NC GOV 2024 - Stein (D) vs Robinson (R)

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I don't know if this should go here, but the NC Dems just ousted their entire leadership.

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And Robinson is dominating the primary polls so far it seems, which is brutal for Republicans.

For all the crap that online lefties often get I'd argue that it's actually the online right-wing social media warriors who have benefited Democrats electorally than vice versa.

Any reason to think Robinson's support is primarily drawn from online stuff? I don't really see much about him there. Yeah, he became prominent for a video that went viral, but he's also the sitting lieutenant governor and none of the other candidates in these hypothetical polls seem particularly strong. Might be reasonable to assume that he would lead either way.

Yeah something that people outside NC are missing is that although Robinson is indeed quite inflammatory and extreme, he's absolutely the preferred candidate of the Republican establishment. They've been coordinating quite a bit with him; that's why he gave the State of the state response earlier this month, when normally it would have been someone in NCGA leadership.

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I would actually be pretty concerned if Folwell were the nominee; he's widely respected across the state as a pretty effective treasurer.

Thankfully he's not likely to win against Robinson.

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It's not fair to describe Robinson as incoherent. If you're looking for a 2022 parallel, Robinson is Kari Lake, not Doug Mastriano -- highly extreme to the point of being too far from the state and filled with scandal, but fairly charismatic and a good public speaker. Robinson became the Lt. Governor nominee because he went viral in right-wing circles for his speech at the Greensboro City Council.

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Yeah ftr I wasn't arguing that Robinson was favored (far from it!)--just pushing back against folks running down his political skills, which are enough for him to have essentially won the Republican shadow primary.

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Walker's a strong enough candidate to possibly beat Robinson in the primary (so is Folwell, for that matter).

This is definitely looking like a primary where a Trump endorsement could be decisive.

Ehh, I don't know about that. Walker's 2022 primary performance was pretty low-energy. And the guy's basically 5 years out from getting drawn out of his seat; he doesn't have much to his name.

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A majority of North Carolinians don't know who either Stein or Robinson is, and I suspect a good chunk of the people who know Robinson only know him as "he's the lieutenant governor, right?" I'm not too concerned about polling right now, especially since Carolina Forward has a vested interest in making sure the political class doesn't get too complacent about Robinson getting Mastriano'd.

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NC row offices will also be up in 2024, here are some thoughts on them. An important note is that I don't know NCGOP politics very well, so I may be missing some stuff there.

NC Lt. Gov: Robinson isn't running for reelection, and the primary on both sides looks to be a bit of a clown car. Republicans have Sen. Burgin (who I would assume is the favorite?), Rep. Elmore, and then a bunch of randos, who assume this being a Republican primary also have a reasonable chance of Robinson-ing to the top.

On the Dem side, you have Sen. Hunt, daughter of Governor Hunt, who is the probable favorite of old guard NC Dem establishment, who talk about Hunt in the way that old Catholic grandmothers talk about JFK. There's also Rep. Raymond Smith, Sen. Ben Clark, and Sen. Sydney Batch, all of whom also have a decent shot imo. Batch represents newly Democratic areas of Southern Wake County and is seen as a rising star in the party; if the NC Democratic party had the same demographic makeup as the VA Democratic party she would be a heavy favorite. Smith used to rep Goldsboro and Clark used to represent the Sandhills. There are probably going to be some racial and geographic dynamics to this race, as there was in the 2020 primary, where Holley won the clown car by doing the best with rural Black voters; Smith or Clark seem the most likely to replicate that.

Attorney General: This seems likely to be a showdown between Jeff Jackson and Dan Bishop. This should be fairly interesting; two very ambitious sitting members of Congress duking it out for a row office because it's the de facto "next stop in line" for Governor candidates. I think Jackson maybe has a slight advantage; he's built a very strong following on social media and probably will inspire a reasonably high level of interest.

Secretary of State: Elaine Marshall will probably run again. She's basically an institution at this point; Republicans could dislodge her if 2024 is a good year for Republicans nationally or they get someone really good, but I think she's the likeliest Democrat to win a council of state election except maybe Josh Stein.

Auditor: Beth Wood may run again but if she does she would have to be a massive underdog, maybe even in the primary, on account of her hit and run. The only Republican announced against her yet is Charles Dingee.

Treasurer: Dale Folwell is running for Governor, which opens up an opportunity for Democrats since he's a fairly popular incumbent. Wesley Harris, a state representative, has announced so far and seems like a strong candidate. So far the only Republican is James Upchurch, who is a party-switcher from Guilford County and probably not very strong.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Truitt appears to be running again. This could be an interesting race, in part because the right-wing of the GOP hates her for being insufficiently strident on their education/obscenity/CRT related obsessions (plus being hapless in the face of Dem-controlled North Carolina State Board of Education, which is why they're trying to reconfigure how all this works). No Democrats have announced yet but I assume they'll get someone decent, since NC Dems are obsessed with public education.

Commissioner of Agriculture: Troxler will win.

Commissioner of Labor: Dobson isn't running again, foiling the dreams of political scientists who wanted to see if the Cheri Berry effect was replicable. Jon Hardister and Ben Moss are both running on the GOP side so far; I assume Hardister is the favorite, since he's an NCGOP insider, but I don't know these things as well.

Commissioner of Insurance: Causey is probably the favorite; Wayne Goodwin might run again but I don't really know.

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What’s the Cheri Berry effect?

Cherie Berry (I misspelled thanks to Cheri Beasley) is the former Republican Commissioner of Labor, who overperformed relative to what you might expect because her office decided to place photos of her in every elevator in the state.



Image by J. Collins. No changes made.

Since she left office in 2021, Dobson is the guy who's in every elevator now. He hasn't quite had the same meme-ifaction as Berry, whose ubiquity and amusing rhyming name earned her the nickname of "the Elevator Queen."

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Huh looked it up, someone even dressed up as her for Halloween*. Nikki Fried tried something similar in Florida and put her name on every gas station. Wonder how it would have gone for her if she had tried to run for election
*is there something more atlas than dressing up as random elected row-offices.

The thing about the plaques with Cheri Berry's name on it is that they're hard to not notice; they're always above the control panels of the elevator at about eye level. If you're just standing in an elevator the labor commissioner's photo is really hard to miss, unlike a gas station where Nikki Fried is not going to be as visible unless her photo is required to be by the pumps or something.

Josh Dobson is the politician who I see most frequently, including prominent national figures.

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Random thing I noticed; the last two Attorneys General of NC became governors (Roy Cooper, Mike Easley)

Common joke: "Attorney General" = "Almost Governor"

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Morgan getting 29% in Watauga County in the Gov. primary is reflective of an interesting phenomenon; there's a woman there who puts together a voter guide each year that Dems use for all of their materials. She doesn't always pick the establishment favorite, so sometimes in random races you get a candidate like Morgan winning there.

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Primary voters are not too happy with the turncoats in the house:

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Also, looks like Mike Woodard lost his State Senate seat -- pretty striking for a very long-serving and prominent Democrat to go down like this. Though he was increasingly not a great fit for Durham, especially with his not-so hidden skeletons in the closet.

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Some of you may not know who the father of Democratic lieutenant-gubernatorial nominee Rachel Hunt is. I hope that these links will prove to be a useful study aid in these regards.

People in North Carolina certainly remember, as attested by her primary performance.