Riding Cooper’s Coattails, or a Generational Shift?

LaKesha Womack wants people to know she didn’t come out of nowhere. On Election Day, Womack joined a slew of Democratic congressional candidates who won elections few saw as competitive, beating Tim Moore in North Carolina’s 14th District.

Womack won despite spending only $56,000 during her campaign. She says that was by design. “I was very clear on the type of race that I wanted to run, and it was very grassroots and community-focused,” Womack said, noting that she put 30,000 miles on her car. “And I didn’t spend the money on consultants and media buys.”

But she was ready for this moment, she told The Assembly on Saturday, as she prepared to go to Washington for new-member orientation. She completed The Campaign School at Yale University and Emerge America, two training programs for women seeking elected office. She also was an organizer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

Democrats upset incumbents in three other U.S. House races in N.C.: Cyril Jefferson beat Addison McDowell in the 6th District, Richard Ojeda defeated National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson in the 9th, and Paul Barringer defeated Brad Knott in the 13th. Out west, Jamie Ager defeated Jennifer Balkcom in the 11th after incumbent Chuck Edwards dropped his reelection bid. And in the 5th District, Rep. Virginia Foxx, who has served since 2005 and chairs the House Rules Committee, trails challenger Chuck Hubbard by 99 votes as of Tuesday.

Democrats gained a majority in the state House and made major gains in the state Senate, swept along by two currents: antipathy toward President Donald Trump and Roy Cooper’s 19.5-point victory in the U.S. Senate race. 

The surprise winners say their victories were not flukes. Rather, they say they prepared to ride the blue wave. “The things that I know helped me, and I believe helped some of the others too, were just making sure we were out there all the time talking to people, hearing their concerns, making sure we were visible, and crafting a platform that responded to those concerns,” said Barringer, who moved back to North Carolina just last year. 

He said that he was a bit surprised to hear that some candidates didn’t know some of these winners were even in the running, but their voters did. “Every one of the people who won—and most of the ones who lost—worked really hard,” said Barringer.

The wins represent not just a major power shift in the state; Democrats now have a slew of candidates for their bench who can run for higher office and make North Carolina a power broker state. Cooper may have won by a landslide, but there will come a point when the 69-year-old who has been the face of the state party for decades exits the stage. 

More than that, the North Carolina Democratic Party’s new breed of candidates has more diverse faces and backgrounds than those the party previously saw as the only way to win. 

Cooper’s Coattails

For much of recent history, Democrats in North Carolina have looked, well, a lot like Cooper. They also shared his background: white, male lawyers educated in North Carolina universities who climbed the rungs of elected office. 

Former governor and senator Terry Sanford also graduated from the UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC School of Law. Jim Hunt, arguably the most successful elected official in North Carolina history, graduated from N.C. State University and UNC Law. Gov. Josh Stein followed Cooper’s path, too, serving first as attorney general and then running for governor. Attorney General Jeff Jackson, whom many view as Stein’s likely successor, is another UNC grad, lawyer, and former state senator and congressman. 

They all fit a similar ideological mold: Hunt and Sanford were old-fashioned rural Democrats, while Cooper was firmly center-left. Stein, despite growing up in the Triangle and being the state’s first Jewish governor, has modeled himself after Cooper. 

The incoming class of General Assembly members is also younger and more diverse—and filled with people who have never before held elected office. 

But the new candidates fit a different profile. Jefferson is the only one who currently holds elected office. The 34-year-old graduate of N.C. A&T State University served on the High Point City Council before being elected mayor in 2023. 

North Carolina, meanwhile, has been getting more diverse. The state is 20% Black, and as in most Southern states, Black voters consistently vote Democratic. The number of Asian and Latino voters has increased dramatically. Women have also been underrepresented in statewide elected office: Only four members of North Carolina’s current congressional delegation are female, and just two members of the Council of State.

Candidates who didn’t fit the Cooper profile have not performed particularly well in the past.

Another roadblock is many non-white female candidates do not receive adequate backing from either the state or national party. In 2020, Cheri Beasley outperformed most Democrats when she ran for reelection as chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court, but lost by only 401 votes. She should have been a high-profile candidate supported by the national Democratic Party, but Republicans on the national level massively outspent her in her U.S. Senate race to Ted Budd two years later. That Beasley did so well in bad environments for Democrats should have told Democrats they could run Black or female candidates. But it didn’t.

In 2024, Cooper nominated Jessica Holmes to fill an open auditor seat. But she lost to Republican Dave Boliek that fall. Holmes for her part also complained about the lack of support from the state party. The only Black Democrat to win a statewide race was Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green.

Black candidates still face this obstacle, Womack said.

“I had a lot of people after I won the primary tell me that they were surprised that I won because they thought they needed a white man to run against Tim Moore,” Womack said. “And I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you’re saying that to my face.’”

Building a Bench

Some of this year’s success owes to a willingness to try new styles of political organizing and candidate recruitment. Anderson Clayton, who became chair of the N.C. Democratic Party three years ago, focused largely on organizing across the state and recruiting candidates to run in every race possible.

Clayton said that running candidates everywhere means that candidates can get their start and then move up gradually.

“People ask me, ‘What makes Roy Cooper a good candidate?’ Because he came up from the state legislature and that’s where he started,” Clayton told The Assembly at an election night party in Raleigh. 

Clayton, who was elected chair at just 25 and is still the youngest state party leader in the country, had a response to how to recruit beyond just inoffensive white guys. 

“Ask nonprofit leaders and church leaders and people that are grassroots organizers in their communities who would they want to see in office,” she said, “and you recruit people who are the teachers and the football coaches and the people that are going to bring folks out to the polls, because that’s what really matters.”

Lainey Edmisten, a Democratic consultant who worked on Hubbard, Ager, and Barringer’s campaigns, also cited recruitment as key. “We recruited in every single district,” she said. “How are voters ever going to know that there’s a difference between the two parties unless we get out there and we tell them?”

In the 11th District, Ager outperformed even Cooper, winning by almost 16 points. The farmer and self-described “Mountain Democrat” tried to create some significant distance from the national party in his race. That independence is important for candidates, he said.

“It represents who we are as people, as North Carolinians, and I just think that’s the kind of leadership people are looking for right now,” he said.

Ager’s victory speech—delivered in a trucker hat, farmer attire, and heavy accent—went viral on the X account OrganizerMemes, with the caption “There is a new south brewing and it’s centered in North Carolina.” 

But as he exited the House chamber after last weekend’s new-member orientation, he wore the more traditional suit and tie. The priorities he listed were still local, however.

“We need Hurricane Helene recovery money,” he said as he and his wife made their way to a reception in Statuary Hall. “We’ve got a lot of people still struggling in western North Carolina, and that’s our agenda here: to try to help get that recovery money.” 

The U.S. House has long been a proving ground for higher office: governor, senator, committee chairmanships, and leadership roles. 

Edmisten said the Democrats who found their way to Congress this year will have to show they did not just win because of the wave and prove they can deliver on promises.

“They need to do what they said they were going to do, and then they need to have really good constituent services,” she said. “Because when somebody calls their office, they need an answer to their questions.”

And what about the future? In 2028, Budd is up for reelection, and neither Trump nor Cooper will be atop the ballot. Rep. Don Davis of the 1st District, whom Republicans tried to gerrymander into a tougher district, is “taking a look at” running against Budd, Axios reported this week.

Cooper, for one, expressed optimism about the diversity of the statewide slate. “I think that’s positive,” he told The Assembly during a visit to Capitol Hill on Monday as he navigated the Capitol elevators. “I look forward to working with them. I think they’re going to be very strong.” 

Cooper arrived in Washington with an entourage befitting a former governor and rocking a pair of Air Jordans and was feted as a political juggernaut. But any future Democrat who occupies that Senate seat will likely look drastically different.