Poor and Working-Class People are Winning in North Carolina
Not only do we fight at Down Home– we win.
Through organizing, Down Home members have won both local and statewide campaigns, plus made a reputation for ourselves at the ballot box.
Local Wins
Down Home members know their hometowns best and know what they need. For the past three years they have run local issue campaigns to win tens of millions of dollars worth of resources to address the issues that matter the most. This work includes:
- A campaign to get the Ashe County Commission to create a low-income home repair fund.
- A campaign to get the Oxford City Council to refund and reopen the Granville Street Park
- A campaign to get the Cabarrus County Commission to fund an anti-eviction program for the county
- A campaign to prevent Haywood County from raising taxes to build a new jail
- A campaign to get the Johnston County Commissioners to fund school supplies for local teachers
- A campaign to get the Watauga County Commissioners to hold public comment before, not after, decisions were made
Electoral Wins
Up and down the ballot, Down Home members endorse candidates who will fight for working-class needs. We then put in the hard work of knocking doors to get them elected and work to co-govern with those candidates after they win. Our electoral wins include:
- Breaking the supermajority in 2020 with the election of Ricky Hurtado, the first Latino to serve in the NCGA
- Preventing the supermajority again in 2022 with the election of Diamond Staton Williams to the NCGA
- Preventing a supermajority for a third time in 2024 with the election of Dante Pittman and Bryan Cohn to the NCGA.
- In a cycle where 90% of the nation’s counties moved appreciably to the right, Down Home’s rural counties bucked the trend, reducing the rate of rightward movement and effectively reversing in six counties.
- Electing the first Black woman to the Person County Commissioners (and she’s a Down Home member!)
Statewide Wins
Down Home members organize together across county and region to move working-class legislation at the state level, too. Our wins include:
- The passage of Medicaid Expansion, bringing health coverage to 600,000 North Carolinians living in the coverage gap
- Working to elect our endorsed candidates to statewide offices including Governor, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the NC Supreme Court in 2024.
