Editorial: Two views of 2024 campaign in N.C. Feuding Democrats or return to Jim Crow era?

CBC Editorial: Tuesday, March 19, 2024; #8916

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

Two distinctly different pictures of the 2024 election campaigns in North Carolina are emerging.

One portrait, pushed by parochial pundits echoing political establishment conventional wisdom, has Democrats feuding among themselves over the limited congressional and legislative seats left them after hyper-partisan gerrymandering. One of the primaries featured a Democrat incumbent – mostly backed by Republicans who was narrowly defeated in a Democratic primary.. The GOP didn’t bother fielding a general election opponent – figuring their choice would win. But that apparently hasn’t happened. The close primary election is the subject of a recount.

Another view, emerging from a variety of national observers, is a landscape of a political environment more akin to 1898 – the apex of the Jim Crow era in the state -- than 2024.

-- The Republican nominee for state Superintendent of Public Instruction calls for public executions of President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.

-- The Republican nominee for governor says: “There is no separation of church and state;” that people who identify as transgender should be forced to relieve themselves outside; described survivors of school shootings as “spoiled, angry, know it all children;” And “so many freedoms were lost” because of the “so-called” 1960s civil rights movement.

-- The Republican nominee for state Attorney General says, falsely, the 2020 election was stolen. He wants to end support for the freedom-defenders in Ukraine against Russian dictator Vladimer Putin and has called the TikTok “a Chinese Communist Party-owned social media platform,” and said his opponent was “Chinese social media star” and “helping China spy on North Carolina” for using it.

-- The Republican nominee for 8th Congressional District is the same congressional candidate, who in 2018 denied, then admitted, that his campaign had been tainted by “improper activities.” The election was scrapped and operatives connected to Harris’ 2018 campaign admitted guilt in an illegal absentee ballot harvesting scheme. Six years later, the GOP nominee denies the fraud he earlier acknowledged and now contends “they stole the election and drug me through the mud.”

Donald Trump anointed two North Carolinians – former state GOP chair Michael Whatley along with Wilmington native and daughter-in-law Lara Trump – to lead the national GOP operation.

North Carolina Republicans have given the nation a lot to watch during the 2024 elections. The next seven months are shaping up to be a rearview, 126-year-old reflection of politics in an era of intolerance and prejudice.

Will North Carolina voters in 2024 make different choices than voters did in 1898?

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