“I may not be the establishment candidate but I am the constituents’ candidate.”-State Senator Erica D. Smith

Erica Smith is running to be a United States Senator from North Carolina. Her campaign is centered around 17 years of legislative experience, a career in which she’s been awarded numerous honors as a legislator who can get things done. Currently serving in the State Senate, she’s led Thom Tillis, the incumbent Republican in multiple polls. Her agenda is a common sense platform for progress that includes common sense gun violence measures as well as a commitment to universal health coverage for everyone and has the potential to appeal to both parties. It all sounds perfect. Democrats have a great candidate for a winnable race. So what’s the problem? Establishment leaders have manufactured a crisis.

Chuck Schumer and the the DSCC have backed Cal Cunningham, a straight white moderate who’s already lost a statewide race in North Carolina. Why? Access to money. Cal Cunningham is the preferred candidate of the corporate class which has earned him the blessing of party leadership. The DSCC prefers Cunningham because he is white and male and willing to spend his days calling donors.

The DSCC should be tripping over themselves to elevate Senator Smith and her candidacy. Instead, their over-eagerness to back candidates like Cunningham and MJ Hegar (in Texas) shows that no lessons were learned from 2018 an election year in which Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum delivered two of the most impressive democratic campaigns in recent memory. Clearly no lessons were learned from Lucy McBath’s success in a district Jon Ossoff couldn’t flip in spite of his much larger war chest. More millennials watch AOC’s live Instagram story updates of her microwaving mac and cheese than know who Joe Crowley is. All the money in the world means nothing if it’s not being used to amplify the right messages by the right people. The establishment’s fear of backing women of color to be our general election candidates is not just morally wrong, it is ill-informed and it is harmful to democrats’ 2020 prospects.

Senator Smith is the third senate candidate I’ve interviewed. Mayor Ted Terry of Georgia, Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez of Texas and now Senator Smith have each left me with the impression that Washington would be a significantly better place with them in it. They have everything going for them except the backing of the establishment and that’s because they represent a new kind of politics. It’s because they aren’t your run of the mill politicians. They care more about their constituents than they do about money and power and that frightens the people in charge who profit off of things staying as they are, who’s careers are predicated on a politics as usual.

The democratic establishment needs to step up and have some ambition. They cannot be driven by fear and cynicism. Democrats win when they are bold and ambitious and show up with the courage of their convictions, not merely the most monotonous candidate available. We need to show up with the courage of our convictions. These stronger, more interesting and bold candidates (many of whom are supported by Flip the Senate) won’t just win their elections but they’ll do something of substance once they’re elected.

I believe that Senator Smith would win in a general election, not just because the polls tell me so but because it’s clear that she’s a consensus builder, more focused on bettering peoples’ lives than on petty politics. Her electability rests in her appeal to a “new American majority who are tired of the establishment in both parties, who want results, not rhetoric.” She’s sacrificing valuable campaign trail time in order to ensure that she doesn’t miss any important votes in the North Carolina legislator. Every day at work she’s had to go up against one of the most vile conservative legislative bodies in the country. In the state assembly, North Carolina republicans tried to override a veto from the democratic governor while their democratic colleagues were at a 9/11 memorial (the only reason they were able to do this in the first place was because a rule change that was enacted under Senator Tillis’ leadership of the chamber).

Smith has a phone for campaigning and a phone for governing, she keeps two offices as to assure no potential conflicts of interest or regulatory violations. In North Carolina right now, on one side, there is a party and a senator about as shady, slimy and corrupt as they come and on the other side we have Erica Smith who’s character and integrity is beyond reproach. She hasn’t just told us she’s a fighter, she’s shown us. She hasn’t just told us that she’s the constituents’ candidate, she’s shown us.

When Cal Cunningham’s district lines were redrawn, he didn’t seek reelection. He assumed he couldn’t win. When Erica Smith’s district lines were redrawn (Trump won her district in 2016), she rolled up her sleeves, got to work and won. The DSCC is betting that Cal Cunningham can win because voters want a candidate who looks like him. I’m betting that Erica Smith can win because voters want a candidate who fights for them.

The DSCC is severely out of touch with the American people and it is jeopardizing our party and our country. If Cal Cunningham was not a white man he would not be their preferred candidate. The inequality we see in our countries economics, education, criminal justice system and leadership is only perpetuated by decisions like this one. We also cannot forget, that come election day black women are the backbone of the democratic party and that endless and overflowing support is underrepresented in the parties elected officials and leadership.

Erica Smith is ahead in the polls. She is a champion for the working class, has an impeccable record on climate change, and plans for common sense gun reform. Erica Smith does not accept PAC money. She can be “fiscally conservative and understands sounds business principles.” Erica Smith has everything it takes to be the next Senator from the state of North Carolina.

This race is about more than Erica Smith and it is about more than just North Carolina. It’s about the Democratic party, a party that prides itself on being the party of progressives, of progress but remains beholden to the very crooked, corrupt and broken ideologies of the past it claims to oppose. Politics as usual is the root cause of this moment of peril, not the silver bullet to solve it. The DSCC is jeopardizing a seat this nation needs and its callousness and poor judgment “will haunt us in 2020,” Smith predicts. Hell, with a DSCC this spineless who needs the NRSC? Leadership should be embarrassed by the way in which they’re handling this Senate race.

Where the party’s leadership has failed, it is imperative that its constituents succeed. Smith knows that because of the color of her skin and her gender she’s in a position of putting in “twice the work to get half the credit.” Let’s help her out, let’s put in some of that work with her.

If over the next few months of this primary, if over the next year of this election, we the people fight for and champion Erica Smith, I am certain that she will spend her time in the U.S. Senate fighting for and championing us. The DSCC, Chuck Schumer, they’ve got this one wrong. But fortunately for us, this is not a plutocracy or autocracy, this is a democracy. We have the final say. Erica Smith is for the people. Let’s make sure that come election day, the people are for her too.

Learn more about her campaign: https://ericaforus.com/