A View from the Legislative Minority in the North Carolina of the 2020s: Where to Find Hope
Our April speaker will be State Senator Lisa Grafstein, D-Wake County. She will speak to us Sunday evening, April 28. The meeting begins at 7 pm at the home of Tom Cameron and Earl Actub.
Sen. Grafstein did her undergraduate work at Northwestern University in Chicago. She moved to North Carolina in 1990. She graduated from UNC Law School in Chapel Hill. Starting in 1995, she has practiced civil rights law, doing so since 2011 on the staff of Disability Rights North Carolina.
She has been President of the NC Association of Women Attorneys, Co-Chair of the NC Justice Center, and a Board member of NC Gay and Lesbian Attorneys. She has managed the campaigns of several woman running for appellate judgeships, including Linda Stephens and Robin Hudson.
In 2022, she ran for a newly created seat in the NC Senate and won. As a result of an NC Supreme Court decision that declared partisan gerrymandering safe from challenge, her district was redrawn in 2023 such that she was part of only two pairs of State Senators who were put in the same district. In legislative jargon, that is known as “double-bunking.” She was paired with Senate Democratic Whip Jay Chaudhuri. But she decided to move in midterm from North Raleigh to Southern Wake County so she could run for an open seat. She went from an easy Democratic seat to a somewhat Republican leaning tossup district. Her opponent, the GOP nominee, filed an alienation of affections lawsuit last year against the GOP Speaker of the House.
Lisa Grafstein is currently the only out LGBT Senator. There are several out LGBT members in the House.