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In North Carolina, Trump and Harris navigate a hurricane and a rollercoaster governor's race

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In North Carolina, Trump and Harris navigate a hurricane and a rollercoaster governor's race


RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. (AP) — Renee Kyro already has voted for Republican nominee Donald Trump for the third consecutive presidential election. But she plans to volunteer for the first time, reaching out to her neighbors in hurricane-battered western North Carolina to make sure they have a voting plan amid a flurry of precinct changes.

“I want to say I’m confident he wins, but I’m worried that people are just overwhelmed and may need some help or encouragement,” she said, standing outside an early voting site in the conservative stronghold of Rutherford County. “I just can’t imagine Kamala Harris as president.”

To the east, in heavily Democratic Winston-Salem, Dia Roberts described the fear that has her writing postcards urging voters to back Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee.

“Donald Trump is a narcissist, a liar, a wannabe dictator,” said Roberts, an independent who has voted for Democrats in the Trump era. “This should not even be close.”

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But it is.

And the presidential race in North Carolina is playing out in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and alongside a governor’s race in which the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has seen his campaign collapse amid multiple controversies, potentially splintering GOP unity.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are ramping up their activity here again after the storm. Trump has three North Carolina stops Monday, including a visit to see storm damage in Asheville. Former President Bill Clinton appeared last week with Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, and followed with several visits in eastern North Carolina.

With 15 days until Election Day, North Carolina is critical to the Electoral College math that will decide whether Trump gets a White House encore or Harris hands him a second defeat and, in the process, makes history as the first woman, second Black person and first person of south Asian descent to reach the Oval Office.

“We are going to win or lose the presidency based on what happens in North Carolina,” Republican National Chairman Michael Whatley, a North Carolinian, said last week as part of a GOP bus tour.

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Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes have gotten more attention from Harris and Trump than other battlegrounds. But North Carolina and Georgia are the next largest swing states, with 16 electoral votes each. While Georgia yielded Democrat Joe Biden’s closest victory margin four years ago, it was North Carolina that delivered Trump’s narrowest win: less than 75,000 votes and 1.3 percentage points.

North Carolina is expected to cast as many as 5.5 million ballots, with more than 1 million votes already cast since the start of early voting last Thursday.

Harris on Monday was targeting suburban Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — holding a series of conversations with Republican Liz Cheney that will be moderated by Bulwark publisher and Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes.

Hurricane Helene displaced thousands of voters

Many North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene moved Election Day precincts or changed early voting sites. Thousands of voters remained displaced or without power or water as early voting commenced.

Buncombe County, home to left-leaning Asheville, was hard-hit. Appalachian State University in Boone, the other cache of Democratic votes in the mountainous region, remains closed. But surrounding western counties, including Rutherford, add up to more GOP votes than Democrats’ advantages in Asheville and Boone. That leaves both parties scrambling to check turnout operations and their math.

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“We’re working every channel we can, you know?” Whatley said. “We’re going to be doing phone calls. We’re going to be doing direct mail. We’ll be doing emails and digital — basically anything we can do to let people know where to go.”

Republicans like Kryo, who lives a short drive from the devastated Chimney Rock community, said she knows “plenty of Trump supporters who lost everything” and others who remain in their homes but don’t have reliable internet or phone connections and may not know their polling location.

“I’ll go door to door if I have to,” she said.

Yet Trump and Republicans never built the same campaign infrastructure as Harris — or President Joe Biden’s before he dropped out of the race in July.

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“It was a flip of a coin before the storm,” said GOP pollster Paul Shumaker. “The critical question is going to be: How is the rural turnout going to compare matched with the urban and suburban turnout?” Especially, Shumaker added, if Republicans “continue to have ballot erosion in the urban-suburban areas.”

State Sen. Natalie Murdock, who doubles as political director for Democrats’ coordinated campaign in the state, said the party has the apparatus to reach their target voters in the disaster zone. Field workers in some of Democrats’ two-dozen-plus offices around the state have engaged in recovery efforts, distributing water and other supplies to residents. Murdock noted that Appalachian State is slated to be open before Election Day, with students being able to vote at their usual campus precinct.

Democrats are running both on Helene and Mark Robinson

Even before Helene, North Carolina was all the more compelling because of its history of split-ticket voting. It’s one of the few states that features competitive governor’s races concurrent with presidential contests. Democrats have carried the presidential electoral votes just once since 1992 (Barack Obama’s narrow win in 2008). Republicans have won just one governor’s race in the same span. Four years ago, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won reelection by 4.5 points despite Trump outpacing Biden. He’s now term-limited.

Democrats hope Robinson’s latest struggles, centered on CNN’s revelations that the state’s first Black lieutenant governor once called himself a “Black Nazi” and posted lascivious statements on a porn website, turn thousands of Cooper-Trump voters into supporters of Harris and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Stein. Robinson has denied the allegations and sued CNN, calling its report defamatory.

In his campaign appearances last week, Walz took care to make two points beyond the usual pitch to any swing-state audience: He offered condolences and promised continued federal assistance to Helene victims, and he declared that Robinson “will never be the governor of North Carolina.”

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Said Murdock: “We are definitely making it clear how extreme the Republican ticket is.”

At the least, Trump’s dominance over the GOP has moved some of the state toward Harris, said Robert Brown, a High Point attorney who came to hear Walz. Just 16 years ago, Brown was on the other side of the aisle as Republican nominee John McCain’s state director against Obama.

Trump’s nomination in 2016, Brown said, pushed him to register as an independent and vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton. “Then after Jan. 6, I moved all the way over” and registered as a Democrat, he said.

“I’ve just become more and more scared and disillusioned about the direction of the party and the country,” he explained, adding that he sees Harris as a center-left pragmatist who is as strong on national security as was McCain. “This really isn’t that hard for me and for some other Republicans and former Republicans.”

___

Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

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North Carolina

Fox News projects Democratic Rep. Don Davis will win North Carolina's 1st Congressional District

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Fox News projects Democratic Rep. Don Davis will win North Carolina's 1st Congressional District


Fox News Decision Desk projects Democratic Rep. Don Davis will be the winner against Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, considered a toss-up race this election cycle.

Davis, who won the seat in 2022 after the retirement of longtime Democrat G.K. Butterfield, is a former state senator and mayor. He also has a military background as an Air Force officer.

Buckhout is a retired U.S. Army colonel with extensive experience in military logistics and national security. 

While the 1st District has historically leaned Democratic and has a large Black population, recent electoral trends in North Carolina are showing growing Republican support in rural areas, where conservatives are largely dissatisfied with Democratic policies on issues such as the economy and agriculture. 

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The district, which covers much of the northeastern part of the state, includes rural counties, the Inner Banks, and parts of the Research Triangle. 

POLITICAL STORM: ON TRUMP ‘ONSLAUGHT OF LIES,’ BIDEN URGES FORMER PRESIDENT TO ‘GET A LIFE MAN’

Voters cast their ballots at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens polling place on Nov. 8, 2022, in Madison, Wisconsin. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

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POLITICAL STORM: ON TRUMP ‘ONSLAUGHT OF LIES,’ BIDEN URGES FORMER PRESIDENT TO ‘GET A LIFE MAN’

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How North Carolina went red while electing down-ballot Democrats • NC Newsline

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How North Carolina went red while electing down-ballot Democrats • NC Newsline


Democrats in North Carolina emerged from election night with key victories up and down the ballot. But they failed to break Donald Trump’s hold on the battleground state for a third straight time as he cruised to a second term.

The results — still unofficial as of Wednesday — saw Democrats keep hold of critical statewide offices, win the state’s sole competitive U.S. House race and gain just enough support to potentially weaken a Republican stranglehold in the statehouse.

But that success failed to translate for Vice President Kamala Harris, as Donald Trump again emerged a victor in a cycle that largely retained the Tar Heel State’s partisan status quo.

The former president, returning to the White House after a tumultuous campaign that included a criminal conviction and assassination attempt, proved that he remains a unique electoral force among Republicans in North Carolina.

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“He’s Teflon,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, in an interview with NC Newsline. “The things that took down (Lt. Gov.) Mark Robinson, that took down (superintendent candidate) Michele Morrow, don’t seem to take down Donald Trump. He defies patterns we think we know, and we think we understand.”

Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor, rose to prominence in Trump’s image with headline-grabbing speeches and controversial policy proposals. But ultimately, Robinson could not overcome a series of scandals that led to national Republicans — including Trump — abandoning his campaign.

The lieutenant governor ran more than half a million votes behind Trump, collecting just 40% of the vote, to Trump’s 51%. And while Republicans lost several other key Council of State races — including attorney general and superintendent of public instruction — they were thin margins by comparison.

“It didn’t seem to have a clear impact on the other Council of State races,” said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College and director of the Meredith Poll, of Robinson and the governor’s race.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson defeated his House colleague, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, in the race for AG, coming away with 51.3% of the vote. Mo Green, running to oversee public schools, earned 51% of the vote over Morrow. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall narrowly eked out another term, and state Sen. Rachel Hunt took the lieutenant governor’s race.

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In a redistricted congressional map, North Carolina’s sole competitive U.S. House seat also stayed in Democratic hands. U.S. Rep. Don Davis was set to narrowly prevail over Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout.

And pending recounts, Democrats in the General Assembly appeared to hit a major landmark — breaking the Republican veto-proof supermajority in the House.

North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton addresses supporters at an election night party in Raleigh on Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)

“Vice President Harris ran a bold, joyful campaign and I remain thankful for her service to our country and values,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton wrote on social media Wednesday.

“Our role as Democrats just got that much more important. Our neighbors — the world — are looking to us to hold Donald Trump accountable during his presidency.”

Republicans hold their own in down-ballot Council of State, judicial races

Still, Republicans had wins of their own to tout Wednesday.

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They flipped the auditor’s office, with Dave Boliek defeating Jessica Holmes. Luke Farley will be the new labor commissioner, succeeding fellow Republican Josh Dobson; and Brad Briner won the race for treasurer. GOP incumbents won another term as commissioners of insurance and agriculture.

But a lack of prominent statewide Republican officeholders is likely to spur fights to climb the ladder, as sections of the party eye a potential primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis in 2026.

“I think we’ll probably see a real battle for the next two years,” McLennan said.

The GOP’s biggest gains of the night came in the judiciary: they swept Court of Appeals races, and as of Wednesday, Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin leads state Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs.

Michael Whatley and Jason Simmons
Michael Whatley (right), chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks to reporters as North Carolina GOP chairman Jason Simmons looks on at the NC GOP headquarters in Raleigh on Sept. 14, 2024. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)

“You’ve seen on the judicial races, conservative candidates carry the day,” North Carolina GOP chair Jason Simmons told reporters after the election.

How North Carolina voted, and what it meant for the presidential race

About 73% of registered voters in North Carolina turned out this cycle, according to an initial analysis by Catawba College’s Michael Bitzer.

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If that figure remains, it represents a slight dip from the 2020 general election (75.3%). And turnout appears to have varied significantly across counties and regions.

Despite Hurricane Helene wreaking havoc on the mountains weeks before polls opened, impacted counties were among those with the highest turnout in the state.

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“It was nice to see strong turnout in western North Carolina,” McLennan said.

In fact, several of those counties hit a mark rarely achieved by Harris nationally — a higher margin of votes for Democrats than in 2020.

Asheville’s Buncombe County shifted 3.5 percentage points toward Democrats since 2020, according to New York Times data. And there was reason for optimism in places Harris still fell short: Henderson County, just south of Buncombe, shifted 4.2 percentage points toward her compared to 2020.

But Democratic strongholds in the Piedmont failed to deliver the margins needed for Harris to remain competitive. Wake County shifted 1.1 points toward Trump since 2020, and Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County shifted 2.4 points to the right.

Trump, meanwhile, ran up the margins in rural counties beyond his 2020 totals. Among the biggest gains: a 4-point gain in coastal Pamlico County, and an almost 7-point gain in Bladen County.

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“[Democrats] had a great ground operation leading up to the election, knocking on doors, that sort of thing,” McLennan said. “But they simply didn’t turn out the vote.”





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Ticket-splitting trend continues in North Carolina in 2024 election

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Ticket-splitting trend continues in North Carolina in 2024 election


RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — On Election Day, North Carolina continued its history of ticket splitting. It was a repeat of 2016 and 2020, where Donald Trump carried North Carolina in the race for President, but at the same time a Democrat was elected to be the state’s Governor.

In 2024, the trend was even more pronounced. Trump carried North Carolina by about 3 percent of the vote, while Democrat Josh Stein defeated Mark Robinson by 15 percentage points in the Governor’s race.

Down ballot, it was an even stronger picture for local Democrats. Rachel Hunt flipped the Lt. Governor’s seat for Democrats, and Democrats also won the Attorney General and State School Superintendent’s races.

SEE ALSO | NC Democrats poised to break Republican supermajority in House, strengthening Stein’s veto power

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North Carolina Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein’s veto could become more effective than outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper’s stamp has been recently

So who are some of those ticket-splitters? We spoke with one of the Democratic candidates who flipped a Republican seat in in the legislature in Wilson County. Democrat Dante Pittman says he believes appealing to the middle and focusing on the needs of rural communities may have let to some cross-party support.

“One of the things that I was up front about from the very beginning when I ran was that I’m a moderate Democrat. And here in eastern North Carolina and and Wilson County especially, we have a lot of moderate Democrats, folks that are willing to work across the aisle, folks that believe that you you see people on the other side, that you can come to a good compromise,” Pittman says.

Pittman’s Wilson-based district is among those flipped seats that helped break the GOP supermajority in the state legislature.

It’s also why some political experts still believe North Carolina will continue to be a battleground in the years ahead.

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“I think that Trump winning again will mean that we get more questions about whether we’re a swing state,” says professor Jason Husser from Elon University.

“But as of now, we definitely are. We saw a massive victory of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate. Democrats doing well in other statewide elections in North Carolina, and Trump winning the state decisively, but not with such a margin that North Carolina couldn’t be won by Democrats in 2028.”

Despite the national GOP trend in 2024, the dynamics of North Carolina’s population growing, especially in the Triangle will mean continued competitive races.

Another major change this cycle was for the first time 2012, the Governor and Lt. Governor were from the same political party. Stein will be joined by fellow Democrat Rachel Hunt when he takes office.

Copyright © 2024 WTVD-TV. All Rights Reserved.

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