Two NC House opponents ran into each other at a brewery. The real surprise came next.

About seven months ago - back when we accidentally ran into each other more - Becky Carney and her family walked into a campaign event at Divine Barrel Brewing north of uptown in Charlotte. Carney, the longtime Democratic representative running in N.C. House District 102, was holding a meet-and-greet on a Saturday night. She didn’t know that her opponent, Republican Kyle Kirby, was hosting a birthday party for his wife, Addie, in the side room of the same brewery.

It didn’t take long for the incumbent and the challenger to see each other across the room. Two candidates. One brewery. One potentially awkward moment.

Or not.

This is a story about what politics used to be. Before yard signs jeopardized friendships. Before Facebook posts cost you customers. Before the R or D after your name told voters everything they needed to know about you.

Yes, politics has long built more walls than opened doors between us. But from the top down, this election has felt more flammable. There’s more at stake. There are more who are willing to say so, loudly. Have we ever felt more fidgety with the people around us?

So it might have been easy on that February night for two N.C. House candidates to ignore each other’s presence at Divine Barrel, but instead, Kyle and Addie Kirby walked up to Becky Carney and invited her and her family to join them for a few moments in the other room.

It might have been easy for Carney to politely say thank you but some friends are expecting me, but instead, she said sure and took her husband, daughter and two granddaughters into the Kirbys’ party.

It might have been, well, a little weird for everyone then. But instead, Kirby asked Carney if she wanted to say a few words to the birthday gathering. And Carney happily did just that (I’m a friendly person!” she says). And Kirby told his Democratic friends in the room that if they lived in District 102, Carney would be a fine person to vote for.

And also, the granddaughters got cupcakes.

“Kyle is a really nice guy,” Carney says now.

Says Kirby: “It wasn’t anything other than friends enjoying each other’s company.”

True, but it also was more than that. Carney has told the Divine Barrel story a few times during the campaign. She thinks it shows something that people don’t know about Republican and Democratic politicians in North Carolina – some of them like each other and are friends. “That still happens more than people know,” she says.

But it also happens less than it used to – especially in recent years. Not just in the General Assembly but everywhere, and the sneering disdain we see politicians direct toward each other is more commonplace in the rest of our lives. That didn’t begin with this president, by the way, although he embraces and embodies derision as much as any president has.

But on a Saturday night in February, a moderate Republican N.C. House candidate and Donald Trump supporter spent a few good minutes with a liberal N.C. House candidate who supports Joe Biden. No, that doesn’t mean you have to hug the next conservative or liberal who crosses your path, or that you should ignore when someone in the party you don’t belong to advocates for values you don’t share. But it’s a reminder in these coming weeks and months that our political battles don’t have to be fought on all fronts, and that no matter how much is at stake this election, if we let it overtake the basic decencies we show others, we’re in bigger trouble than we think.

This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.