In the British army of the colonial era it was called the butcher’s bill: the after-action tally of troops killed in the last battle, or wounded, or missing in action. Essential information for leaders, as a long campaign inexorably whittled down troop strength (and morale), constantly reshaping strategic options. Yet equally essential information for the troops on the ground, enabling them to personalize the otherwise brutally impersonal. “Aye, that one was Johnny...a good lad...cut down in his prime by the bastards.”
Now the North Carolina progressive action group, Progress NC, is bringing the butcher’s bill home again, recognizing that (in the immortal words of Tip O’Neill) all politics is local.
The Raleigh News & Observer reports this morning:
Progress NC, a left-of-center advocacy group, is raising money to post billboard ads in communities that Hurricane Matthew hit last October. The ads would blame President Donald Trump for the level of recovery funding the state has received.
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Gov. Roy Cooper sought more than $900 million in the state’s latest request for federal hurricane-relief funding. North Carolina received $6.1 million, less than 1 percent of what it asked for.
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Based on money received, the group is looking to put billboards in Robeson County, Wilmington and Beaufort County. He said the organization will continue to raise money and look to put billboards in other places.
Those counties were hit hard by flooding in the wake of Hurricane Matthew last year, destroying homes, displacing thousands of residents, wiping farms and businesses off the map. Robeson County in particular was essentially cut off from the rest of the world, as floodwaters rose and stayed for weeks. A rural, high-poverty county, Robeson went for Trump in the election (by a 4 point margin), largely because many of its most vulnerable citizens, working-class blacks, were simply unable to get to the polls. New Hanover County (home to the city of Wilmington) also went for Trump by 4 points. And Beaufort County went hard for Trump — by 24 points.
By refusing 99% of the disaster relief requested by the governor, the Trump administration left his own voters face down in the mud.
And this is a story repeated over and over again in NC (and across America). The rural town of Belmont, NC and its Republican mayor fought for years to save its tiny community hospital — the only emergency room within a 50 mile drive — but lost last year. Then-governor Pat McCrory (R) refused to expand Medicaid in the state, sounding that hospital’s (and many others’) death knell.
Stories like these abound. And unlike more abstract issues, they hit home to the individuals concerned. Bringing those stories directly and simply to the voters who are Republicans’ victims — making politics local again, as Progress NC is doing with these billboards — is a potent strategy. Forget sexy ‘digital’ strategies. Many of these folks don’t — can’t— do digital. But they see billboards every day.
How many tourism dollars were lost from New Hanover County hospitality workers’ pockets due to NC Republicans’ loathsome ‘bathroom bill?’ How many Marines from Camp Lejeune won’t be coming home to their families in Onslow County thanks to Trump’s bumbling military adventures? How deep a hit to their meager budgets did the working poor in Moore County take when state Republicans funded tax cuts most benefiting the wealthy with sky-high increases in automobile registration fees disproportionately hitting the poor? How many Gaston County accident victims didn’t make it to an emergency room in time, after Belmont’s hospital was shuttered due to state Republicans’ indifference? How many more kids dropped out of school in Chatham County as state Republicans slashed public education funding, plunging NC from the middle of the pack to 47th among the 50 states?
Take the answers to these questions home, directly to the voters involved, as Progress NC is now doing. Do it every day between now and November 2018. Keep it simple. Make it personal.
Post the butcher’s bill in every corner of the land.