VP HARRIS’ AKA SORORITY
FILES TO CREATE PAC
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
To date, the Democratic presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has raised upwards of $380 million entering the month of August.
Harris’ sorority - Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.(AKA’s), intends to add more to her campaign warchest.
On August 9th, the AKAs, the nation’s oldest Black Greek-letter sorority, and one of the “Divine Nine” of historically Black sororities and fraternities at HBCUs across the nation, filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to create a PAC, or political action committee, for the purpose of raising money to support federal political candidates during the 2024 election season.
VP Harris is an alumna of the AKAs, having pledged to its Alpha chapter while a student at historically Black Howard University in Washington D.C in 1986. She addressed the annual AKA convention, the 70th Boule, in Dallas, Texas just last month, when President Joe Biden decided to step down from the campaign and endorse her.
Harris told the AKA Convention then, "You are such an incredible part of my journey and I love you guys."
According to The Atlanta Voice, members of the AKA Sorority were among the 44,000 Black women who raised a reported $1.5 million for her campaign via Zoom call within a day after she announced she was running for the presidency.
AKA Sorority, Inc. is “…an international service organization, founded on the campus of Howard University in 1908,” according to its website. It is currently comprised of more than 325,000 initiated members in graduate and undergraduate chapters across 12 countries.
Other prominent members of the AKA include filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and comedienne Wanda Sykes. Both have reportedly expressed support for VP Harris’ presidential campaign.
A PAC, according to USA Today, is “…a political action committee, typically organized for the purpose of raising money to either elect - or defeat - a political candidate or ballot issue.”
PACs are “…most often dedicated to certain business, labor or ideological interests….,” and “…have specific rules that govern how [they] operate, regulating how much they can donate to candidate committees and national political parties in a calendar year,” USA Today continues.
There are several types of PACs, according to the FEC. The AKAs may be creating a SSF, or separate segregated fund, which allows it as a membership organization to “solicit money only from those connected with the association that sponsors it."
The name of the PAC the AKAs are creating reportedly is "AKA AKA 1908 PAC.”
The AKAs already have a voter registration, education and mobilization apparatus that works in concert with other Divine Nine organizations.
Currently the AKAs’ Mid-Atlantic Regional Director is Soror Nadine Vargas, who “…is a 30-year member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, a Silver Star and a Life Member. Currently, she is a member of the Alpha Theta Omega chapter in Raleigh, NC.
According to The Atlanta Voice, “ AKA is poised to mobilize and organize millions of Black voters in key swing states across the country.”
Currently, The NY Times/Siena College poll shows VP Harris leading Republican opponent, former Pres. Donald Trump by at least four percent points in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In North Carolina, Trump still leads Harris, 47.2% to 44.1%, which is considered a statistical tie, according to Cygnal Polling, on behalf of the conservative John Locke Foundation.
VP Harris is expected to be in Raleigh on Friday to talk about the economy. It will be her eighth visit to North Carolina this year.
A request for comment was sent to AKA Mid-Atlantic Chief of Staff Ade’Leaka Gore, but there was no response by press time.
-30-
AS GOP REGISTRATION GOES UP
IN NC, HARRIS-WALZ CAMPAIGN
IS HELPING NC DEMOCRATIC
REGISTRATION AS WELL
By Cash Michaels
County boards of elections don’t begin mailing out absentee ballots to eligible voters in North Carolina until Sept. 6th, and in-person early voting doesn’t begin until Oct. 11th, so there are no ballots cast as of yet.
But if recent voter registration numbers for both Democrats and Republicans across the state are any indication, the November 5th general election may see one of the largest voter turnouts in recent election years.
As of August 10th, 2024, there were 2,402,172 Democrats; 2,269,714 Republicans; and 2,849,518 unaffiliated voters in North Carolina.
Racially, there are 4,898,445 whites; 1,509,362 Blacks; and 664,272 undesignated; along with 308,345 Hispanics.
Gender-wise in North Carolina, females far outpace males across the state, 3,771174 to 3,213340.
Recent reporting shows that in the rural areas of the state, Republican registration has gone up dramatically.
Even though there are more registered Robeson County Democrats than there are Republicans, GOP voter registration over the past 20 years shows an uptick of 94%, from 7,274 registrations in December 2004 to 14,111 by July 27, 2024, according to WRAL-TV.
Meanwhile, Democratic voter registrations went down 40%, and unaffiliated registrations went up a whopping 327% from 5,942 to 25,367.
WRAL tracked voter registration figures in 25 North Carolina counties and found the same trend occurring as in Robeson County, which is a 60% majority - minority county with Blacks and Native Americans.
The TV station found urban counties, however, like Durham, Wake and Orange, displaying the opposite trend, with their number of Democratic registrations growing.
According to Chris Cooper, a Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, “From July 20-July 26, 2,351 people registered as Democrats in North Carolina--a 44 percent increase as compared to the previous week. New Republican and Unaffiliated voters, on the other hand, were both down from the previous week (-23% and -14% respectively).”
Prof. Cooper continues, “While this is good news for Democrats, we should not lose track of the larger story line: Democrats are losing in terms of voter registration, and a Harris effect of this size, even if it is sustainable, would not be enough to arrest the larger trends in party registration. As Andy Jackson of the John Locke Foundation notes, the available evidence indicates that Republicans will do better than Democrats during both the 2024 registration rise and the 2025 registration fall, leading them to overtake Democrats sometimes in 2025 or 2026."
Still, given the stakes of the November 5th general election in less than 90 days, most observers are counting on a Democratic explosion of voter registration, especially in North Carolina’s African-American community, to win the state for VP Harris, and down ballot statewide races.
Voter registration ends in North Carolina on Oct. 11th at 5 p.m. (with the exception of early voting - same day registration).
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment