Americans are out of work, missing paychecks, deprived of essential social services, and relying on the capacity of food banks to get by while the government stays closed. And yet, during this time of strife, Republicans continue their crusade against equal representation and for unfair, rigged elections. In North Carolina, state Republicans approved yet another pro-Republican and pro-white redistricting map as children starve and farmers suffer.
Anderson Clayton, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair, joins Jen to warn about the dangers of this re-redistricted map, discuss the upcoming high-stakes senate and state supreme court races, and call to help our neighbors (see below) despite the Trump Administration’s apathy towards Americans.
Anderson Clayton is the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. Elected at 25 years old, she is the youngest chair of a state Democratic party. Prior to her election as Chair of North Carolina Democratic Party, Chair Clayton served as a chair of the Person County Democratic Party, her hometown county.
SNAP benefits expire on November 1st, and Republicans have refused to tap into emergency funds so we can feed our most vulnerable. Contrarians, contact your representatives and join us in demanding that SNAP benefits be turned on immediately.
We also recommend, for those that can, donating to food banks to support our communities. Please see a non-exhaustive list of places to donate below and add your additional suggestions to the comments. Your local nonprofits, churches, and neighborhoods likely run food and clothing pantries as well.
This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity.
Jen Rubin: Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I’m delighted to have back Anderson Clayton, who is the Chair of Democratic Party of North Carolina. Welcome, Anderson.
Anderson Clayton: Thanks for having us, Jen.
Jen Rubin: Absolutely. North Carolinians, when Donald Trump, at least Republicans, when Donald Trump says, jump, they ask, how high? So when he told them to redistrict, they did. What did they do?
Anderson Clayton: Well, what we saw is that Republican Speaker Tim Mul… Republican Speaker of our Senate, Phil Berger, and also Destin Hall, who’s our Republican Speaker of the House in North Carolina, essentially came in and said they were going to re-gerrymander North Carolina even worse than they already have previously. And so they, last week, voted on new redistricting maps that took North Carolina from a 10 and 4 minority right now in Congress to a, you know, 11 to 3 minority in Congress, trying to strategically target Don Davis’ congressional district in northeastern North Carolina, which is Congressional District 1 in the state. It spans around 22 counties right now, almost half of them that are majority-minority rural counties throughout eastern North Carolina that are now going to be lacking representation in Congress, thanks to Republicans.
Jen Rubin: And he is an African American congressman, and that traditionally has been one place where African Americans do have representatives, representatives and representation in Congress.
Anderson Clayton: Absolutely. You know, the Black Belt region of North Carolina has always been Eastern North Carolina, and whether you look at historical representation from people like Congresswoman Eva Clayton, the first Black woman to be a member of Congress on behalf of North Carolina, or people like Congressman G.K. Butterfield, who held that district before Don Davis. But that district that Don Davis won is a Trump-plus-three district. Republicans have already come in and gerrymandered it once before. in 2023, when Democrats in North Carolina lost the state Supreme Court after the 2022 election cycle. We saw our state Supreme Court take an even 7-7 Democratic-to-Republican split that we had in Congress, and made it a 10-4 minority that we had, and then Republicans just got even greedier when they came in, or even more racist, to be truthful with you, Jen, and trying to target strategically Black representation, not just in North Carolina, but in the South right now, too, right? We’re looking at the eradication of the VRA and Section 2, and what Republicans and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to do right now to our region of the country is just deny Black representatives power.
Jen Rubin: Exactly. Now, the governor in North Carolina cannot veto this, is that correct? So this is going to go in effect unless courts, block it. Is that essentially where we are?
Anderson Clayton: Unfortunately, one of the provisions… North Carolina was the last state in the country to ever get the right for the veto for the governor, and I think it’s important that people know our governor’s office is actually, unfortunately, thanks to our Republican legislature, one of the weaker ones when it comes to appointment powers and also other powers that are traditionally given to governors. And so, in our state constitution, it does not allow for Governor Josh Stein to veto redistricting legislation that comes out of our state legislature right now, unfortunately. So we have sued, the DCCC, the DNC, and the NCDP have filed on to a former lawsuit that we made after 2023, and after the redistricting process that they took us through then in federal court, and so filed another brief on behalf of more plaintiffs in CD1 and CD3 that are being strategically targeted right now by Republicans.
Jen Rubin: Now, you make a great point. The Supreme Court, a couple weeks ago, heard an argument that would take Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows the creation of minority districts in order to provide representation for traditionally disadvantaged groups. They are considering essentially saying that’s unconstitutional. We can’t give minorities, a representative. What would that do, as you say, in North Carolina and throughout the South? And this doesn’t only apply to federal races, is that right?
Anderson Clayton: Yeah, and it’s crazy, because actually the case that this is coming out of is coming out of Louisiana, where we just won, actually, a case on the Section 2 of the VRAN, and the opposite side came back and sued again. White folks, honestly, in Louisiana came back in and said that this was racial discrimination against them, the VRA was. And so, for anybody right now that does not and is not following that case, I hope that you will look into it. Because it is extremely interesting how folks are weaponizing the rule of law right now, and traditional, legal avenues throughout our system to be able to pursue their own interests. But we’re about to see over 19 rural Black Democrats in the South be taken out of their positions, and when we think that that is not a racist, targeted attack by Republicans, we’re just dead wrong. Because everybody right now knows that that representation has been something the South had to fight for for an extremely long period of time through the civil rights movement and into where we’re at right now.
Jen Rubin: We’re really talking about going back to Jim Crow South, where there’s one party in control, and there’s no Black representation, and that goes from Congress all the way down to city councils to various boards, and really across the board. What’s the reaction in North Carolina? Are Democrats fighting mad? Are they gonna react in 2026, in the congressional races that they do have, and more importantly, in the Senate races, in the Senate race that they have, coming up?
Anderson Clayton: You know, we’re pissed off in North Carolina, to be honest with you, but we’ve been pissed off for a long time with Republicans taking advantage and utilizing levers of power in our state to be able to keep their own instead of actually giving power back to the people of North Carolina. And so, in 2023, the new officer board that came in for the North Carolina Dems mapped out a plan of how to take back the North Carolina State Supreme Court, because our state Supreme Court has the ability to determine whether or not our maps stay gerrymandered, right? We’ve got unfriendly statewide courts right now, and for those of you that don’t know, my state Supreme Court was a court that was willing to throw out, retroactively, 68,000 ballots from an election cycle last November in order for their buddy to win a Supreme Court seat, Jefferson Griffin, who ran against Democratic Justice Allison Riggs. And so, when I came in in 2023, we were at a 5-2 minority on the state Supreme Court. The next two election cycles for us were pickups, or, well, they were holds, basically. So we had to hold Justice Allison Riggs’ seat, and in 2026, we’ve got Justice Anita Earls’ seat up on the ballot, too. And we fully intend to hold her seat as well. And in 2028, we have the ability to take three Republican seats on the North Carolina State Supreme Court that can give back the power of, they’re redeciding, right, racial and partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina to the Democratic Party again, and we can make sure that we have got free and fair elections in our state. And in the meantime, we will have two of the most important U.S. Senate elections, one in 26, with our good old Governor Roy Cooper, who is running for us right now, and he is out there working hard across the state. And then also in 2028, when we look to taking out Ted Budd, too, in the U.S. Senate. Because he is also, right now, failing the people of North Carolina.
Jen Rubin: Let’s talk a little bit about Roy Cooper. He was the former governor and the former Attorney General, extremely popular. He is running against the guy who was head of the DNC when they tried to steal that Supreme Court seat back. How is that race going right now?
Anderson Clayton: Yeah, Michael Watley still has yet to relinquish his title as the Republican National Committee Chairman, and so I don’t know how that’s fair in a primary that he’s in currently right now. I think that some Republicans should be maybe up in arms a little bit more about that, but I’m not seeing him on the ground in North Carolina. I actually don’t think that he even lives in the state at this moment in time. Washington, D.C. seems to keep him pretty busy with the Republican shutdown that they’ve caused people throughout North Carolina to go without right? I was going through the airport yesterday to come up to New York for a fundraising trip, honestly, and every TSA worker in there was telling folks, you know, we’re not getting paid right now. We’re still showing up to work, even though there’s a shutdown in place, and people need to know who’s at fault for that. And so, I just, I think that Michael Watley has only backed up Republican antics and politics that have kept people across North Carolina hurting. And, you know, Governor Cooper, throughout his entire career as governor made it the point to be a public servant, not a politician for the people of North Carolina. And that looked like eradicating medical debt for people across our state, and trying to make sure that we were making our public schools ones of the best in the country while we could, with Republicans in our state legislature defunding our public schools at that point in time. Governor Cooper, I think, has got an amazing legacy throughout North Carolina, and one that people really respect, especially folks, folks in rural North Carolina right now.
Jen Rubin: Now, North Carolinians are getting hit twice. One, they are beginning to get those notices about what their Obamacare, insurance premiums are gonna look like next year, and if it’s like any other state, I suspect they’re much higher than they were. And secondly, if the Republicans don’t turn back on the spigot, food support for hundreds of thousands of people will cut off on November 1. It was both the potential impact of the loss of the Obamacare subsidies, and also, the loss of food assistance.
Anderson Clayton: I mean, you know, people’s healthcare premiums are about to go up by 40 to 50%. We already have folks that are receiving letters right now, and that have been sending them into the state party, actually, to help us be able to showcase to folks that this is coming. The fact that Democrats have said Republicans want to take away your healthcare, it’s not the showboating sense from Democrats right now. It is real, and it’s happening to people across this state and across this country who are about to not be able to to afford their health insurance are about to be kicked off of it altogether and completely. And that also looks to what our state legislature has refused to do with Medicaid rebase and not making sure that we actually are funding our government, our state government, efficiently enough to also help with subsidies for folks right now, too. And our state health plan, unfortunately, has gone up from a $55 copay to a $105 copay for people across the state right now. And our state legislature is just not responding to the needs of everyday people when it comes to that. And 1.4 million North Carolinians who rely on food assistance and SNAP benefits on November the 1st are going to be without, because Donald Trump refuses to go into reserve funding for emergency use right that we have right now. He would rather people starve in the streets than actually negotiate with Democrats on keeping people’s healthcare premiums At a lower cost, which is insane to me right now.
Jen Rubin: And those are… include children and people with disabilities. The Republicans would like to think that these are lazy people on couches, but children are not gonna go out and work, and people with disabilities are, by definition, disabled and cannot work. what is the, kind of sense, in North Carolina, among, philanthropic groups, other groups? You know, everyone in the Republican Party seems to think there’s this unlimited reservoir of philanthropy out there that’s going to fill in to make the difference. I don’t understand how private charities are gonna make up for billions in government assistance. What are they looking at? Local food banks, local, you know, food dispensaries, what are they, anticipating?
Anderson Clayton: a lot of uncertainty. And you know, the people that work at those organizations and those agencies right now, honestly, are the most stressed that they have ever been, and they’re not paid enough, in my personal opinion, to have to go through the amount of stress that they are with hundreds of thousands of people that are about to look to these organizations and say, I need more, and can you do more? And so, for everybody listening to this right now, if you’re thinking about where you can give and what you can do. Food banks need your help right now. They need Absolutely. They need your canned food, they need your non-perishable items. North Carolina Dems are going to be hosting a community meal in Cumberland County, and so we’re going to try to bring a hot meal out to folks that are going to be impacted by the shutdown, especially because Cumberland has one of our highest military populations in it right now, too, and so we’re going to try to bring that around the state as best we can, because we know that we need to be in community serving people right now, and the best way that we can show up as a party is by getting involved with feeding folks.
Jen Rubin: Absolutely. Now, North Carolina is also a state of farmers. How do farmers get affected when they cut off food aid, or as this big, ugly bill is going to do, take $186 billion out of the food stamp, the SNAP program next year? What does that do to farmers and their income?
Anderson Clayton: I mean, a lot of farmers are part of the folks that, you know, the government buys food from to help fund these programs and to help service them. You look at people like Jamie Ager, who runs Hickory Nut Gap, he’s one of the candidates that we’ve got in the NC11 race this year, who’s going to be running against Chuck Edwards in next cycle, right, for western North Carolina that went through Hurricane Helene throughout the last year that’s not received but 9% of the federal funding that we are supposed to for that region of the state right now, you know, he would tell you that Hickory Nut Gap had one of their, programs actually ended up being cut because of the fact that, and this was last year, right, when we were going through these sort of original cuts, too, to begin with, of what was going to come and what was going to happen from this administration, of just proactively, there were things that were already being suffer, or were already having that suffer from, and I just think that we’re going to continue to see that. But especially North Carolina is the third largest producer of soybeans, too, and so I think that just in the fact of what you’ve heard already from the news cycles of that soybean farmers, China is not buying our soybeans right now, and so farmers have left their soybeans in the ground, and they don’t have the ability to actually have workers out there that will help get them out. And so it’s been a trying time, I think, especially in eastern North Carolina and in western North Carolina, when you look at how this has hurt our agricultural community. And agribusiness is still the number one economic driver in North Carolina. Make no mistake about it, even though we got the Research Triangle, we got a lot of farmland in our state as well.
Jen Rubin: Well, Anderson, it seems that…for Donald Trump, cruelty seems to be the point. Many of these harms, all of these harms, frankly, are self-inflicted. It’s not as if there’s a, outside calamity. The calamity is Donald Trump and the Republicans who are visiting these, really, atrocious hardships on the people of North Carolina. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I’m sure we will be back to you to watch, what Donald Trump is doing to our country. So, thanks very much.
Anderson Clayton: Thank you.
