Runoff candidates O'Neill, Weatherman eye lieutenant governor's office as a platform for advocacy
A low-key runoff election will determine the Republican Party’s nominee for the second highest position in North Carolina government — a platform many have used to seek even higher office.
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill and political strategist Hal Weatherman are competing to be the GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor, a position currently held by Republican Mark Robinson. Robinson is the Republican nominee for governor.
O’Neill and Weatherman received more votes than the other nine candidates in the March 5 primary but failed to earn more than 30% support, the threshold needed to secure a party’s nomination. The winner of the May 14 runoff will face Democrat Rachel Hunt in November.
North Carolina’s next lieutenant governor will take over a job that carries a big title but fewer responsibilities than many other elected state government leaders.
The lieutenant governor presides over the state senate, calling on senators when they ask to speak. He also sits on various boards and is first in line to succeed the governor but can’t issue executive orders, or even cast a vote in the senate unless there’s a tie.The lieutenant governor sits on various boards but doesn’t run a department, unlike the commissioners of agriculture or labor or other elected officials on the council of state.
What the job lacks in power, it makes up for in opportunity. It’s a high-profile position that allows the office-holder to build name recognition by traveling the state and weighing-in on North Carolina’s most pressing issues. Every lieutenant governor since 1961 has also run for governor.
Robinson became the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee in part because he uses the lieutenant governor’s office as a bullhorn for the party’s right wing. He often rails against abortion and LGBTQ issues with a blunt, thunderous speaking style that helped him rise from obscurity to stardom in a matter of months. He was unknown in North Carolina political circles before his run for office in 2020. Now he’s a regular speaker at national conservative conferences and is endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
O’Neill and Weatherman don’t have the same star power as Robinson. But they’ve been involved in North Carolina politics longer than him and are drawing from their résumés to appeal to Republican voters.
O’Neill, 58, came just 14,000 votes shy of becoming North Carolina’s Attorney General in 2020. He believes his experience as Forsyth County’s top prosecutor will appeal to voters who are concerned about crime, immigration and civil unrest.
Weatherman, 54, has spent his career in North Carolina politics. He worked as chief of staff for former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and former U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick. Although this is his first time as a candidate, Weatherman believes his experiences traveling the state and attending local Republican gatherings makes him more in-touch with grassroots voters.
Political science experts and Republican campaign strategists who spoke to WRAL hesitated to predict a winner in the race. Weatherman got more votes in the March primary and is endorsed by Robinson, but the field was crowded and O’Neill may carry over some name recognition from his campaign for attorney general.
“The only thing that I will attempt a prediction at: it’s likely going to be an abysmal turnout rate, and only the truly engaged and active Republican voters will likely be participating in this low-voter affair,” Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, told WRAL.
Priorities in office
Both candidates say they share the same concerns as Republican voters. They want to secure the southern U.S. border, limit government spending, and crack down on crime. Contacted by WRAL, neither candidate identified a major policy disagreement with the other.
“Both men appear to present a strong conservative platform,” Bitzer said. “But North Carolina’s lieutenant governor is institutionally weak in power or authority that it’s up to the office holder to try and make it whatever they want.”
If elected, O’Neill and Weatherman each said they’d have different priorities. O’Neill wants to use the position to advocate for law enforcement and help legislators tackle the state’s emerging crime problems.
“What the lieutenant governor's office provides is a platform … to speak on behalf of other people,” O’Neill told WRAL in an interview. “And one of the things I've been most passionate about over the last 28 years is law enforcement.”
O’Neill has worked as Forsyth’s district attorney since 2009, when Gov. Bev Perdue appointed him to replace a DA who retired. O’Neill has won each of the three DA elections since then — something he says stands out in a county dominated by Democrats.
He touts an endorsement by North Carolina’s Police Benevolent Association and is especially proud of a program he launched in 2018. The county’s DATA program, as it’s known, offers low-level offenders the opportunity to reduce their charges if they agree to regular counseling, drug tests, and monthly injections of Vivitrol, a non-addictive drug that blocks a body’s opioid receptors.
O’Neill says the program does two things at once: it helps reduce crime while also treating addiction.
“Fentanyl is killing Americans on a daily basis. The numbers are astronomical,” O’Neill said. “So I pulled in a lot of resources, a lot of community partners, and came up with this plan.”
Weatherman declined multiple requests for an interview. In an email to WRAL, he said he wants to advocate for school choice policies and workers in blue collar jobs.
“My primary goal in seeking the office of lieutenant governor is to use the authority of the office to fundamentally remove the stigma our society has placed on men and women who work with their hands (the trades),” Weatherman said in an email.
He noted that the lieutenant governor has a seat on the State Board of Education and the State Community College Board of Directors. Weatherman, who’s endorsed by Robinson, said he wants to use those seats to fight the “woke agenda.”
“I want to drive a new generation of people into the trades and restore the basic concept of the dignity of all types of work,” Weatherman said. “And I want to prepare our state for the precarious days that I believe are ahead of us as a country.”
Recent election performances
Another reason O’Neill and Weatherman are running for lieutenant governor is because both of them suffered election losses in 2020: O’Neill as a candidate for attorney general and Weatherman as the manager of Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s campaign for governor.
If Forest had won, he’d likely be seeking a second term as governor this year and Robinson might be seeking another term as lieutenant governor. If O’Neill had won, he’d be up for a second term as attorney general.
O’Neill lost to incumbent Attorney General Josh Stein. O’Neill alleges that Stein, a Democrat, defamed him. The O’Neill campaign filed a complaint with the state elections board alleging that a Stein campaign ad defamed him by claiming O’Neill “left 1,500 rape kits sitting on a shelf, leaving rapists on the streets.”
O’Neill alleged that the ad is defamatory because local law enforcement agencies maintain custodial control of rape kits — not the local district attorneys. A federal judge later blocked the Wake County District Attorney from pursuing charges against Stein.
“Even when the race was over that November, I continued to fight,” O’Neill said in his interview with WRAL. “Ask yourself: Who do Josh Stein’s people not want to see prevail in this race? And I think the answer is clear.”
Stein has defended the claims from his campaign ads in 2020, saying they’re accurate. Asked about O’Neill’s comments last week, Stein campaign consultant Morgan Jackson accused O’Neill of being “bitter.”
Weatherman worked for Lt. Gov. Forest throughout his eight-year tenure and managed his gubernatorial campaign in 2020. Forest’s loss stood out in an otherwise good year for North Carolina Republicans.
Forest, meanwhile, lost to incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper by 248,000 votes, or 4.5 percentage points. Multiple Republican strategists who spoke to WRAL on the condition of anonymity said they believe Forest’s campaign could and should have done better.
After all, Republicans fared well in other races. In the presidential election, Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in North Carolina by 74,000 votes, or 1.4 percentage points. In the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Republican Thom Tillis beat Democrat Cal Cunningham by 95,000 votes, or 1.7 percentage points. Republicans also won each of the three N.C. Supreme Court seats that were up for election.
Weatherman didn’t offer much insight into Forest’s campaign. Asked about the loss by WRAL, Weatherman emailed a one-word answer: “Covid.” He added that Forest’s first run for lieutenant governor in 2012, though, stands out as his proudest political accomplishment.
“That campaign began with no name recognition and no statewide network,” Weatherman said in an email. “But, through sheer determination, hard work, a well organized plan and the recruitment and mobilization of hundreds of dedicated volunteers, Dan won not only the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, but also became only the second Republican elected to the office in over one hundred years.”
The only other Republican elected lieutenant governor in the past 100 years was Jim Gardner in the 1960s.
“You will see so many elements of that campaign of 2012 in my campaign today,” Weatherman said.
Looking ahead
Historically, runoff elections are known for drawing very few voters to the polls. The last primary runoff for the lieutenant governor’s seat was 2012, when Forest defeated Wake County commissioner Tony Gurley in a race that drew 150,000 voters. At the time, the state had about 6.3 million voters.
Some candidates try to motivate voters with fear tactics. In a Triangle-area congressional runoff, for example, Republican candidates spent millions of dollars on television ads accusing the other of holding secret liberal beliefs.
The race between O’Neill and Weatherman has been far less contentious, in part because neither candidate has enough money to pay for negative ads across the state. In races where candidates have low name recognition, GOP insiders advise their candidates to focus on positive ads where they introduce themselves to voters. Campaign finance records show that each candidate entered March with about $60,000 on hand.
Weatherman, who got 19% of the vote in March, says he planned out his campaign strategy with a runoff in mind. His campaign has spent months recruiting volunteers in every county, he said.
“My campaign has focused on putting relationships first and meeting the people of our state face to face,” Weatherman said in an email.
“We are currently mobilizing those people as evidenced by our yard signs up in all 100 counties, door to door in multiple counties, old school person-to-person contacts to name just a few tactics,” he said. “Turn out will be low, and low turnout elections are won with boots on the ground.”
O’Neill says Weatherman’s job allows him to travel more.
“If you serve as a professional, political operative, I think obviously you're going to be doing a lot of glad handing and back slapping and that sort of thing,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill has a campaign strategy of his own, one that includes television ads in the Charlotte and Triad markets. He also has a team of supporters speaking to voters every day. Beyond the campaign logistics, though, O’Neill hopes that voters choose substance over style.
“Who's the guy who's going to get the job done? Who's the guy who's going to make us safer and keep us safer?” O’Neill said. “If you look at the two candidates as if you would look at a resume, I don't even think it's a close call. I think that my record of success speaks for itself.”
