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Miles Parks
hey there it's the npr politics podcast i'm miles parks i cover voting i'm ashley lopez i cover politics and colin campbell of member station wunc in north carolina is here with us as well hi colin hey miles and ashley and today on the show voting in this year's midterms is already underway in north carolina a state that has a really interesting senate race brewing so colin this senate seat is open because republican thom tillis announced that he's not running for reelection tell us who is on the ballot to try to replace him yeah so on
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Colin Campbell
the republican side we have michael whatley who's the trump endorsed candidate in the primary he was previously the chairman of the republican national committee he led the republic party in north carolina before that but it's his first run for elected office outside of party leadership roles and on the democratic side we've got former governor roy cooper running he served two terms left office about a year or so ago and he is likely the candidate on the democratic side he's been in office for decades here never lost an election democrats really hopeful that this could be the year that he could be the candidate that gets them across the finish line in a senate race
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Ashley Lopez
yeah and whatley's also working with way less name recognition than obviously a governor so this is going to be a little bit of an easier lift for democrats than they would otherwise in a state that by the way obviously went to trump in twenty twenty four so this could be one of several hopeful pickups for them this year i will
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Miles Parks
say it's a little surprising to me an open seat in a competitive state that the democratic and republican primaries for this seat seem if not wrapped up but a little bit uncompetitive can you explain do you have any thoughts on why that is colin yeah i mean
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Colin Campbell
voters here will have a choice on their ballot there's multiple candidates in each party's primary but this is a situation where both parties i think saw some pretty stakes in this race and early on decided to anoint their candidates when former governor roy cooper jumped in on the democratic side that kind of cleared the field some other candidates that had name recognition and were running dropped out at that point in the race on the republican side there was a lot of interest when thom tillis announced last year that he was going to drop out of the race other members of congress who are republicans were interested at one point there was discussion of lara trump the president's daughter in law might be interested in the race ultimately the race there was for president trump's endorsement a lot of people talked to him and as soon as he weighed in with michael whatley being his pick for his endorsement that caused all the other folks to sort of step aside and let whateley run granted there are two other candidates that are noteworthy in this primary michelle morrow who beat a republican incumbent for state superintendent of public instruction a couple years ago she's more on sort of the fringe extreme of the party same goes for don brown who's an attorney whose claim to fame is that he represented some of the january sixth defendants in court both of those not expected to win but certainly may test the value of the trump endorsement in a race where the trump endorsed candidate michael whatley like ashley said is not that well known can you tell
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Miles Parks
us a little bit more about roy cooper on the democratic side i mean this is somebody who's a fairly popular two term governor but for people who aren't in north carolina i'm not sure we're super familiar with what he's known for tell us a little bit more
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Colin Campbell
about him yeah he's sort of this old school kind of moderate north carolina democratic politician was an attorney from a small town around rocky mount first served in the state legislature back in the eighties eventually became attorney general for the state waited for sixteen years in that role before he decided to run for governor and then had two terms where he's fairly popular he's done well in the polls here still despite some of the attack ads coming from the republicans since he jumped in this race still seems to have an edge here he's got this sort of folksy approach that seems to play well here in north
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Miles Parks
carolina ashley lay out how north carolina fits into the map for the broader senate i guess when you think about democrats potential chances for retaking the senate how does north carolina play into that
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Ashley Lopez
i will say in general the senate is going to be a tougher climb for democrats than say the house north carolina is sort of essential if democrats are going to flip some seats because north carolina has a lot of independent voters it's more of a purple state than anything if you look at registration numbers republicans now have like a little bit more of an edge than they did a few years ago but it's pretty much neck and neck in terms of the parties where voter registration is really growing is among independent voters so this is a place where democrats if they are gonna play a little better among independent swing voters you know more centrist voters this is a state where they could potentially do really well and as i mentioned they have an upper hand here the democratic candidate just has way more name recognition so if democrats do want to take the senate this is sort of a must win yeah
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Colin Campbell
they haven't won a senate seat in north carolina since two thousand eight every time they try and so far they've been falling short but with roy cooper as the candidate there's a lot of optimism that i'm hearing from democrats here regardless this is going to be a really expensive race because there's just so few senate races around the country that are this competitive i've heard anywhere from half a billion to maybe even a full billion dollars could be spen on this race before all is said and
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Ashley Lopez
done yeah and two thousand eight was sort of a weird year it was the year that barack obama won north carolina it was just like a sweep for democrats and that has not been seen in north carolina in a really long time not to say that that's not possible but it's just more of like two thousand eight was more of
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Miles Parks
a weird thing got it okay so democrats need to net four senate seats to potentially take over the senate i'm just trying to play out the math here and north carolina potentially could be one of those four in addition to the two they need to defend i want to talk a little bit more about president trump's endorsement of michael whatley colin how do you think trump is going to play into this race come
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Colin Campbell
the general i think trump is going to be sort of the key figure in this race michael whatley you know really is a trump surrogate in many ways he's on cable news all the time defending the president's actions one interviewer asked whatley if there's anywhere he disagrees on trump any issue and whatley's response was not in public i'm not going to disagree with trump in public you already see roy cooper coming out attacking whatley for pretty much anything that's coming out of the trump administration whether it's issues around the economy around immigration and ice and border patrol actions that have taken place some in this state it's really going to all come down to trump related messaging i think on both sides in this particular race is there
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Miles Parks
anything to be gleaned i mean voting started more than a week ago there is there anything to be gleaned from the early voting numbers at this point
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Colin Campbell
you know with the primary not having a whole lot of action between the different us senate candidates in either party i was kind of expecting this to be a low turnout primary but so far that's not actually been the case but going back to the twenty twenty two midterm the last one here we're actually up a fair bit in early voting so far in terms of the number of ballots have been cast and the majority of those ballots so far have been in the democratic primary now north carolina is an open primary state so if you're an unaffiliated voter which is actually the most popular registration option in this state in recent years you can choose whether you want to vote in the democratic primary or the republican primary and a lot of people seem to be choosing the democratic primary which would seem to be an indication that people are just really eager to vote particularly on the democratic side this even if the voting they're doing right now is not deciding any sort of partisan
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Ashley Lopez
contest what we've been seeing a lot in like elections this year and last year special elections primaries governorships is that democrats and independent voters in particular are very fired up for elections this year they're unhappy with the direction of the country immigration you know that has been for a long time a benefit to republicans but right now after what happened in minneapolis it's a liability for them and voters are very motivated to vote against republicans on this issue and we've been seeing independents time and time again sort of in polling sort of side with democrats on a lot of issues
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Miles Parks
well and i keep thinking ashley about the reporting you brought to the pod a couple weeks ago from that focus group that you watched where majority of the focus group participants said that they had had their daily life impacted in some way by ice activity and i feel like north carolina is a place where not it's not a border state so you wouldn't necessarily assume that but there has been a fair amount of enforcement activity there right colin yeah we
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Colin Campbell
had a pretty big border patrol and ice enforcement for about a week or so last fall in charlotte some of those agents came up here to the raleigh durham area there was a point where a lot of immigrant related businesses shut down some construction sites were shut down for a few days during that happening so certainly that issue is top of mind here for a lot of voters particularly those in the middle who may not like what they've seen from immigration enforcement actions so far even if they'd like to see stronger border protections and a better immigration enforcement system so
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Miles Parks
what does whatley do from there then i guess as a candidate who is so directly tied to president trump do you expect him to separate himself in some way over the next eight months from president trump or how is he gonna go about this i think that's
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Colin Campbell
gonna be really the challenge for whatley is to what extent he can separate himself from trump when he's been with the president on just about every single issue that matters to voters at this point what'll be interesting to see is i think the whatley campaign is hoping that they can change the messaging around that they can focus more on hopes that the economy does better as we get closer and closer to november and i think they're also going to try to go on the attack with the amount of ad spending that's going into this race trying to paint roy cooper as soft on crime the issue that they seem to really be pointing to and is probably going to be a key factor as we get closer to november's election is this incident that happened last year on the charlotte light rail system a ukrainian immigrant woman was attacked at random with a knife and the suspect in that case has a pretty lengthy criminal history and whatley's campaign is trying to tie that criminal history to policies by governor cooper when he was governor making the claim essentially that this guy was out of jail because of actions the governor has taken there doesn't seem to be any evidence that we've seen so far that directly connects the dots on that but certainly we're going to see that incident come up again and again in this race all right
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Miles Parks
we can leave it there for now
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Miles Parks
and we're back and we've been talking about the senate race in north carolina but i want to turn for a moment to another competitive race that's unfolding right now in the primary there which is for the fourth congressional district this is a safe democratic seat but there is currently a competitive democratic primary going on colin can you tell us what's going on there so this is
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Colin Campbell
one of those primaries that's really going to tell us something about the direction of the democratic party's electorate in the state particularly in a deep blue urban district like this one that's centered around durham and chapel hill the incumbent congresswoman there is valerie fouchier longtime sort of establishment figure in democratic politics she's seeking a third term but her opponent is a durham county commissioner by the name of nita alam who ran against fushi a couple years ago the first time she ran in the primary and lost allam is endorsed by senator bernie sanders and a number of other groups on the left that want to sort of steer this seat into a more leftward direction on issues like ice and on issues like israel and middle east policy will be interesting to watch there's been a lot of outside money around this race that seems to be mostly going toward alam side of things so this will be one to see whether democrats are willing to go against an incumbent who's been around for a while and try to get a new voice in there who's younger and who's more in sort of the bernie sanders wing of
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Miles Parks
the party yeah i feel like ashley one of the things that was interesting to me about just like watching this race is just that alam is running on this abolish ice campaign which i feel like a couple months ago it felt like i wasn't seeing anywhere and i feel like if she's able to win this primary running on that message i don't know that to me is i don't know it's interesting for a lot of different reasons yeah well i
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Ashley Lopez
mean it's not surprising because like this is what primaries are right it is a group of voters that are usually more engaged the ideological partisans of the party sort of hashing out where they want the party to go and especially when you have safe seats like this which there are a lot and we could talk about that this is like kind of the safest place to hash these conversations out and so i'm and i'm not surprised because if the base of the party has been saying they don't like the direction that the party has been going when it comes to immigration there were a lot of complaints from the base of the democratic party that the harris campaign for example was not vociferously defending immigrants and democrats on the hill are not doing enough to fight back against ice like you know the conversation hasn't been to fully defund or abolish ice on the hill and that has really angered a lot of base democratic voters so i'm not surprised to see this at all it will be interesting to see how many of these safe democratic seats lose their incumbents because that is a sign that the base is really angry and they want to see the party move in a different direction but if you're going to see fights over stuff like this it's going to be in a safe democratic
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Colin Campbell
seat but it does have the potential to go to run into the general election i think if nita alam wins this race you're going to see republicans really try to tie roy cooper's campaign in the us senate race to her candidacy and he's among the many establishment democrats who who are endorsing incumbent valerie fu chi in this race so that'll be one to watch if she does end up pulling off an upset here
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Miles Parks
and ashley another storyline to watch in north carolina is that this is one of the states that redrew its house map in response to president trump asking republican controlled states to try to redraw their maps to make it easier for republicans to keep control of the house of representatives how could that impact everything
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Ashley Lopez
this year so north carolina was already pretty gerrymandered for republicans so they really just took aim at one seat that was held by a long term democrat there in the house and so it's just one extra seat but i will say this like broadly speaking this arms race in redistricting has yet to yield any sort of meaningful edge for either party but i did do some reporting recently that what it did do was it created more safe seats in congress so each party just has more safe seats that means there are fewer competitive races heading into the general the most voting power many voters are going to have is going to be in these primaries and you know that's unfortunate in some ways because fewer voters participate in primaries it's like a not as mixed right there's not as many low propensity voters in primaries there's not as much racial diversity these voters tend to be older wealthier and as i mentioned ideologically partisan people so what parties are doing right now is just creating a situation where fewer voters have sort of meaningful voting power when they come into november and north carolina has been going down that road for a while and they just sort of added another safe seat for the party i mean all of this is dependent on how well democrats do if this is like a wave election where it's like a plus twenty point swing in one direction like that could you know this could all be null and void but those things don't tend to happen all the time yeah
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Colin Campbell
the district that got redrawn in north carolina is the first district up in the northeastern corner it was the last cycle the only toss up race in the entire state now that's been redrawn to be a republican friendly seat so we have no toss up up congressional races in the state granted congressman don davis the democrat who's the incumbent up there is still running for reelection he's hoping that having that vintage of incumbency plus maybe a good year for democrats could maybe let him win a victory in a district that's really drawn to stack the odds against him at this
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Miles Parks
point i feel like we look at congress and we're like why doesn't this work really well and then you're like wait we put a group of the most ideologically like i don't like i don't know it just makes so much sense when you think of it that way that there's only these handful of competitive districts and generally it's a group of people who are picked by the most ideologically angry people on both sides of course they're not gonna be incentivized to compromise generally i don't know yeah
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Ashley Lopez
and i just mentioned these voters are older and wealthier and what does congress look like i mean it is very easy to see where this all leads and as colin just mentioned this is another example of one competitive seat where voters at least in one region had the ability to you know decide who controls congress because you know so few seats decide what party has power in congress you know that was taken away from some voters but i will say like the majority of american states don't have competitive seats unite america which this is like their hobby horse they have been pushing for primary reform for years they told me that something like thirty two states don't have a single competitive seat in congress coming this election you're
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Miles Parks
in good company colin so one other storyline i guess to watch in north carolina as voting picks up over the next week ahead of tuesday's election day this is the first election cycle after some pretty major changes made by the republican controlled legislature in north carolina to change who actually controls how voting is done in the state colin can you explain what happened last year yeah so
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Colin Campbell
this is a state where the governor gets to appoint the majority or used to get to appoint the majority of the state board of elections that oversees elections administration that changed last year when the legislature decided to take that power from the governor instead give it to the state auditor who oh by the way just happened to become a republican in the last election so now republicans have a majority on the board that administers elections here in north carolina and so we're going to see a lot more gop friendly decisions coming out of that board we already saw even just in this primary the decisions about early voting sites and hours fewer places opening on sundays which is popular with black voters that do souls to the polls campaign fewer voting locations on college campuses where young voters are likely to come out so we're going to see some of the rules and processes around this sort of handled in a way that advantages republicans whereas the last few cycles democrats were in charge of that process and those decisions all right well we
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Miles Parks
can leave it there for now as we mentioned voting continues in north carolina through next tuesday colin thank you so much for walking us through all this thanks for having me and tomorrow it's the state of the union so we will be in your feed a little bit later than usual with analysis after the president's done talking and after the democrats response make sure to hit that follow button so you don't miss that or any of the other great podcasts we have coming out this week i'm miles parks i cover voting i'm ashley
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Ashley Lopez
lopez i cover politics and thank you
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Miles Parks
for listening to the npr politics podcast
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