From the Charlotte Observer:
N.C. Senate Majority Leader Martin Nesbitt Tuesday invoked the Republican landslide of 1994 in urging Democrats to take nothing for granted – and go to the polls.
He told the Charlotte Uptown Democrats that changes in election law could help his party avoid a GOP sweep like the one that surprised Democrats 16 years ago.
“We know it can happen now,” he said at the Levine Museum of the New South. “That’s probably the biggest thing that’s different.”
Nesbitt is the second-ranking Democrat in a Senate where Democrats now control 30 of 50 seats. But seven Democratic incumbents are either retiring or already have gone.
And with polls showing more voter enthusiasm for Republicans, the GOP is confident of picking up at least the six seats that would put them in charge for the first time since 1898.
Nesbitt said he believes Democrats will hold most contested races, even those in Republican-leaning districts currently held by Democrats.
“At the end of the day, they’re ours,” he said. “The only way those people are going to lose is if we don’t turn our people out on Election Day.”
Note: Nesbitt lost his N.C. House seat in that ’94 GOP landslide.