*By Christian Smith*
North Carolina may be gun safety advocates' best bet for making legislative inroads this November, said Sarah Ullman, filmmaker and founder of One Vote at a Time, a PAC that creates free campaign ads for pro-gun safety candidates.
"I think North Carolina is really interesting right now," Ullman said Monday in an interview on Cheddar. "People smell an opportunity to make huge, huge gains for Democrats."
North Carolina, a state with a strong firearms culture and deep ties to the NRA, might seem an unlikely place for gun safety advocates.
But thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling requiring the state to redistrict in an effort to curb gerrymandering, Ullman believes Democrats can make real progress.
Republicans in North Carolina currently hold a supermajority in both the state's House and Senate, which means both bodies can box Democrats out of policy decisions. Ullman hopes that through her team's work, Democrats can win back enough seats and end the GOP's stronghold on the state legislature.
This year, One Vote at a Time will work with 190 candidates across 10 states, she said. To make the cut, a candidate must stand a chance of winning and also be pro-gun safety ー the definition of which the PAC determines on a state-by-state basis.
"What it means to be pro-gun safety is very different in Texas versus North Carolina," Ullman said. "We have a political adviser, we talk to different political people in the state to make an assessment on which candidates are the best for us."
The cost of ads varies, since different states have vastly different rules about the amount of money a PAC can contribute to a campaign. To limit costs, One Vote at a Time executes many simultaneous ad shoots for candidates in a single day, so the organization can distribute the cost across several campaigns.
The ads run online and, if the candidate's campaign can afford it, on local broadcast networks.
One Vote at a Time has raised just over a $1 million this year.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/from-films-to-filings-why-one-director-decided-to-make-her-own-super-pac).
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Thursday that the U.S. is investing more than $100 million in the Caribbean region to crack down on weapons trafficking, help alleviate Haiti’s humanitarian crisis and support climate change initiatives.
At Cleveland's Urban Kutz Barbershop, customers can flip through magazines as they wait, or help themselves to drug screening tests left out in a box on a table with a somber message: “Your drugs could contain fentanyl. Please take free test strips.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday condemned a wave of “cruel” and “callous” state legislation curbing the rights, visibility and health care access of LGBTQ+ people, while causing the community to feel under attack for being who they are.
Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the global Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America through his Christian Coalition, has died. He was 93.
The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case, ordering the creation of a second district with a large Black population.
Mike Pence opened his presidential bid with an unusually forceful critique of former President Donald Trump over Jan. 6, his temperament and abortion on Wednesday as he became the first vice president in modern history to challenge his former running mate.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasted no time going after Donald Trump while launching his presidential campaign on Tuesday, calling the former president and current Republican primary front-runner a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog" and arguing that he's the only one who can stop him.
Saying gender identity is real, a federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
With concerns about misinformation spreading online, European Union officials want to more closely regulate artificial intelligence, and they're asking the world's biggest tech companies for help.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Ed Markey, and Mazie Hirono sent a letter to top officials at Twitter expressing their concerns over the platform's privacy policy.
