North Carolina Democrats win first state House majority since 2008

State Supreme Court win and near-tie Senate would add to Gov. Josh Stein’s power

Democrats’ victories reached deep into North Carolina’s down-ballot races, Colin Campbell said in an interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly: the party easily won the race for the state Supreme Court, won a majority in the state House for the first time since 2008 and is close to a tie in the state Senate — a tie that, if it happens, would be broken by the lieutenant governor, a Democrat. Campbell, who covers North Carolina politics for member station WUNC, spoke from Raleigh.

Campbell said the results would give Democratic Gov. Josh Stein a lot more power next year, and that Stein wants to pursue redistricting reforms. Republicans, he said, would still hold some influence. Stein called on the two parties to come together and work on the affordability issues that dominated the election, Campbell said.

“What the voters want us to do is listen to what happened last night and focus on that,” Stein said, in remarks played on the program. “They want us to work for them and not be focused on reflecting pools or ballrooms or triumphal arches. They want a government that is worrying about their lives, the fact that gas has shot through the roof in price, that electricity bills are going up.”

Campbell attributed the Republican underperformance largely to the national environment: Republicans, he said, were not expecting a wave this large when they drew the maps and tried to figure out the party’s optimal number of seats.

The state’s U.S. Senate race also played a role, Campbell said. Former Gov. Roy Cooper’s big polling lead prompted national Republican groups to pull all of their advertising from the party’s nominee, Michael Whatley, and move the money in the final weeks of the campaign to other states such as Kansas. Most other Republicans on the ballot had relied on that spending to drive voter turnout in their own races, Campbell said, and some congressional incumbents started running their own television ads only in the final weeks — a response he said looked like too little, too late.

Whatley ended up with less than 40% of the vote, Campbell said. He was Trump’s pick to run for the seat but never really won over the state’s Republican base, Campbell said.

The wave also reached North Carolina’s congressional delegation, where race calls by The Associated Press gave Democrats five Republican-held U.S. House seats and where Democrats held on to a redistricted seat. Most of those races were not considered competitive going into Tuesday’s election, Campbell said, and the congressional results were one part of what he described as a big blue wave in the swing state President Trump won three times.

Republicans held 10 of the state’s 14 U.S. House seats going into the election, Campbell said. Last year, he said, state lawmakers gerrymandered the maps further in an attempt to unseat Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the state’s northeastern corner. The AP called that race for Davis. It was one of the most expensive races in the country, Campbell said, and one that had drawn close attention, along with the open seat in western North Carolina, where Democrat Jamie Ager flipped an open Republican-held seat by a wide margin.

The biggest surprises, Campbell said, came in the nine districts with Republican incumbents on the ballot — all of whom had won by big margins two years ago. Reps. Tim Moore, Richard Hudson, Brad Knott and Addison McDowell lost their seats to little-known Democrats, Campbell said. He called Hudson’s defeat particularly notable because Hudson chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign operation for the House GOP.

None of the races for the four remaining Republican incumbents had been called, Campbell said. Three of the four held narrow leads while the state counted provisional and absentee ballots, and those numbers could still change. Rep. Virginia Foxx, who has been in office since 2005 and chairs the House Rules Committee, trailed her Democratic opponent by just 99 votes. All four races could head to recounts, Campbell said, and under state law that process cannot begin until after Nov. 13.