“You can’t govern if you don’t win the election.”

That is Brad Crone’s message to “progressive” Democrats, unaffiliated voters and others seeking alternatives to the far-right conservative movement taking place at the local, state and national levels. Crone presented that message to the Beaufort County Progressive Alliance on Tuesday. Crone is president of Campaign Connections, a Raleigh-based consulting firm that specializes in public relations, public affairs and grassroots campaigns for corporations, advocacy groups and trade associations.

Audience members included current and former elected officials in Beaufort County who are Democrats. The alliance is the result of a conversation between Herman Gaskins Jr. and Tom Payne, former Beaufort County clerk of Superior Court. The alliance has no membership list and does not collect dues, Gaskins said. Alliance meetings are open to the public.

In an email sent last week about the meeting, Gaskins described the alliance as “a nonpartisan political organization of men to promote camaraderie and the sharing of progressive political ideas. He also wrote: “An important goal for the organization is the recruitment and support of Progressive candidates for political office.”

To overcome the rising tide of the ultra-conservative Republican agenda, Democrats — with support from unaffiliated voters — must do a better job of finding candidates, financing their campaigns and getting out the vote for those candidates, Crone said. Addressing the alliance Tuesday night, Crone made it clear that overcoming the GOP agenda won’t be easy, but he’s optimistic it can happen.

“I do believe there’s a tidal wave coming,” Crone said about efforts of Democrats and some unaffiliated vote when it comes to challenging the GOP in statewide and national legislative races. Ideally, Crone said, Democrats should have a candidate for each political contest across the state. Crone said Democrats need to target specific Republicans for defeat in the 2018 general election, including one Republican who lives in Beaufort County. “Do not let Bill Cook run unopposed,” Crone said.

Cook represents District 1 in the state Senate. The district includes Beaufort County.

Crone said 2018 “will be one hell of an election cycle for Democrats.” That election cycle includes state legislative races and congressional races.

Crone said “progressives” have a challenge when it comes to Democrats winning elections in North Carolina. He said there are three key demographic groups that have been problematic for Democrats at the state and federal levels since the 2010 election cycle. The three groups are:

• unaffiliated voters 25 years old and older who have been voting for Republicans over Democrats at a 60-percent rate to 40-percent rate since 2010.
• older, white Democrats at least 50 years in eastern and western North Carolina have an average crossover rate of 16 percent when it comes to voting for Republican candidates. Data analysis shows Democrats can’t win consistently when that crossover rate is higher than 9 percent, Crone said.
• liberals and minority voters, where fluctuations in their voter turnout numbers have been problematic for the Democratic Party. GOP voters have been more motivated to go to the polls and vote, according to Crone.

Crone said Democrats must do a better job of persuading unaffiliated voters to support their candidates at the polls. “The unaffiliated vote is growing more and more important each election cycle,” Crone noted.

During the eight years Barak Obama was president and “the politics slipped away from us,” Crone said, Democrats lost 14 U.S. Senate seats, 65 U.S. House seats, 14 governorships and seven state legislatures to Republicans. That translates to 935 legislative seats across the nation, Crone said.

“That is the political rebuilding that a party must look at in an environment that is as toxic and as acidic as we’ve ever seen, simply because of the telephone and iPad and the cesspool, I call it the cesspool of social media,” Crone said.

Crone offered advice on what Democrats should do to defeat GOP candidates, including President Donald Trump, in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.

“Democrats have got to do a better job of communicating a broader message than just he’s not fit to be president. We’ve got to get back to our core principals of our economic policy, education policy and standing up for the little guy,” Crone said.