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Women And National Donors Swing Big In North Carolina Races

A group of women in red shirts holding blue letters, all together the letters spell out 'moms'
North Carolina chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
Everytown for Gun Safety, backed by billionaire Mike Bloomberg, will spend $5 million in North Carolina this election cycle.

Money is flowing freely into politics, despite the global recession. Top donors, like Michael Bloomberg and Charles Koch, are targeting competitive elections. North Carolina is ripe with opportunity for either party. From the record-breaking U.S. Senate race down to the suburban state House districts, the deluge of ads is doing more than just affecting voters. 

New issues are cropping up in campaign speeches and debates. Once candidates know they have the reinforcement of ads paid for by issues-based organizations, issues likegun control can be more safely highlighted. While conservative donors focused their dollars on North Carolina state candidates in 2010 and 2012, left-leaning interest groups are now counterstriking. Women donors are leading the charge, chipping in record amounts, mostly toward Democrats as well as PACs pushing the conversation toward abortion access and gun control measures.

Host Frank Stasio explores how money tips the political scales in North Carolina with WUNC’s data reporter Jason deBruyn andGrace Haley, the gender and race researcher for the Center for Responsive Politics, which runs Opensecrets.org, a website making campaign finance records more easily accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnd69XtKeMk&ab_channel=OpenSecretsDC
 

Grant Holub-Moorman coordinates events and North Carolina outreach for WUNC, including a monthly trivia night. He is a founding member of Embodied and a former producer for The State of Things.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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