A new political ad just started airing this week in North Carolina — focusing on an election that’s been over for nearly three months.

It’s unusual for a political ad to air long after ballots have been counted. But the unresolved race for an open seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court isn’t your usual race. 

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The race is tied up in multiple legal battles. One of them, at the federal appeals court level, is scheduled for oral arguments on Monday. Another, in state court, is proceeding in Wake County. The ad could be aimed at swaying judges in the court of public opinion, as lawyers seek to do the same in the court of law.

Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs appears to have defeated Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin — a result confirmed by multiple recounts. But Griffin is trying to have more than 60,000 people’s ballots thrown out, saying he doesn’t think the state can verify the identities of the voters in question.

State elections officials dispute that claim and have already rejected Griffin’s request to throw out the ballots; he has appealed that decision in court.

In the meantime, many of the voters he’s challenging have started going public to speak out, affirm they aren’t imposters, and demand Griffin drop his challenge to their eligibility.

One of them is James Danz, a Republican from Pinehurst who’s featured in the new ad — paid for by a group led by former North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

“I voted for [Donald] Trump and Jefferson Griffin,” Danz says in the ad. “I’ve voted Republican my whole life. Now politicians are trying to cancel my vote here in North Carolina. They say I’m on a list of 60,000 voters facing canceled ballots due to a technicality. Now regardless of how you vote, all of us need to stand together to stop this attack on our elections.”

The North Carolina Republican Party didn’t respond to a request for comment about the ad criticizing Griffin’s tactics, or the fact that it’s backed by a Republican former governor.

McCrory’s post-governorship political career has focused on efforts to help restore faith in elections among fellow Republicans in the face of conspiracy theories spread by President Donald Trump and others at the top of the GOP.

McCrory was national co-chair of the political group No Labels, which briefly considered mounting a third-party presidential candidate in 2024 for voters dissatisfied with both major political parties. After leaving No Labels in March, he became chair of the group RightCount. Its political arm RightCount Action paid for the ad criticizing Griffin’s efforts — efforts that have been heavily backed by the North Carolina Republican Party.

In 2016, McCrory lost the governorship to Democrat Roy Cooper by just 10,000 votes. After the election, his campaign and other allies within the GOP falsely accused many North Carolina voters of having committed fraud, due to cases of mistaken identity. After it became clear no fraud occurred, McCrory conceded defeat. His campaign also later won a defamation case brought by some of those falsely accused voters.

In 2024, on Election Day, the Carolina Journal published an opinion article by McCrory in which he vouched for the accuracy and integrity of North Carolina elections. He referenced his own 2016 loss and said some in the GOP pressed him to keep fighting that loss, but he refused, since conceding defeat was the right thing to do.

“Despite the calls by some within my own party to persist in contesting the election, the result was an outcome I accepted because it reflected the will of voters,” McCrory wrote in that November op-ed.

That was published weeks before Griffin began his effort trying to overturn the results of his election, in similar circumstances as those McCrory faced in 2016.