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Congressional candidate Richard Watkins (under the North Carolina flag) speaks to the audience of a Democratic candidates forum at the Sertoma Center in Burlington's North Park.
Congressional candidate Richard Watkins (under the North Carolina flag) speaks to the audience of a Democratic candidates forum at the Sertoma Center in Burlington's North Park.
Times-News
Isaac Groves
There are a lot more Democrats running to represent North Carolina’s Fourth Congressional District than Republicans, and it’s not hard to see why.
“Whoever takes this seat is going to have the power of a safe blue seat to actually push progressive policies, push Democratic members and Republican members to do right by working families,” said Nida Allam, one of eight Democrats running in the Tuesday, May 17 primary. “We don’t have to play it safe."
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The new 4th Congressional District includes Alamance, Orange, Durham, Granville and Person counties, plus a little piece of the northeast corner of Caswell County. There are two Republicans running for the seat too, but Allam is not the only one who thinks it will be a safe Democratic seat.
Four of those Democrats and one surrogate came to Burlington last week for a candidate forum Down Home N.C. hosted at North Park in front of an enthusiastic crowd of about 30 people:
Ashley Ward is an expert on climate change impacts at Duke University living in Mebane;
Crystal Cavalier, an environmental activist in Mebane, actually sent her husband Jason Keck as a surrogate;
Richard L. Watkins, a microbiologist specializing in virology, living in Durham;
Stephen J. Valentine, a lawyer and director of the N.C. Central University Veterans Law Clinic;
Two of the most high-profile candidates in the race were not there – Valerie Foushee and Clay Aiken – though they were invited, according to organizers. Neither was Democrat Matt Grooms. Republicans Courtney Geels and Robert Thomas did not come up at all.
Alamance County actually has slightly more registered Democrats than Republicans or unaffiliated voters, but Republicans consistently dominate county wide elections like those of the county commissioners and sheriff for years now.
Democrat 38,245
Republican 36,352
Unaffiliated 36,592
The candidates that did show up were not playing it safe; progressive politics were front and center.
Watkins was proud he and Cavalier were the only candidates to have gone to a Graham City Council meeting earlier in the week where protesters demanded the city fire controversial Graham Police officer Douglas Strader.
Several candidates talked about raising taxes on the super-rich. Ward said that demanded a “wealth tax” that taxes the net value of assets, not just income, to capture the value of the investments on which the very rich base much of their wealth.
“just taxing the 1% is not going to touch Elon Musk because most of his stuff in stocks,” Ward said.
The candidates were largely in agreement saying that income would fund universal healthcare access, whether through Medicare for all or some other mechanism.
Watkins and Ward both said improving health would take more than just paying for doctors’ visits and prescriptions but investing in the broader healthcare system like clinics and rural hospitals that became less common from the 1980s on, Ward said, and developing in-home care that is more cost-effective than hospitals and nursing homes.
Keck said Cavalier would focus on eliminating what he called corruption that would free up resources for public good. Corporations would also have to budget for their own environmental and health impacts whether from fast food or oil pipelines.
Ward said anti-trust laws could break up those companies that consolidated over the years giving them too much power over pricing to not only fight current inflation but also wealth inequality.
There was a lot of general agreement among the candidates about policing and justice policies. They all opposed cash bail, for example. Allam said police were just a part of making people safe after putting resources into communities. Valentine said the country needed to go back to community oriented and get away from militarized policing.
Several candidates said there were many police with white supremacist attitudes, and Keck said hate-crimes laws should apply to their actions. Watkins took the Biden Administration to task for not making white extremism a justice department priority.
A question about campaign financing – how to keep a candidate from outright buying an election – brought out some candidates’ frustrations, not just over the difficulty of breaking into electoral politics without money and backers but also at how much the news media and even voters focused more on fundraising than ideas.
There was also some stone-throwing, at least at candidates not at the forum.
“This is about Valerie Foushee,” Watkins said. “Money does matter.”
Foushee's campaign is well-funded at close to $800,000, but Watkins was talking about the $3.4 million Foushee has in outside support from political action committees, according to Open Secrets compared to less than $300,000 for Allum, and basically nothing for the rest of the field.
Foushee actually has just the second-largest war chest among District 4 candidates, according to Opnesecrets.org and the Federal Election Commission. Allum had the best-funded campaign by close to $8,000.
Nida Allam (D) $805,550
Valerie Foushee (D) $797,341
Clay Aiken (D) $480,121
Courtney Geels (R) $109,453
Richard Watkins (D) $106,167
Ashley Ward (D) $74,717
Stephen Valentine (D) $57,288
Crystal Cavalier (D) $20,576
Matt Grooms (D) $3,018 $8,547
Robert Thomas (R) $1,115
Whatever his frustrations, Valentine struck a note of unity more than once.
“No matter who you vote for in this election, I think the Democrats will be in good hands,” Valentine said.
Isaac Groves is the Alamance County government watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow him on Twitter @TNIGroves.
