NC voters rejected extremism on their ballot. So why did they still choose Trump? | Opinion
Here’s the good news: Voters in North Carolina weren’t pleased with what the most extreme candidates on their ballots were selling.
And yet the same voters who handed Mark Robinson and Dan Bishop and Michele Morrow losses in key races still cast their vote for the man who is responsible for it all: Donald Trump.
In the governor’s race, Robinson lost to Attorney General Josh Stein by a whopping 15 percentage points, according to unofficial results. In the race for attorney general, Bishop lost by more than 3 percentage points. And Democrat Mo Green defeated Morrow by a comfortable margin in the race for superintendent of public instruction.
All on a night where Trump carried North Carolina by a sizable margin, a much more comfortable win in the state than his narrow 2020 victory.
That means that there are hundreds of thousands of voters who rejected Robinson, Bishop or Morrow — or all three — but still voted for Trump in the end.
It’s not particularly surprising that voters would shun the most extreme group of candidates for statewide office in North Carolina’s history. The kind of visceral hate they espouse has never resonated well with the voters of our purple state, and there was really never a reason to think it suddenly would now.
But there’s a reason that extremists keep appearing on the ballot in North Carolina and across the country. It’s because Trump still dominates the Republican Party, and its voters are apparently still willing to let him, no matter how much they dislike the fanatical acolytes that have spawned under his influence.
To be very clear: there would be no Mark Robinson, Dan Bishop or Michele Morrow on our ballot if it weren’t for Donald Trump. The fact that they are there at all is a testament to Trump’s hold on the Republican Party and the rightward shift it has taken since he rose to power.
All three of them are fierce Trump allies whose support for him has not wavered, even in his worst moments. They embraced his lies about a stolen election, stood by him through felony convictions and blatantly racist, misogynistic and xenophobic rhetoric.
That, it seems, was a dealbreaker for North Carolina voters, although each candidate did have their own baggage weighing them down as well. But how is it not a dealbreaker to be the source of it all in the first place?
Of course, Trump has always been a unique kind of candidate. There’s a reason he’s earned the nickname “Teflon Don” — no matter how low he stoops, the backlash never seems to stick, in spite of how disqualifying his actions should be. Yet that same backlash seems to stick to his most offensive acolytes, including Robinson here in North Carolina and potentially Kari Lake in Arizona. There’s also always the chance that, for at least some voters, this was as much about rejecting the current White House as it was about embracing Trump.
But the Trump-Stein-Jackson voter remains a perplexing phenomenon, one that Republicans will have to answer to eventually. And as long as voters continue to support Trump, the scions of extremism they seem to reject will continue to fester. Because with Trump winning another election, it’s hard to see the Republican Party finally reckoning with the monster he has created. With Trump atop the GOP, he will continue to create extremism in his wake, and Republicans will blame the candidates themselves for their losses while bypassing the internal reflection that is most sorely needed..
We have not seen the last of candidates like Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow. There will be others like them. How long will it take for the Republican Party — and its voters — to realize Trump is the problem?
I’m grateful that voters blocked a bunch of terrible candidates from taking office. I’m just not sure why they don’t realize that Trump is the most terrible one of all.
This story was originally published November 6, 2024 at 1:20 AM.
