Punishing the disloyal
Anti-ICE group linked to Cooper. Earls touts fundraising, gets Emily's List endorsement.
Welcome back to the Old North State Update. This is edition #4 on the eve on what is supposed to be a very serious winter snow and ice storm.
NCGA
The NC Democratic Party (NCDP) is following former Gov. Roy Cooper’s playbook of punishing members of their party deemed ‘disloyal’ by having voted with Republicans in certain instances.
One measure driving the effort to punish certain Democrats comes from an environmental scorecard issued by North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, ranking how legislators voted on environmental measures.
The NCDP, as reported by Bryan Anderson at The Assembly, enacted new rules to deny resources to Democrats the party deems disloyal.
Specifically, and at the direction of NCDP Chair Anderson Clayton, the party’s executive council is blocking access to VoteBuilder, a software program used to identify supporters, set up donor lists and track other crucial campaign activities.
”The new policy wasn’t announced publicly,” Anderson wrote. “It punishes Democrats who have bucked party leadership and serves as a warning to discourage others from doing so in the future. While Republicans have a supermajority in the state Senate, they need at least one Democratic lawmaker to break ranks to override vetoes in the state House.”
Anderson wrote that Clayton said the NCDP decided to revoke VoteBuilder access to anyone who voted to override a veto by Gov. Josh Stein, as well as anyone who voted to override a Cooper veto and anyone “now challenging a Democratic incumbent also lost access.”
Mecklenburg Reps. Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed, and Edgecombe’s Shelly Willingham are being blocked. So is former Rep. Michael Wray (Northampton), who is making a bid to regain his seat. Wray was one of Cooper’s targets in previous elections due to his support for school choice.
“The state party has restricted some of the access to resources that we have for anybody that’s overridden the governor’s veto in the past election cycles that we’ve seen,” Clayton said in an interview, according to Anderson. “We need people that are going to Raleigh to actually represent their district and their constituencies and how they got elected.”
NC Supreme Court
‘Liberal wing leader’ pulls in millions
Democratic Associate Justice Anita Earls announced a “record breaking” campaign fundraising haul of $2 million for 2025.
Q City Metro reported, “The record-breaking pace suggests that donors view the court as a critical firewall. Earls, a leader of the court’s liberal wing, has framed her campaign around “defending the rule of law” and serving as a ‘check on political overreach’.”
The NCDP has already begun its campaign to get Earls reelected. Expect to see social media and ads like this one blanketing the state this year ahead of the November election. So far, the NCGOP has not offered a counter to the NCDP’s efforts.
Democrat mega-donor Emily’s List to dump $15M into NC races
In a press release this past week, the progressive Democrat mega-donor group Emily’s List announced it will drop $15 million to back Democratic candidates in North Carolina.
Top of their list is Anita Earls.
“Reelecting Justice Anita Earls is a top priority in this state as we work to build a progressive majority on the state supreme court in 2028,” the press release says.
General Assembly Senate candidates endorsed by Emily’s List so far include Jessica Bichler (SD-07), Lisa Grafstein (SD-13), April Cook (SD-34), and Woodson Bradley(SD-42). For the House, the group is endorsing Evonne Hopkins (HD-35), Amy Taylor North (HD-74), Beth Helfrich(HD-98), and Lindsey Prather (HD-115).
The release noted they backed Vi Lyles for mayor of Charlotte, who was reelected last year.
Emily’s List is also running similarly funded “dynamic“ campaigns in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
U.S. House
NC-01 Haul
Col. Laurie Buckhout’s congressional campaign today announced it will report more than $2 million on hand in its fourth quarter FEC filing, and is launching a six-figure television and digital advertising campaign in the district.
The campaign’s Q4 report will show over $2 million in total resources, positioning Buckhout as the only candidate with the financial strength to compete effectively in both the March primary and November general election.
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U.S. SENATE
Dueling Polls
The Washington Examiner cited a poll by the “right-leaning Tipp Insights for the League of American Workers,’ that gives Cooper a 24-point lead over Whatley.
The poll also showed 54% of respondents see Cooper favorably, compared to 25% for Whatley. That last set of numbers sounds like Whatley has a name recognition problem.
The Center Square reported on a poll by Carolina Forward, a progressive/left dark money group, that showed Whatley pulling within 5 points of Cooper.
Carolina Forward’s sampling from Jan. 5-7 released on Monday is closer between Cooper and Whatley than the last poll in September (Cooper by 7%), and the last poll by Carolina Journal in November (Cooper by 8.7%). Cooper leads the latest poll 47%-42% with 9% not sure.
Center Square reported that the same poll has Republican Rep. Sarah Stevens leading incumbent Democrat NC Supreme Court Assoc. Justice Anita Earls by one point (42 to 41) with 16% saying they were unsure.
Real Clear Politics Polling tracks the polls in the race and their average has Cooper sitting over Whatley 46.6% to 38%.
Planned Parenthood endorses Cooper
“Fifty-three years after Roe v. Wade was decided, the freedom to control our own bodies has been ripped away from us.” Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.
With so much on the line, Planned Parenthood Action Fund is proud to endorse Sen. Jon Ossoff, Gov. Roy Cooper, Rep. Chris Pappas, and Sen. Sherrod Brown,” Johnson said. “We can count on these champions to deliver what voters need: Legislators who will always fight for our freedom to make our own decisions about our lives, bodies, and futures.”
Cooper linked to far left anti-ICE group, Siembra NC
From the Washington Examiner:
Former Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), the front-runner in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s open Senate seat, was pressured in 2019 by an anti-deportation group with financial ties to a dark-money hub.
After a pressure campaign from the group, Cooper rejected legislation that would have helped immigration authorities track illegal immigrants who had been arrested in the state.
That same activist group, a North Carolina-based nonprofit organization named Siembra NC, is now gearing up to rally behind Cooper’s 2026 Senate bid.
Siembra NC is the same organization called out last year by NC Republican Congressman Mark Harris for actively attempting to impede federal agents conducting immigration sweeps in North Carolina.
Read more about Siembra NC:
Siembra NC operates OJO Obrero, a real time ICE tracking app based on calls made to their hotline. Ojo Obrero means “Look out, workers.” This app has been used by activists to track down locations where ICE is operating to impede and harass agents.
A lot of Dark Money is being dumped into NC
The Sixteen Thirty Fund funneled $1,087,500 into North Carolina in 2024, including $160,000 to Siembra NC, and another $150,000 to the “Urban Sustainability Directors Network,” a left of center climate change action group.
Carolina Federation and Committee on States each got $25,000 and $50,000 went to the “Forward Justice Action Network,” a group that has focused on defunding the police.
Another $225,000 each went to Down Home North Carolina and NCAAT in Action. $100,000 was given to Fair Future NC and $102,500 to the New Rural Project.
Foreign money — upwards of a billion dollars — has been infiltrating swing other states like North Carolina, often distributed through the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Sixteen Thirty Fund has been cited as being a main funding source for leftist ideology campaigns and Democrat agenda items and was found to be funding progressive online influencers to blanket social media apps with scripted messages.
Sixteen Thirty Fund, Arabella Advisor funds, George Soros organizations and other dark money groups poured $20 million into groups that organized protests against President Trump’s efforts to bring crime in D.C. under control.
Sixteen Thirty Fund money trail was also found to be behind an organization tied to Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Weiss, which attacked Trump’s Working Family Tax Cuts.
News catching my eye
“From the skeletons in brothels to the child sacrifice of the Mayans, the mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded rather than the blessings to cherish that they are,” Vance said. “But the inheritance of our civilization is something else: the fact that, as Scripture tells us, each life is fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator.”