Not All The Bad News In North Carolina Comes From Republicans

A young member of Congress, Don Young (R-AK), mostly senile these days

When Valerie Foushee replaced Ellie Kinnnaird in the North Carolina state Senate, she gave up her District 50 state House seat (Orange and Durham counties), Thursday, a 4 person selection committee, two Democrats from each county) voted to replace her with Graig Meyer. There were 7 candidates, including, Danielle Adams, whose responses to the committee's questionnaire are here-- and very much worth reading. Meyer, a white male with no experience in elective office, will serve out the rest of Foushee's term, just over a year.

There were 3 women running, all of whom do have elective experience, Danielle, who is the Durham County Soil and Water Conservation district supervisor, Laurin Easthom, a Chapel Hill Town Council member, and Orange County Commissioner Bernadette Pelissier. None of the other males had ever been elected to anything either and none of them got any of the 269 votes cast in the first round of voting (97 from the 2 Durham members and 172 from the 2 Orange members). It was all split between the 3 women and Meyer. In the second round Meyer was unanimously selected.

Meyer sounds like he might be a pretty good guy but this was hardly the most progressive move these four members of the vacancy committee could have made. After all, they chose to fill the vacancy left by a female person of color with... another heterosexual white male, a group overly-represented in the North Carolina legislature-- and not only overly represented on the Republican side of the aisle.

How significant is this? If you don't know, ask a woman. Ask a woman of color. There are 28 women in the North Carolina House out of 120 members-- 16 of whom are Democrats. This means that progressive women hold 16 of the 43 Democratic seats (37.20%) and progressive women make up just 13.33% of the entire state legislature. When you have a vacancy left by a progressive woman and you have three overly qualified elected officials who are all women vying for that seat why would you choose a male with no prior experience?

The research is pretty clear that when Democrats put women in office, they favor equal rights amendments, oppose parental consent, oppose prohibiting abortion, oppose the death penalty, oppose nuclear power, and believe the private sector can't solve all problems-- all things that have impacted North Carolina since Art Pope managed to buy the state government for the Republicans.

For young women of color, this is an especially lousy message. Of the 7,383 state legislators in the U.S., 238 of them are women of color! That's a demographic that voted at least 95% for Obama as a block but it is a demographic that makes up just 3% of legislators in our nation. And, as far as young people… the Democratic Party is as oriented towards electing geriatric cases as the Republican Party is.

Democrats aren't getting any younger. At least, their top leaders aren't.

Voters under the age of 30 were key to President Obama's electoral success. But Obama's going gray and his most prominent potential successors aren't paragons of youth.

Hillary Clinton, who would be the presumptive Democratic favorite for president the minute she decided to run, will be 69 in 2016. Vice President Biden is already 70.

The party's congressional leaders aren't spring chickens, either. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California are both 73. Pelosi's top two lieutenants in House leadership are also septuagenarians.

Overall, the average age of Democrats in Congress tops 60, with the party's caucuses in both the House and Senate skewing older than the Republicans.

…Obama, who was 47 when he first took office, depended on the youth vote, particularly in his re-election effort.

His share of the vote of those under 30 actually slid from 66 percent to 60 percent between 2008 and 2012, but young voters made up his margin of difference in essential states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia.

…Younger voters are more likely to be liberal and identify themselves as Democrats than the population as a whole. Nearly two-thirds of those under 30 favor same-sex-marriage rights and keeping abortion legal in most cases, according to exit polling last November-- much higher numbers than among those who are older.

"The other side happens to be full of younger faces with old ideas," says Mo Elleithee, a Democratic consultant who worked on Clinton's 2008 campaign… "Paul Ryan is a young guy"-- the Wisconsin representative was 42 when he served as the GOP's vice presidential pick in 2012-- "but he didn't do well with young voters because of his ideas and his vision," Elleithee says.

We're disappointed Danielle didn't get the appointment. She has three more years on her Durham County term and I hope we'll be seeing her run for higher office after that.