ICYMI: In ABC News Interview Erica Smith Slams Cal Jr.’s “Cookie Cutter” Campaign

February 11, 2021
For Immediate Release

Raleigh, NC - In a recent ABC News interview, Radical Liberal Erica Smith slammed Cal Jr.'s “Cookie Cutter” style campaign. It appears that the ghost of Cal Sr. continues to haunt North Carolina Democrats. The national Democrats' strategy of picking cookie-cutter candidates that went on to tank in Kentucky, Texas in North Carolina continues to throw their party into disarray.

“Radical Liberal Erica Smith continues to blast Cal Jr.'s campaign for its cookie-cutter approach,” said NCGOP Communications Director Tim Wigginton. “As the ghost of Cal Cunningham chases the Democrat field to the left, Republicans are assembling a coalition to win this November.” 

Here are some of the key quotes from ABC News article: 

“For Erica Smith, a Democrat who announced her second consecutive bid for the U.S. Senate last month, the outcome of the 2020 Senate election in her home state of North Carolina was an ‘epic fail.’”

“‘(It) showed us unequivocally that we have to stop looking for this cookie-cutter version of a candidate for U.S. Senate in the South, who is a white male with military experience and not necessarily other lived experiences,’ Smith, who is Black and also a former state senator, told ABC News. ‘If we are the big tent party of inclusion that we say that we are, then we will stop using Black women as the most faithful, loyal voting bloc as the base of the party and allow us to be the face of the party in leadership.’”

“Smith isn't the only one hoping to change the party's entrenched ways. Democrats in North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio, three states that are poised to be at the center of the battleground map in elections over the next two years, are challenging the play-it-safe primary strategy that has defined Democratic Party politics for decades.”

“As the issue of diversity looms over these races, candidates are not the only ones arguing that the old approach will no longer work, particularly in the South. The success in Georgia, the culmination of a decade of grassroots organizing and outreach, solidified the state's purple hue and provided undeniable evidence of the utility of more diverse candidates, strategists and experts say.”

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