Dan Besse for Lieutenant Governor

Background:

A two-term city council member from Winston-Salem, NC with a 30 year career focused on aid to the disadvantaged, health care, and environmental stewardship. Dan has a decades long record of public service as a legal aid attorney, as well as with such groups as the NC Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (since 2006), the NC Environmental Management Commission (93-05), the NC Sedimentation Control Commission (94-02), the NC Coastal Resources Commission (85-93, chair 85-90), the NC Emergency Response Commission (87-92), in a variety of professional positions with Planned Parenthood since 1996.

He also has demonstrated elected leadership within the National League of cities (energy, environment, and education), as the chair of the stakeholders committee of the Piedmont Triad Early Action compact (a regional clean air coalition), and the board of directors of the Piedmont Triad Partnership (one of the top regional economic development organizations in the nation).

Dan has also earned the endorsement of the Progressive Democrats of North Carolina (by a 72% majority over his competitors in the primary race)

Goals:

To address the challenges of growth including: the increasing stress on our natural resources (water, air, forest, farmland), public infrastructure (transportation, water and sewer, education), and economy (job and workforce development).

Further, to address equal opporunity to insure that people have access to education, jobs, housing, and health care regardless of their race, gender, national origin, or sexual orientation.

Issues:

Environment (long term sustainability), Health Care (universal access to affordable health care including medication and mental health care), and Education (equal opportunity and access)

Grassroots Support:

Grassroots play a central role in our campaign.

We rely on volunteers to distribute our materials via targeted door to door canvassing and on volunteer-based phone banking.

Dan has been travelling the state for the past year to energize that grass-roots base at meet it at its source.

DFA Values:

Dan is socially progressive in his priorities for government. He considers equal opportunity and responsible environmental stewardship to be key objectives of a Democratic Government.

He is fiscally responsible in that he insists that we pay for our priorities. We can't claim that we support high goals and refuse to fund the efforts to achieve them.

Finally, we have to combine progressive principles with fiscal responsiblity by paying for our programs with financing that does not disproportionately draw from lower and middle income households.