Election delay scrambles NC campaigns. How could it change candidates’ strategies?
Former U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers had a campaign strategy to wait until just before she filed for office to announce her intention to run again for Congress.
The Harnett County Republican had enough name recognition that she didn’t feel like she needed to make a big splash ahead of time, she said.
But the courts unraveled her plan.
The N.C. Supreme Court gave everyone a surprise Wednesday when its justices announced they would abruptly end North Carolina’s filing period that began Monday and move the state’s March 8 primary to May to allow the courts more time to rule on gerrymandering lawsuits over the state’s districts.
That left Ellmers, and every other North Carolina candidate for the legislature and U.S. House, unsure what district they will end up in if the courts force a redrawing.
It could also affect the state’s closely watched race for U.S. Senate. Republican Senate candidate Mark Walker told The Associated Press on Thursday that he would hold off until the new year on a decision about whether to switch to run in a Greensboro-area House district.
Candidates’ announcements have come flooding in at a frenzied pace since early November when state lawmakers released their newly drawn map of the state’s congressional districts.
Candidates tweeted.
They filed federal documents.
They changed plans.
They elbowed each other out of the way.
But not Ellmers.
She stayed quiet.
Until Wednesday.
Then she tweeted it: she was running for the 4th Congressional District.
“My plan was to file on Friday,” Ellmers told The News & Observer Thursday afternoon. “I just decided to go ahead and tweet it out and then of course, I had no idea that the court was, within hours, going to put a stay on campaign filings, so that was kind of odd.”
Could some NC candidates make a comeback?
Chris Cooper, political science professor at Western Carolina University, said candidates take different approaches to announcing their campaigns for strategic purposes.
“I think to announce early is a threat,” Cooper said. “I don’t mean a violent threat, but it’s a way to elbow out other people and say this is your lane.”
Cooper said to wait is a “sneak attack” that allows candidates to get a look at the entire field of opponents before getting in.
“I think they’re just opposite strategies to try to get to the same end, that end, of course, being to win the election,” Cooper said.
Now many campaigns have to re-strategize while they wait for the courts to reach a decision about the legality of the maps.
Any changes in the maps could leave some candidates without a place to run, while opening the door to others to reconsider their options.
Republican House Speaker Tim Moore is believed to have had the 13th Congressional District drawn specifically for him. But U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn elbowed him out of the race by announcing he would leave his neighboring district to block establishment Republicans.
Moore almost immediately announced his plans to run for reelection to the state House. But he would be able to have a say in any new court-ordered maps.
Moore didn’t respond to calls and texts from the N&O.
N.C. Rep. Jon Hardister, however, said he would not reconsider his decision to run for reelection and to pass on a campaign for the 7th Congressional District. The Guilford County Republican had considered the congressional run but then backed off, in what was seen as a signal that former U.S. Rep. Walker might run there. Walker trails two other GOP candidates in the Senate race.
Walker’s staff confirmed over the weekend that he spent time at Mar-a-Lago Saturday talking with former President Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn and congressional hopeful Bo Hines, about a possible endorsement for Walker in the 7th district.
Despite confirmation that Trump offered one, the endorsement did not come before filing was halted.
Former state Sen. Erica Smith, a Democrat, likewise walked away from her U.S. Senate candidacy to run for the 2nd Congressional District after U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield announced his plans to retire.
How ruling affects incumbents’ plans
“The inconvenience of a ten-week delay pales in comparison to the challenges that Black voters have faced for generations in order to secure the right to vote,” Smith said in a written statement to The N&O Thursday. “A right that is under attack by elected Republican officials who care more about consolidating power than protecting democracy.”
Smith said the 2nd Congressional District hasn’t had a Republican congressperson since the late 1800s, but Republican lawmakers drew a competitive district that could allow a Republican to win.
“Whether it’s under these lines or different lines I won’t let that happen,” Smith said. “My community will not be silenced and while I hope to see a fair map enacted, I’ve run under gerrymandered lines before and I can do it again.”
As for Butterfield, he told The N&O when he announced his retirement that he would not change his mind if the districts were redrawn.
His retirement, he said, was a reaction to the maps, which he said were unfairly drawn to dilute the voices of Black voters. But he said even if the maps changed, he was done.
U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from Greensboro, is one elected official who could benefit if the courts order the maps to be redrawn.
Manning was drawn into a Republican-majority district.
Hailey Barringer, spokeswoman for Manning, said that the congresswoman had hoped that the courts would take up the maps after seeing her district split into four.
“We’re really breaking up the voices of the communities of interest, because Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point have a lot in common,” Barringer said.
She said Manning has been able to fight for those collective interests in Congress, but having the district split into four pieces dilutes her constituents’ voices.
Manning hasn’t confirmed but has strongly hinted at a bid for reelection.
New strategy
Cooper said Wednesday that there are so many variables now to North Carolina’s election that there is no clear way to know who will benefit and how it will all play out.
He said candidates who said they were out could return for a run, while unknown candidates trying to get their names out to voters now have more time to do so. The delay also helps unaffiliated candidates trying to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot.
“I think, in general, it’s better for candidates who are less well-funded, and people who were less likely to win to maybe be able to use this time to their advantage,” Cooper said. “Big-name incumbents, they’ll probably be OK either way, but you probably would rather have a shorter primary season.”
Jordan Shaw, a political consultant with OnMessage, is working on the campaign of several candidates in North Carolina.
“I think if you’re interested in running for Congress, in this scenario, the thing that you need to be doing is focusing on the fundamentals of campaigning without necessarily wedding yourself to a particular district structure because these things could change,” Shaw said. “What a smart candidate will do, instead of worrying about where the lines are going to be, they’ll be engaging their supporters, engaging their donor networks and saying, ‘Look, I’m going to try to run if there’s an opportunity to do so.’”
Shaw said candidates need to be watching out for the possibility of new lines and if there is still a path to Congress to take it and be prepared to launch a campaign.
He said other candidates may realize that they have no path forward.
Renee Ellmers’ campaign
Ellmers was previously elected to Congress, though she lost in a Republican primary in 2016, and her home county of Harnett is in the middle of the 4th Congressional District. She has name recognition.
What could be detrimental to her is that she has now said she’s running before knowing for sure that the district will stay the same.
Potential candidates know she’s in and so do state lawmakers, who might be able to decide her fate if they’re forced to draw new districts.
Ellmers isn’t worried, though.
She said the pandemic is the reason she chose to get back in.
A nurse, she spent the past 18 months working with COVID-19 patients at the Veterans’ Affairs hospital in Fayetteville and now spends 10-hour shifts testing people for COVID-19.
She’s not happy with how President Joe Biden is handling the pandemic, especially compared to Trump’s handling of it.
She said her work has shown her the seriousness of the disease, the need for improvement at the VA and a need for answers about how COVID-19 got into the world.
So Ellmers said she will keep campaigning, keep fundraising and that people should expect to see her around the 4th district.
And if new maps are drawn, then Ellmers will figure out how to proceed.
But Ellmers said she had no regrets about announcing.
She told The N&O that her run had been in the works for a long time, and she was just waiting to see if the maps gave her a possible roadmap to success.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 5:58 PM with the headline "Election delay scrambles NC campaigns. How could it change candidates’ strategies?."