In rural North Carolina, party strategists are searching for an answer to a question that has repeatedly shaped Democratic prospects: whether Democrats can mobilize Black voters who live outside the state’s biggest cities. With Roy Cooper running for the U.S. Senate, Democrats are arguing that the electoral math may depend not just on turnout among Black voters statewide, but on whether rural Black voters—particularly those in eastern counties—feel reached out to, asked to vote, and persuaded to follow through.
Ricky Brinkley, a 65-year-old former truck driver who has lived in the state for most of his life, described the disconnect as elections come around. While working at his daughter’s beauty supply store near the Nashville courthouse, Brinkley said, “People don’t come out like they should and ask you how you feel about things.” He added, “You want somebody to vote, but you don’t want to do nothing to get the vote. No, it don’t work that way.”
Brinkley is among rural Black residents Democrats have often failed to mobilize as the party looks to narrow Republican advantages in North Carolina, a battleground state. Democratic leaders and community figures frame the challenge as urgent because it comes despite the party’s historical strength with Black voters—strength they say does not consistently translate into rural participation.
State party chair Anderson Clayton said rural outreach in North Carolina must be understood differently than many campaign efforts assume. Clayton said, “People want to look at the word ‘rural’ in North Carolina and equate it to the word ‘white,’” adding that in her vision, reaching out to rural voters means reaching out to rural Black voters.
Clayton’s comments echo what local leaders say they see on the ground. The Rev. James Gailliard, a former state lawmaker who leads a Black congregation in Rocky Mount, said Democrats do not win statewide by focusing narrowly on places such as Durham. “You don’t win this state in Durham,” Gailliard said. “You win it in the east.”
While North Carolina is known for the Research Triangle—Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill—and for Charlotte’s financial hub, rural areas and small towns play a role in determining outcomes, according to the way both parties have organized in recent decades. Democrats say their obstacle is not simply voter realignment by white voters toward Republicans. They also point to differences in how often Black voters vote between urban areas and rural communities, with many rural Black residents concentrated east of the Triangle along highways toward the Atlantic.
Cooper, 68, previously won two terms as governor and four terms as state attorney general. Republicans hold major state-level power now, including control of the state courts and legislature, and they have redrawn the congressional map. The former governor has also spent recent months holding roundtables with Black farmers, business owners and civic leaders in eastern North Carolina, as well as students from North Carolina A&T University, and his campaign promises a statewide organizing effort before November.
Gailliard said that approach still needs to be strengthened and made more intentional, emphasizing the practical work of organizing where people live. As the founding pastor at Word Tabernacle Church, Gailliard described his own political experience after Republican-led redistricting helped cost Black state lawmakers seats. He said regaining ground requires neighborhood-level organizing and investment from national Democrats, and he said he struggled to get support from Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. Gailliard recalled, “I couldn’t get any traction,” adding, “I begged them to bring her to Rocky Mount. I said, ‘Listen, Rocky Mount is the gateway to the East. If we crack Rocky Mount, we’ve cracked the East.’ Could not convince them to come. Two weeks later, guess who’s in Rocky Mount? Donald Trump.”
Gailliard said the Harris campaign sent former President Bill Clinton to the area instead. Still, Gailliard said Cooper needs help from people like him to win. “Roy is a great friend, and I’m gonna run my butt off to help him in every way, but I’m not banking on his coattails,” Gailliard said. “I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to grow coattails for him.”
Clayton said the party is also trying to address gaps in how national Democrats have prioritized North Carolina earlier in election cycles. She said she has leaned heavily on local money to finance 25 full-time staffers, more than three times what the state party had heading into the 2022 midterms. In Bertie County, Democratic chairwoman Camille Taylor described how that shift is felt in communities with smaller populations. Taylor, whose hometown of Powellsville has fewer than 200 residents, said it can be especially difficult to persuade rural voters to care about elections beyond the presidency, even though she tells them “these are the races and the people that you’re going to interact with more.”
Statewide, Democrats say they have recruited candidates in all 170 legislative districts, including two Democratic-aligned independents, and in every U.S. House district. They also point to a statewide race: state Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls, a civil rights attorney and Black woman, is running for reelection.
Gailliard said he has identified hundreds of organizations—nonprofits, neighborhood associations and other groups—that can do issue-oriented work as the election approaches. He said he wants the groups matched to specific precincts and given resources so they can reach voters and persuade them to vote. He also urged a strategy for volunteer engagement, saying he wants volunteers to be trained by Democratic and left-leaning organizations rather than having outside groups knock on rural Black voters’ doors. “We can’t have 21-year-old recent college graduates from Utah knocking doors at $22 an hour in the hood,” Gailliard said. “That just does not work. They’re not a trusted messenger.”
Democrats argue that those persuasion efforts can have a cumulative effect in close races. About 2 in 10 North Carolina voters in the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections were Black, according to AP VoteCast, as well as in the 2022 Senate election. Roughly 4 in 10 Black voters in the state’s last presidential election said they live in small towns or rural communities, similar to the share who said they live in the suburbs, while only about one-quarter reported living in urban areas.
Small shifts can matter when outcomes are tight, Democrats note. In 2008, Barack Obama became the last Democratic presidential nominee to win North Carolina, by a margin of just 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million votes cast. Democrats also point to turnout patterns, saying that between 2020 and 2024, turnout declined more in counties with larger Black populations. Counties where Black voters make up about 30% to 40% of the electorate saw the biggest drop, with turnout falling by more than 3 percentage points, while counties with smaller Black populations saw more modest declines of about 1 percentage point.
Back in Nashville, Brinkley said the issue for Democrats is not only whether people hear campaign messages, but whether they are personally asked. “Black and rural voters are not transactional,” he said. “They are relational.” Brinkley said he expects local Democrats to earn his vote. He said he plans to vote for Cooper and other Democrats—but only if he votes himself. “I could. I could. I may vote,” he said. “There’s just so much going on.”