August Update: we graduated 4 candidates from our Slate whose victories we are very confident about. These outstanding women and men will make incredible North Carolina legislators!

Update, 9/13: We're launching The Frontier Five! In these last 50 days until Election Day, we're going on offense and expanding the map to boost 5 new promising State House candidates in our mission to win the majority.

Here are thumbnail sketches of the candidates and their districts. Click through for each candidate's campaign website:





What is the Long Leaf Pine Slate all about?

The Long Leaf Pine Slate aims to boost fundraising for a small group of Democratic challengers running to flip vulnerable GOP-held seats in the NC General Assembly.

In 2018, following court-ordered corrections to an egregiously partisan gerrymander, Democrats in North Carolina succeeded in breaking the Republican supermajority in the state General Assembly. Following more court-ordered map changes in 2019, Democrats now have a real chance of taking control of one or both chambers of the General Assembly in the 2020 elections. To do this, Democrats need to flip 6 House seats and 5 Senate seats.

The good news is that North Carolina Democrats are ready. We have recruited strong candidates to challenge newly vulnerable Republican incumbents in races over the state. The Long Leaf Pine Slate focuses on just the most winnable races where your support will matter most. Check out the Candidate List to learn more about the House and Senate candidates we're supporting!

Here in North Carolina, the average House race costs about $250,000. The average Senate race rises to around $750,000 or more. Now, that's not cheap - but by contrast, Congressional races are multi-million dollar affairs. The race to kick out GOP Senator Thom Tillis alone is expected to raise over $40 million! What this means is that, particularly for small donors like us, your political contribution has much greater impact in races like these.

How did you choose the candidates?

To choose the candidates the Long Leaf Pine Slate would focus on, we turned to FLIP NC, a wonderful all-volunteer group of grassroots progressives who are passionate about maps and data. Their team broke down the most recent legislative maps and compared it with past elections results to determine where the most promising districts for Democrats would be. You can read their full guide to NC's 2020 races here. We've gathered together the strongest of those candidates whose victories could flip control of the General Assembly.

All of the candidates on our Slate had to meet a few basic requirements. All candidates must support:

• Independent redistricting reform

• Affordable access to health care

• Fully fund our public schools

We also wanted to focus on races that could use our help the most. A few races, like the new Senate districts in Wake and Mecklenburg counties (S-18 and S-39, respectively), were considered "safe" enough Democratic seats that we dropped them from this list. That way, we could focus our resources on more competitive races.

Why should I care about North Carolina?

Well, lots of reasons!

North Carolina is the 9th largest state in the nation by population. It has 15 electoral votes, 13 Representatives in Congress, and is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. North Carolina's growth and evolution is steadily making it a more Democratic-friendly state. In 2008, NC went for President Barack Obama. Both 2012 and 2016 cycles were decided by just a sliver of votes, and also saw widespread voter suppression by hostile Republicans in the General Assembly.

The North Carolina Republican Party has seen the same trendlines, and they're terrified. Their response has been breathtakingly cynical: everything from openly racist and undemocratic gerrymanders, voter suppression, election fraud, gutter-grade dirty tricks and outright corruption to push their rotten agenda. They've put on a clinic for Republicans in other "purple states" around the country on how to entrench their power by any means other than winning clean elections.

The party that controls the NC General Assembly in 2021 will draw new Congressional maps based on the 2020 census. When that happened in 2011, North Carolina Republicans drew an outrageous gerrymander that sent 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats to Congress, despite the fact that voter turnout was about 50/50. If we let them, the NC GOP will continue to gerrymander those maps for their own partisan advantage, right up to (and beyond) what the Supreme Court allows. The Republicans will continue to disenfranchise wide swaths of our state and run roughshod over our democracy. We cannot allow that to happen.

Here's a good summary of the timeline of Republican gerrymanders in NC, courtesy of the good folks at NC Policy Watch.

We'll be sending out occasional updates on our Slate candidates and the state of the race throughout 2020. Want to stay in the loop? Sign up here!

Contact

Got something to say? Want to help? Let us know! longleafpineslate@gmail.com