Flywheel Design, a downtown-Durham marketing company, says its benefit bash for Barack Obama raised more than $1,000 — what’s more, it made news overseas.
BBC correspondent Jamie Coomarasamy used the Oct.8 affair at Flywheel’s office to illustrate a North Carolina shift toward favoring Democrats in the November election, in cities as well as in rural black communities.
The Flywheel crowd, he told the British listeners, were “not poor African Americans, but better off, better educated whites, the kind of out-of-staters who’ve been moving to North Carolina in recent years, taking off the [state’s historic] red edge.”
Flywheel owner Woody Holliman said the BBC spotted a notice about the benefit on the national Obama Web site. On the broadcast, Holliman said he will be giving employees time off to take voters to the polls.
“I’ve never felt this way about an election before,” Holliman said.
