A contentious issue is bubbling up between North Carolina’s 121 delegates to the Democratic National Convention and national party leaders, and it has nothing to with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders

No, it’s not politics at issue, but soft drinks.

North Carolina’s national convention-goers are notorious for imbibing soft drinks, while their Northern counterparts tend more toward harder beverages.

But a recently passed tax on sugary drinks and even diet beverages in Philadelphia, the site of the convention, would add $1.08 to any purchase of a six-pack of 12-ounce soft drinks.

The tax was scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2017, but the city fathers in the City of Brotherly Love decided that an influx of thousands of imbibing convention-goers to the Democratic gathering, which opens Monday and runs through Thursday, was too good a revenue opportunity to pass up, so the effective date of the tax was moved up to July 1.

N.C. Democratic Party Chairwoman Patsy Keever told Carolina Journal that this extra expense for delegates has become a huge issue.

“Look,” said Keever, “we North Carolinians come from a state that invented Pepsi-Cola and Cheerwine. We take our soft drinks seriously, and we drink a lot of them. If the cost goes up more than a buck a six-pack, that will put a serious dent in our per diems.”

Keever explained that Northern and Western delegates are known to shun soft drinks, preferring harder beverages. “And they mostly drink their liquor neat,” said Keever, while North Carolinians are fond of mixing with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other sweet drinks.

After hearing of the new soft-drink tax, several Democratic delegates said they’d rather stay home than have to spend nearly a week in Philadelphia without a bubbly sweet drink.

“I really wanted a Philly cheese steak from Geno’s but that wasn’t enough to make up for not having my Pepsi to mix with Captain Morgan,” said one delegate, who wished to remain anonymous, lest his pastor learn he imbibes.

To allay the fears of people like this delegate, however, a plan was hatched.

After an emergency meeting in late June, Keever announced that several hundred cases of soft drinks of various brands will be trucked to Philadelphia for the convenience of Tar Heel delegates.

Democratic Party interns could be seen delivering the cases of drinks to state Democratic Party headquarters on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh recently.

Some delegates were concerned about being scofflaws and smugglers, but one delegate eased their concerns by pointing out that Northerners had been doing this with North Carolina-made cigarettes for decades.

North Carolina delegate and U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, D-12th District, told CJ she was fully on board with smuggling soft drinks for delegates, saying it was “exciting” to break the law for a just cause. “This tax on drinks is a burden for all delegates,” she said. “It’s just and fitting that we should use civil disobedience to fight it.”

Even so, many Democratic delegates, while upset that they might have had to pay the tax in Philadelphia, were impressed with the amount of revenue it is reported already to be raising.

“Even though we don’t want to have to pay this tax at our convention,” said Adams, “we have to be big enough to bite the bullet and do something good for North Carolina, like passing a law like this for our state.”

Parting Shot is a parody loosely based on recent items in the news. This appeared in the July 2016 print edition of Carolina Journal.