Keever Elected NC Democratic Party Chairperson
By Johnnie Grant
Former State Representative and long-time Asheville resident Patsy Keever was recently elected chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
Keever won 369 votes from the 560 members on the State Executive Committee. She beat Marshall Adame of Jacksonville, who gained 169 votes.
“It matters what happens in North Carolina, so it matters what each of us does,” said Keever during her nomination speech. “We have a lot of work to do and I’m ready to get started.”
Keever, a Charlotte native, has been an active community leader in Buncombe County for more than 40 years, and has held leadership positions with numerous community organizations, including CarePartners, Buncombe County Library Board of Trustees, the County Board of Health, United Way, the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, Asheville/Buncombe League of Women Voters, and the Chamber of Commerce Legislative Task Force.
She attended NC public schools and graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in Elementary Education, and then earned a Master’s Degree in Education from Western Carolina University. For 25 years she worked as a teacher of language arts and social studies, primarily at Enka Middle School, before retiring in 2002 to look after her husband, who was terminally ill.
In 1992, while still teaching, Keever was elected to the first of three terms on the Buncombe County Commission. In 2004, she ran unsuccessfully (45%-55%) for Congress against long-time incumbent Charles Taylor.
During the next few years she remarried and stayed active in the community and in the Democratic Party leadership. In 2010 she challenged incumbent Democrat Bruce Goforth in the primary election, winning by 60%-40%. Goforth stepped down before the expiration of his term, and Keever was selected by local Democrats, and then named by Governor Bev Perdue, to fill the seat. That fall she won a full two-year term, and two years later the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters awarded her the 2012 Rising Star award for her work in the legislature.
A highly effective legislator, Keever was targeted for defeat by the Republican Party when it drew new district lines following the 2010 census. She was placed into the same district as then three-term incumbent Susan Fisher, who had represented parts of Asheville since 2004.
Keever chose not to run against her good friend and colleague for a state House seat that year. Instead she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in North Carolina’s 10th congressional district. In May 2012, she lost the general election to incumbent Patrick McHenry.
The following year she was elected first vice-chair of the NC Democratic Party, and in January 2015 she was elected chair.
Keever and the party she leads face major challenges as the nation heads toward the 2016 presidential election. Democrats are the minority party in state politics for the first time in more than 100 years. The party must pay down more than $260,000 in debt as of the end of 2014, and bring back big-time donors who have bypassed the party for independent expenditure groups.
Over the past two years, Republicans have controlled both legislative chambers and the Executive Mansion for the first time since 1870. The 2011 redistricting helped reinforce Republican gains, and GOP gerrymandering meant that the party now holds 10 of the 13 U.S. House seats—77% of the seats, though they won barely 56% of the vote. Republicans now also hold both U.S. Senate seats after Thom Tillis narrowly defeated Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan.
But with races for governor, U.S. Senate, and president on the ballot in 2016, Democrats expect to have a good chance to rebound next year. The party still has 700,000 more registered NC voters than Republicans, and North Carolina is expected to be a battleground presidential state. Keever is determined to turn that to the Democrats’ advantage.
“We may not have as much money as the Republicans, but what we do have is grassroots boots on the ground,” said Keever.
