Democrats quickly raise $13,000 to help reopen firebombed North Carolina GOP office

Democrats chip in to rebuild firebombed NC GOP office

(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 17 October 2016

As if the 2016 election could not get any stranger, just hours after the North Carolina Republican Party reported that its campaign office in heavily Democratic Orange County had been gutted with a Molotov cocktail, a collection of Democrats raised more than $13,000 in 40 minutes through crowdfunding site GoFundMe "to enable the Orange County, North Carolina Republican office to re-open as soon as possible." Nobody was hurt in the attack, which also included a spray-painted "Nazi Republicans get out of town or else" on the side of an adjacent building.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R) called the firebombing "an attack on our Democracy," and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump tweeted out that "animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina" were to blame for the attack. The North Carolina Republican Party thanked Trump and said "we will not be silenced nor suppressed by this evil act," but they also thanked Hillary Clinton for her condemnation of the attack.

North Carolina's Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is challenging McCrory in November, tweeted that "the culprits must be caught and brought to justice," and the North Carolina Democratic Party strongly condemned the "outrageous" attack. The Hillsborough police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (AFT) are investigating, and no suspect has yet been arrested or motive identified. The Orange County GOP is already back up and running, and so this could be seen as a rare sign of (almost) everyone working together to ensure a democratic election. Some Democrats who contributed to the GoFundMe campaign, however, got some pushback from the left:

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.