On Tuesday, North Carolina held runoffs for the two Republican council of state races that were not resolved during the March 5th regular primary due to the leading candidate receiving less than 30% of the vote. The final two nominees are Hal Weatherman for Lieutenant Governor and Dave Boliek for State Auditor.
North Carolina Lieutenant Governor:
Hal Weatherman — 74% (+55%); 96,461 (-85,357)
Jim O'Neill — 26% (+10%); 33,111 (-113,931)
North Carolina State Auditor:
Dave Boliek — 53% (+31%); 66,895 (-122,176)
Jack Clark — 47% (+24%); 58,974 (-139,819)
Interesting to note: Boliek was able reverse a narrow second-place finish from the regular primary, where he finished with 22% to Clark's 23%. Given North Carolina's runoff threshold being set so low, the runoff garnering such low turnout, and the narrow-ness of the initial primary results, this isn't an entirely unexpected outcome to have occurred, but it's worth noting. The last time a North Carolina statewide primary runoff reversed the first- and second-place finishers was in 2012 (when the runoff threshold was set at 40%), when Mike Causey beat Richard Morgan for Republican nominee for North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance in the July runoff. Causey finished 2% behind Morgan in the initial primary and was able to turn that into a 15 point victory two months later.
While expected, these were actually quite important results. O’Neill would’ve been a far-stronger GE candidate (with real rising star potential) who likely would’ve put the LG race away (it’d be Lean R, but closer to Likely than Tilt). Weatherman is a pretty meh candidate, but the issue with him is more that I don’t think he or his aides realize that Robinson is a one-man wrecking ball for the NC Republican statewide ticket. The vibe I get is that Weatherman is going all in on tying himself to Robinson (which admittedly could’ve changed post-primary) and I think Robinson is an even weaker candidate than Mastriano*, so obviously I’m rather skeptical of that strategy.
Weatherman is basically Generic hardline SoCon NC Republican and normally that would be enough, but he’s going out of his way to very aggressively tie himself to a sinking ship, so I have NC LG at Tilt R. Rachel Hunt is a strong Democratic nominee and while that’s generally necessary for a statewide Democratic win in NC, it is far from sufficient. She’s really incidental to the outcome of this race unless she screws up. She can’t win, but either Weatherman or (even more likely) Robinson can easily lose it for Republicans.
By contrast, Republicans picked easily the best candidate in their decidedly meh field for Auditor. The Democrats have a solid if unexceptional incumbent. This is basically Generic D appointed incumbent vs. Generic R and likely comes down to the overall political environment in NC and how badly Robinson ends up hurting the rest of the NC statewide GOP ticket.
*Albeit one who will get a much higher vote share than Mastriano did (I think Robinson “only” loses by ~5%) due to running in a highly polarized, mildly Republican-leaning state during a Presidential election year, far more support from the state and National Republican establishment, and likely being at least somewhat better funded than Mastriano.
