As you likely know, HJR 235 is awaiting passage in the NC Senate, having already passed the House in 2023. It is especially important for all grassroots to be engaging their current Senator and asking them about their support for HJR 235. We have an opportunity after the November election for the resolution to be considered. We must pass in the Senate this year, otherwise we will be back again next session with a new resolution that will have to be passed in both the House and Senate.
In addition, it is also helpful to engage anyone running for the NC House, as this might be important for next session if we have to re-introduce the resolution.
There are a couple other considerations:
- Your current House or Senate member may or may not be running for re-election.
- Because of re-districting, the district you are voting in may be different than the one you are in right now. That also means that in some cases, you will be voting for someone in November who you are not familiar with.
Here is a step-by-step by step guide to identify your existing representative or senator if you don't already know them, how to determine what district you are in for the election and who is running in that district both in the House and Senate. Remember, right now the priority is to engage any sitting NC Senator, whether they are running for re-election or not:
- Do you know who represents you now, and what district you are voting in for the November election? If you do not, go here and enter your address. That will show you your current district and who represents you and what district you are voting in.
- For the district you are voting in for the November election, do you know who is running for the House and the Senate? If not, go here. If you scroll to page 5, you will see who is running in the Senate districts, followed by who is running in the House districts. Note that some of these candidates will be incumbents and you might know them. In other cases, you may not.
- For your current Senator, Democrat or Republican, especially if they are running again, attend campaign events and ask them about their support of COS. They will all be visible in the district campaigning. You can contact your county political party and their websites typically list events. You can also search Google for their campaign websites, or find them on social media.
- For sitting Republican Senators, approach them respectively at campaign events and ask them their position on COS. If they say they support the resolution, ask them to help convince Phil Berger to have a floor vote when they are in session starting 11/19. If at all possible, record a video of their comments and provide to COS leadership. But remember, always be kind and courteous!
- For all House and Senate candidates, incumbent or otherwise, engage them on their knowledge and support of COS and feed back any information gleaned to COS state leadership.
Let's get out there and talk to our current Senators and candidates for both the House and the Senate! We need to make sure they all know that COS is not going away.
