RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Democrats again fell short in wresting the swing-state prize of North Carolina from Republicans in the presidential election, but scored significant victories in the popular vote, giving them hope as they look to the future.
Despite Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in North Carolina, Democrats celebrated their Election Day victories in races for governor, attorney general and legislature in a closely divided state where conservatives recently won the General Assembly and the courts have dominated. .
In an election with few bright spots for Democrats nationally, the tendency toward division among voters in the Tar Heel State offered some of that good news.
“I think we had good candidates running against right-wing extremists, and the people of North Carolina made the right choices,” said Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a Harris surrogate who was once considered her potential running back mate, of the downballot. breeds.
Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, easily defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to succeed Cooper, who became ineligible to run because of term limits. The campaign was dominated by Stein’s fundraising prowess and by ads and social media that focused on Robinson’s history of inflammatory statements on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Democrats have now won eight of the past nine gubernatorial elections in North Carolina. In contrast, Republicans have won the state in eleven of the past twelve presidential elections, with Barack Obama in 2008 as the only exception.
In the race to succeed Stein as attorney general, U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson extended his winning streak in the 1900 Democratic elections by defeating U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop. Democrats flipped both the lieutenant governor’s office and the state school superintendent’s job — defeating in the latter race a Republican who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally in Washington before the attack on the U.S. Capitol and who publicly called liberal schools ‘indoctrination’. centers.”
Anderson Clayton, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, the youngest in the country at 26, is learning to embrace the positives while dealing with the headwinds that Harris first faced.
“Everyone keeps calling us a bright spot,” she said. “And I thought, ‘We still lost the presidential race.’”
State Republicans can hang their 2024 success hat on Trump’s third consecutive election victory and gaining three additional seats in Congress — the result of the 2023 redistricting that led to Democratic incumbents not seeking re-election. These somersaults were critical to national Republicans’ efforts to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
But in the only battle for Congress, first-term Democratic Rep. won. Don Davis sips. While the Republican Party retained a veto-proof majority in the Senate, it will likely fail to maintain one in the one-seat House of Representatives, giving Stein a more robust veto to overturn Republican legislation.
Ticket splitting in North Carolina has been happening for decades. Voters have long been comfortable with Democrats running state agencies, but less comfortable with the liberal wing of the national Democratic Party.
“People are dissatisfied and want to see change at the federal level. They’re not very comfortable with the idea of change for change’s sake at the state level,” said David McLennan, a professor of political science at Meredith College in Raleigh.
Republican state leaders say their party is still doing well. They point to winning five of 10 positions in the statewide executive branch, retaining control of the General Assembly and continuing its recent dominance in the statewide appeals court races. However, an upcoming Supreme Court race appears likely to lead to a recount.
“There’s going to be a lot of talk about North Carolina being a purple state. You’ve all heard me say this before: North Carolina is a default Republican state,” Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger told reporters after the election.
Yet 2024 will be marked by missed opportunities for the Republican party that some critics lay at Robinson’s feet.
What was billed after the March primary as the nation’s most competitive gubernatorial race never materialized; Stein won by almost 15 percentage points. Robinson’s bid was overwhelmed until mid-October by Stein’s 4-to-1 spending advantage and a CNN report that said Robinson posted explicit sexual and racist statements on the message board of a porn website more than a decade ago.
Robinson denied writing the messages and eventually sued CNN. The case is pending. But the Republican Governors Association stopped running ads supporting him, most of his campaign staff quit and Republicans distanced themselves. That included Trump, who had endorsed Robinson before the March primaries, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but stopped appearing with him as Trump passed through North Carolina.
Stein’s campaign was comfortable enough to send $12 million late to the state Democratic Party that helped other candidates, including General Assembly hopefuls who ran ads linking GOP rivals to Robinson.
“It could have been a historic race for the state of North Carolina, but it didn’t,” said U.S. House Majority Leader John Bell. While giving Stein credit for his campaign, Bell added, “Our gubernatorial candidate ran a very poor campaign.”
Larry Shaheen, a longtime political consultant and now fundraiser for the Republican Party, wrote on X that without the work of party leaders, “the damage to candidates as a result of Robinson would have been enormous.”
Some conservatives stuck with Robinson, blaming Republican officials who gave up on him for poor election results. Robinson himself complained during the campaign about politicians on his side of the aisle that “when it gets hot in the kitchen and you turn around and look, they’re not there anymore.”
The next big election test will come in 2026, when U.S. Republican Senator Thom Tillis’ seat is up for re-election. Robinson has not ruled out a future bid, which could see Tillis challenged in a primary. Among Democrats, Cooper has not publicly rejected a 2026 bid for the Senate, and retiring U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat, has said he is also considering one. Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina since 2008.
Still, McLennan said, Democrats gave themselves something to build on.
“The Democrats should be feeling pretty good,” he said. “But they still have a lot of work to do before 2026 and 2028.”
Clayton, the Democratic chairman, said the work starts now. That means recruiting candidates starting with next year’s municipal elections, making sure incumbents get the help they need, and reaching out to people across the state to support the grassroots for future elections.
“We have to get back to basics,” she said.
