Carter Wrenn posted on March 18, 2013 10:09
In his novel Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner wrote if you have something outside the ordinary to do and it’s got to be done quickly, don’t waste time on the men – go get the women and children. Thirty-seven years ago, here in North Carolina, we built Ronald Reagan’s first Presidential campaign around women and young people, then landed at the Republican Convention where we learned politics’ adamantine heart devours youth and passion when a self-proclaimed conservative stalwart (who was also Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party) made a backroom deal and Reagan lost by a handful of votes.
This year, since the election last November, I’ve been watching and waiting for the old guard Democratic standard bearers in the General Assembly (like Martin Nesbit and Larry Hall) to breathe life back into their party but they seemed too stunned by the defeat to stir. They went through the motions like sleepwalkers. With barely a sign of a pulse.
Then some mischievous genie leaked the ‘Secret Not for Distribution Democratic Campaign Plan’ to the Charlotte Observer and, suddenly, there was a sign of a pulse – but it was coming from a pretty strange place. It wasn’t coming from the old guard or any of the long time Democratic standard bearers – it was coming from a young man and a young woman, a pair of ‘grassroots organizers.’
The young woman Jessica Laurenz, according to her biography, graduated from Vanderbilt with degrees in Women’s Studies then sailed into Democratic politics working for liberal groups to advance the rights of Southern women – which is sort of like advancing the rights of a Bengal tigress. It’s a fine sentiment. But the tigress (or maiden aunt or steel magnolia) is more than capable of defending herself not just against Southern men but most anything else that crosses her path.
The young man, Sean Kosofsky, had been a spokesman for LGBT groups in Michigan then came to North Carolina to head Blueprint NC.
Neither, according to their bios, had ever faced the terrors of a statewide campaign but Sean Kosofsky provided a poll and Jessica Laurenz wrote a plan for Democrats to, as she put it, ‘eviscerate’ Pat McCrory, Thom Tillis and Phil Berger.
To be continued…