Editorial: National campaigns are going local for votes in North Carolina

CBC Editorial: Friday, March 29, 2024; #8918

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

President Joe Biden’s visit to Raleigh with Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday marked the seventh time this year that he, Vice President Harris or First Lady Jill Biden made personal stops since the first of the year.

That doesn’t include stops in the state by members of Biden’s cabinet to promote various initiatives and accomplishments of his administration.

Biden’s campaign operatives see opportunity in North Carolina they aren’t passing up when surveying the 2024 national political landscape. While early voter surveying has Biden trailing Republican challenger Donald Trump in the state, those numbers are within polling credulity intervals or margins of error.

They look to the results of the 2020 election – trailing Trump by a percentage point. They look to the margin of victory that same year of Democratic incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper – 4.5 percentage points. They see the Republican’s at the top of the state’s 2024 ticket – particularly gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, attorney general candidate Dan Bishop and superintendent of public instruction nominee Michele Morrow --as polarizing figures who may alienate crucial sectors of the electorate.

They also look to the 2008 election when Barack Obama narrowly carried the state – the first time and only time since 1976 that a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state.

Biden’s campaign brain trust also knows there is nothing easy or simple about campaigning in North Carolina.

Republicans are organized, well-funded both within the state but even more so with outside-the-state dollars as well as dark money. These resources have been shown to be effective, particularly in the 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate and for top state judicial races.

North Carolinians are playing major roles on the national Republican stage – as former state GOP chair Michael Whatley was hand-picked by Trump to oversee the national Republican organization.

There is little reason, particularly at this point, to assume the election in North Carolina won’t be as close as those in the recent past. Reaching voters, motivating them and getting them to the polls, may seem obvious but isn’t easy.

Biden’s choice to hold Tuesday’s event to highlight the anniversary of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act – a signature achievement of President Obama – at the Chavis Community Center in Raleigh was designed to send a strong message. Located on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the park honors John Chavis, a free Black man, Continental Army veteran who was an educator and Presbyterian preacher.

Getting a strong turnout of supporters – particularly among Black voters – will be critical to any chance Biden might have to carry North Carolina. In 2008, when Obama carried the state, 73% of the Black registered voters went to the polls. In 2020 68% of Black voters cast ballots.

And getting Black voters to the polls won’t be easy. While Democrats recruited candidates to oppose all but two Republicans running for the state legislature, the GOP didn’t field opponents to 25 Democrats running for the state House of Representatives and eight Democrats running for the state Senate. That clearly isn’t a coincidence or accident.

It is a truism -- all politics are local. When there’s little motivation for the most local of candidates to get out and campaign there’s similarly less local push to get those voters to the polls. Twenty of the 33 unopposed Democrats are Black.  The unopposed Democratic candidates mostly are in counties with the greatest concentrations of Black and Democratic voters – Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham, Guilford, Forsyth and New Hanover counties.  It will be even more challenging to get voters in these areas, when there’s little local campaign energy, charged up about the election and anxious to get to the polls.

With Tuesday’s event and its location at Raleigh’s Chavis Park, Biden’s campaign is sending a message to North Carolina voters – particularly Black voters – of their importance to the Democrats’ hope for success in November.

Given the high stakes and emphasis the Republican and Democratic national campaigns have in North Carolina, even those candidates who may think they have a free ride won’t be allowed to rest on their laurels.

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