RALEIGH — North Carolina Democrats will meet on Saturday, Feb. 11 to choose the party’s leadership for the next two years.
Current chair Bobbie Richardson, a former state Rep. from Franklin County, is running for a second term and is supported by most of the state’s elected officials including Gov. Roy Cooper. Richardson is the first African American woman to serve as chair of the party.
Two additional candidates have also been campaigning for the job. They are Person County Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton and Brunswick County Democratic Party chair Eric Terashima.
Clayton, 25, says she is an “organizer by trade” and is running on a grassroots-first platform. Among her accomplishments she touts are flipping the Roxboro City Council and the defeat of former state Rep. Larry Yarborough, whose district became significantly more Democratic following the 2021 redistricting session.
Terashima became the Brunswick County chair in 2021 and made headlines with his efforts to rescue refugees from Afghanistan following the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.
The NC Democratic Party is coming off a 2022 cycle in which they lost the state’s U.S. Senate race, lost every statewide judicial race and came within one state House seat of giving Republicans a supermajority in the General Assembly.
That performance led to the resignation of the party’s executive director, Meredith Cuomo. Both Clayton and Terashima cite the party’s failed efforts in 2022 as a reason for new leadership.
