FLIP NC was founded in the wake of the 2016 election with a focus on ending the corrupt, far-right Republican control of our state legislature that North Carolinians have endured for the better part of a decade. Our all-volunteer organization is built around direct, person-to-person voter outreach to connect with and mobilize left-leaning voters across the state.
For the 2018 elections, our focus was on turning out left-leaning voters in flippable districts to break the Republican supermajority in the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA). Together, hundreds of FLIP NC volunteers knocked tens of thousands of doors in competitive districts, talking with sporadic, left-leaning voters about the issues that matter to them and making sure they know that they live in a competitive district that could come down to a handful of votes. These efforts, together with our text banking campaign, were a critical piece of a massive statewide effort that helped break the Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the NCGA, restoring Governor Cooper’s veto power and stopping the most egregious GOP legislation from passing.
For 2020, we planned to massively scale up these efforts, running regular door-to-door canvasses in competitive districts throughout the summer and fall and supporting partners to run canvasses in other critical districts across the state.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed all of our plans but none of our goals. The 2020 elections will be the most consequential elections of our lives. In North Carolina, it’s critical that we re-elect Governor Cooper, oust the tin pot dictator in the White House and his Senate lackey Thom Tillis, AND break the Republican majority in the NCGA – before it can redraw NC’s legislative and congressional maps in 2021 to lock in their power for the next decade.
At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic means we can no longer safely run face-to-face voter outreach, and there are no signs that it will become safer to do so between now and election day.
So we’re adapting. We’ve developed a whole new pandemic-proof plan to reach voters across the state. We’re both (1) scaling up traditional “no-contact” voter outreach methods (including phone and text banking) and (2) launching a set of new, innovative voter outreach programs: FLIP NC’s Social Voter Program, which leverages the power of personal networks to connect with voters, and Social Media Amplification, a voter education program to disseminate critical information to voters. You can learn more about those efforts at flipnc.org/get-involved.
It’s more important than ever that we’re having conversations with left-leaning voters across the state – and especially in competitive legislative districts – from now until election day. Remember, there are more of us than there are of them; we just need to make sure our fellow left-leaners have the information they need to vote, vote safely, and vote the full ticket in November.
We’ll need to mobilize more volunteers and reach more voters than ever before. We can’t allow the horror and chaos of these unprecedented times to derail these critical efforts. And while our strategy and tactics are necessarily evolving, FLIP NC has two secret weapons: One is our culture of adaptation, innovation, and continuous improvement. The other is the incredible FLIP NC network. FLIP NC volunteers and partners put so much of their time, energy, and talent into these critical efforts to FLIP NC blue so we can restore true democracy to our state and our country and build a better future for all North Carolinians.
