NC Democrats hire Sadjadi as new executive director
After a nearly year-long job search, the North Carolina Democratic Party has installed the person charged with implementing its elections strategy for 2024 and beyond.
The state party hired Kian Sadjadi to be its new executive director. Sadjadi, 36, most recently worked as a state program director for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. Prior to joining the trade union group earlier this year, Sadjadi worked almost two years as national regional organizing director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Sadjadi brings stability to a party organization that shook up its leadership after disappointing results in the 2022 midterm elections. Democrats picked up congressional seats but failed to win a single statewide race.
Meredith Cuomo, who had served as party executive director since 2019, stepped down shortly thereafter. Then, in February, party members elected new candidates to the top four leadership positions. That included Anderson Clayton who, at age 25, became the youngest state party chairperson in the nation.
Clayton ousted former party chair Bobbie Richardson on the idea that North Carolina is home to enough Democrats to win key elections, but that the party failed to turnout long standing members of its base.
In an exclusive interview with WRAL News on Wednesday, Sadjadi echoed some of Clayton’s stated goals.
Sadjadi aims to help the party “focus on the rural communities, communities of color, youth engagement, and really making sure that we're mobilizing every single voter across the state and making sure that people have the tools and the skill set needed to organize in their own communities.”
With the DCCC, Sadjadi managed organizing staff for multiple western and Midwestern states.
“Focusing on rational battleground districts was a great opportunity to develop really tailored programs that match the district,” Sadjadi said.
In 2021, he worked as an organizing director for Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. In 2019 and 2020, he helped Joe Biden win Nevada as the state party’s Regional Organizing Director.
Sadjadi isn’t Clayton’s first hire; she’s hired other party staffers in recent months. But he may be her most important.
Executive directors typically oversee daily operations of political party organizations. They are the top staffers and answer to the party’s officers, who are elected by delegates. Sadjadi will be responsible for hiring other staff members as the party builds toward its long-term goal of hiring a larger, full-time staff.
“The duty of the party, as I see it, is just to make sure that we are really providing tools and resources to our counties, making sure that they are able to effectively do outreach in their communities,” he said.
Sadjadi’s proudest accomplishment, he said, was when he helped Nevada Democrats organize early voting for the party’s caucus in 2020.
“We were asking people to volunteer for basically four straight days for the early vote. And then we had to then tabulate all the votes, get them ready for caucus day itself. And it had never been tried before,” he said.
“I am just really proud of how it came together. Almost as many people voted in the early vote [in 2020] as voted in the entire caucus in 2016. So we had a tremendous amount of turnout; we registered about 70,000 voters — new Democrats — and it was a complete volunteer-run effort.”
Clayton cited Sadjadi’s experience as an organizer when announcing his hire on Wednesday.
“The stakes couldn’t be higher in this next election, and I know Kian’s experience as an organizer and his track record of winning competitive districts is exactly what North Carolina needs,” she said in a statement.
