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Three Mecklenburg County women could be key to breaking the GOP supermajority in the General Assembly

By Dylan Rhoney

October 22, 2024

Democrats are hoping to break the Republicans’ grip on the General Assembly. Beth Helfrich, Woodson Bradley, and Nicole Sidman could be the reason they succeed. 

April 5, 2023 changed a lot of North Carolinians’ lives. For Nicole Sidman, it was the day that began her journey of running for public office. 

Sidman, an attorney and mom living in south Charlotte, was outraged by Tricia Cotham’s decision that day — and the consequences it would have for scores of North Carolina women.

Cotham had campaigned and won a seat in the state House as a pro-choice Democrat in Mecklenburg County in the 2022 election, but less than six months after being elected, she’d done the unthinkable: she switched parties. That decision gave Republicans a supermajority in the House of Representatives, allowing them to nullify Gov.  Roy Cooper’s veto powers. 

“When Tricia Cotham flipped and gave the supermajority to the Republicans, it was very clear what was about to happen,” Sidman said.

What was about to happen was Republicans passing an abortion ban over the protests of doctors, medical professionals, and North Carolinians themselves.  

What made Cotham’s decision all the more stunning was her background. She had served as a Democrat in the General Assembly for 10 years, and had been a consistent supporter of abortion rights. In 2015, she even shared her own personal story on the House floor, revealing that she chose to have an abortion when continuing a pregnancy would have put her life at risk and potentially prevented future pregnancies. During her speech, Cotham argued against a law requiring patients to wait 72 hours after an initial doctor’s visit before they could have their abortion.

“This decision was up to me, my husband, my doctor and my God. It was not up to any of you in this chamber,” she said at the time.

Eight years later, she apparently decided it was up to politicians in that same chamber, as she provided the decisive vote to pass Senate Bill 20, which banned abortions after 12 weeks, with some exceptions still allowed after that point.

After Cotham’s party switch, Sidman, who’s worked with reproductive rights clinics, went to the legislature with other advocates to try and speak with lawmakers.

“They literally hid from us, in a corner, behind a newspaper. It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic,” she said. 

Cotham faced massive criticism for her decision, including from Sidman. 

“The reason I’m running is because I’m running against Tricia Cotham,” Sidman said. “People had knocked doors for her, people vouched for her, people gave their hard-earned money to her based on those promises and she never meant it… It’s not right to promise to do one thing and then go to Raleigh and just turn around and do the exact opposite.”

Sidman, who’s running in House District 105, is one of three Democratic candidates running in key races in Mecklenburg County — races that could help the party potentially break the GOP’s supermajority in the state House and state Senate. Davidson resident Beth Helfrich is running in the 98th House district in north Mecklenburg County, while realtor and small business owner Woodson Bradley is running in Senate District 42. 

Bradley, a Charlotte resident, said the Republican supermajority is bad for North Carolina and has killed bipartisanship.

“We’ve got a group of people there [in the General Assembly] that can override the governor’s veto, that can legislate pretty much whatever they want, and get away with it,” she said. “It’s because the checks and balances have just completely been obliterated.” 

@cardinalandpine

The outcome of the General Assembly elections will have the biggest impact on North Carolinian’s daily lives, State Senate candidate Woodson Bradley of Charlotte says. “The General Assembly in Raleigh impacts my daily life, and your daily life, pretty much more than any other vote you’re going to cast,” Bradley told Cardinal & Pine. #nc #northcarolina #legislature #generalassembly #vote #charlotte #voting #election #election2024

♬ original sound – Cardinal & Pine

The threat to reproductive freedom motivated them to run

For all three candidates, the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe and reverse the constitutional right to an abortion was a key motivating factor to get off the sidelines and run.

“I likely would not be running for office had the Dobbs decision not happened, and subsequently SB 20 here in North Carolina,” Helfrich said. 

Helfrich is a small business owner, former educator, and school administrator, but it’s the devastating human toll of the abortion bans that have followed the loss of Roe that motivated her to run for office.  

“I think as folks begin to hear the full scale of the consequences of this decision, when we learn about women who are dying because of this decision, when we learn about the number of folks who are in medical school who ultimately are going to opt out of practicing in North Carolina because they’re not able to practice to the full extent of their training … I think folks will understand that this isn’t just about access to abortion. This is about a bigger fundamental question about the role that government plays in our own healthcare decisions,” Helfrich said.

In Georgia, at least two women have died as a result of the state’s abortion ban. In Texas, a recent analysis found the rate of maternal deaths in the state increased 56% from 2019 to 2022, after the state’s abortion ban went into effect, compared with just an 11% nationwide rise during the same time period. 

For Bradley, reproductive rights is deeply personal. She is a sexual assault survivor who speaks at high schools across Mecklenburg County about teen dating violence.

“I am a survivor of a violent sexual assault and I will tell you that in the aftermath of that, the only thing that I thought about, prayed about, cared about, was whether or not I was pregnant. And I happened to win the coin toss that night. And it’s as simple as that,” she said. “I wasn’t, but I still had a choice. And that was almost 30 years ago.”

“I cannot imagine someone telling me in that moment of crisis that I didn’t have a choice because of what state I lived in, or had I been a few miles down the road, there might be some different options. And I cannot imagine that being said to my daughters,” she added.

@cardinalandpine

NC House candidate Beth Helfrich spoke with Cardinal & Pine about how personal decisions about reproductive rights should not involve the government. She also says North Carolina’s ban that passed after the overturning of Roe v. Wade could hurt the states economy. #nc #northcarolina #freedom #reproductiverights #abortion #legislature #generalassembly

♬ original sound – Cardinal & Pine

Addressing NC’s childcare crisis

It’s no secret that North Carolina, like most other states, is facing a childcare crisis.

According to NC Child, an advocacy organization that works across the state to support childhood education, the cost of child care has soared by 32% in the state since 2019. In Mecklenburg County, child care for an infant costs $16,373 per year on average. Statewide, the average cost is $9,480 per year for full-time care, according to Tootris, a national education and childcare focused tech company.

Despite the exorbitant cost to families, those rising costs aren’t helping providers keep their doors open. In just the first three months of 2024, 41 programs across the state closed their doors. 

The shortage of programs has left families struggling to get by. A June report from the NC Chamber Foundation and NC Child found that 25% of parents faced “job disruption” because of childcare, and of those, 35% left the workforce as a result.

Helfrich, a mom of five, understands the struggles parents go through trying to find child care.

“I have been figuring out, with my partner, child care for someone under five in my home for fifteen years in a row,” she said. 

She believes North Carolina needs to do more to make child care affordable and accessible.

“It is a necessary part of how a society and an economy functions. Nothing works without childcare,” Helfrich said. “It’s an unfair expectation that a family member or a parent be available to care for our little ones.” 

She said working parents need somewhere to take their children each day.

“We have single parent homes, we have parents where both have career and professional obligations or opportunities,” Helfrich said. “We have to have more options for our families”

Sidman, a working mom, also understands as well as anyone the burdens that parents go through trying to find child care.

“When I was first looking for childcare for my son, when I was pregnant, I went to daycare after daycare, and found it was too late. The list was so long, that my child would be in elementary school before he got off that waitlist,” she said.

Sidman believes that a childcare tax credit is needed for families to offset the personal costs of care. 

“We’ve got to institute the childcare tax credit to acknowledge how much it costs to have a child,” she said.

Sidman also believes that a raise is needed to keep quality teachers in the childcare field. The average salary of early childcare teachers is just $13.08 per hour, as of October 2024, according to ZipRecruiter.

Bradley, meanwhile, finds it ironic that Republicans pushed through a 12-week abortion ban, with some in the caucus wanting to go further, but haven’t proposed concrete solutions to the state’s childcare crisis.

“I will be the one that asks the question to the other side of the aisle, ‘explain it to me like I’m in Kindergarten, why you want so much to maybe force people into having birth, taking away their bodily autonomy, yet you don’t want to do anything to help the child after its born,’” she said.

@cardinalandpine

Democrat Nicole Sidman, who is running for the North Carolina House in Mecklenburg County, says the state’s teachers need a raise, emphasizing they have earned the right to be paid appropriately based on their education and importance. #nc #education #schools #teachers #pay #charlotte #northcarolina

♬ original sound – Cardinal & Pine

The importance of raising teacher pay in NC

Helfrich, Bradley, and Sidman all have experience working as a teacher at one point or another in their careers and say they understand the burden teachers in North Carolina carry.

Average teacher pay in North Carolina is $56,559 per year, ranking 38th in the country, according to the North Carolina Association of Educators annual report. Starting teacher pay, just $40,136, is even worse, ranking 42nd in the nation.

“Teaching is the only profession where we expect people to do it just for the love of the child. My vet may love my dog, but they still want to get paid for it,” Sidman said.

Helfrich said the state’s decade-long pay freeze for veteran teachers is a major problem. 

Since July 1, 2018, North Carolina teachers have not received a step increase between years 15 and 25 on the job. Under the current pay scale, a teacher making $5,306 per month in year 15 will still be making that same salary come year 25 if they stay in the profession. 

In 2023, around 10,000 teachers left the profession in North Carolina — an exodus that doesn’t go unnoticed by students.

“My daughter began her sophomore year with one teacher sharing two chemistry classes that meet at the same time. This is her second year of high school, and it’s not the first time that this has happened,” Helfrich said.

Bradley, the daughter of a public school teacher who also taught overseas for a year herself, understands the daily burden of teachers in the state, noting how expenses often come out of their own pockets.

“There is nothing that will deplete your resources, emotional and financial, like being a teacher in North Carolina.” 

A recent survey found that teachers in the state spend over $1,300 on average out of their own paychecks on school supplies each year. 

Beyond the lackluster teacher pay for North Carolina teachers, Bradley said private school vouchers are also hurting the state’s public schools.

In September, the General Assembly expanded the state’s private school voucher program,  known as Opportunity Scholarships. The Opportunity Scholarship provides North Carolina families a stipend to send their children to a private school, rather than a public school operated by the state. As of September, North Carolina families regardless of income are eligible to apply for the scholarship.

Republicans’ latest expansion of the scholarship in September provided an additional $463 million in taxpayer dollars to the program, which is overwhelmingly being used by wealthier parents and siphons funds away from public schools.

Bradley argues the money spent on vouchers could have gone to boosting teacher pay and retaining educators, as well as recruiting new teachers to move to the state. 

“All of that money could have been used in some way, shape or form to take care of the teachers that we have, and recruited some of the most talented, brilliant educators in the country that really want to move to North Carolina.”

Author

  • Dylan Rhoney

    Dylan Rhoney is an App State grad from Morganton who is passionate about travel, politics, history, and all things North Carolina. He lives in Raleigh.

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