In the special election for North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, a national environmental group is making a large investment in voter education.
Last week, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Victory Fund announced it will spend $250,000 on digital ads and direct mail to support their endorsed candidate Dan McCready. The ads and mailings will contrast McCready’s record of creating jobs through solar energy projects with opponent Dan Bishop’s record of favoring oil industry and toxic polluter interests.
“Dan McCready is the environmental champion we need in the Ninth District,” said Dan Crawford, North Carolina LCV Director of Governmental Relations. “McCready puts our country first — he fought for us as a Marine combat veteran, and now he’s fighting for our earth as the climate crisis gets more and more severe. North Carolinians are already suffering from climate-fueled extreme weather, and we need leaders like McCready who will act on climate to protect our families and our future.”
The LCV Victory Fund makes independent expenditures in campaigns aimed at defeating pro-polluter candidates or helping to elect environmental champions. By law, these independent expenditures cannot be coordinated or made in consultation with any candidate campaign. But LCV and other environmental organizations are also directly supporting McCready’s campaign by contacting their members to volunteer and turn out to vote, and you can help McCready have the funds to cross the finish line.
The latest polls show this contest is highly competitive, and it has attracted major interest from both major political parties, as well as industry lobbies and public interest groups. Oil industry interests strongly favor Bishop. The contest is viewed as a proxy for the nationwide battles in next year’s battle for the country’s future.
The Ninth Congressional District stretches across eight counties along the state’s southern border, and includes parts of the cities of Charlotte and Fayetteville. It has been viewed as a strongly Republican-leaning district, but was one of the closest congressional contests in the nation in 2018. The state Board of Elections took the unusual step of invalidating the results of last year’s contest after evidence showed a pattern of extensive absentee ballot fraud on behalf of the Republican nominee in that contest, Mark Harris. Harris declined to run in the special election, and Bishop won a multi-candidate primary.
Early voting has begun in the contest. The election will conclude on Tuesday, September 10.
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