After difficult year, NC Democrat opens up about his mental health, fight within party

Last year, as he faced scrutiny along with a few other Democrats for breaking ranks with their party on certain bills and voting with Republicans, state Rep. Cecil Brockman says he was struggling with a “deeply personal” issue that marked one of the “most difficult and darkest” points in his life.

In the runup to an exceedingly close primary last month, Brockman faced criticism for, among other votes, joining four other House Democrats in September to approve the GOP budget.

Youth leaders in the party slammed the group of Democrats, four of whom including Brockman are Black, for voting for a budget that they described as “a massive assault on reproductive rights, Black representation in our courts, public education, and access to health care,” and told them to “start acting like Democrats and stop helping NC Republicans pass some of the most brazenly anti-Black legislation we’ve seen in years.”

Brockman also faced questions about his absences from the House floor, having missed 179 out of 611 votes over the course of last year. Brockman told The Assembly earlier this year his absences were due to an “extremely major” medical issue he wanted to keep private. But last week — in an op-ed he shared with The News & Observer, and in an interview at his office — Brockman said that after struggling with whether he should talk about it publicly, he decided to open up about a mental breakdown he experienced last year.

Brockman, who has represented High Point and other parts of Guilford County since 2015, said he didn’t talk about the breakdown publicly before the campaign because he didn’t want it to seem like “an excuse.”

He lamented that his struggles were “used against” him and said he wanted to respond to attacks ads and mailers that focused on his absences from the legislature, and questioned his commitment to his district, which he said engaged in “racist tropes that a Black man was not doing his job, that he was just missing work.”

“That offended me, that offended my family,” Brockman said. “They have no idea what I was going through, even though I told them it was a medical issue, I told everybody, but that wasn’t enough for them.”

Brockman said he also wanted to talk about his mental health publicly to try to normalize talking about an issue that can carry a stigma in the African American community, and to encourage others struggling with their mental health to seek help from professionals.

“It’s not necessarily something that you talk about, you’re supposed to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s considered weak to go through these things,” Brockman said. “It’s not weak to admit that you’re struggling, it’s not weak at all.”

Brockman said that as a state lawmaker and someone who is in the public eye, he’s accustomed to being criticized, but he struggled with people “constantly” questioning his motives. He said he wouldn’t have been able to deal with his mental health without his family, friends and his psychiatrist, who told him that he wouldn’t be able to fully recover without taking time off from work, because his job was triggering his trauma.

‘Why should my district wait for Democrats to get back in power?’

Brockman told The N&O that after serving a few terms in the legislature, he realized that his district, which was among the worst in the country for major problems like food insecurity and gun violence when he was first elected, wouldn’t receive any help unless he sought funding from the party in power.

In last year’s state budget, High Point received a total of $29.5 million in funds that Brockman said were desperately needed and would go toward supporting more than 30 nonprofits in his hometown. The amount High Point received last year was more than double what the town received in the previous budget.

Brockman said that his critics too easily dismissed the impact these funds would have on High Point. He also said that regardless of how he would’ve voted, the budget would’ve passed, since Republicans obtained a supermajority in both chambers last year.

“I could just vote no like all the other Democrats, and their districts got nothing,” Brockman said. “But Cecil Brockman got something for his district.

“That is something to be celebrated, not something that should be criticized from the folks who say they care about the poor, from the folks who say they care about people of color, (from) the folks who say they care about women, and (from) the folks who say they care about the most vulnerable people in our community, because that is what all of these resources went to do.”

In March, Brockman survived a formidable primary challenge from James Adams, a former president of the High Point NAACP, winning by just 85 votes.

Brockman said he’s committed to his party, and defended his voting record, pointing to a number of examples, including fighting against 2016’s House Bill 2 as an openly LGBTQ+ member of the General Assembly, supporting Medicaid expansion and abortion rights, and introducing legislation to provide free breakfast and lunch in public schools.

Brockman also said that as a proud and lifelong Democrat, he’ll be “working my butt off” to help President Joe Biden and gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein defeat an “atrocious” and “extreme” top of the ticket on the Republican side — in Donald Trump, who he said peddles racism, and Mark Robinson, whose comments referring to “transgenderism” as “filth” made him want to “punch him in the face.”

He said he also hopes Democrats are able to break the GOP’s supermajority and earn back some power in the legislature.

But at the same time, Brockman said, he remains committed to helping his district.

“Why should my district wait for Democrats to get back in power, just so I can start working for them, and bring resources back to the district?” Brockman said. “We’ve got to wait 10-20 years, possibly, with the way gerrymandering is, until Democrats (get) back in power, until I work for my poor, Black district?

“I’m sorry, that’s (inexcusable),” Brockman said. “And I’m not going to do that, and I haven’t done that.”