President Joe Biden will be the sole Democrat on North Carolina’s 2024 presidential primary ballot, the state’s top election officials confirmed Tuesday.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the bipartisan, five-member North Carolina State Board of Elections voted unanimously to finalize the primary candidate lists the state’s Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian parties submitted last month. No names were added beyond what the political parties requested for their March 5 primaries.
Tuesday’s vote by the state board of elections reaffirmed its initial approval, made in December and based on the North Carolina Democratic Party’s request to leave President Biden as the alone Democrat for the primary election ballot. While the board has the authority to override a political party’s request and add more presidential primary candidates, none of the board’s Democrat or Republican members proposed doing so.
The decision effectively shot down three of President Biden’s potential challengers: Dean Phillips, a Minnesota congressman; Marianne Williamson, a self-help author; and Cenk Uygur, the founder and a host of the progressive political online show, “The Young Turks.”
According to the board, none of the three Democrats formally petitioned to be added to the March 5 ballot. North Carolina’s election law mandates that a candidate must first gather at least 10,000 supporting signatures before filing such a petition.
“State law permits a candidate to be included on a party’s primary ballot by gathering sufficient petition signatures from North Carolina voters, but no such petitions were received by the State Board,” the election officials said Tuesday.
Tommy Mattocks, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Democratic Party, defended the decision to offer only President Biden as a candidate, arguing that no other candidates have been seriously campaigning in the Tar Heel State.
Trump to Remain on Ballot, For Now
The Republican Party primary, meanwhile, will feature seven candidates, including former President Donald Trump, the overwhelming frontrunner to be that party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office this year.President Trump, who dominates the national polls and remains Republican voters’ favorite, is allowed to appear on the ballot in North Carolina for the March primary after the elections board dismissed a challenge to his eligibility.
The board, made up of political appointees of three Democrats and two Republicans, on Dec. 19 voted 4-1 to reject a complaint seeking to disqualify President Trump from seeking a second term in the White House.
Similar challenges have been filed in more than two dozen other states, with Colorado becoming the first state ever to declare a presidential candidate ineligible under a section of the 14th Amendment, which bans anyone from holding federal offices if they have taken an oath of office to defend the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
“Trump engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, after having previously taken an oath as the top officer of the United States to support the Constitution,” read the complaint, filed by Bryan Martin, a retired attorney who worked as assistant solicitor general in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore spoke in defense of the board’s decision not to take President Trump off of the ballot in a key swing state where he won with 49.9 percent of the vote in 2020.
“The complaint filed with the NCSBE against President Trump has entirely no merit and has one aim—to deny North Carolina voters their Constitutional right to decide for themselves who our next president will be,” Mr. Moore said in a statement. “Rather than let the voters decide, some activists would prefer to effectively silence the former president.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has also said he is moving to introduce a bill that would block federal funding from going into any state entity that “misuses the 14th Amendment for political purposes.”
“Regardless of whether you support or oppose former President Donald Trump, it is outrageous to see left-wing activists make a mockery of our political system by scheming with partisan state officials and pressuring judges to remove him from the ballot,” the senator said in a press release.
That decision of the elections board was appealed by Mr. Martin on Dec. 29, setting the stage for state courts to rule on whether President Trump is eligible to appear on North Carolina’s presidential primary ballot.
Besides President Trump, six Republican presidential candidates are set to appear on the March 5 ballot: Texas pastor Ryan Binkley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
