This election cycle, Duke Dems is focusing their efforts locally. The student-led organization hosted NC Sen. Sydney Batch, NC Rep. Rachel Hunt, Frank McNeill and Mary Wills Bode, both candidates for North Carolina State Senate, as well as NC Sen. Wiley Nickel, a candidate for U.S. Congress, at a panel Monday night.
To kick off the event, Anika Mitra, a junior and co-president of Duke Dems, discussed the importance of this midterm election for North Carolina Democrats. If Republicans attain a supermajority in the state Senate, she explained, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper will no longer be able to sustain a veto on passed legislation.
All of the candidates stressed their stance on an issue on the minds of many North Carolinians this election cycle: reproductive rights.
Currently, “North Carolina is the only state in the South that hasn’t outright banned or severely restricted abortion,” said Batch, an attorney and social worker running for reelection in District 17. This means that a third of women obtaining abortions in North Carolina are now coming from out of state to do so, she added, extending the scope of the issue.
“The first vote that I hope to make as a congressman is a bill to put the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law,” said Nickel, who is running for U.S. Congress in North Carolina’s 13th district.
Jack Fuchs, a sophomore and director of party relations for Duke Dems, continued the discussion by asking candidates about their motivations behind deciding to run for office.
Batch said that she is running because she believes “a government should look like the people it serves.” As a Black woman, she noted the lack of diversity in the composition of the current Senate.
Bode, a District 18 candidate who currently works in law and directs a nonprofit, was prompted by her desire to tackle gerrymandering and redistricting reform, describing that “the best time to save democracy is before you’ve lost it.”
Vying for a state Senate seat in District 21, candidate McNeill spoke of the values he plans to bring to his position: “decency, kindness, hard work, taking care of each other, we should do that in our daily lives and we definitely need to in public office.”
In an effort to increase their impact, Duke Dems is focusing on North Carolina Senate races in this midterm election. Fuchs noted that one of the candidates, Hunt, won her representative seat in 2018 by just 68 votes, proving that the club’s phone banking and in-person canvassing events may have a tangible influence on the outcome of state races.
Bode echoed this sentiment, expressing that “North Carolina's future in the next two years is going to be decided by a couple thousand North Carolinians.”
Candidates also emphasized the importance of young voters in the upcoming election.
“If we can just increase the turnout of people below age 25, we can change the entire landscape of North Carolina,” said Hunt, a current state representative running for state Senate in District 42.
After the panel, Fuchs spoke to the importance of familiarizing college students with candidates that could become their elected officials. Even more important, he added, was their ability to interact with the politicians one-on-one after the panel.
He stressed that even though Duke students likely cannot vote in the districts of most of the North Carolina Senate candidates, they can get involved with their campaigns through volunteer work.
“We've got a chance in this election to send a message about where we are as a country,” Nickel said.
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