Former Governor Pat McCrory is something of a political punching bag in North Carolina. But he could go from chump to champ in 2022 if he shatters the conventional wisdom that the state Republican Party belongs to Donald Trump.

In June, Trump endorsed Congressman Ted Budd in the 2022 Republican Senate primary. Conventional wisdom saw that as a mortal blow to McCrory.

But two Republican strategists in North Carolina – Paul Shumaker and Carter Wrenn – think McCrory, like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, might expose the man behind the curtain.

The Charlotte Observer reported that Shumaker, who is working with McCrory’s campaign, “released polling last month in a memo arguing that (Trump’s) endorsement might actually hurt a Republican’s chances in the general election.”

Noting that “the memo was not paid for or commissioned by the McCrory campaign,” the Observer said:

“Among the unaffiliated voters cited in Shumaker’s poll, 47% said they would prefer a candidate who pledged to help President Joe Biden’s agenda over one who voted against certifying the presidential election results…. Just 30% said they would prefer a candidate who voted against certifying the election, and 23 percent declined to answer.”

Budd voted against election certification, while McCrory said he would have voted to certify Biden as the winner. They’re running to succeed retiring Senator Richard Burr, who was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump for inciting the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

The poll Shumaker cited said voters prefer a Biden-endorsed candidate over one endorsed by Trump by 49-39%. Shumaker wrote:

“When comparing a Trump endorsed candidate to a Biden endorsed candidate, (Republicans’) advantage with the Unaffiliated voters evaporates. Candidates for state and federal office at any level who are on the wrong side of these issues will alienate suburban voters and jeopardize Republicans’ chances of winning in 2022.”

Shumaker isn’t a disinterested source, of course. And his poll was about the general election, not the primary. But Carter Wrenn isn’t working for anybody, and he wrote in his blog about a national poll that found weakness in Trump’s support among Republicans:

“Half the Republican primary voters…said Trump’s endorsement didn’t matter to them; the rest split, some for Trump’s candidate, some against.”

Wrenn said “Texas’ Special Election confirmed the numbers didn’t lie.” Trump’s candidate lost a special congressional race there last month. Trump’s candidate won a special primary in Ohio, but that’s a safe Democratic seat.

Wrenn and Shumaker are both smart, veteran strategists – from different wings of the party. Shumaker is from the Burr/Jim Martin/Jim Broyhill tradition. Wrenn is from the more ideological Jesse Helms school.

McCrory, like Shumaker, came out of the Charlotte- and Western-based Chamber of Commerce, country-club, big-business wing. He was elected governor in 2012, when nobody imagined a President Trump. He lost reelection in 2016 even though Trump carried North Carolina.

McCrory’s GOP pretty much was the state party until 1972, when Richard Nixon and Jesse Helms began bringing in white voters who didn’t like the Democratic Party’s liberal tilt, especially on civil rights.

The party changed again in the 1980s with an influx of white evangelical Christians, led by Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. They opposed abortion, and they wanted tax subsidies for all-white Christian academies.

Now the GOP has changed again as Trump has brought in displaced and disaffected working-class whites – as well as the neo-Nazi, QAnon, Confederate-flag-waving white supremacists like those who attacked the Capitol.

The Senate primary next year will tell us whether North Carolina Republicans are more at home with the Chamber of Commerce or with the Proud Boys.

 

Links:

Charlotte Observer story: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article253118418.html

Carter Wrenn blog: https://talkingaboutpolitics.com/echoing-a-proverb/#.YQlW645KiM8

Texas primary: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/27/susan-wright-jake-ellzey-texas-6-congressional-seat/ 

It’s been 89 years since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in the depths of the Great Depression. But nostalgia for FDR’s New Deal dies hard.

Giddy Democrats are hailing President Biden’s ambitious plans for COVID-19 and economic relief and for rebuilding America’s physical and social infrastructure – which together are estimated to cost more than $4 trillion – as the second coming of the New Deal. The White House is tweeting out FDR quotes and photos.

Farther left along the spectrum, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) complains that Biden’s “once-in-a-lifetime investment in America” isn’t nearly enough to finance her vision for a “Green New Deal” that would re-engineer the U.S. economy from the top down.

Hardly a day goes by without some idea monger (me, for example) calling for a new New Deal to solve this or that pressing national problem. And why not? It’s hard to think of a better model than FDR for the bold and inventive leadership our country needs now.

As a universal metaphor for “going big,” the New Deal works pretty well. As a governing blueprint for today’s Democrats, it’s less useful. The real history of the New Deal was forged in a very different America, and its lessons are just as likely to challenge as reinforce contemporary progressive shibboleths.

Read the full piece in the Hill. 

For 150 years, North Carolina has been a battleground over Black citizens’ voting rights. Get ready for another battle.

Governor Roy Cooper issued a warning this month:

“I expect Republican leadership in our North Carolina legislature to follow a lot of other state legislatures in using this ‘big lie’ of voter fraud as an excuse for laws that suppress the vote. Let’s just get real about it: These laws are intended to discourage people from voting.”

Legislators in 43 states have proposed more than 250 bills to suppress voting. Georgia just passed one that The New York Times says will have “an outsize impact on Black voters.”

Reporters in Raleigh have speculated that similar bills will be introduced this year – and rushed through the legislature to Governor Cooper’s desk.

Our state has been here before. Resistance began as soon as the Fifteenth Amendment gave Blacks the right to vote after the Civil War.

Blacks helped elect Governor William W. Holden, a Republican, in 1868. In 1870, the Ku Klux Klan used murder and intimidation to suppress Republican votes. Democrats regained control of the legislature. They impeached Holden and removed him from office.

Despite Jim Crow laws and the Klan, Blacks continued to hold elected office in North Carolina during the 19^th Century. The last to serve in Congress was George Henry White (1897-1901).

Then white supremacists took over. In 1898, white mobs murdered Black citizens and overthrew the legally elected government of Wilmington. The Democratic Party and The News & Observer, working together, imposed ruthless voter-suppression laws that disenfranchised Blacks for decades.

In the 1960s, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act despite filibusters by Southern Senators, including North Carolina’s Sam Ervin, a Democrat.

The two parties then reversed roles on race. The Democratic Party, once the party of white supremacy, embraced civil rights. Southern whites embraced the Republican Party, once the party of Lincoln.

The News & Observer became a strong voice for civil rights and racial equality.

Republican Senator Jesse Helms, elected in 1972, took up the Southern-resistance banner. He had won fame fulminating on WRAL-TV against the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He held his seat for 30 years; he never changed his views on race.

The U.S. Justice Department accused Helms’ 1990 campaign – against a Black opponent, Harvey Gantt – of intimidating Black voters. The campaign sent 125,000 postcards, mostly to Black voters, falsely claiming they were not eligible and could be prosecuted for voter fraud. Helms’ campaign later signed a consent decree to settle the complaint.

A former Democrat, Helms had been involved in one of the most racist campaigns in North Carolina’s history, Willis Smith’s victory over Frank Porter Graham in the 1950 Senate Democratic primary. Smith’s campaign passed out flyers that said: “White People Wake Up.”

Despite Helms, North Carolina earned a reputation in the last decades of the 20^th Century as a progressive state on racial issues.

Then, in 2010 – the first midterm after the election of Barack Obama, the first Black President – Republicans won majorities in the state House and Senate.

In 2013, they passed an election law that the Brennan Center for Justice called “possibly the most restrictive” in the nation. It required a photo ID, curtailed early voting, ended same-day registration and ended provisional voting.

A federal court said the law “disproportionately affected” Black voters, targeting them “with almost surgical precision.” Lawsuits tied up many of the law’s provisions.

Now – in the wake of the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud – North Carolina may be in for another battle.

By Gary Pearce

Looking back, it’s clear that North Carolina took a big step in 2008 toward becoming a Democratic state in presidential elections. It’s not clear whether we’ll keep moving in that direction.

Since 2008, Democrats have confidently predicted that demographic trends – more young voters, minority voters and college-educated voters – would make North Carolina more like Virginia, which is increasingly Democratic, and Georgia, which was surprisingly Democratic in 2020.

Before we explore whether that will happen, let’s be clear about the “blue shift” that already has happened.

From 1980 to 2004, North Carolina was reliably Republican in presidential races. Republican candidates carried the state seven straight times, usually by double digits.

Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter here by 2% in 1980, then swamped Walter Mondale by 24% in 1984; George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by over 16% in 1988. Bill Clinton made North Carolina competitive again in 1992, losing to Bush by less than 1%, partly because Ross Perot was on the ballot and siphoned votes away from Bush. Bob Dole beat Clinton here by 4.7% in 1996.

In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore in North Carolina by 12.8%; Bush beat John Kerry by 12.4% in 2004, even with former North Carolina Senator John Edwards on the Democratic ticket.

But that pattern changed dramatically in 2008.

The breakthrough didn’t come the way experts expected: with a moderate white candidate from the South, another Carter or Clinton. Instead, it was a Black candidate, an unknown first-term Senator from Illinois with an unlikely name and an unexpected appeal.

Republicans scoffed that year at reports Barack Obama’s campaign was targeting North Carolina. No way, they said, could a Black Democrat win such a safe Republican state.

But Obama did win, by just 0.3%, thanks to a surge of minority voters and young voters. He won white working-class voters who had lost faith in Republican economic policies and lost patience with never-ending wars in the Middle East. John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin for Vice President cost him women and college-educated voters.

North Carolina turned red again on the electoral maps of 2012, 2016 and 2020. But the margins never returned to pre-2008 levels. Mitt Romney beat Obama here in 2012 by just 2%. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 3.6% in 2016 and Joe Biden by 1.3% in November.

Democrats here have been inspired by Democrats in Georgia, which went for President Biden and elected two Democratic Senators. Efforts have begun to replicate Georgia Democrats’ voter registration and turnout juggernaut.

But North Carolina isn’t Georgia. We’re more rural. While both states have over 10 million people, Georgia’s rural population is about 1.8 million; North Carolina’s is over 3 million. Georgia has more Black voters – 30% of the total electorate, compared to North Carolina’s 20%.

Three questions will decide the future of North Carolina’s “blue shift.”

First, will Covid and its economic impact put an end to the 40-year reign of Ronald Reagan’s philosophy that “government is the problem”? Some polls suggest Americans today want more from government, not less.

Second, which party’s set of issues matter more to voters? Biden and Democrats are focusing on Covid vaccines, economic relief, climate change, and gender and racial equality. Republicans are focused on abortion, immigration, “reopening” the country and “cancel culture.”

Third, which will prevail: Democrats’ efforts to expand voting or Republicans’ efforts to restrict it?

In a state where presidential elections are decided by 1, 2 or 3%, small actions and small shifts in attitudes can produce big shifts in outcomes.

A national reporter recently wrote a flattering article about Governor Roy Cooper, but seemed flummoxed by Cooper’s political success.

In “What Does This Man Know That Other Democrats Don’t?” in The Atlantic, Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote, “The governor is 16–0 in primary and general elections over the past three and a half decades—in good years and bad years for Democrats, in the North Carolina of his youth and in the very different place his state has become.”

Even after interviewing the Governor, he wrote, “Cooper doesn’t know why he keeps winning in North Carolina while other Democrats keep losing.” He added, “the secret to Cooper’s victories may be hard to replicate.”

Actually, there’s no secret here. Dovere touched on most of the explanations. But he underestimated some of them, and he missed a big one.

Cooper’s first key to success, the article noted, is “Make sure voters can see you running a competent and effective government.” Yep. The Governor’s handling of the Covid pandemic played a big part in his reelection last year.

Dovere mentioned “his identity as a white man (which) may have enabled him to hold on to moderate voters.” It’s more than that; Cooper comes across as what he is: a small-town boy from rural North Carolina who has worked his way up.

The article noted, in a master stroke of understatement, that Cooper has “built up his own fundraising apparatus.” In fact, the Governor raised more than $42 million for his reelection last year. His opponent, Dan Forest, raised about $5 million. Cooper outspent Forest 10-1 on TV. In 2016, Cooper outraised an incumbent Governor – a rare feat.

Dovere said Cooper “also established (and largely funded) a political operation (that) gave him centers of political support around the state.” Actually, he’s been building a network since he was a student at UNC. Through 35 years in politics, Cooper has built a stable and experienced team of governmental and political advisers; some have been with him since he ran for Attorney General in 2000.

The article adds, “Then there’s Cooper’s aggressive messaging.” Again, that’s an understatement. In his one debate with Forest last year, Cooper – unlike most incumbents – hit his opponent hard from his opening to close.

After all that, Dovere missed what may be the biggest factor in Cooper’s success: He has won because he has run against the legislature.

Thanks to a fluke off-year election in 2010 and gerrymandering since, Republicans run the legislature. They’ve cut corporate taxes, cut spending on public schools, pushed private schools, stopped Medicaid expansion, cut unemployment relief and cut health, safety and environmental regulations.

But gerrymandering doesn’t work for a statewide race. North Carolina has elected Democratic governors – with precisely the opposite priorities of our legislature – in seven of eight elections since 1992. The only exception was 2012, when incumbent Governor Beverly Perdue pulled out of the race late and left the door open to Republican Pat McCrory.

McCrory faithfully followed the legislature’s lead on most every issue. He signed the controversial “Bathroom Bill” that cost North Carolina millions of dollars in business. He promptly lost reelection to Cooper, even though Donald Trump carried the state, as he did again in 2020.

Cooper is squarely in the tradition of governors since Terry Sanford (1960-64), including Democrats and Republicans like Jim Holshouser and Jim Martin. They focused on better education as the path to a better future. Cooper has added better health care, racial and gender equity, climate-change action and rural Internet to the agenda.

His secret is that North Carolinians evidently share his priorities.

Link to Article.