NCFP Weekly Update: Planning for our Bright Future!

Well, met with former Governor Pat McCrory and retired Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, myself and a dozen of us total.

So honestly, when I looked around the room, I also realized most of the people in the room have been a guest on this podcast.

So Alvarez Santana and Steve Morris from Concord joined us as two of our Forward Aligned elected officials.

We had some of our donors in the room some of our executive committee members some political advisors really just a dynamic and thoughtful group of folks coming together to talk about this new future that is so bright and that is so exciting let's not forget folks we do have to finish off the work at hand we do need a few thousand more signatures and thank you again all the volunteers and donors and please keep that Coming because we certainly need to get this wrapped up as soon as possible, but we are encouraged and we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

So over the next, I would say, three to six months, hopefully closer to three.

We'll gather all the signatures we need and get ballot access.

Well, that opened up conversations about so many exciting things.

What will we do with this incredible opportunity? What would be some of the candidates we would run? How would it work? Once we have ballot access, will that be a call to volunteers and voters to finally become a little more engaged? We've had some great success, but We could certainly use some more help.

So maybe this will be a turning point.

We'll start getting some more activity and some traction and take this thing to the next level.

Obviously, we spoke about fundraising.

We've had great success, but once you become a political party, we'll certainly need to ramp up that effort.

We need to find some new avenues to pursue, to bring in the dollars it will take to have an impact, to run candidates forward.

and not only run candidates, but get people elected.

We also, as a reminder, will be statutorily required by the state of North Carolina to run someone for governor.

It's a retention clause.

You got to go out and get 15,000 certified signatures.

And then once you have ballot access, they will take it away if you don't get at least 2% of the people of North Carolina to vote for your candidate for governor.

A pretty high bar.

And certainly a little more extreme than many other states.

But this is what our legislature has chosen to do to protect you, the people, I guess, from too many political parties or having too many options.

Maybe they're afraid folks will be confused if they see something other than an R and a D on the ballot.

But whatever their motivations, this is the law.

So we put a committee together and we spent some time yesterday with the group I mentioned talking about who would run for governor and what would that campaign look like.

I'm not in a position to share any names at this point, but I am proud to tell you that of the shortlist we are working on, wherever this settles, you'll be very impressed and I'm sure supportive of our candidate for governor of North Carolina, which again will be a fun and exciting opportunity to get our name out there across the state, but also we'll take your support and your vote.