By james art Durham Democrats celebrated the first day of early voting Thursday with appearances by Tim Waltz and Bill Clinton at an invitation-only rally of about 200 staff and supporters at the high school of the Lyons Park Community Center.
But on rare occasions when the warm-up band was more exciting than the headliner, Durham’s own lineup of younger locals may have accidentally displaced the former president and current vice-presidential candidate.
The first speaker, Mayor Pro-Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton, danced as he took the stage to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?”
“Bull City, are you in the house today?” he asked the borderline rowdy crowd before launching into a five-minute rallying cry focused on the local angles — investment in affordable housing and help for small business owners — of Harris’ economic agenda. Waltz.
“We’re the fourth most educated city in America,” Middleton said. “And this being Bull City, we know a bull when we see one. We are aware of the choice before us in this election.”
“NORTH CAROLINAAAAAAH,” Middleton roared. “Come on and get up!”
After Middleton, Sheriff Clarence Burkhead emphasized the law-and-order credentials of the ticket, and state Sen. Natalie Murdoch and state Rep. Zach Hawkins reminded the crowd of the importance of voting in a swing state.
“The road to the White House goes through the great state of North Carolina. But more importantly, it goes right through Bull City,” Hawkins said. Behind him, a massive poster broadcasts to attendees that “NORTH CAROLINA IS EARLY VOTING.”
The high energy continued as the crowd, filled with even more local politicians like Mayor Leonardo Williams, state Sen. Mike Woodard and Sophia Chitlik, Woodard’s likely successor, waited 40 minutes for Walz and Clinton to appear. Some young people in the stands filmed a version of the viral “HOT-TO-GO” dance, while another part of the room did the wave.
When Walz finally took the stage, he looked right at home among the billowing sea of orange text on camo background campaign signs. In his 30-minute speech, he railed against the misinformation — about migrants and election results — that has become a trademark of the Trump-Vance campaign and painted a bleak picture of a second Trump administration.
“You remember 2016, you remember the path [Trump] were talking,” Waltz said. “This is not this Trump. It’s something much more insane, something much more desperate.
The crowd booed and cheered at the appropriate times, though a line about Waltz and Harris being gun owners got a lighter cheer from the ultra-blue crowd.
Clinton, sending the message that she is “no longer running for anything but my grandchildren’s future,” pointed out that she is only two months younger than Trump. He later joked that he had a petition ready in case he was sent to prison by an armed Justice Department in Trump’s second administration.
“I want him to transfer me to Guantanamo, because when you’re 78 years old, you worry a lot more about it being too cold than too hot,” Clinton said.
But after about 20 minutes, the atmosphere clearly shifted from block party to lecture hall, as Clinton used her raised, shaking hands to demonstrate an imbalance of supply and demand in Economics 101. Members of the crowd silently turned as her voice, merging with the hum of the high school HVAC, interrupted only by the occasional ringing of the phone. A few people quietly left the gym.
As the former president’s speech hit the 40-minute mark after touching on every hot topic from myths to Marjory Taylor Greene’s time-control conspiracy theories, he struggled to come up with as rousing or succinct a message as younger politicians in Durham. And he may have accidentally reminded some Democrats why they recently kicked 81-year-old Joe Biden off the slate.
“Bill, we can’t hear you,” shouted an audience member after Clinton’s first few lines were too quiet to be heard clearly over the gym speakers.
One wonders, given the Democrats’ reported poor showing with black voters this election cycle, if Obama is not available.
After the speeches, however, there was no shortage of admirers who slipped through the crowd to take selfies with a wide-eyed Walls and a smiling Clinton.
Contact reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].