On Tuesday night, the North Carolina Republican Party won major close elections and maintained a majority in the General Assembly.
Republicans retained control of the General Assembly and the U.S. Senate, but lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Democrats. In addition, Democrats won state judicial elections.
Republican incumbent George Holding managed to win a close race against Democratic challenger Linda Coleman for the seat for North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District.
Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director for the North Carolina Republican Party, said that the party will continue to have governing majorities in the legislature to pass legislation, but they no longer have a supermajority in the General Assembly.
Four out of the six constitutional amendments on the ballot passed including the right to Hunt and Fish, Marsy’s Law, the income-tax cap and the requirement to show voter identification at polling sites.
“I think it’s a pretty good night,” Woodhouse said. “Four of six amendments passed, and we’re obviously disappointed in the judicial races, but most of those we knew we weren’t going to win because we had a numerical disadvantage on the ballot.”
Woodhouse said that while the country is seeing a lot of Democratic Party wins, he does not believe that things will be dramatically different after the election.
“It means that Republican policies continue to have a lot of support,” Woodhouse said. “And the success of the legislature and doing what they do, having four of the six amendments pass shows that the Republican view of the constitution is adopted, in a lot of cases by a majority of people, and it means that we’ve made it through what is likely to be the toughest election for us in the decade.”
Holding, who was the party’s leading candidate, won with 51 percent of the votes for the 2nd Congressional District. Holding said that he will advocate for students by maintaining a healthy economy.
“The best thing that I can do for students is make this economy keep growing,” Holding said. “What do students want when they get out, they want a job. And with unemployment rates going down, it’s a good opportunity to use your degree to go out and earn a living”
Holding said that his goal is that by maintaining an economy, it will bring more opportunities for people in the district.
“Wake County has been a big beneficiary of this growing economy,” Holding said. “A lot of businesses are expanding here or moving here. This is one of the fastest growing congressional districts in America because people are coming here to work for their jobs, let’s keep that rolling.”
While the party did have significant victories, several favored candidates within the party lost seats in Wake County.
Donnie Harrison, Wake County Sheriff who ran for re-election and lost to challenger Gerald M. Baker, said that in his time as sheriff, he achieved everything in his platform in 2002 and looks forward to seeing what happens next.
“We’ve done everything that I’ve said that we’d do from when I came in,” Harrison said. “I say ‘we’ because in the sheriff’s office, we all worked together. We reduced response time, we put more deputies in the field, we’ve turned some things around in the jail, so it’s a whole lot quicker to get in and out of the jail.”
Charles Dingee, the campaign manager for Anne Murtha who ran for the North Carolina House of Representatives in District 33 and lost to Rosa Gill, said that the what made a difference in campaigning was that voters had a variety of candidates to choose from.
“In terms of Wake County, for the voters and the options that they had, there was a wide variety of candidates,” Dingee said. “We had a ton of women on the ballot, which is awesome, Anne being one of them. So, voters had a chance to choose from a wide variety of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds.”
David Robertson, who ran for the North Carolina House of Representatives for District 49 in Wake County and lost, said that he hopes that infrastructure must be a priority so that students and working-class people are able to get to and from their schools and jobs.
“The entire state suffers and the poor and middle class and rich people can’t get to work and if they can’t get to their jobs and students can’t get to school, it’s really gonna hurt the state,” Robertson said. “A good infrastructure will attract industries to come to North Carolina so we’ll need to be thinking ahead and building the roads and making the pipes large enough to handle water and sewer for future construction.”
Morgan Sinclair, a fourth-year studying business at NC State, worked for John Bryant running for District Attorney in Wake County against current DA, Lorrin Freeman, who won. Sinclair said that she was excited to see what voters want from the party.
“I think that in general there’s a lot going on in our nation and this is obviously a huge election,” Sinclair said. “I think this is going to maybe really change things, I’m hoping. For better or for worse.”
Boz Kaloyanov contributed to the reporting of this story.
