A rural listening (or rallying?) tour in North Carolina

X Post by Anderson Breeze Clayton
from Pasquotank County, NC

I've written a great deal about Anderson Breeze Clayton in the last couple of years.  The North Carolinian is the youngest state Democratic Party chair in the nation.  I've also written about the need for candidates to show up in rural places--the need not to neglect the rural vote, including in Politico here and in the Daily Yonder here.  

In the last few weeks, these two topics have come together as Clayton has been promoting her rural tour, which I'll help document here, based on her X (formerly Twitter) account.  The photo above is from Pasquotank County, population 40,568.

Above is a screenshot of Clayton touting Stop No. 10 on the Rural Tour (note her capitalization here,) in Gates County, population 10,478, on the Virginia state line, in the eastern part of the state. 

Above is Pitt County, population 170,243, which is the Greenville Metro area and so not rural.  But Clayton mentions the rural tour in this post to X, perhaps because Pitt County has rural reaches. 

Above Clayton touts the candidates who are showing up in all 100 counties--which is definitely going to include some rural ones! 

Stop No. 5 was Currituck County, population 28,000, on April 29, 2024.  The county is on the coast, and also borders Virginia.  It is part of the Virginia Beach-Chesapeake VA-NC Combined Statiscal area and includes part of the Outer Banks. 

Here's another post from Stop No. 6, Pitt County.

Stop No. 7 was Halifax County, population 48,622.

Stop number 8 was Northampton County, population 17,471.

Stop No. 9 was Hertford County, population 21,552 in the Inner Banks region.

Another recent stop was Vance County, population 42,578. 

Here Clayton quotes a story that quotes her, "It's a damn good thing to be a Democrat, y'all." and in her re-post, "especially say it in rural North Carolina," with the hashtag #RuralMatters.  

Clayton's more recent posts show her traveling with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Jamie Harrison, of neighboring South Carolina, in the eastern part of NC.  

I'm impressed, as always, with Clayton's commitment to rural North Carolina.   I look forward to seeing where she goes next--and how the Democrats fare in the state in Election 2024.  

Postscript:  the May 29, 2024 NPR Politics podcast is all about the Democrats efforts to win North Carolina, though it attends little to rural issues and doesn't mention Clayton.  It does mention that the Democrats have opened offices in places like Rocky Mount (population 54,000), which isn't really rural. It's also just 45 miles from the state's capital, Raleigh.