AC brought the heat

When Anderson Clayton defied the Democratic establishment and was elected state party chair in 2023, skeptics scoffed.

They mocked her youth (she was 25), her supposed inexperience, her intensity, her looks, her clothes, her accent and her sailor-salty language.

They pooh-poohed her stubborn insistence that Democrats should - and could - compete in the reddest, most Republican corners of rural North Carolina.

Turns out, she was right.

For three and a half years, she has driven from one end of the state to the other - rallying Democrats, recruiting candidates and volunteers, raising money and raising hell in any forum that would have her.

She wasn’t on the ballot, but she was one of the biggest winners this year.

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