With the 2026 midterms fast approaching and a new round of redistricting just a few years away after the 2030 Census, North Carolina Democrats are set to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars more from the national Democratic Party to boost on-the-ground organizing efforts.
Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, announced Thursday that all state party organizations would be getting extra funding, regardless of how competitive they are in presidential or congressional elections, and that Republican-controlled states like North Carolina will be in line for an even bigger bump.
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The idea is that Democrats should be putting more of an emphasis on winning local races like for school boards and state legislatures, Martin told reporters, and not only focus on flashy races like U.S. Senate. Republicans have found success with that strategy for the last two decades, he said, and Democrats need to catch up.
"I'm sick and tired of folks in D.C. just focusing on federal races," said Martin, a Minnesota party leader who took over control of the DNC in February. "What the Republican and conservative movement has done so well is build power at every single level. From state houses to governorships to local races like mayorships, county boards, school boards. We have to compete in all of those arenas."
The national Democratic Party has been giving state-level Democratic Party groups $12,500 a month, Martin said, but will soon add another $5,000 per month on top of that— a nearly 50% increase to the amount of funding going toward efforts to register voters, knock on doors, host events and do other grassroots organizing work. The new funding model will exist for at least the next several years.
Martin said he believes that new sum is substantially more than the Republican National Committee gives its state party organizations.
A spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party declined to say how much the group receives from the national Republican Party, but he did offer advice to Democrats seeking to be more competitive in the Tar Heel State.
"Democrats will continue to fail until they change their policy preferences," NCGOP spokesman Matt Mercer told WRAL. "They've run to their far-left fringe and abandoned normal voters. You see that in the historic fall in voter registration since 2016. You see that in Republicans outright winning the early vote in 2024. The tactics Democrats employ mean little until their strategy sees them talk about the issues that are important to North Carolina families."
State data shows that there are about 400,000 fewer registered Democrats now than there were in 2016, even though the state has undergone massive population growth in that time. A decade ago, Democrats made up about 40% of all voters statewide. Unaffiliated voters came next, followed by Republicans and Libertarians. But now, Unaffiliated voters are the largest voting bloc, and Republicans are on pace to pass Democrats for second-place in terms of total numbers.
The recent explosion in Unaffiliated voters — caused by former Democrats and Republicans abandoning their parties, as well as by new voters never joining a party to start with — is also an explicit concern of the DNC, not just in North Carolina but as a nationwide trend. Martin said he hopes the funding will also help Democrats grow back their membership, which could lead to more electoral success down the road.
2030 redistricting in sight
On the immediate horizon is the 2026 midterm election, when Democrats are favored to win back control of the U.S. House since the party that controls the White House — currently the GOP — typically loses seats in midterms. Democrats also hope to flip some Republican-held U.S. Senate seats, including the North Carolina seat held by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
North Carolina is also home to a highly competitive U.S. House seat, currently held by Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the northeastern part of the state, that Republicans will be trying to flip.
Funding for those big U.S. House and U.S. Senate races will be handled separately from the money that state parties get from their national counterparts. The Tillis race in particular is likely to be the most expensive Senate race in the country. Democrat Wiley Nickel, a former U.S. representative from Cary, has already announced he will run but other Democrats are expected to jump into the race as well. Former Gov. Roy Cooper has been rumored as a potential candidate but so far has been coy about his plans. Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson has also been rumored as a 2026 candidate. On Thursday WRAL asked if he's considering getting into the race, and he had a clear answer: "No," Jackson said.
Beyond just flipping Congressional seats in 2026, though, Martin said Democrats are already trying to lay the groundwork needed to stay competitive in Congress for years to come. All five of the nation's fastest-growing states are in the South, he said, including North Carolina. That means the 2030 Census, and the subequent round of political redistricting ahead of the 2032 elections, will be expected to shift large amounts of political power away from the North and Midwest, and into the South.
"In 2032, during the reapportionment, all of the shift in Congressional power would be from the North — from states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, other northeastern states," Martin said. "All of that's going to shift down to the South."
In North Carolina, the state legislature wields total control over redistricting, with little to no oversight from courts. In recent years Republican judges at the state and federal level have given Republican legislative leaders a green light to engage in politically motivated gerrymandering. If Republicans still control the legislature and state Supreme Court after the 2030 elections, they likely will be able to draw maps locking themselves into power for another decade.
Martin said this new investment is the start of Democrats' efforts to chip away at the GOP's grip on power in many Southern states, to be ready for that upcoming round of redistricting.
"We have to start moving the needle [in Southern states], or we're going to be caught flat footed and, potentially, be in a permanent minority in the U.S. House," he said. "So that's why I say we have to build everywhere. We have to make deeper investments in red states to start moving the needle there, and we have to organize everywhere and up and down the ballot."
WRAL reporter Emily Walkenhorst contributed reporting.