Weekly Recap: What to know from North Carolina's primaries and the runoffs to come
Four state lawmakers were voted out of office and several party leaders lost bids for higher office.
👏 A big thank you
Before we dive into the week that was in North Carolina politics, I want to give a warm welcome to all the new Anderson Alerts subscribers who joined on the heels of Friday’s News & Information Summit! I’d also like to give a big thank you to Colin Campbell of WUNC, Kate Sheppard of The Assembly and Tim Boyum of Spectrum News for taking time out of their busy day to join my panel. I also have to give a shout-out to Sarah Day Owen Wiskirchen and David Grant for holding a session on great newsletters and including Anderson Alerts as part of it.
I’ll be exploring some ideas on how to give unpaid members greater access to information. Among the ideas I’m considering: Launching a referral program for folks who encourage others to join Anderson Alerts, hosting a live Zoom for readers and a weekly Q&A between me and a rotating North Carolina political player. If you have any ideas of something you’d like to see or any suggestions of political guests you’d most want to hear from, send me a note!
Now let’s get down to business…
North Carolina’s March 5 election may be over, but primary season is going to run an extra 10 weeks.
That’s because we’ll have runoffs in four important GOP primaries on May 14 and potentially one recount for the state’s most conservative Democratic lawmaker.
🥊 Runoffs
On May 14, voters can return to the polls for two statewide contests and a pair of open congressional races. That’s because no candidate on Tuesday surpassed the 30% share of the vote necessary to claim their party’s nomination outright. Here’s who will square off in the four runoffs and how they performed on Tuesday:
GOP Lieutenant Governor
Former GOP political adviser Hal Weatherman: 19.61%
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill: 15.85%
GOP Auditor
Account Jack Clark: 23.24%
UNC Board of Trustees member Dave Boliek: 22.12%
GOP 6th Congressional District
Lobbyist Addison McDowell: 26.11%
Former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker: 24.09%
GOP 13th Congressional District
Attorney Kelly Daughtry: 27.38%
Former prosecutor Brad Knott: 18.68%
🗳️ Recount?
In northeastern North Carolina, the state’s most conservative Democrat in the General Assembly, state Rep. Michael Wray, is on the verge of defeat. He trails social studies teacher Rodney Pierce by just 42 votes, or 0.36 percentage points, in a race where 11,918 ballots have been recorded thus far.
Wray could request a recount if the margin of victory remains within 1% as expected. In the meantime, a handful of votes will trickle in.
According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, there are 62 provisional ballots that have yet to be reviewed (13 in Northampton County, 20 in Halifax County and 29 in Warren County).
While those ballots are unlikely to be enough for Wray to overcome his deficit, they could narrow the gap and help justify a recount.
North Carolina 27th House District race is the only contest in the state that has yet to be called by The Associated Press. Counties will conclude their counting of votes on Friday.
In a statement, Wray said he won’t make a decision about a recount until the counties have recorded all results.
“We look forward to working with the county boards of elections to ensure that all votes have been counted,” Wray wrote. “At that point, we will determine our next steps.”
Pierce has declared victory in the race.
“After looking at the vote tallies and crunching the numbers, I can say with confidence that the people of NC House District 27 have chosen me to be their representative in Raleigh,” Pierce said in a statement.
Updated candidate list
Asked and answered. With folks’ feedback, I’ve updated my 2024 candidate list into two separate sheets:
NC 2024 General Election Candidate List
NC 2024 Primary Election Candidate List
I’ve also gone the extra mile for the general election candidate list, adding in the partisan makeup of the legislative and congressional districts based on 2020 presidential data.
🤦 Bad night for establishment
Assuming Wray’s result holds, four state lawmakers will have been voted out of office: Wray, Democratic state Sen. Mike Woodard and Republican state Reps. George Cleveland and Kevin Crutchfield.
Woodard lost to former Obama appointee Sophia Chitlik. Cleveland lost to 21-year-old East Carolina University student Wyatt Gable. Crutchfield lost to businessman Brian Echevarria.
But that’s not all. Four state lawmakers lost bids for higher office, including state Rep. Jeffrey Elmore for lieutenant governor, state House Deputy Majority Whip Jon Hardister for labor commissioner and state Reps. John Bradford and Grey Mills for Congressional Districts 8 and 10, respectively. Elmore finished seventh in the 11-candidate GOP primary for lieutenant governor. Hardister lost somewhat handily to attorney Luke Farley. Bradford finished a distant third in his congressional race, which swung for pastor Mark Harris. Mills narrowly lost to businessman Pat Harrigan.
As of now, at least one in seven General Assembly officeholders won’t be returning to Raleigh next year.
Republican House Speaker Tim Moore handily won his 14th District congressional primary and is on a glidepath to D.C., as he doesn’t face a competitive general election. Democratic state Reps. Wesley Harris and Caleb Rudow are running for treasurer and the 11th Congressional District. And Democratic state Sens. Rachel Hunt and Natasha Marcus are running for lieutenant governor and insurance commissioner.
An additional 11 lawmakers are retiring altogether:
Democratic Rep. John Autry
Democratic Rep. Kelly Alexander
Republican Rep. Kristin Baker
Democratic Sen. Mary Wills Bode
Republican Rep. John Faircloth
Democratic Rep. Rosa Gill
Republican Sen. Joyce Krawiec
Democratic Rep. Marvin Lucas
Republican Sen. Jim Perry
Republican Sen. Dean Proctor
Republican Rep. Wayne Sasser
💤 Guaranteed seats
Thirty seats in the General Assembly are locked in: 28 for Democrats and two for Republicans. That’s because 25 never had any primary or general election opponent and five won their primaries and won’t face a general election opponent.
These guaranteed returning and prospective lawmakers are:
Democratic Sen. Gale Adcock (SD-16)
Democratic Sen. Gladys Robinson (SD-28)
Democratic Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed (SD-38)
Democratic Sen. DeAndrea Salvador (SD-39)
Democratic Sen. Joyce Waddell (SD-40)
*Democratic Sen. Caleb Theodros (SD-41)
Democratic Rep. Deb Butler (HD-18)
**Future Democratic Rep. Rodney Pierce (HD-27)
Democratic Rep. Vernetta Alston (HD-29)
Democratic Rep. Marcia Morey (HD-30)
Democratic Rep. Zack Hawkins (HD-31)
Democratic Rep. Abe Jones (HD-38)
Democratic Rep. James Roberson (HD-39)
Democratic Rep. Frances Jackson (HD-45)
Democratic Rep. Cynthia Ball (HD-49)
Democratic Rep. Renée Price (HD-50)
Democratic Rep. Amos Quick (HD-58)
*Republican Rep. Reece Pyrtle (HD-65)
Democratic Rep. Kanika Brown (HD-71)
*Democratic Rep. Amber Baker (HD-72)
Democratic Rep. Mary Belk (HD-88)
Democratic Rep. Terry Brown (HD-92)
Republican Rep. Jason Saine (HD-97)
Future Democratic Rep. Julia Greenfield (HD-100)
Democratic Rep. Carolyn Logan (HD-101)
Democratic Rep. Becky Carney (HD-102)
*Democratic Rep. Carla Cunningham (HD-106)
Future Democratic Rep. Aisha Dew (HD-107)
Future Democratic Rep. Jordan Lopez (HD-112)
Future and former Democratic Rep. Brian Turner (HD-116)
*Won primary and face no general election opponents
**Pierce race not officially called
🇺🇸 Election Night Recap
The morning after the election, I provided a recap of the top primary results. Among the most notable takeaways:
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt lost her GOP primary to Michele Morrow, an ideologically extreme candidate who has called public schools “indoctrination centers,” said that “the biggest threat to our constitutional republic is the indoctrination happening right now in the public educational system in North Carolina” and was at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Democratic Rep. Cecil Brockman narrowly defeated his primary challenger, former High Point NAACP President James Adams. With all precincts reporting, Adams was down by 83 votes, or 1.4%. “Yesterday was no victory,” Brockman said in a statement. “Mark my words, purity tests will be the death of my party.”
Assistant principal Scott Lassiter defeated coffee shop owner Vicki Harry in the 13th Senate District. Lassiter had been strongly opposed by GOP Senate leaders. He now advances to the general election against Democratic state Sen. Lisa Grafstein. The contest is one of a small handful of legislative tossups.
Businessman Bo Hines suffered a stunning defeat in the 6th Congressional District. The surprise isn’t that he lost. It’s that he lost by as much as he did, finishing in fourth place with just 14.4% of the vote. Hines had been widely seen as a leading candidate, but his prospects collapsed after former President Donald Trump endorsed McDowell over him.
Businessman Fred Von Canon finished in third place in the 14-candidate GOP field vying for the 13th Congressional District. Von Canon spent nearly $3 million of his own money on his congressional bid. In the end, he got 17% of the vote, while Daughtry and Knott had 27% and 19%, respectively.
In North Carolina’s lone congressional tossup, GOP voters chose retired Army Col. Laurie Buckhout over businesswoman Sandy Smith. Smith had previously lost two general elections. The win for Buckhout reflects voters’ desire for a fresh face and the influence of personal spending, outside groups and more ideologically moderate Republicans who feared Smith would lose to Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the general election in the northeastern 1st Congressional District.
Want to read more?
If you want to check out more detailed coverage of particular races, I had a number of stories:
Stein, Robinson to square off in contentious governor’s race
Tim Moore handily wins congressional primary, effectively securing ticket to D.C.
Buckhout defeats Smith in North Carolina’s swingiest congressional district
Businessman Pat Harrigan wins NC's 10th Congressional District
NC's messiest congressional race continues: McDowell, Walker advance to runoff
Primary Recap: What you need to know from Tuesday's elections
Daughtry, Knott to square off in Triangle-area congressional runoff
House To Home: A look at who won some of North Carolina’s most competitive U.S. House primary races on Tuesday (via The Assembly)
🤫 2 stories I didn’t get to this week
I was at the NC News & Information Summit on Friday moderating a panel discussion on the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing North Carolina political reporters and the news media at large both inside and outside the newsroom.
As I was preoccupied for the day, I didn’t have time to share with you a hugely important development in conservative politics: NCGOP Chairman Michael Whatley being formally selected to lead the Republican National Committee, and Trump’s Wilmington-born daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, serving as co-chair. The RNC shakeup could help the former president pay for his personal legal bills and alienate more centrist Republicans frustrated with the direction the party is going.
Another important development this week: After nearly six months of navigating North Carolina’s mess of a public records process, state Sen. Graig Meyer took a step no other lawmaker in the state has: Responding to my public records request from last year by turning over to me all his communications to the greatest extent possible under the law.
I requested communications from all 170 state lawmakers. Why? Because GOP leaders, particularly Senate leader Phil Berger, added a last-minute provision to the state budget making past and current lawmakers the custodians of their own records and able to withhold or sell records as they see fit. If lawmakers were going to try to get away with maximum concealment, I was going to make a symbolic push for maximum disclosure. (I also made a more narrow request for just days worth of records).
After Meyer gave me a shout-out at Friday’s summit and referenced my work on this issue, WRAL and the News & Observer asked for the same records as well. At the event, Meyer handed me a thumb drive with a trove of calendar and email records his office had spent months working to assemble. I’ll be talking to him in the coming week about the massive undertaking involved in getting that to me, why he did it and what he learned along the way about how North Carolina’s legislature handles public records requests.
Kudos to Meyer for the transparency and showing some of the absurdity of the process!
👀 What to watch for this week
MONDAY: Sports gambling becomes legal in North Carolina. This comes as we approach March Madness and the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament.
TUESDAY: At 1 p.m., lawmakers are scheduled to hold an oversight hearing on Medicaid expansion.
FRIDAY: Counties canvass their election results. This includes approval of provisional ballot totals, which could be notable in House District 27.
📖 5 essential reads
RNC votes to install Donald Trump’s handpicked chair as former president tightens control of party (Steve Peoples and Michelle Price // Associated Press)
'Absolute blessing': Sports betting revenue a game-changer for smaller UNC System athletic departments (Brian Murphy // WRAL)
A ‘big tent’ party? After defeat of two long-serving NC Democrats, the debate rages on (Avi Bajpai and Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi // Raleigh News & Observer)
Candidate once accused of election fraud wins North Carolina House primary (Ally Mutnick // Politico)
Republican primary: Michele Morrow defeats incumbent State Superintendent Catherine Truitt (Liz Schlemmer // WUNC)
Tweet of the Week
Robinson was in furniture manufacturing. After work one day in 2018, he went to the Greensboro City Council and delivered an impassioned speech about why a gun show ought to be allowed to take place. In a speech in Greensboro, Trump completely missed the mark on Robinson’s origin story.
Until next time…
I shall return to your feed as news develops. If you are enjoying Anderson Alerts, please tell me a friend!