How to matter in the minority party

Two Wake County Democrats recently offered very different theories of political power.

There are a lot of ways to serve in the minority party at the General Assembly, but they generally fall into two different camps.

You can spend your time cursing and shouting and reminding everyone that the majority is unfair. Or you can accept the arithmetic and figure out how to get something done anyway.

Two Democratic women from Wake County have just offered a useful illustration of this contrast.

Rep. Sarah Crawford recently appeared on the Do Politics Better podcast and talked about her work on the Gabe Torres Act.

Torres was the Raleigh police officer killed outside his home during the 2022 Hedingham mass shooting as he prepared to leave for work. Because he had not yet gone on duty, his death initially fell through a loophole in the state law providing benefits to families of public safety officers killed in the line of duty.

Crawford, a Democrat, introduced legislation to close it. She also understood that a bill with only Democratic support was unlikely to go anywhere in a Republ…