiped out three congressional seats that should have gone to Democrats. And that could literally be the difference between a Democratic House majority going into 2025, a check on Donald Trump and Republicans’ unified power in Washington.
What are other kind of examples of the importance of these downballot, state Supreme Court races, local races in terms of actually having an impact on our broader national politics?
Clayton: I mean, I think you covered my biggest one pretty well right now. And Allison Riggs’ race is being challenged. So Jefferson Griffin, who is the Republican that ran against her, is challenging 60,000 valid voters right now across the state of North Carolina because he is trying to steal this election from her.
And he genuinely does not want to accept the fact that we just went through a recount. We are going through a hand-to-eye recount right now in the state of North Carolina, because the Republicans do not want to believe that these votes are valid, even under the circumstances that we came in from them. It’s Republicans’ rules that we are playing on right now in this state, and they still think somehow that we were not able to eke this out in a fair and legal way. And it’s like, no, our elections in North Carolina were legal.
But I think, to your point, that Supreme Court race—when we lost our Supreme Court in 2022 in North Carolina, it changed the trajectory of this state and of this nation, in my opinion, for the next four and eight years.
And people do not necessarily think about that, I think, when they’re looking downballot, which is why those races don’t always have the biggest megaphones, which is why we’ve got to give it to them. People like Elaine Marshall running for secretary of state is so important, because when you think about Republicans in my general assembly this year, we’re saying we’re going to take the elections boards from being under the governor’s power. We’re going to take it. We’re going to move it to the secretary of state, then, if it becomes a Republican.
And we had Republicans that were just thinking about how do we shift power into places that we have power already by using the supermajority that we have in a general assembly? And I think what we need to see is that every branch of government enables another branch, and also it can disable another branch.
Because what Republicans in North Carolina right now are saying—they just recently passed Senate Bill 382, which is stripping away powers from our newly elected governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general in the state. This bill would say that our attorney general does not have the ability to sue over unconstitutional laws that he deems unconstitutional in the state, which is the power given to the attorney general based on our state constitution.
Seeberger: What is the point of having an attorney general?
Clayton: There wouldn’t be one. But that’s where Republicans are at right now. They lost those races, and they are trying to deny that. But they are also trying to strip the powers from those folks that just got elected. And I think that’s the type of democracy that we’re looking at if we’re not playing in every part of that democracy, which means building the bench at the city council and the county commission level for Democrats across the board, making sure that we take back commissions, school boards, and those local races, and that we build, and that we continue to recruit people to run in every single one of those gerrymandered races in North Carolina.
Because that is what we did in 2024. We contested every single one of those Senate and House races, even though we were under gerrymandered maps. And I think that that was a huge reason why Allison Riggs makes it over the line with 722 votes.
Seeberger: It sounds like a great plan to fight back. I am curious, how are you going about actually educating voters about this stuff?
We know a lot of people in this country right now have turned off the political news. But, in order to make these anti-democratic attacks on our system of government and basically trying to reverse engineer and overturn the will of the people, how are you getting this information across so that it actually leads to actual proponents of democracy being able to be in these positions?
Clayton: I think that’s the harder part, to be honest. Because not a lot of people right now are paying attention to North Carolina and what’s happening. And not even a lot of the folks in my own state could tell you that Republicans are challenging 60,000 voters and that they could be one of them. Like, their votes.
I mean, I’ve had county commissioner candidates, I’ve had people that are elected officials in their communities, I’ve had NAACP presidents look at me and say, “Oh my God, I’m on that list. They’re challenging my vote. I’ve been voting in my community for the last 30 years. Anderson, why on earth would my vote be challenged?”
And I’m like, yeah. So part of our education, really—because it happened over the holidays and it was such a quick turnaround, Republicans did this in the cloak of night—was just rapid-response Zoom calls. And so we had about a thousand people that got on a Zoom with us last Sunday to talk about this, to educate folks. We did a “pack the galleries” for the overturn in the Senate chambers of Senate Bill 382. They overturned Gov. Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 382. And then we’re also going to do another pack the galleries on December the 11.
Because the thing that I need right now is my local media and my media apparatus in North Carolina to also be covering this more and educating more people about it. Because that is part of the help, and where cameras go is usually where people go. And so that is why we’ve come up with the approach of, we need to be in the legislature. We need to be in those chambers.
Yesterday, when protesters in the gallery were talking and were basically booing the legislature for voting to override, Mark Robinson had the galleries cleared. He was like, “Get everybody out.” And they wouldn’t let people back in. And it was like, we got to go and we got to do a rapid response TikTok and an Instagram post and videos of trying to help even young people understand, “I’m here right now. I’m being kicked out of a chamber where they’re voting to override a bill that they passed and that they came up with within 24 hours that you have not had any right or any say so in whatsoever.”
And I think in some ways, to be honest with you, I feel like it’s small. I’m like, I don’t actually know if I’m having a big megaphone in this in so many ways. And I am trying to figure out, how do you come up with a strategy over the next year to continuously educate people about this, and to bring that awareness in? And it’s something where our digital team and my comms team and all of us are working together to try to come up with a real strategy—and not just us, but our state House and our state Senate caucuses, too—about the movement of this. Because it’s happening so quickly.
And that’s the other part about it, is that mobilization is hard when Republicans are doing this while people are at work, while their kids are at school, and while they’ve got other things to focus on besides Republican corruption in the state legislature, unfortunately.
Seeberger: Well, clearly based on your electoral success this year, it does seem to be working. This playbook does seem to be working. So, everyone knows what the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is, but few of us really understand what they actually do, right? And for our listeners who need some additional context, Jaime Harrison, who has been the DNC chair over the course of the last four years, he is departing. There is an election for a new Democratic National Committee chair.
Can you talk a little bit about the DNC’s role vis-a-vis somebody who’s in your position running a state Democratic party, the significance of the election of a new chair for the DNC, and what qualities you’re looking for in the next DNC leader?
Clayton: I asked that question. I was like, “Do they know what the DNC is?” I think that is part of our problem, honestly. It was sort of like when I became state party chair, a lot of people did not understand that I’m elected to this role. There is a group of people in the state of North Carolina that vote for me to get here. And they come from every county in the state.
And it’s the same thing when you look at the DNC. The people that are electing the next leader of this party are people just like you. And they’re in your own backyard. And the idea that I think everyone should be curious about right now is, who is my DNC member? Who is going to be voting on the next leader of this party for me? And what would I like to advocate to them and make sure that they know?
Because your DNC members represent the Democrats in your state. And it’s important that they also have the ability to show, “Oh, I’m bringing the voices of my constituents, not just my voice, to this conversation.”
And so for me as a party chair, what I am looking for right now is someone to value infrastructure building in our party. Because I think that the way in which I was able to do what we did this year in North Carolina was through funding. And I know that no one wants to talk a lot about money, but I think that we should. Because the DNC’s funding mechanisms and how they distribute the monetary resources that they have, I think is the most important part of this election.
And when I’m looking at a DNC that spends less than 7 percent of its annual budget on state parties, I’m like, that to me is a problem. It needs to be a 15, a 25 percent of a DNC’s national budget that is actually focused on building state party staff because the people on the ground here matter. And who is in each state doing this work matters. But I get that I am one of many DNC members in that sense. And state party chairs are only one category of many types of DNC members. And so I think you’re going to hear from a lot of people that want to have a plan for every single state in so many ways.
Where do you see opportunity? Where do you see strategy? And how do you come up with it? And my biggest goal is to make sure that a DNC chair would come in and say, “We’re going to pay state party chairs.” Because I was an unpaid state party chair for the first year that I did this. And being a young person, it’s impossible to do if you are young, if you’re a working person, if you’re somebody that’s not independently wealthy, if you don’t have a salary that goes along with a position like this. And I think it excludes some of our best organizers from being able to do amazing things in this party and even look at state party jobs as a job that they would want to do.
Most people look at me and they were like, “Why on earth would you want to be a state party chair? How did that come into your brain?” And I was like, “It really didn’t.” But I started as a county party chair, and I think that someone that’s got the institutional knowledge to be able to understand all the workings of our party, but that doesn’t mean they have to be an institution themselves, right?
It means that they have to respect the system that they’re coming into, and being willing to figure out how you help change it. Because this is not going to be an easy fight. And I think a lot of people are looking at a DNC chair’s election like, “That’s going to solve all of our problems.” And I’m like, no, it’s not, my friends. It is one part of this pie that we are in right now, and there’s a lot of other people that control many other pieces of this pie. And I think that us looking at that as a strategy and as young people in this party, is going to be important going forward. So, sorry that was a ramble, but that is all the thoughts that I have about it.
Seeberger: No, I think you offered some really invaluable insights. We like to end our conversations on “The Tent” on a positive note when we can. And I think a lot of people are licking their wounds after the results, at least at the presidential level this year. And I’m curious, as you think forward to 2026, 2028 in North Carolina, around the country, you think things are going to get better, that this was a low point and we’re going forward? And for folks who are fired up and really want to get involved, I’m curious if you have any tips you could share about how to mobilize, how to organize, how to prepare for that next fight.
Clayton: Who are your local city councilors? Can you name every single one of them for me? Who represents you in your state legislature right now? Can you name them for me?
I think that we are so focused on the up here, the national viewpoint. We’re so focused on Donald Trump going into office right now. I’m like, there’s s— happening. There’s f—– up s— happening, honestly, in your own backyard right now. And if we can start to fix those problems, because that is where everyday people look at a federal level.
Barack Obama was the only president in the last, I wanted to say 20 years or something like that, that had two terms, right? It was a crazy statistic that I read the other day that talked about the period of politics that we are in right now. We have gone back and forth and back and forth at the federal level because people are looking for change. They’re looking for what’s going to impact their life the most. They’re looking for who’s going to help them.
And I’m like, the federal level is not going to do that. It’s going to be your local level. Because your local level are the people that are controlling whether or not your water gets turned on every day, whether or not you have the resources that you need for a homeless shelter in your community, whether or not people are taken care of.
And I think a lot of people have been struggling so much that they want to feel taken care of. And so I would look to people and say, “Where are you getting involved in your local county party?” Because those are the resources. And if you don’t like what your local county party looks like right now—because I get it, we ain’t all perfect up in here either—go change it.
I got involved with my county party by going to a county convention and volunteering to be the county party chair. And I think that there are so many more opportunities to get involved with the actual party apparatus. And a lot of times, people look at it and they’re like, “I can’t do the Democratic Party. I’m just not.” But I’m like, you are the party. We are the party right now. And if you all don’t like what it looks like, what it’s doing, what it’s saying, then go do something different. And go say something different. And go take on a leadership role, and come be part of this with us, and fix this s— with us. Because I don’t think that you are going to do anything from throwing stones outside a glass house. You’re only going to take us all down with you.
And the other piece that I would say is that there’s a lot of really good organizing happening all across, in C3s, and C4s, nonprofits. There’s so much work right now that we can be leaning into and doing. I hope that everyone’s got hope. Because being from rural North Carolina, I don’t ever expect to win elections as a Democrat, and I think that we have got to have the grit and the resiliency to be like, it is about the fight. It is about people seeing that we are fighting for them, which is why there’s a part of this party that I do not agree with right now when it says like, “We’ve got to go back on our values,” or, “We’ve got to take back things that that we’ve stood for and that we’ve stood on.” And I’m like, “No, that is part of our principles.” And we need to bring more people into that conversation. And those are tough conversations to have, but we’ve got to have them.
Seeberger: Fired up Anderson Clayton. Thanks so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Clayton: Thank you for having us.
Seeberger: Well, that’s all the time we have for today. Please go back and check out previous episodes. And if there’s anything you’d like us to cover on the pod, hit us up on Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, and Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Folks, I hope you’re taking care and enjoyed your Thanksgiving holidays. I know in my house, we are making cookies, we are making meatballs, we are decorating trees, we are going all out having the best time watching all our favorite movies. Shoutout to Lindsay Lohan, “Our Little Secret” is in my Netflix queue and I just need to find some time to binge watch it as quickly as possible. Also, love “Home Alone,” can’t beat it. “Love Actually,” I mean, it’s amazing. Hope you’re all getting to spend some time with friends and family, watch your favorite movies, eat your favorite things, and find some joy. I know it’s been a long year. And look forward to chatting next week.
Seeberger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Colin Seeberger, and co-hosted by Daniella Gibbs Léger. Erin Phillips is our lead producer, Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, and Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Hai Phan, Matthew Gossage, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests at “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.