Democrats think they’ve now got a shot at an open seat in Republican-leaning North Carolina to help them seize the closely divided U.S. Senate.
Earlier on Democrats seemed to think the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr was a low priority. They didn’t spend much money in the state.
But former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee, is closing on Republican Congressman Ted Budd who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
The Real Clear Politics poll average shows her behind Budd by fewer than 4 percentage points, near the margin of error.
Beasley had raised $15.9 million as of June 30 to Budd’s $6.3 million. Budd, though, has more outside support in his race, with $8.8 million being spent on his behalf but not donated directly to his campaign. Beasley has only $2.3 million in such outside support, and $6.3 million in such money working against her, according to the Open Secrets campaign finance website.
Beasley is still somewhat of a long shot, said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina.
“Democrats are defending states like Georgia, Arizona, and New Mexico, and to put resources in a state pretty much an uphill climb for a Democrat, they may look at it and say, ‘Where’s our best investment?’” Bitzer said.
Beasley proved overwhelmingly popular with Democrat primary voters. In a 10-candidate race, she received over 80 percent of the vote.
“She’s the first African-American female ever to lead the ticket” in North Carolina, said Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist in Raleigh. “It’s a big deal, especially in a midterm election, when the challenge is for the party holding the presidency to motivate the base.”
“She’s not a politician. She’s been a judge her entire career. It shows her to be independent, fair, and balanced.”
Jackson said that Beasley enjoys credibility similar to that of veterans running for office. “Routine attacks about being a liberal or being for open borders don’t have the same effect.”
Jackson said he doesn’t think Budd a very good candidate and opines he hasn’t run a good campaign, doing well in the primary because the Club for Growth, a conservative pro-business PAC, spent so much backing him. The group has put $14 million into his race so far.
Despite the state’s Republican lean, “I like our chances with Cheri Beasley,” Jackson said.
Republican political consultant Dee Stewart of Raleigh downplayed the tightening polls, saying the race doesn’t begin in earnest until Labor Day. Right now, it’s mostly about fundraising, he said, making sure money is in place for the fall campaign.
Bitzer said both parties in North Carolina now rely on outside money, most of it spent supporting campaigns but not coming to them directly or coordinated with them.
Every race in the state is now deeply competitive as the state is so evenly split, Stewart said. The state went narrowly for Trump in 2020. He got 49.1 percent of the votes to then-candidate Joe Biden’s 48.6 percent.
Beasley, 56, was appointed to the bench in 1999 as a state district court judge and served on a state appellate court before being appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2012.
She was elected to an 8-year term there in 2014 and appointed its chief justice, the first black woman to serve in that capacity, in 2019 by Governor Roy Cooper.
She narrowly lost, however, in seeking reelection to that post in 2020. Losing that closely, by only a few hundred votes, is typical of North Carolina elections now, Stewart said.
Budd, 50, was elected to Congress in 2016, representing a district between Charlotte and Greensboro. He still lives with his family on the cattle and chicken farm he grew up on outside Winston-Salem and owns a gun store.
Budd faced tough opposition in this year’s primary, including Pat McCrory, a former governor, but still took 59 percent of the vote to McCrory’s 25 percent.
McCrory once termed himself an Eisenhower Republican and later a Reagan Republican, but North Carolina Republican voters have moved beyond that and are now firmly Trump-aligned, Bitzer said.
They are further to the right than Reagan, who redefined conservatism in modern politics. If Reagan came back today, Bitzer said, “I‘d have to wonder how much of his old party he’d see in Trump’s party.”
McCrory was once termed the ninth most conservative governor in the nation.
But Budd’s supporters spent more than a million dollars airing a television ad attacking McCrory for being “too liberal” and appointing a commission “teaching kids to hate America,” according to Open Secrets.
Jackson rated Budd as the most conservative Republican to run for Senate in North Carolina since Jesse Helms.
Trump’s playbook has proven successful for many Republicans, particularly in North Carolina, and they follow it, Bitzer said. They take standard positions on critical issues and otherwise present something of a blank slate. They avoid the press and engage only with carefully selected small groups. They use television and the media to get their message out.
“The voters are like, ‘Okay, they check my boxes. I’m a Republican, they’re a Republican, and they’ve got my vote.’ That’s the power of partisan loyalty that we are at, in this polarized environment.”
Some establishment Republicans fret that aligning more closely than ever with Trump will backfire in purple states like North Carolina, lessening their appeal to swing groups like the proverbial soccer moms and college-educated voters moving into the growing state.
Stewart disagrees, arguing that their opponents have their own problems appealing to the middle.
“In an age of polarization, Democrats have gone way further to the Left than Republicans have to the Right.”
