More people are running for the legislature, but that doesn’t mean more diversity | News & Observer

Interest in running for legislative races was at an all-time high this year as the Democrats look to break the Republican supermajorities in both the state House and Senate, and the Republicans work to keep the majority they’ve held since 2011.

Yet both state political parties have made only marginal gains in recruiting a more diverse candidate pool for legislative seats, according to data analyzed by the N.C. Insider.

While the NC Democratic Party says it has “one of the most diverse fields of candidates ever assembled,” it’s difficult to track just how diverse the candidate slate is, since parties don’t have the information readily available. This year, the N.C. Democratic Party launched a website that allows voters to see which of the candidates are people of color, women or under the age of 35. The Republicans do not have a similar site. However, even the Democrats’ site is incomplete, as at least one candidate under the age of 35 was not listed and two female candidates were missing as well.

When asked for biographical information about 2016 and 2018 Democratic candidates for the General Assembly, NCDP spokesman Robert Howard said the information — age, gender, race and sexual orientation — was not readily available. The NCGOP compiled a list for the N.C. Insider, but the list was incomplete, making it hard to compare the two cycles. But using past election results and available online information, the N.C. Insider was able to fill some gaps in the data.

From the 2016 election cycle to the 2018 election cycle, the state Republican Party made small gains in the number of women and people of color running for the General Assembly:

▪ In 2016, about 2 percent of the party’s candidates were people of color. This year, 7 percent of the candidates are people of color.

▪ Women made up 18 percent of the party’s candidates in 2016, and in 2018 they make up 19 percent.

▪ Only in one category — candidates under 35 — did the Republicans lose ground. In 2016, 9 percent of the candidates were 35 or younger, and this year that percentage dropped to 8 percent.

As for the Democrats:

▪ This year 35 percent of their General Assembly candidates are people of color, compared to 38 percent in 2016.

▪ Mirroring national trends, more women are running this year as Democrats than in previous years. In 2016, 34 percent of Democratic candidates were women. This year, 38 percent of candidates are women.

▪ In both 2018 and 2016, nearly 11 percent of Democratic legislative candidates were 35 or younger.

The parties have a higher number of candidates in each of those categories, but that’s because far more races are contested this year.

There are 97 women running: 65 Democrats and 32 Republicans.

The majority of non-white candidates in both parties are African-Americans, and only one Latino is running this year.

Ad portrays a young man who’s a ‘mess’

Democrats have a total of 18 candidates running who are under the age of 35. The Republicans have 14 candidates. Age in the past hasn’t become a defining factor in many races, but in one General Assembly race, Republicans have taken aim at the Democratic challenger’s age.

In Senate District 27, Democrat Michael Garrett is running against Republican Sen. Trudy Wade of Guilford County for the second time. Garrett, 34, is married and has a young child, yet an ad against him portrays him as a young man who is a “mess.”

The ad says Garrett moved back home and his father gave him a job. The ad then shows a man painting a campaign sign with Garrett’s name on it. It also noted he’d switched parties from Republican to Democrat.

“My initial reaction (to the ad), I just probably laughed the hardest I’ve laughed this entire campaign cycle,” he said, describing the ad as “desperate.”

Garrett said he and his wife, along with their infant son, lived in his parents’ house for two months after the house they were previously living in sold quickly. While he doesn’t live with his mom as depicted in the ad, he joked that cleaning his room has “moved down the list of priorities” during the campaign season.

As for the job his dad allegedly gave him, Garrett said while he owns his own business, he also helps run the family business. “Family businesses and small businesses are the backbone of the North Carolina economy,” he said. Wade, a three-term incumbent, did not respond to a request for comment about the ad.

Garrett said he hears about the ad when he’s out canvassing, including from Republicans who he says are “turned off” by it. “Families have different living arrangements for various reasons,” Garrett said. “That’s why we didn’t waste any time or energy responding to that ad.”

A recent Civitas Institute poll found Garrett and Wade in a close race with Garrett polling one point higher than Wade, with 46 percent of likely voters casting a ballot for him. Of the 400 likely voters polled, 10 percent said they were undecided. A March 2018 partisan ranking from the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation ranked Senate District 27 as “lean Republican.”

For 26-year-old Da’Quan Love, a Democrat running against Republican Rep. Jimmy Dixon of Duplin County in a safe Republican district, his decision to run was prompted by a 2017 comment Dixon made about the Great Recession. Dixon said it was “a wonderful blessing to the state on North Carolina” because it forced government to spend less.

“The great recession hit me hard. I was raised by a single mom. My mom literally almost lost the family home that I grew up in,” Love said. And after watching Doug Jones win the special U.S. Senate election in Alabama, Love said he didn’t want to “sit idly by and allow for (Dixon) to continue not to be held accountable.”

Love, a third-grade teacher, has been balancing teaching classes and getting his master’s degree all while campaigning, and he’s had to jump a lot of hurdles to get to the election, since some people didn’t think his campaign had a chance. “I believe, I’m very optimistic that we’re going to be successful in this race, because people are just sick and tired of hearing the rhetoric” Dixon has been using, Love said.

Love’s age hasn’t been a hindrance on the campaign trail and not many have questioned it, he said. “I think the reason for that (is) I have a wealth of experience,” Love said, adding though that he was surprised his age hasn’t come up more while out talking to voters.

Year of the woman?

Many political observers are calling 2018 the “year of the woman,” harkening back to 1992 when the phrase was first used to describe the increase in women running for office across the country. That year, North Carolina saw a 12 percent jump in the number of women running for the legislature, according to Meredith College political professor David McLennan’s 2015 “The Status of Women in North Carolina Politics” study.

McLennan’s study was updated this year. His update found that from the 2016 election to the 2018 election there was a 27 percent increase in the total number of candidates running for the General Assembly, and a 26 percent increase in women candidates.

“Put simply, the number of women seeking legislative seats increased, but slightly less than the overall increase in the number of candidates,” his study reads.

McLennan found that almost two-thirds of the women running for the General Assembly are Democrats. He noted, however, that it is a slight decrease from the 2014 election, in which 70 percent of female candidates running for the General Assembly were Democrats.

One of the women running for the N.C. House is Lisa Stone Barnes, 52, a Republican from Nash County running against Democratic Rep. Bobbie Richardson of Franklin County. Barnes, a Nash County Commissioner, said while she’s been out on the campaign trail people have been receptive to her, with some even telling her that more women need to run for office.

“I’ve got a lot of support and encouragement from other women,” she said.

Her race for House District 7 pits two women against each other, but not every resident in the district knows that. Barnes said a “little funny thing” has happened on the campaign trail because Richardson’s first name is Bobbie — they assume she’s male. Barnes said voters are surprised when they find out the other candidate is a woman, but she doesn’t see that being an issue at all.

Aimy Steele, 39, is running against Republican Rep. Linda Johnson of Cabarrus County, in House District 82. Steele, a former elementary school principal, said she was inspired to run after “being on the receiving end” of legislation about principals and schools. Like Barnes, Steele has found that people have been welcoming and excited to see a candidate come to their door.

But not every experience knocking doors on the campaign trail has been great. Steele said several people have said because she’s a Democrat they won’t vote for her, and one man yelled at her, even after she thanked him for opening his door. “When you work in a school you accept everybody and anybody,” she said, even those who don’t want to talk to her because of her political ideology.

Both Barnes and Steele have noticed that their candidacies lead to more women being interested in politics, and potentially running for office someday. Steele said she’s felt like a mentor to women when she talks to them because they ask questions about running for office. “I feel like people are looking up to me because I’m knocking (on their door),” she said.

Barnes said some women have been shy about asking, or say they’d like to be involved but don’t know anything about politics. “Don’t worry, when I started out I didn’t either,” she tells them. “It’s just about hard work and listening to people and trying to work together with everyone.”