NC goes for Trump, but voters show this is still a purple state | Opinion

Along with candidates’ names, much else was said to be on the national ballot Tuesday – reproductive rights, civil rights, even democracy itself.

But in North Carolina another issue loomed behind the choice of candidates: What kind of state is North Carolina politically?

The results said North Carolina is red in its west and the southeast and blue in its urban areas.

In other words: still purple.

For the third time in a row, North Carolina backed Donald Trump for president. And for the third time in a row, voters chose a Democrat for governor, this time picking state Attorney General Josh Stein to succeed term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper.

The state took a sharp rightward turn in 2010 when Republicans won control of both the state House and Senate for the first time in more than a century. Republicans went on to gerrymander legislative and congressional districts in their favor and turn judicial races into partisan contests that Republicans largely won.

This year, flush with their gains and in the thrall of former President Donald Trump’s crusade to recapture the White House, Republicans nominated the most extreme slate of statewide candidates ever.

On Tuesday, a majority of voters balked at that slate. The results will pull North Carolina toward what it really is: a moderate state, almost equally divided among Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

Trump’s victory in North Carolina once more defied Democratic hopes that population growth and shifting demographics would turn the state blue in presidential elections. Population changes have occurred, but some have favored Republicans, such as an influx of more conservative retirees in coastal counties.

Democrats hoped this year to cut into the Republicans’ rural base by fielding candidates in red counties and putting more resources on the ground despite the unlikelihood of winning. It might have been wiser to put more money and energy into turning out the vote among Black voters and within urban areas.

Within the state, voters clearly rejected the Republican candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Stein trounced Robinson by more than 15 percentage points.

A CNN report on Robinson’s alleged comments posted on a pornographic website years ago surely sealed his defeat. But even without that, Robinson’s long record of financial problems and inflammatory statements made it unlikely he could win a statewide race.

Voters also symbolically swung the state toward the center by electing state Sen. Rachel Hunt – the daughter of four-term Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt – as lieutenant governor. She defeated Hal Weatherman, a former Republican political staffer who campaigned as a Christian conservative.

In a race between two congressmen to become attorney general, voters chose Democratic Jeff Jackson over the Republican firebrand and HB2 sponsor Dan Bishop.

Democrat Mo Green, a former Superintendent of Guilford County Schools, over Republican Michele Morrow, a homeschooler who in social media postings called for the death of former President Barack Obama and other Democrats.

The results in other Council of State races were mixed, but the biggest Democratic victory of the night have been legislative. Given the extent of gerrymandering, it’s almost impossible to wring the extremism out of the Republican-controlled state legislature. But Democrats hoped to flip a couple of seats to end the Republicans’ veto-proof supermajority, and they appeared poised to do so in the NC House. If so, Republicans will not be able to blunt Stein’s ability to block legislation.

Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, a Cooper interim appointee to the state Supreme Court, narrowly lost to Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who once joined a court opinion, since withdrawn, that found that life begins at conception. Riggs, abandoning the vagueness that had cost Democrats in earlier Supreme Court races, made her support for reproductive rights clear.

Republicans also won three statewide races for the Court of Appeals.

Heavily gerrymandered congressional districts drawn by Republican state lawmakers warped the state’s congressional delegation. North Carolina’s 14 U.S. House seats are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, thanks to a fair map drawn by court order for the 2022 election. This year’s election held using newly gerrymandered maps shifted the balance to 10 to 4 in the Republicans favor.

In a sense, Trumpism came to North Carolina before Trump arose on the national political stage. Republican lawmakers have stoked culture wars and split the state along an urban and rural divide to advance tax cuts that mostly benefit large corporations and the wealthy. Major concerns about underfunded public schools, a lack of affordable housing, the high cost of child care, threats to the environment and gaps in public health services have gone largely unaddressed.

How much this election changed the state’s political balance of power will take a while to become clear. But what is clear is that on the state level a majority of voters said they do not want to go further to the right.

But at the presidential level, North Carolina is still Trump country.

Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly said state Democratic Justice Allison Riggs had held on to her seat on the state Supreme Court.

This story was originally published November 6, 2024 at 1:07 AM with the headline "NC goes for Trump, but voters show this is still a purple state | Opinion."