NC Eleventh District Democrats work year-long to create fellowship and teambuilding towards strengthening our communities, state, and nation. Our fundraising enables the NC Democratic Party to build strong, local party organizations. We accomplish this by having an energized field and organizing presence throughout our state, providing enhanced training opportunities, giving fundraising support, and sharing data and other useful targeting resources.

We need YOU to make this happen.

Through your support of events like the Fall Western Gala at the Historic Grove Park Inn in Asheville and the 11th Congressional District Liston B. Ramsey Spring Gala, we make critical investments in the field programs, technology infrastructure, and Get-Out-the- Vote efforts that we all know are so important.

This is the time to stand up, to fight, and to win! United We Win!

Mississippi and South Carolina just LOVE North Carolina Republicans! House Speaker Tom Tillis, Rep. Tim Moffitt of Asheville, Senator Jim Davis of Franklin, and Senator Ralph Hise of Spruce Pine, and all of the Raleigh Republicans gave them a gift they could never have dreamed of, before Republicans took control in Raleigh. Mississippi and South Carolina could never have risen above North Carolina in school spending per pupil without the "leadership" of these Republicans and their vision that brought us the worst North Carolina state budget in our lifetime.

Please see the June 17, 2011 Editorial in the Asheville Citizen-Times:

'Generational damage' a real threat from budget

Ben J. Utley, past Chairman of the Macon County Democratic Party.

Democrat Bev. Perdue has become the first N.C. governor to veto a budget bill since the chief executive of our state was given that power in 1997.

Gov. Perdue said in her announcement Sunday that the Republican-led legislature's $20 billion dollar proposal would do “generational damage” to public education. She said the legislature has turned its “back on our schools, our children, our longstanding investment in education and our future economic prospects.”

Her veto was overridden in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The budget cuts passed by the legislature dramatically impact the very programs that have moved North Carolina to the forefront of our nation's educational efforts:

• $124 million in “discretionary” reduction passed on to local school districts is on top of the $305 million in deductions for 2009-10.

• 20 percent cut to the “More at Four” preschool program for at-risk children.

• Elimination of professional development funding for teachers, including the end of the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Cullowhee.

• Elimination of the Teaching Fellows program, which drew into the field of education some of our brightest young people.

In 1954, America was No. 1 in the world in math, science and college graduates. Today, we are 19th in science, 24th in math, and 12th in the world in the number of college graduates.

It is not so much that we are falling behind as it is that others have begun to catch up or pass us. China is now producing four times more college graduates in science, engineering, technological fields and mathematics than we are. They, and countries such as Sweden, Norway and Germany, are placing extraordinary emphasis upon education, research and innovation.

When given these circumstances and the importance of education to meeting the challenges we face today in the world, it is inconceivable that our legislature would dramatically cut or eliminate educational programs and services.

It is time for not only educators, but the public at large, to rise up and voice their concerns over the direction our Republican-led legislature is taking in dissolving our longstanding investments in education. It is time to quit being quiet.