Kathy Manning Comes Up Short In North Carolina House Race
Former Jewish Federations of North America chair Kathy Manning is projected to lose her North Carolina congressional race by a margin of 52%-45%.
Manning, one of many Democratic Jewish women to run as first-time candidates this cycle, long trailed in the polls against one-term Republican Rep. Ted Budd but had managed to narrow the gap as election day drew nearer.
Manning out-fundraised Budd leading up to the election, but Budd, a local gun store owner, made hay of the fact that more than half of Manning’s donors came from outside the state.
The heavily-gerrymandered 13th district stretches from Charlotte’s northern suburbs to Greensboro. A federal judge ruled in August that the state’s electoral districts were unconstitutionally drawn to favor the Republican Party, but that it was too late to change the maps before election day.
Budd won his race 56%-44% in 2016. But the nature of the maps, designed to protect the GOP, left them susceptible for a massive wipeout if Democratic turnout (or Republican apathy) vastly exceeded their expectations. In addition to turning out Democratic votes, Manning would have needed to flip wealthy and college-educated voters in the district’s suburbs who typically vote Republican.
EXPLORE ALL THE RACES WITH JEWISH CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES IN OUR INTERACTIVE MAP
Manning was the first woman to chair the JFNA, and was the founding chair of Jewish day school network Prizmah. She has been an active philanthropist and community leader in Greensboro for 30 years. She says she was inspired to run because of concerns about health care — one of her daughters has a pre-existing condition.
She was also inspired by her Judaism. She cited the rabbinic compilation Pirkei Avot in an interview with JTA last year: “It’s not our obligation to complete the work, but neither are we free from the obligation to get it started.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO