In the primary, North Carolina Republicans eat their own
Published March 7, 2024
By Thomas Mills
For Reagan Republicans in North Carolina, yesterday’s primary will go down as the March Massacre. After years of feeding their base conspiracy theories and lies about government and the establishment, GOP elected leaders went down in flames, victims of their own disinformation campaigns. The mob is in control, pitchforks and all.
Incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt lost to Michele Morrow, a Moms for Liberty-type who brags about winning conservative fights instead of improving public schools. Two incumbent state house Republicans lost primaries to upstarts. Onslow County Representative George Cleveland lost to a 21-year-old East Carolina junior who is a Charlie Kirk acolyte. Cabarrus County Representative Kevin Crutchfield got beat by Brian Echevarria who hired a consultant tied to the Proud Boys and has a history of financial mismanagement.
With the exception of Tim Moore, every Republican legislator who tried to move up the ladder lost, usually to a MAGA type. None of the legislators running for lieutenant governor made it to the runoff. Jon Hardister lost his primary for Commissioner of Labor. State Representative John Bradford came in third in his race for Congress, losing to Mark Harris, the guy who tried to steal an election in 2018. Representative Grey Mills lost his primary for Congress, too.
The only bright spots for the establishment GOP came when Commissioner Mike Causey fended off his primary challenge, Steve Troxler won his primary to keep his position as Agriculture Commissioner, and Tim Moore won his primary for Congress.
The message to Republicans is that governing is unacceptable in the party of Trump. Burn it down or go home. The most favored candidates are those who have no track record of doing anything other than burnishing their MAGA credentials.
The top of the state GOP ticket will be the most extreme in North Carolina history. Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson decisively defeated State Treasurer Dale Folwell and attorney Bill Graham and now leads the ticket. He’ll be joined by Representative Dan Bishop for attorney general and probably Hal Weatherman, a MAGA enthusiast who wants to teardown public schools and supports a fetal heartbeat bill, though Weatherman may face a runoff from former Forsyth District Attorney Jim O’Neill. It will be among the most extreme tickets in the country.
Robinson will spend much of the cycle trying to convince voters that he was lying about who he told us he was for the last decade. He’ll have to defend statements on tape and video demeaning women, LGBT citizens, and Jews. He’ll be joined by the rest of the ticket trying to walk back or conceal extremist positions on abortion and birth control. Bishop is the only one of the three with any governing experience and he’s going to need to defend funding a white supremacist web site and cavorting with extremist clowns Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz.
Democrats, on the other hand, are unified around a ticket with solid experience and a track record of winning tough campaigns. Attorney General Josh Stein handily dispatched his primary opponents, winning 70% of the vote. State Senator Rachel Hunt won the nomination for lieutenant governor with 70%, too. In the attorney general primary, Congressman Jeff Jackson notched a comfortable 22-point win over Durham District Attorney Satana Deberry. There’s no evidence of a split in the party.
The two Democratic primaries challenging state house incumbents who voted with Republicans on the budget are probably going to recounts. In the High Point district, incumbent Cecil Brockman leads his opponent James Adams by 83 votes and in the Roanoke Rapids-based district challenger Rodney Pierce leads incumbent Michael Wray by less than 50 votes. When the dust settles, Democrats need to huddle and figure out work together going into an important election cycle.
Republicans had a higher turnout than Democrats but I doubt that has any bearing on November. Because of gerrymandering, the GOP had numerous Congressional primaries where the next member of Congress will be determined by last night’s results. They also had crowded primaries for Council of State seats that Democrats avoided.
The biggest losers last night were formerly mainstream Republicans who consider themselves Reagan Republicans. They are going to have to debase themselves by bowing to the cult of Trump or find a new home. Most, like the Thom Tillis’s of the world, will try to pretend like Mark Robinson, Dan Bishop, and Hal Weatherman are mainstream politicians or rationalize that, somehow, Democrats are worse. They’ll excuse racist, sexist, antisemitic, and antidemocratic behavior because Democrats want to raise your taxes, want a path to citizenship for established immigrants, and want women to have access to reproductive health.
I would like to personally invite them into the Democratic fold to build a large, centrist, big-tent party that can govern a state like North Carolina. Otherwise, I urge them to sit this election out because they can only reclaim their party if MAGA loses big. If the election is close, Tillis can expect a primary from a recently defeated Mark Robinson or Hal Weatherman in 2026 and yesterday’s result would indicate a difficult path through a GOP primary.
As for this year’s general election, the primaries last night gave voters in North Carolina clear choices. The top of the Republican ticket will be solidly MAGA, an anti-governing, anti-abortion ticket embracing authoritarianism and based in cultural resentment. The Democratic ticket will be topped by political leaders with track records of both governing and winning tough campaigns. We’re about to find out where North Carolinians want to go, forward, embracing a more diverse society and technologically advanced economy, or backward, trying stumble back into a world that no longer exists.
