BY MILES LAYTON

WINFALL — When Perquimans Democrats held their county convention Tuesday at the Community Center, familiar faces set the tone as local politicos received a message of hope from the state party’s leadership. 

Trust me when I say, there’s a lot to “unpack” from state Democratic First Vice Chairman Jonah Garson’s (that’s him taking the group photo) keynote speech, so more on that after introducing the party’s officers who will lead the charge in 2026. Why does what Garson says matter to folks in Chowan, Pasquotank, Gates, Tyrrell, all the places our readers live? Because Garson provides insight not only into Democratic strategy but into how the party plans to counter Republicans to build on its successes and learn from its mistakes. 

Why is it important to cover local political party conventions? Short answer – by reporting on party officials and their respective public officeholders, our readers can gain insight into the policies these decision-makers pursue. All politics is local, and quite honestly, what happens in a town council meeting or a county commissioner’s meeting has far more impact than DC politicians pontificating about how a sparrow flapping its wings in Brazil causes global warming.  

In contrast to the local mainstream media, the Albemarle Observer gave equal coverage to Republican county conventions in Perquimans, Chowan and Tyrrell counties, also the First District Convention with plans to cover other county Democratic conventions.

Familiar Faces

First, let’s start with the business aspect of the county convention before moving on to the party’s plan for organizing and energizing its base.   

Tammy Miller-White was elected as the local chairwoman of the Perquimans Democratic Party – she does a good job. Miller-White is the Dean of Students for Perquimans County Schools – a true blue Pirates’ fan!

Bridgette Packer was elected as 1st Vice Chairwoman. Sorry, I don’t know much about Packer and didn’t get a chance to meet her since she wasn’t at the meeting – she was on a trip that took her out of the country. From what folks said, Packer is energetic and passionate about her party. 

“Ever since the election (2024), Bridgette has been on fire,” said Miller-White. “Praise God that we have a relatively young person who is on fire and wants to get involved.”  

Earnell Brown was elected as 2nd Vice Chairwoman – I know her. A few years back, Brown served as mayor of Hertford during turbulent times when He Who Shall Not Be Named was terrorizing council and the community. Time and again, Brown stood up to that bully, with the results being the dawning of the era of good feelings in Hertford — a renaissance in terms of economic development, a revitalized downtown core and a higher quality of living. Toward that end, on behalf of many, I’ll say thanks, Earnell, for your fortitude, patience and vision for making Hertford a jewel of the Albemarle.  

Janice McKenzie Cole (speaking) will serve as secretary – I know her too. A former judge, Cole was the first female and African American attorney in Perquimans County, elected the first female and African American District Court Judge in the 1st Judicial District, and appointed as a United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. A portrait of Cole hangs in the Perquimans County Courthouse Annex. She also served as Hertford’s Town Manager – led the effort to put Town Hall back on a solid financial footing. 

Jacqueline Frierson will remain Treasurer. She was also appointed to the State Senatorial District Executive Committee. Frierson is the longtime Register of Deeds for Perquimans County. Custodian and manager of the county’s real estate and other vital records, Frierson was first appointed to the job in 2013 following the retirement of the previous register of deeds and won election in 2016 and re-election in 2020 and in 2024. By all accounts, Frierson is well respected within the party and as a county official.  

These people ran unopposed and were elected/re-elected with unanimous consent – a strong endorsement.  

Another takeaway from the county convention – Eula Reid may be a strong contender to fill the vacant seat created by the retirement of Superior Court Judge Jerry Tillett, who will retire May 1. 

Reid embraced a glowing endorsement from Judge Cole so surely her name will surely be forwarded to Governor Josh Stein for consideration. Whoever Stein appoints to the judicial seat will have to run for election in 2026.  

Reid was appointed as Superior Court Judge for Judicial District 1 in the spring of 2021 by then-Governor Roy Cooper. She was defeated by Andrew Womble, who was elected as Superior Court Judge in 2022. Reid previously was an assistant district attorney and an adjunct professor at Elizabeth City State University. Reid earned her Bachelor of Arts at Elizabeth City State University and her Juris Doctor at North Carolina Central University School of Law.

As I would say to Reid or any candidate who runs for office, “Good luck. That takes guts and may the Force be with you, always.”

First District Convention will be held May 17 at Wilson Community College.

State of the Democratic Party

Flashback to Election night of 2024 — Democrats held onto the Governor’s mansion, most of the executive cabinet, and the House, albeit by one vote (that’s huge), and for the moment, a Supreme Court Justice. That said, President Trump handily carried the Tarheel State in 2024, and his coattails propelled many, many local Republican elected officeholders into power, particularly across Eastern NC, especially the First Congressional District.    

NC Democratic Party 1st Vice Chair Jonah Garson – a young guy with a lot of potential – gave the keynote address at the county convention. Who is Garson? Among political circles, Garson is a well-known organizer and fundraiser.  

A native of Chapel Hill, Garson earned a bachelor’s degree from UNC in 2009 and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 2014. Garson has been affiliated with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, Carolina Performing Arts, and the Orange County Democratic Party, where he once served as chair. 

Garson presented local Democrats the good news and the bad news about what’s ahead.  

Because the Supreme Court case is in the headlines, let’s start with the good news for state Democrats who are hyper-focused on the legal outcome of the state Supreme Court race between Democrat incumbent Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin. Lawyers are wrangling over votes for a race that Riggs won by 734 votes. 

Garson happily announced that the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ 2-1 ruling Tuesday temporarily blocked North Carolina election officials from beginning a massive ballot review period — a process that potentially would have required thousands of military and overseas voters to prove their eligibility or have their votes thrown out. Friday, more judges will rule, and lawyers will bloviate about that ruling, so let’s not go down that rabbit hole just yet.  

Why does it matter which team’s jersey – Democrat or Republican – captures or can hold onto that seat on the Supreme Court?

Garson explained that by working to replace the Republican majority, Democrats will be better able to protect congressional election districts from partisan gerrymandering by the GOP. Now, “carry the 1,” as the teacher says in math class, to apply that equation further to power in Congress.

“​What did we lose when we have a new Republican majority under Paul Newby suddenly say, ‘Ok. We’re overturning the precedent that we just set.’ Well, we lost relatively fair congressional maps. We were sort of splitting our congressional delegation. It would be 7-7. It’s 4-10 now, Democrats, Republicans. What if we were still splitting our congressional delegation? What would that mean for the country?” 

Maps matter…

(Drum Roll) — “It would mean that we would have Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the House or another democrat as U.S. Speaker of the House. Under any relatively fair set of maps, North Carolina is that margin. It is the margin we hold the US House by,” Garson said.  

On that note…

BREAKING NEWS – Perhaps one of the most competitive House races in the nation and certainly North Carolina will take place in our backyard for the 1st Congressional District between Democrat Don Davis, who narrowly – by the slimmest of margins – held onto his congressional seat in the 2024 election cycle — a race that Garson mentioned during his remarks.

Though Republicans have not primaried, still very early, my phone blew up Wednesday morning, confirming that Sandy Roberson, the two-term mayor of Rocky Mount, has announced his plans to run for Congress. He ran for the office in the May 2022 Republican Primary but lost to Sandy Smith. She would go onto lose to Davis in the November General Election, then lose to Laurie Buckhout in the primary in 2024. Buckhout has endorsed Roberson’s latest bid – she’s taken a big job with the Defense Department.     

According to folks near and far, Roberson plans to spend $2 million of his own money to help jumpstart his campaign – so it’s on!  

“I’m running for Congress because North Carolinians deserve a representative who isn’t afraid to take on the tough issues,” Roberson said in a press release. “In Congress, I’ll stand with President Trump to secure our border, stop the flow of deadly fentanyl into our region, and unleash the American economy to benefit the citizens of North Carolina’s First District.”

Back to Garson, gerrymandering and the makeup of the Supreme Court – “That also has an effect on legislative maps. I think some of you in this room know that more North Carolinians voted for Democratic state legislators to send to Raleigh than they did for Republicans. That’s true in 2024. You would not know it from the makeup of our North Carolina General Assembly. OK? So losing unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering from a court that doesn’t care about whether it’s right or wrong to have politicians choosing their voters, not the other way around, that’s what we lost.”

Reorganization, Inspiration and Framework 

Let’s give Garson credit – he didn’t deny the obvious in saying that changes need to be made statewide and nationally or Democrats will continue to face tough times. 

“Two years ago, the current members of the North Carolina Democratic Party board ran for state party leadership very, very frustrated at the performance of battleground North Carolina,” he said. “We were not taken seriously nationally as a battleground state. We kept losing election after election. Other battleground states like Wisconsin, at the time Georgia, Michigan, they were getting much more attention than us. More than that too, we found that the party, the state party leadership just really had taken some of the hardest learned lessons from those more successful battleground states and applied them in an intentional way here in North Carolina.”

Like a phoenix before rising from the ashes, the Democrats looked inward and began to come to life.   

“Sometimes, at its worst, the voters who put me here would say, ‘Hey. You know, we just had this election. It looked really bad. It felt really bad. You know, local candidates didn’t get really the support they needed.’ But it wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t as bad as you think. But that rankled a lot of us that believe that you do not make progress without sort of clear eyed assessments of performance and all of its complexity. And you certainly don’t build coalitions, don’t build an organization by gaslighting folks, whether they’re grassroots or donors, and telling them the sky is blue when it’s not.” 

Garson said people aren’t fools, but want results and leaders who are not afraid to get in the ring to do battle.

“Whether in emails asking them for money or talking about election results after the fact, you cannot treat them like fools,” he said. “So we all ran as a reform-minded board saying we want to build a North Carolina Democratic Party that doesn’t promise folks the moon, but that is capable of fighting and winning some of the toughest fights at the ballot box in the field and in the courtroom because we believe that that’s what it takes to have a modern successful battleground state party.” 

Anyone who’s been in this game long enough knows that organization and voter recruitment efforts tend to slide between election years, certainly during midterms. 

“These (state) parties have been hollowed out,” Garson said. “People are focusing on candidates over the permanent infrastructure. It is a broken system. Until we start investing in organizations, the individual political leaders come and go. Boy, do I wish that President Barack Obama had taken over the Democratic Party with his Organizing for America apparatus. I think we would be in a different place. We have to invest in organizations that last over time.”  

Toward that end, Tarheel Democrats have figured out the importance of keeping the motor running because if you stop the engine for a year or so, you’re probably going to jump the battery, maybe get an oil change and pump up the tires to get things rolling. Those are things you don’t want to do to get the engine running on all four cylinders heading into an election cycle.  

Garson said a permanent state staff is recruiting, organizing and keeping people motivated ahead of 2026, certainly 2028.  

“Our idea is that we need a backbone of full time, well compensated, hardworking regional organizing directors from their regions to serve the county parties as their clients. OK?” he said. “And that is a six person team that we call Project 100, and that is our organizing staff.”

What is Project 100? Project 100’s mission is to elect leaders with Democratic Party values by empowering people to lead change from the ground up, according to the handout at the county convention. 

Here is the Oh Crap part from Garson’s speech. 

“Currently, we are one of two states in the entire country that retained its organizing staff after the presidential election,” Garson said. “If that sounds disturbing, it should sound disturbing. That’s not the way you want to build democratic power, especially at a time like this.”

And then there’s this from Garson – where’s the plan, vision?  

For decades, Republican think tanks such as the Claremont Institute and the Federalist Society have formulated a plan to capture the electorate, so the gains you’ve seen in recent years didn’t just happen overnight. For folks that’ve been around Eastern NC – a region that was once a solid Democratic bastion – flipped to Republican Party long before Trump came along.

Garson’s point was that the party needs to get back to the basics in terms of organizing and messaging — formulate a longterm strategy, a point similar to Ohio’s Democrats — to attract and retain voters, win hearts and minds not just for the next election cycle, but 5, 10, 15-20 years into the future.

“I think that in so many ways, we have to focus on identifying at the local level what the good life messages are in a North Carolina context. Our fight is the fight that’s right in front of us,” he said. “North Carolina just happens to have an outsized role in the future of this country because of its status as a battleground state. I think that we have to articulate powerful terms beyond believing freedom and democracy. That is up to us and I believe that we’ll be running some very interesting experiments.”

NCDP is very much alive and well, preparing to fight in the next election cycle.  

“In North Carolina, our message has been a variation of Democrats really want to fight and fighting like hell for you to live the good life right here in your home place. And for your kids to want to stay here too,” Garson said. “And have an opportunity to stay here, but they (voters) don’t see it, so the ways that we break through from the tool set, radio, digital, then something that we believe in very much in a sort of a democratic party is field.”