The seeds of the resistance that kicked several incumbent Democrats out of office in the primary election were sown two years ago, in a Roanoke Rapids hotel room.
In the month leading up to the 2024 primary election, a loose partnership came together to oust then-State Rep. Michael Wray from the legislature, after he voted with Republicans more than any other Democrat two sessions in a row.
Temporarily stationed in Roanoke Rapids, 15 North Carolina members of hospitality worker union Unite Here knocked on 15,000 doors in Halifax, Northampton and Warren counties. The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters’ political advocacy group sent direct mail to Democratic and unaffiliated voters in the district.
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The organizers told voters that Wray was not acting like a “real Democrat.” He overrode the Democratic governor’s vetoes on environmental bills and a budget prioritizing private school vouchers, they explained. They encouraged prospective voters to come out and instead support Wray’s primary opponent, public school educator Rodney Pierce.
There was no guarantee it would work. In fact, similar efforts failed in State House District 60, where incumbent Rep. Cecil Brockman, D-Guilford, narrowly fended off Democratic challenger James Adams in the face of grassroots resistance.
But in the end, Pierce beat Wray, a 20-year incumbent, by 34 votes.
For Unite Here and NCLCV, it was proof of concept. Apparently, several other political organizations agreed. Two years later, Down Home North Carolina, the Carolina Federation and the advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund joined the fight — this time, to take out three incumbent Democrats who gave Republicans a working supermajority by overriding governor vetoes.
“We joked, we got the band back together, but the band got bigger,” said Dan Crawford, NCLCV senior director of public affairs.
More than a million dollars of spending and 170,000 door knocks later, each of the coalition’s preferred candidates won — by wider margins than expected.
In northeastern North Carolina, Patricia Smith defeated 11-year incumbent Rep. Shelly Willingham, D-Edgecombe, by 11 percentage points. Pierce also won reelection in a rematch against Wray, this time by nearly 4,000 votes.
In the Charlotte area, Veleria Levy bested seven-year incumbent Rep. Nasif Majeed, D-Mecklenburg, by 42 percentage points, and Rev. Rodney Sadler beat 13-year incumbent Carla Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg, by 48 percentage points.
“With the margins and success that we had in all four of those races, … if I were an elected official, I would be paying attention and making sure you got the message that you will be held accountable for your votes,” Crawford said.
Building frustration among Democrats
Despite recent knee surgery, Unite Here member Maria Hernandez was going to hit the streets, knocking on doors for Sadler and Levy in the weeks before the March primary. For her, it wasn’t just political; it was personal.
Hernandez remembers the day in 2017 when her grandchildren came home crying. President Donald Trump had just entered his first term. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers had parked outside her grandchildren’s school, arresting parents as they picked up their kids.
While Hernandez is a U.S. citizen, she is a Latina woman.
“I asked, ‘What happened?’” Hernandez recalled. “And one of them goes, ‘Nana, we thought you were not going to be home because ICE took the Mexicans away.’ I go, ‘What do you mean?’ And she goes, ‘My friends were crying, and they don’t have parents anymore.’”
For days, Hernandez’s grandchildren wouldn’t let go of her. In the middle of the night, the littlest one, about 6-years-old, would put her hand on Hernandez’s face, making sure she was still there.
Hernandez couldn’t afford to miss more than a day of work, so she gave each of her grandchildren something of hers to take to school with them. She left work early to stand at the front door of the school, so she would be the first person they saw when they left.
The experience was traumatic, she said. So when Trump was on the ballot again in 2024, Hernandez joined the Unite Here canvassing team.
In July 2025, Cunningham made a controversial floor speech calling for immigrants to assimilate and suggesting that “all cultures are not equal” before overriding Gov. Josh Stein’s veto on House Bill 318, an immigration bill that requires sheriffs to comply with ICE detainer requests.
Hernandez was more motivated than ever — Cunningham had to go, even at the risk of her surgery recovery.
Hernandez is not the only one whose frustration reached a breaking point.
In 2024, organizers worked hard to break the Republican supermajority and elect a Democratic governor, so that Republicans could not unilaterally advance their agenda. The goal was to restore power to the governor’s veto.
They succeeded, by one seat. However, during the 2025-26 session, several Democrats voted with Republicans on key issues, effectively negating the governor’s veto power. The work was not done.
Cunningham, Wray, Willingham and Brockman in particular often voted with Republicans on controversial bills and veto overrides, said Dustin Ingalls, North Carolina director of political programs at EDF Action, the advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Wray was ousted in 2024. Brockman resigned from the legislature in 2025 in the face of criminal charges. Majeed was a later addition to the list, as he hadn’t been as “frustrating” for Democrats in the past, Ingalls said.
“A lot of folks have tried to get Cunningham and Wray and Willingham, particularly, to hold the line on vetoes, and been burned, really, too many times,” he said. “We decided ultimately, enough was enough.”
While each targeted incumbent Democratic lawmaker has a slightly different voting record, they had one particularly controversial vote in common: the veto override of Senate Bill 266.
SB266 does two things. First, it removes the interim, 2034 goal of a 70% reduction in carbon emissions by Duke Energy on the way to 2050 carbon neutrality — a bipartisan aim set by the legislature in 2021.
Second, it allows public utilities like Duke Energy to charge ratepayers for the cost of construction of electric-generating facilities before they are completed.
For NCLCV, Down Home NC and EDF Action, swing Democrats’ support of Senate Bill 266 — or as some call it, “the Duke Energy bill” — was the core message to voters. They argue that the policy will unnecessarily raise rates in the midst of an affordability crisis that’s already hitting voters’ wallets.
“Universally, especially in Eastern North Carolina, when we go into communities and we ask people, what’s your number one concern, it’s always health care, education or the cost of living,” Down Home NC political director Vicente Cortez said. “And when we dig into the cost of living, it is the energy bills.”
Doing the work
Building the primary electorate wasn’t easy. It took multiple layers of political education in many cases, Cortez said.
Sometimes, people didn’t know what a primary was and why it was important. Organizers helped prospective voters understand that in many solid Republican or solid Democratic districts, the ultimate winner is decided in the March primary, not in the November general election.
Once organizers established that, they could appeal to voters’ concerns — which tended to include health care, housing and utility costs, Graham said. Finally, they would make a plan to vote.
To get people to actually vote, organizers had to be persistent. Unite Here member Denise Jackson said they went out in the ice and the rain, six days a week.
“They see you’re willing to come out in this kind of weather and talk to them,” she said. “That lets them know how important this is.”
The campaign literature organizers handed out or left on doorknobs was fact-based, Jackson added. Voters could double check it themselves.
Often, organizers knocked on people’s doors more than once. Hernandez said they would make their pitches to Ring cameras if people didn’t come to the door.
Carolina Federation engagement director Ashley Evans said they knocked on more than 100,000 doors and had about 30,000 conversations over the course of the primary.
Carolina Federation is a group that organizes Black, brown and white North Carolinians across race, class and gender, with a focus on working class power.
She took one message away from it: voters are ready to organize and “fight for what we deserve.”
“Look at who won in each of the legislative primaries where our members endorsed: a preacher and two public school teachers,” she said. “Folks from our own communities who understand that our tax dollars should go to better jobs, affordable homes, and fully funded schools, not handouts for the rich.”
Money matters
In 2024, NCLCV’s political action committee, Conservation Votes PAC, spent $132,000 on newspaper advertisements and direct mail to convince voters to oppose Wray and support Pierce, according to campaign finance records.
This year, they upped the ante, spending $179,000 in the District 27 primary. The organization also spent big in the other three targeted districts, for a total of over $628,000.
They used brightly colored mailers, which labeled Democratic challengers as “real Democrats,” while citing in big, bold letters how often incumbents voted with Republicans.
Rodney Sadler is a father, Bible scholar and Baptist minister, “the real Democratic we can count on,” one mailer stated. Meanwhile, Rep. Carla Cunningham votes with Republicans “nearly 85% of the time” and “was the deciding vote to expand ICE’s brutal tactics.”
Community advocate Veleria Levy will “stand up to Trump Republicans and deliver results.” Rep. Nasif Majeed, however, “turned his back on the LGBTQ+ community” and “made it easier for corporations to pollute our water.”
Small business owner and accountant Patricia Smith is a “proven Democrat our community can count on,” while Rep. Shelly Willingham voted to allow concealed guns in schools and churches.
The average person spends only a few seconds looking at a piece of political mail, Crawford said. So, they had to make it stand out. They also created short digital ads.
If NCLCV and EDF Action’s bread and butter is digital ads and political mail, one-on-one conversations are Unite Here, Down Home NC and Carolina Federation’s specialty.
It takes both to be successful, said Aiden Graham, Unite Here North Carolina political director. He learned that by working with the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters in 2024.
“So they sent all this mail, which meant when we got to people’s homes, people had already heard a little bit about what was going on,” he said. “So we were just reinforcing that message. The mail on its own is not enough. Field on its own is not enough, but together,that’s really how we won that race.”
The coalition layered communications again in 2026, on a broader scale. They organized who was doing what to avoid duplicating efforts, Crawford said. That way, every dollar went further.
There were a lot of dollars to stretch. To be specific, the five organizations spent a total of $1,045,816 on the four 2026 primary races.
The most expensive of these races for the coalition was House District 27, the rematch between Wray and Pierce, coming in at more than $329,000. The least expensive was House District 23, where Smith defeated Willingham, with $196,000 spent by the coalition.
That doesn’t include candidate spending. Smith said when she was canvassing, she heard about the other door knockers and phone callers working to support her.
“The efforts made on behalf of my campaign were definitely above and beyond a phenomenal job,” she said.
New leaders, fresh energy for Democrats
Before these wins, organizers like Crawford made a lot of “empty threats and promises” to lawmakers. Now, there’s some substance behind their pleas.
“Taking out three incumbents, that’s a pretty big deal,” he said.
While the vetoes mattered, Cortez said a sense that incumbent lawmakers had gotten disconnected from their districts and local issues also influenced voters.
It’s too early to tell whether other lawmakers will heed that message, Cortez said.
Ingalls agreed.
“Listen to your people,” he advised lawmakers. “The people have spoken overwhelmingly. You’ve got high-paid corporate lobbyists from Duke and other companies bending their ear all the time, but if you forget the people who put you in office, eventually the people are going to remove you from office.”
Either way, Graham hopes the new representatives bring “fresh energy.” They’ve been out in the community, and they understand voters’ frustrations, particularly with the affordability crisis, he said.
If Democrats maintain their 49 House seats in the general election, and the newly elected Democrats stick with their party, Stein’s veto will become much stronger.
That’s the goal for Down Home NC members, Cortez said. They plan to help defend several Democratic seats in tight districts in November.
Real, lasting change takes time; it isn’t a one-off. Graham understands that, and is committed to the work.
“This is about building power,” he said. “It’s bringing together groups that have all been operating in their silos, and now we’re all working together, and we’re all singing from the same songbook.”
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