North Carolina Democrats weren’t sure what to expect when Anderson Clayton, 25, won their election for chair, making her the youngest state party leader in the country. She is aiming to motivate younger voters, but she also campaigned with broader goals, arguing that Democrats need to invest in rural communities if they hope to erode Republicans’ grip on state and local power. “People with me all the time are like, ‘I wish you’d stop saying we’ve left Democrats behind,’” she said. We’ve left people behind.’”In North Carolina’s elections last year, Democrats ceded 44 state legislative seats, uncontested, to Republicans. Many encompassed blue-collar, rural towns that had voted reliably Democratic decades ago but by then had no official footprint from the party, much less a candidate to support.

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