When Vice President Kamala Harris took control of the Democratic nomination in late July, something happened in North Carolina.
Volunteers poured in by the thousands. Of the more than 23,500 people who signed up, 94% had never done so before, the campaign said. In the week after President Joe Biden left office, voter registration rose among women overall and was even more pronounced among women of color, according to a tracking firm.
And all of this happened before the worst scandal yet hit Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, in which he, according to CNN reporting, declared himself a “black Nazi.”
Robinson had already appeared regularly in advertisements in North Carolina aimed at women, advocating a ban on abortion. According to him, the life of the mother was not at stake.
“It’s about killing a child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down,” Robinson says on video.
The unrest surrounding Robinson and signs of a revival of energy around Harris are keeping Democrats in the Tarheel State optimistic, particularly among women, despite the state not having gone blue since former President Barack Obama won it in 2008.
Part of Harris’s campaign strategy in North Carolina, a campaign official said, includes trying to boost turnout not just among black voters but also among women in and around the suburbs. That’s in addition to trying to make inroads into rural parts of the state. They’re also targeting Republicans they’ve identified as being turned off by Trump — or Robinson. That includes counties where Nikki Haley, the former governor of neighboring South Carolina, performed better in the Republican primary.
At a Sept. 12 rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, some of Harris’s biggest advocates were reproductive rights, an issue that has female voters across the country passionately engaged.
“Think about it, because of Trump’s abortion bans, women are being denied care during miscarriage,” Harris said. She then referenced her debate with Trump. “And when asked Tuesday night, Donald Trump refused to say that he would veto a national abortion ban. Remember when he refused to answer that question?”
Tom Bonier, whose company TargetSmart tracks voter registration trends, said North Carolina saw an increase in new female registrations the week of July 21 — just after Biden stepped aside and endorsed Harris — compared to the same week in 2020. For the week after Harris became the presumptive nominee, there was a 61.5% increase in voter registration among women in North Carolina. And there was a 145% increase from 2022 that same week. Of those, there was a 557% increase in voter registration among Black women under 30.
Bonier bases all this on higher Democratic voter turnout in North Carolina.
“It’s huge. Not only are you talking about a lot of new registrants and voters who are likely to participate in a lot of elections, but it’s an indication of a greater enthusiasm among that group in general,” he said. “That means that women in general, particularly younger women, including women of color, are likely to turn out much more than they otherwise would have. That’s certainly all we need to do to put North Carolina in play.”
In 2020, former President Donald Trump won by just 1.3%. Since then, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade and the state has experienced population growth around the metropolitan strongholds of Raleigh and Charlotte.
“North Carolinians — from the suburbs to the cities to our rural communities — reject Donald Trump and Mark Robinson’s extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion and increase costs for families,” Dory MacMillan, Harris’ campaign spokesperson in North Carolina, said in a statement. “Meanwhile, our campaign is gaining momentum as we continue to show up in communities across the state to share Vice President Harris’ vision for a new way forward, one where our rights are protected and every North Carolinian has the chance to not just survive, but thrive.”
Republicans have their doubts. Particularly because rural North Carolina is hardcore Trump country. Trump’s campaign has repeatedly expressed confidence in the state. Yet it has poured money into advertising there, a sign that it recognizes the threat exists. On Saturday, Trump is scheduled to attend a rally in Wilmington, N.C. Robinson is not expected to attend.
Of the progress Democrats are making with suburban women, one Trump ally said, “Good luck with that.”
And a former North Carolina Republican Party official cast doubt on the idea that Robinson’s issues would ultimately make or break the state for the GOP. Democrats “had a chance anyway” in North Carolina because of high population growth in urban centers and especially Republican-leaning suburbs, the former official said.
“Now you have a political interventionist event,” they added. “It will be a test of whether down-balloting hurts the top.”
Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of American Majority, a conservative group in North Carolina, called the revelations about Robinson “troubling” and “disappointing.”
“Nobody wants to see this kind of thing about their political party five or six weeks before Election Day,” Woodhouse said. “A sober reflection this morning, I think, shows you that the fundamentals of North Carolina, not by a lot but a little bit, are consistently in Trump’s favor.”
But Thomas Mills, a veteran state consultant and founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com, said Robinson’s controversies could depress Republican voter turnout overall, especially since Democrats have repeatedly had Trump vouch for Robinson’s character. The day after CNN broke the story, Harris had already run a TV ad featuring the two together. Trump had called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
“It’s coming to judgment and it’s demoralizing Republicans,” Mills said, noting that there’s a segment of the Republican Party that’s already unhappy with Trump and would be even more deterred after seeing the allegations against Robinson. “If those people decide they’re not going to vote, or they actually vote Democrat, in a state like North Carolina where 75,000 votes out of 5.5 million makes a difference, that makes a huge difference.”
Morgan Jackson, a veteran Democratic consultant who has long worked for gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein, the current attorney general, emphasized how evenly divided North Carolina is between the state’s deeply rural areas and its more urban and suburban population centers.
“It’s a 50-50 state. We’ve researched this race extensively, it’s as close as it gets,” Jackson said of the presidential race. “The truth is there are very few … purple counties in North Carolina. Most of them are deep blue and getting bluer or deep red and getting redder.
“The way you win in North Carolina at the state level,” he said, “is you win on the margin.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
