‘Young people are capable’: New faces for NC Democrats open new possibilities | Opinion
People say all the time that young people are the future, but who’s to say they can’t be the present?
The North Carolina Democratic Party elected its youngest chair ever last weekend in a major upset victory. Anderson Clayton, a 25-year-old organizer from Person County, unseated incumbent Bobbie Richardson, a former state lawmaker and educator who is nearly 50 years her senior.
The governor, attorney general and all seven Democrats representing North Carolina in Congress publicly endorsed Richardson. But others in the party clearly weren’t satisfied with the party establishment.
“I think the number one thing that we can say is that we shocked some folks on Saturday,” Clayton told me this week.
It didn’t have much, if anything, to do with ideology. Above all, it was about change — about people who were sick of losing, and people who felt like the party had left them behind.
Fresh faces all around
North Carolina Democrats are hoping new leadership will help revitalize a party that has languished. Though North Carolina has sometimes been considered the purplest of purple states, Democrats lost all statewide races in 2022 and the state hasn’t gone blue in a U.S. Senate or presidential election since 2008.
In addition to electing a new chair, Democrats chose fresh faces for the three vice chair positions, unseating two more incumbents in the process. The party’s new first vice chair, Jonah Garson? He’s in his 30s, making him half the age of his predecessor. In fact, the average age of the party’s top four leaders is now roughly 20 years younger than it was before.
“I think there’s just a huge new space for multi-generational work that has been opened up, and we believe in the power of that work,” Garson told me. “That’s how you create a healthy Democratic Party.”
While the results of the election may have shocked the party establishment, Democrats were quick to unite behind their party’s new leaders. Since Saturday’s victory, Clayton has spoken with party leaders like Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, who she said are “on board and excited to see new energy injected into the party.”
Having younger leadership may help the party’s standing with young voters, who are growing increasingly disillusioned with party politics, Katherine Jeanes, a young Democrat who helped with Clayton’s campaign, said. Though they are more likely to align with Democrats ideologically, younger voters in North Carolina are disproportionately registering as unaffiliated.
While strong turnout from millennial and Gen Z voters in 2022 helped offset a red wave nationwide, that did not happen in North Carolina. Just 24% of North Carolinians between the ages of 18 and 25 cast a ballot in the 2022 general election — the lowest of any age group, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
“When people see that the party has elected a young person who is speaking to their disaffection and their disillusionment from the past election, they see that the people who are running this party care,” Jeanes said.
But it also brings hope to rural voters and grassroots organizers, who have been frustrated by the urban-centric strategy that North Carolina Democrats have employed over the years. The party’s new leaders share a vision of rebuilding the party in all 100 counties, and that resonated with Democrats across the state.
‘Young people are capable’
Before the election, Clayton, who ran a grassroots campaign focused on rural communities, told me she hoped to change people’s minds about what young people can do. Now, as one of the youngest state party chairs in the country, she still feels like she has something to prove — but in a different way.
“I want to be able to show that young people are capable of amazing things across the state,” Clayton told me this week. “And that when they are given the guidance and the support to be able to do some of these things, we can create masterpieces.”
Getting people to trust that something new — and someone young — could make a difference wasn’t easy. But Clayton worked hard to convince people that she could, traveling across the state and speaking to hundreds of people. Still, even some who believed in her message had doubts.
“People assume folks who are older have more experience,” Jeanes said. “Anderson did have to work extremely hard to overcome those doubts. Harder than anybody else in this field did, certainly, because that was the number one question that she got.”
In many ways, Clayton may be redefining what a state party chair looks like. She’s keeping her day job as a rural broadband analyst, albeit on a part-time basis, to supplement the $33,000 stipend she’ll receive from the party. She has a strong social media presence, an organizing background and a keen sense of who and what the party has forgotten.
At the very least, she’s redefining our idea of what’s possible.
“I really want young people to feel like this is their win,” Clayton said, her excitement palpable. “This is something for them to take and say they can see themselves in this party, and know that it’s possible for them to make it here, too.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 10:34 AM with the headline "‘Young people are capable’: New faces for NC Democrats open new possibilities | Opinion."
