Meet the woman who may have saved the governor’s veto power
Lots of politicians say they never imagined running for office. When Diamond Staton-Williams says it, it actually sounds true. A registered nurse by trade, she won a seat on Harrisburg Town Council in 2017 after one of her friends in the Democratic Party suggsted she run. When she was re-elected last year, people started asking her to run for the NC General Assembly.
“I filed the last week [you could], and I was still saying no the day before,” she tells me. “So you can’t not pay attention to your calling.”
On Tuesday, Staton-Williams appeared poised to represent Cabarrus County’s District 73 in the NC House. Staton-Williams led Republican Brian Echevarria by a mere 425 votes with almost 1,600 absentee and provisional ballots left to count. Echevarria has not conceded the race and is waiting for the final vote tally, but if the result holds, Staton-Williams may have decided how much power the Republicans hold in North Carolina.
The GOP hoped to gain a supermajority, or 60% of the seats, in both chambers of the legislature, which would allow Republicans to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto power. The loss of said power would allow Republicans to pass even further restrictions on abortion rights and overrule vetoes on laws that are transparent attacks on democracy and the state’s marginalized people.
Before Staton-Williams decided to run, a friend helped lay out the landscape for her: This was one of the most competitive seats in the state. The Democrats needed to get as many as possible to protect the bodily autonomy of North Carolina women, something Staton-Williams knows the importance of firsthand. Before the birth of her son, she had three nonviable pregnancies. She has had those conversations and made those decisions with her doctor.
So she ran. She got support from the North Carolina Democratic Party. She got support from grassroots organizing group Down Home NC and similar organizations. And she got to knocking doors.
“We went in to knock doors, just to meet people where they are,” she tells me. “Going into neighborhoods that I haven’t traditionally been in, talking to voters who don’t traditionally vote in every election and just listening to see what their concerns were.”
She didn’t just target Democrats; she targeted unaffiliated voters and even Republican voters. She did this, she says, because being a representative for an area means representing everyone - not just the people you agree with. She found that for many, the biggest concerns were education, women’s rights, and access to healthcare.
All three have touched Staton-Williams’s own life, but she is particularly passionate about education. As a child, Staton-Williams struggled with reading. She transferred schools in the first grade, and her first grade teacher gave her extra attention to help her reach her potential. In the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, she was part of Communities in Schools, a program that provides support for children in poverty. The community support she received helped her eventually complete her master’s degree in healthcare administration and organizational leadership.
“There are more kids like me, and they need us,” she says. “They need us as adults, parents, community members to stand up for them.”
Staton-Williams is someone her community knows, and someone people in her community can relate to. Vicente Cortez, the field director for Down Home NC, told me that Down Home volunteers ran into Staton-Williams multiple times while knocking doors for her. On a call with Down Home Thursday night, a member told the team they “fought hard for Diamond, because she works just like I do.”
If Staton-Williams still comes out on top, it’s proof that Democrats can win in more than just metropolitan areas.
“I think it is incumbent upon all of us, because we can’t do this alone,” Staton-Williams says. “We’re not in this world alone; we are in it together. And if we want to do great things and make sure that people prosper, we have to come in and do it together.”
This story was originally published November 14, 2022 at 4:00 AM with the headline "Meet the woman who may have saved the governor’s veto power."
