North Carolina’s path to battleground state could be model for Georgia

The number of actual Hispanic voters could be counted on one hand on a Sunday afternoon last month when the Durham County GOP hosted a Hispanic outreach picnic.

“We were hoping that there would be more Hispanics coming here to connect because we feel lonely around here,” said MariaRosa Rangel, the board chairwoman of the North Carolina Society of Hispanic Professionals.

Taking refuge in the shade, Rangel and other Republicans discussed how to increase the party's profile and educate Hispanics about its platform, but they realize battles over immigration and insulting comments by prominent Republicans present a challenge. Presidential hopeful Trump's assertion that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists prompted plenty of grumbling.

“My Facebook, it’s just everybody’s so anti-(Trump), and of course they’re booing the Republicans,” said Rangel, who was born in Mexico.

Though Hispanics still make up only a tiny portion of North Carolina’s electorate, they could prove crucial in a state where the past two presidential elections were decided by slender margins.

In the past decade North Carolina has transformed from a presidential red state into one of a handful of battlegrounds because of the same migration and demographic trends that give Georgia Democrats optimism about becoming competitive with Republicans once again.

“I’ve often made the argument that North Carolina is one click behind Virginia and maybe two clicks ahead of Georgia,” said Morgan Jackson, a Democratic political consultant in Raleigh.

Deep South Georgia vs. mid-South N.C.

President Barack Obama’s surprise 2008 win here — fueled by young, minority and urban voters — broke a streak of GOP presidential wins going back to Georgian Jimmy Carter’s first run, and it shook the state’s political firmament. Republican victories followed, but North Carolina is now a candidate-attracting, advertisement-soaked presidential swing state.

The moment had been building for some time. North Carolina's black vote steadily grew as the number of people born out of state climbed from about one-quarter of the electorate in 1980 to one-half today. Many of the newcomers flocked to urban areas such as Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro, more culturally liberal than small towns and rural expanses.

“The making of North Carolina as a swing state is a combination of demographic change, metropolitanization, the new economy,” said Ferrel Guillory, the director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“But it’s also that the Obama people had enough money to capitalize on the change,” Guillory said. “If they hadn’t have spent the money, they wouldn’t have found the votes.”

Georgia Democrats say they are a similar nudge away from swing-state territory. Millions of dollars flowed in for a high-profile minority voter registration and turnout effort in 2014 that fell short, but a presidential campaign brings another level of attention and funding.

For now, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's team has Georgia on its general election radar.

In fact, Georgia's population is more urban (75 percent to 66 percent, according to census data) and has a lower percentage of white voters (61 percent, to 71 percent in 2012) than North Carolina. But the percentage of whites voting Democratic has lately been in the 30s in North Carolina, while it has been in the 20s in Georgia.

The more racially polarized voting pattern is typical of a conservative Deep South state and is a reason Raleigh conservative commentator John Hood says the better comparison for Georgia is GOP-dominated South Carolina, rather than swing states North Carolina and Virginia.

Hood, who runs the family foundation for conservative mega-donor Art Pope, points to Republicans' huge success at the state level and the fact that no political trend lasts forever.

“Older voters — including baby boomers, who used to be more Democratic — have swung more Republican in the last several election cycles,” said Hood, who is working on a book about former North Carolina Republican Gov. James Martin and the state’s political changes.

“The Republicans in North Carolina and Georgia and other states have a demographic challenge, but it’s not an insurmountable challenge,” Hood said. “The Democrats have significant demographic challenges, too. It’s why they’re in so much trouble.”

A moral movement

North Carolina gave Obama his closest win (0.3 percent) in 2008 and Republican Mitt Romney’s tightest victory margin (2.0 percent) in 2012.

But its state government is more Republican than it has been since Reconstruction. The 2010 wave brought Republican majorities to the General Assembly, followed by Gov. Pat McCrory’s easy win in 2012.

And they got to work, pushing conservative laws across a wide range of issues, including education, the environment, taxes, voting rights, abortion and unemployment benefits.

Backlash arrived in mass demonstrations called "Moral Mondays," led by the Rev. William Barber II, the head of the North Carolina NAACP. The movement spread to Georgia, with much smaller demonstrations last year against Republican policies.

Last month, Barber whipped thousands of marchers into a frenzy in Winston-Salem after testifying in a federal trial on North Carolina's 2013 voting law changes, which Barber and the U.S. Department of Justice contend were deliberately designed to suppress minority votes. His large frame hunched over a podium and clad in fuchsia ministerial robes, Barber repeatedly denounced the law as "sin."

In an interview the next day, Barber measured success by declining poll numbers for the Legislature and McCrory, and public support for policies such as expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — which the state has refused to do.

But in 2014, the leader of that vilified Legislature, then-state House Speaker Thom Tillis, was able to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan. While Tillis was attacked for the Legislature’s agenda, he pulled away in the end, riding a national wave and fears about Ebola and the Islamic State.

Carter Wrenn, a longtime GOP political consultant and adviser to the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, said the movement riled up both party bases but was dismissed by independents.

“They have William Barber out front, who’s an absolute demagogue,” Wrenn said. “And most people looked at him and it didn’t matter what he was saying. They just looked at him and said: ‘That guy’s sort of crazy.’ ”

In one breath, Barber blamed "voter suppression" from the 2013 law for Tillis' win and credited the Moral Monday movement for helping defeat two Republican state House incumbents in the Asheville area. In the next, Barber said moving public awareness was more important than elections in shaping policy.

“If you start judging the movement’s power simply by the next election, then what happens is after the election, you’ll quit — which has been the problem of progressives in some ways,” he said.

While there was no coordinated effort to register voters at the Winston-Salem event, participants hoped the hoopla around the disputed voting law will inspire minorities to register and turn out. And presidential years typically see higher turnout among Democratic-leaning groups.

“People are saying we’re going to take our vote back, but not enough people are saying it yet,” Gail Eluwa of Raleigh, the chairwoman of the state’s black leadership caucus, said as she took a quick break from marching. “That’s why I keep working on it.”

An opening with Hispanics?

Edgar Agosto was born in Puerto Rico and stationed around the world during a career with the Navy. Now living in Raleigh, his new mission is sent from the Republican National Committee: Find Hispanics and convert them to the GOP.

Republicans across the country are grappling with how to reach minority voters after national exit polls showed Obama winning 93 percent of African-Americans, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asian-Americans in 2012.

In North Carolina, as in Georgia, black voters are by far the largest minority group, with Hispanics fast-growing but still marginal. Hispanics make up just 2 percent of registered voters in North Carolina.

A recent poll commissioned by Univision and conducted jointly by Democratic and Republican polling firms showed an opening: In a generic presidential ballot test, 47 percent of North Carolina's Hispanics chose the Democrat, to 35 percent for a Republican and 18 percent undecided.

Republicans claim the gap can be bridged with education and visibility.

Agosto said Hispanics simply need to hear more of Republicans’ God-and-family pitch. Carlos Vidales, of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly’s Raleigh area chapter, said poorly educated Mexican and Central American immigrants join the other side in part because they don’t connect generous government services to their own taxes.

Vidales added that many come from socialist governments “still in the euphoria stage, and they haven’t gotten into the Venezuela stage,” so the immigrants have a kinder view of left-wing politics.

The men didn’t have much of an opportunity to woo converts over hamburgers and hot dogs at last month’s lightly attended Durham County GOP outreach event.

Rangel, of the Hispanic professionals group, suggested setting up tables at Hispanic grocers to show Republicans as part of the community. A few kids played a game of cornhole.

Finally, county party Chairman Immanuel Jarvis gathered the fewer than 20 attendees in a circle. Jarvis, who is black, has spent most of his life as a Republican — but seldom talked about it. Engaging conservative minorities is a long process, he told his charges.

“This, today, is a seed,” he said. “Do not walk away from this and say, ‘I wish we had …’ No, no, no, no. This is the inception of something great.”

Then he invited everyone to the next executive committee meeting. There would be plenty of leftover food.