Hello, hello, hello, everybody.
Happy New Year and happy certification day.
Another January 6th is upon us.
It's the fourth anniversary of the January 6th insurrection.
And well, not a whole lot's changed.
Unfortunately, here we are.
Four years later, 2025, no closer to equal democracy, no closer to tilting away from
fascism.
And today we're going to be talking a little bit about that certification.
We're also going to be talking about the Together We Rise rally, which happened yesterday in
the Halifax Mall in Raleigh.
Alison Riggs's win.
And yes, she did win, finally.
And the 2025 municipal elections and what to look forward to in the coming months.
So let's get right down to it.
First off, you might realize that I'm going to be alone today.
Unfortunately, CJ fell under the weather during his holiday break.
There is a sickness sweeping through his house, as he said to me in my in our instant messages
between each other.
But that's OK.
You know, he's he's with me in spirit and we're going to roll right through this.
Get out and vote.
And remember that there is an election every single year.
And sometimes there are special elections.
There's never going to be a time where you do not need to be involved and informed and
activated.
So just putting that right up at the top of this, because it's going to kind of encompass
everything we're about to talk about.
Of course, today is the certification of Trump's victory.
January 6th, the House and Senate Congress is going to meet to open the sealed certificates
from each state that contain a record of their electoral votes.
And they're going to be brought into the chamber in these special little mahogany boxes.
So they're going to read the results out loud.
And of course, the vice president is going to be the one presiding over the session and
declaring the winner, which really is kind of just an exercise in self emulation.
I really feel for Kamala Harris on this one.
You know, she she could absolutely do what Republicans wanted Mike Pence to do back in
2021 and just decide not to certify the election results because I don't know, fraud, quote
unquote.
But we know she's not going to do that.
And it's the right thing to do.
We joked about it a little bit last time in our last episode.
But you know, the right thing to do is just to accept defeat and to understand that, like,
maybe there's just something about the candidate or the policies.
We have our own personal opinions about why she lost.
I'm going to wait until I have CJ on and we're going to have a guest next week, possibly
next week, maybe the week after that, to talk a little bit more about why we think Democrats
lost in North Carolina for the presidential election, but not necessarily statewide.
What's the difference there?
And here's the broader implication for democracy in this certification that Trump does not
respect the certification.
He doesn't.
Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a January 6th, 2021.
There wouldn't have been violence that led to people's deaths back during that time.
And now that he won, it's business as usual.
This is just the same game.
This is the same play over and over and over again.
It's wrong if I lose, but if I win, everything worked exactly how it was supposed to.
And this time, unfortunately, he doesn't just have the Electoral College to think for it.
As we know, he did technically win a majority of the popular vote.
Now that doesn't mean that a majority of Americans actually voted for Donald Trump.
Remember, he didn't quite crack 50%, but it doesn't really matter.
They're still going to call it a mandate.
They're still going to act like there's a very clear win from Trump on this.
But the fact of the matter is that it really came down to seven states.
And unfortunately, when the time came, Kamala could not quite win those seven states.
And there's been a litany of op-eds and analyses and studies that I'm sure are both published
and forthcoming that will be exhaustive on the subject of why Kamala Harris lost the
2024 election and why Trump managed to win even though he is a felon, even though he
is a convicted rapist, even though he is just a con man in general.
Doesn't really matter, right?
At the end of the day, voters made the decision and they wanted groceries to be cheaper.
So this is what they got.
And then just a couple of weeks after he wins, he goes on live television and says, well,
in effect says, well, I don't actually know how to make groceries cheaper.
Actually this was the first time that I heard the term groceries.
I just started saying groceries and everybody loved it.
The man is a TV personality, first and foremost.
And I think everybody who paid attention in these elections, these last three elections,
truly did understand that.
I think a lot of Republicans woke up to it.
But at the end of the day, we had so many people that were so anxious about the economy
or that were so anxious about the situation in Gaza, that were so anxious about immigration.
There were a plethora of issues on the table this time.
And unfortunately, abortion for the Democrats just wasn't one that was motivating enough
to bring some of those median, middle of the road voters over to their side.
At least that's my Cliff Notes take on that.
The importance though, and what I want to tie this all back to, is that the biggest
problem in this election and why Trump was able to win the popular vote is because of
voter turnout.
While Democrats did make gains in a lot of different places throughout North Carolina,
part of the reason that Trump won was because there were gains in voter turnout in places
where there typically has not been very high Republican turnout.
And that is an issue.
This includes Wake County.
Wake County saw a larger majority of Democrats, of course, coming out to vote for Kamala Harris.
But they also saw an influx of Republicans that typically did not vote early or did not
vote at all.
And by Republicans, I hope that the listener understands that I mean unaffiliateds who
voted for Republicans as well.
This is not just people who register as Republicans.
As you probably know, and as you should know, unaffiliateds actually outnumber both Democrats
and Republicans as far as voter registration statistics goes.
So what is this all leading to?
We don't know yet.
This is a huge, huge turn for the country as a whole.
We for the first time have a convicted felon as a president for the first time in almost
what?
140 years, 150 years, we have a president that that has lost reelection and then won
it non consecutively.
It's truly a new time for political history.
And I think that going forward, we need to analyze things a little bit differently.
I think that we need to look at social media and not just as a means to just make people
aware of stuff, but also as a means of organizing.
And that's why so many people were anxious about like the TikTok ban bill and X being
taken over by a far right idiot in the form of Elon Musk, somebody who wasn't even born
here who might still not be allowed to be here.
But we'll get to that in our Elon episode, which is forthcoming.
So stay tuned.
Where am I going with all this?
Right?
So the Democrats decided to hold a rally the day before the certification of the election
in Raleigh on Sunday.
They wanted to highlight their key messages and outline the goals of different candidates
that had won and candidates that would be up for reelection in 2026.
And I think that what stood out to me because and when when I was there, I thought what
was interesting was that it was a pretty decent turnout.
Right.
It was about 500 people.
There were some notable moments from some notable candidate.
It was blisteringly cold.
Of course, this was this was right before the massive cold front came in into North
Carolina.
We've had snow in Greensboro for the first time in I don't know how many years, but there
were some notable speeches.
First we started with Anderson Clayton, who kind of got everybody riled up as she is very
good at doing.
Every single vote in this election cycle has been counted and recounted.
Justice Allison Riggs has won her seat rightfully on the North Carolina state Supreme Court
by seven hundred and thirty four votes, everybody.
A little less than probably what's sitting out here in front of me right now, right?
In so many ways.
And I thought that that was interesting because it really did set the tone for everything
that was kind of going to be talked about at this rally.
It was mostly a Riggs victory rally.
I think that a lot of people were decidedly out there because they wanted to see Anderson
and they wanted to see Allison Riggs because they knew they were going to be there.
But also Justice Anita Earls was there.
And this is the Supreme Court justice that's going to be up for reelection in twenty twenty
six.
And her reelection in twenty twenty six is going to be extremely important because right
of the seven Supreme Court justice positions, five of them are Republicans.
Only two are Democrats, and that is both Anita Earls and Allison Riggs.
And with her reelection coming up in twenty twenty six, we need to also keep in mind that
in the state of North Carolina, there is a mandatory retirement age.
If she wins in twenty twenty six, right?
They serve on the board or they serve on the Supreme Court for eight years in twenty thirty
six.
She will meet the mandatory retirement age.
So we are facing ten years from now the possibility of another very contentious election in the
Supreme Court.
If Anita Earls is able to hold on to her seat now, again, that is not a guarantee.
Allison Riggs won her one reelection by only seven hundred thirty four votes, as you just
heard Anderson Clayton say.
And that is such that is such an incredible margin.
It is almost unfathomable to think about, especially when you consider that each of
them had about a two and a half million vote share.
So the work that people did to cure ballots at these polling locations and to make sure
that every single vote was counted and then the subsequent effort by Jefferson Griffin
to try and kick, try and get sixty thousand ballots removed from various different precincts
and counties is it's it's it's one of those once in an election cycle stories that even
caught national attention.
And when I first met Allison Riggs a few months ago, I say a few months ago, this was back
in February, I met her at an NAACP meeting.
If you had told me that she would be in one of the most contentious elections of twenty
twenty four, I would have been shocked and I still am shocked.
It's incredible to me how close this election was.
But that is just a that is just a glimpse into the future.
Right.
We have several more coming up.
We have a mandatory retirement in twenty thirty one from Justice Chief Justice Paul Newby.
But his term ends in twenty twenty eight.
So that will coincide with the presidential election year.
In fact, we have three justice election.
We have three Supreme Court elections that will coincide with the presidential election
of twenty twenty eight.
So Democrats need to start now and already have to their credit need to start laying
the groundwork now for their strength coming into twenty twenty eight.
This is going to be extremely important for NC Democrats.
And to their credit, I think that this rally was pretty successful in all honesty.
I think that they managed to do exactly what they set out to do in getting people out and
excited and wanting to get involved.
I did see a lot of familiar faces out there.
But I mean, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I think that this was a moment of solidarity for the North Carolina Democratic Party.
We actually heard from a voter who received a notice that her ballot was being disputed.
Of course, this was in conjunction with the Alison Riggs versus Jefferson Griffin race.
They were trying to cure her ballot out to.
When she reached out to the NCGOP and the NCDP to get it resolved, what I thought was
really interesting was they told the story when she told the story, she mentioned at
the end of it as if it was like a footnote that only the NCDP responded no less than
seven times, I think was her exact quote.
But that really does show the level of involvement.
And I think the level of or rather not the level of but the trajectory and the attention
that is being paid to the kind of elections that the Democrats want to run, the kinds
of races that they want to run here.
They're trying to do it very by the book, by the rules, but not so much playing the
margins lawyers that the NCGOP does and trying to connect on a personal level with voters.
What I think will be interesting to see going forward, especially with the municipal elections
and the twenty twenty six midterms is how litigious they're going to be going forward.
I think that if anything, the Democrats need to start showing up some funds to be very
litigious and to challenge every single election, especially the ones where they don't win.
State Senator Sidney Batch also got up to speak.
She was recently elected as the Senate majority or excuse me, the Senate minority leader.
The Democrats do not have a majority in the Senate, much like they do not have in the
House.
She rose to encourage Democrats to continue resisting the North Carolina GOP's power
grabs again refer to our SB 382 episode and all the coverage there for what I'm talking
about.
And she also spoke about implementing progress, quote, we're building a movement based on
unity, justice and democracy.
End quote.
And these kinds of quotes, these kinds of this this rhetoric is great in trying to establish
party unity.
I think it's a little bit understated in how they need to be running the party as if it
is an apparatus that has one cohesive and one goal in mind.
Right now, there is a small race within the Democratic Party.
There are a few challengers for first vice chair.
Right now, the first vice chair is Jonah Garson.
I think he's done all right.
But there are definitely some challengers there.
At this point, I don't I've heard some whispers of people trying to trying to challenge Anderson
Clayton for the state party chair position, but I don't think it's really going to happen.
She's somebody who has really been able to bring the NCDP to the forefront and get herself
out there in terms of marketing herself and marketing the party as a whole.
And the the new South, her appearances on like CNN, MSNBC and some other stations and
things like that, I think brings her to the forefront, kind of like a Ben Wickler, somebody
who is clearly trying to establish themselves as a very influential party chair rather than
somebody who's just like a bureaucrat that kind of makes sure that the party continues
running.
She's definitely been a great spokeswoman for the NCDP.
So I'll be interested to see how she if she wins reelection, which I'm sure certainly
sure that she will, how she's going to continue that going into the midterms, going to the
municipal elections, maybe even going into twenty twenty eight.
We'll see, because there have already been calls online for her to run for DNC chair
at some point personally.
And again, she knows I love her.
We need her here because if there is going to be anybody that can energize the Democratic
Party here in North Carolina, it's going to be Anderson Clayton.
And to move her into a position again, she's 26 years old.
To move her into position on a national scale at such a young age, I think runs the risk
of people not taking it seriously.
This is I mean, I'm only 31.
This is not being I'm not being ageist here, but we have to understand that there is a
whole apparatus in Washington, D.C. that is not it's not like it is here in North Carolina.
She knows that, too.
She's she's very I'm sure she's well aware.
It'd be great to have somebody so young personally.
I would love it to have somebody so young and so driven and so energetic and so goal
focused as DNC chair.
But I also think that there is a lot of politics that are at play here.
You don't get to be DNC chair just because you're energetic and young.
There's there's a lot more to it.
Maybe further down the line, she will have enough traction and enough of a status to
be able to do that.
I would not put it past her.
And I think she'd be great at it.
So we'll just have to see what happens over the next few years.
Let's not everybody jump the gun on this and get rid of one of the best assets we have
in the state in building party power out.
Right.
We we don't want to immediately send her off to do more at the national level when she's
doing so much here at the state level.
But that's just my opinion.
So again, like I said at the top of this, this was this was very much a rigs victory
rally in a way.
Like I think that it was good to establish a sense of unity, to establish a sense of
togetherness.
Right.
In such a word at this Together We Rise rally in Raleigh that gives that gives Democrats
a much needed foundation and focus going into 2025, but also rigs winning by such a thin
margin is both a blessing and a curse because because it was such a thin margin, it makes
it pretty amazing that it was so close.
It was like by the skin of your teeth.
It's very attention grabbing.
It's very exciting and such a huge win for Democrats.
Not going to take that away at all.
But I also think it spells a little bit of trouble further down the line.
If you get somebody who is maybe a little less of a good campaigner, who has not as
good of a campaign team as Alison Riggs did, I just spoke with her campaign manager at
the rally today and I fully think that there there is a lot to this campaign that we did
not see that was incredibly important in securing those that 734 vote margin because there there
were three other judicial branch elections that were going on.
We have Ed Eldred, we have Martin Moore.
There were other people that were running and they did not win election.
They did not win their election.
So for this to be such a close election and for Alison Riggs to have this moment of finally
being able to breathe and get on with her work for the next eight years, Democrats are
of course going to do a victory lap.
Nobody's going to nobody should take that away from them.
It's definitely a warning sign.
That's all I'm saying.
So let's listen to how she started her speech here at the Together We Rise rally.
I didn't know about these signs but it should say we won!
We won!
North Carolina Democrats!
I am Justice Alison Riggs and I am so honored to be here with you today.
And guess what North Carolina Democrats and democracy advocates?
I am standing here today because of you.
I am here to thank you for what you did this past November, two months ago today.
You changed the course of this state, the way that people will enjoy their rights down
the road or because of the work you did this cycle.
So pretty great opening.
I do think it was a pretty great opening.
I do think it was a good way to bring the message of unity, the message of Together
We Rise back into the fold.
Just having this sense of well, yes, I am the candidate but you guys are the ones that
got out and did the work.
As somebody who ran a campaign this cycle, I can definitely say that it is not easy to
get people to come out and canvas or phone bank or do anything for a campaign without
there being some kind of incentive, right?
There were plenty of campaigns that had to run full on paid canvassing, paid phone banking.
There was a massive amount of money being moved through this state.
What I can say for sure is that a lot of people did come together for Alice in Rigs.
I can't say the same thing for a lot of the other Democrats that were focused on during
this election cycle.
I do have a bit of a chip on my shoulder because of that.
Running out in Eastern North Carolina is not easy but there are so many ways that people
can get involved, especially if you are on the left end of the spectrum.
Maybe you don't consider yourself a Democrat.
Maybe you're unaffiliated.
Maybe you're part of the Green Party.
Maybe you're a Communist, Socialist, DSA member, what have you.
What I encourage everybody to do is to look at the candidates themselves and look at who
they're up against and then make a decision on how you're going to use your ability for
activism to further the goal of keeping certain people out of office while knowing the ones
that you put in office are accountable to you.
Because if candidates really believe this, that you made it happen, then it is incumbent
upon you to make it happen.
But that's my little soapbox.
The energy of the crowd was pretty great, to be honest.
I know it was a little lackluster in that one clip but as the speech went on, it actually
picked up quite a bit.
This is also interesting because Alison Riggs is one of only two Democrats on the Supreme
Court as mentioned before and also one of only two women on the Supreme Court.
I bet you can guess that the other woman is a Democrat.
And if you did guess that, you know, brownie points to you.
While Justice Riggs and her re-election might not make a huge difference in the decisions
of the Supreme Court, again, let's keep in mind, let's keep a clear head here that this
was only to retain a seat.
Now dissension in the courts is important, right?
Especially if it's something that goes up to the Supreme Court or if it goes to appellate
courts and things like that.
It is important.
It is important to have dissenting voices in the Supreme Court.
However, we can't get ahead of ourselves and assume, as Anita Earls very deftly pointed
out later on in the rally, that just because somebody fills a vacancy in the court does
not necessarily mean that anything's going to change.
I bet your feet and hands are as cold as mine, so I'm going to be brief.
My name is Anita Earls and for the past six years, I have fought for your rights and freedoms
as an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
I was part of the majority in 2022 that said that extreme partisan gerrymandering violates
our state constitution.
That decision was overturned in 2023.
I was part of the majority that in 2022 said that a voter ID requirement that was passed
explicitly to discriminate against black voters is against the state constitution.
That decision was overturned in 2023.
You gotta love the comedic timing of that.
There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of man hours needed down the road that are
going to shift power away from the GOP, away from the conservative and right-wing majority
in this state because we already know just from looking at the results of this election
that it is not a majority conservative, republican, right-wing ideology.
Setting the stage for 2025 in the municipal elections is going to be extremely important
because county commissioners are up for election, mayors are up for election, local school boards
are going to be up for election.
These are the people that are going to define your everyday local life.
You need to be involved and you need to get people in your neighborhoods involved.
These elections matter.
They do.
As we see, they are very close in this state, sometimes down to the wire, sometimes down
to a minuscule percentage.
So going into 2025, what are the issues that I'm looking at that are probably going to
be pretty important?
Housing, 100%.
Not just because there is a significant lack of housing in the state but also because of
Hurricane Helene, there are still people in Western North Carolina without housing, without
infrastructure.
These are going to be important issues.
These are going to be important issues that Republicans run on.
Of course, they're not going to run on them the way that they need to be run on.
As in, here are the issues, here are ways to fix them.
No, they're going to take it at a pick yourself up by your bootstraps method.
Mark my words.
We have an issue of housing inequality in this state.
Have the Republicans put forward anything in the last 14 years to help alleviate that?
No.
Will they take money from the builders' organizations and lobbying firms that keep the prices high?
Well, absolutely.
And as far as infrastructure goes, are there any projects in place coming up in 2025 that
have been talked about in terms of public transit?
Nope, I'm willing to guess not.
I think I would speak for a lot of people, especially in the Triangle area, that would
prefer to have some form of public transportation going from...
I mean, shoot.
Let's just take Winston-Salem to Greensboro to Durham to Raleigh and then maybe in and
around the Triangle, maybe help alleviate some traffic on 70 and 40 and I-95.
I-95 is not too bad.
But my point is that these are the kinds of things that people ask for and instead the
focus has largely been on immigration as far as the rhetoric goes and private versus public
education.
And don't get me wrong, public education is extremely important and we need to keep the
pressure up to make sure that public education remains affordable and accessible to everybody.
There's no but on the end of that sentence.
We just do need to do that.
So when Democrats go into 2025 running for some of these local election offices or running
for some of these local offices and Democrats go into the midterms and start announcing
that they're going to be running, I mean, take for example, 2026, Tom Tillis is going
to be up for reelection, the senior senator.
There are whispers that Wiley-Nickel, the representative from House District 13 is going
to run.
There are whispers that Roy Cooper, our outgoing, well, our now retired governor is going to
be running, which I think would be a pretty strong contender.
But there's no sure.
There's no sure thing anywhere right now.
What they need to be focusing on going into 2026 is how to best put populist policies
into practice across North Carolina.
What people actually care about is housing and education and health care.
If you can capture those three things in this state, you will have an incredibly strong
position going into 2026 because the people who are going to vote in the midterm elections
are the ones that typically pay attention to policy.
Presidential elections are typically seen as a great time for people to campaign because
you have the chance to gather some of those voters from the presidential campaign, right?
You get some of the coattails.
But here's the problem.
When Donald Trump is on the ballot, it throws a wrench in everything.
And in 2028, hoping and assuming that Trump is not going to try to pull some crap with
the Constitution, we will likely see somebody like JD Vance running for president.
The main focus of the Democrats in North Carolina should be combating every single policy that
he could possibly bring up in a populist framework.
Time is the name of the game right now, and if Democrats can start trying to push a little
bit more of a populist agenda, something that is a little bit more something that I, of
course, would advocate for being more left wing, more labor focused, more equitable housing
and infrastructure and education focused, we could see some real change in this state.
Of course, I'm not a lobbyist or a professional pundit or somebody who works in a consulting
firm talking about these races every single minute of every single day.
So what do I know?
But you let me know, you know, let me know in the comments, let us let me know in the
socials what you think of that premise.
Because if you get involved now and then come 2026, we can start making some real populist
change in this country and we can start making some real populist change in this state, where
instead of the super majority of the GOP in the state house making all the decisions,
the people and the things that they want, the things that they care about can start
making some headway here.
Maybe we have a shot.
Who knows?
Maybe.
Well, unfortunately, without my co-hosts here, this is going to be a little bit of shorter
episode.
Thank you for everybody tuning in and listening.
And you can of course follow us on Blue Sky, Twitter, Facebook, all the things at Left
of Old North.
And of course, subscribe to us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you get your
podcasts.
We are on TikTok for as long as that's going to last.
We don't know quite yet, of course, but stay tuned.
We're going to have some guests coming down the pipeline this year.
We're also going to be looking a lot at municipal elections and putting some focus on rural
North Carolina, especially in the western half of the state, so stay tuned and stay
on the Left of Old North.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.