The midterm elections have come and passed; here’s our breakdown of the results locally, statewide and federally.
Locally, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin overcame staunch competition from NC State professor Terrance Ruth to win reelection to her second term. While winning by a comfortable margin of six points, the contest was closer than it should have been. Considering the mayor’s extensive financial advantage, name recognition and incumbency advantage, the grassroots effort of Ruth made for an impressive performance.
The mayor has faced persistent criticism during the three years she has held office. Despite a recall effort, Baldwin has remained rather unapologetic and consistent in her stances with the city. The final tally in the mayoral election saw her win by over 9,000 votes, but the total cast against her amounted to over half the vote. With more voters opposing than endorsing the mayor, the results may serve as a wake-up call for Baldwin to be more engaged with all her constituents.
In one of the more dramatic occurrences of the midterms, Republican judicial candidates swept every election in North Carolina. This included the State Supreme Court, where victories for Richard Dietz and Trey Allen flipped control of the state’s highest judicial authority from a 4-3 Democrat majority to an overwhelming 5-2 GOP majority. While legislative elections garnered more coverage, the red wave on judicial seats will have an equal, if not larger, impact on the future of the state.
The flip of the Supreme Court all but guarantees the return of a viciously gerrymandered advantage for Republicans in the next election cycle, making for the most devastating development of the 2022 election.
It is very likely that the next few years will see Republican legislators drawing new districts to restore the GOP’s national advantage. With conservative courts now leading North Carolina, it seems as if fair maps have had a good run in the state. Republicans will also have greater control on decisions surrounding abortion access, education funding and voter ID laws.
Following in the fashion of the court elections, North Carolina Republicans fared particularly well in the state legislature elections. Republicans re-established their Senate supermajority but are projected to fall one seat short of the same three-fifths margin in the House. Relative to expectations of a major red wave, Democrats successfully staved off a Republican supermajority, securing Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto power. For the time being, Democrats will live to fight another day in North Carolina.
In the elections for federal office, Democrats performed beyond expectations, in part due to the aforementioned court-drawn maps. The maps imposed by the Democrat-controlled court materialized in a 7-7 split of U.S. House seats for North Carolina, effectively conveying the partisan demographics of a purple state.
The most prominent of these House races was the contest between Wiley Nickel and Bo Hines in the 13th District. Nickel pulled out a slim victory over the Trump-endorsed newcomer Hines, whose affiliation with the former president may have sunk him to defeat. The race is emblematic of a national trend seeing more extreme Trump-affiliated Republicans lose elections they were favored to win.
The Hines loss appears to be another piece of a national narrative moving away from Trumpism and towards moderate politics. As with many other house races involving Trump-backed candidates, Hines was simply a weaker candidate. In comparison to Nickel’s messaging on a broad range of issues from inflation to fairly moderate gun control and police reform, Hines was particularly single-minded. His platform mirrored the Mar-A-Lago House’s platform nearly word for word.
The Senate race, however, displayed severe failures in some of Democrats’ messaging, particularly surrounding inflation and crime. Much of the critiques lobbed toward Cheri Beasley were surrounding her tenure as a liberal judge, something that was portrayed as a soft stance toward crime. Additionally, she was criticized for supporting increased spending for a wide swath of government programs yet provided little rebuttal.
Beasley was the more promising, intellectual candidate, but as evidenced by the aforementioned North Carolina Court flip, Democrats massively ignored the electorate’s concerns over crime. From Beasley’s camp, little was done to publicly rebut the claims that she personally released a child rapist from prison in one of her decisions. That kind of ignorance about public perspective was very clearly costly.
Nationally, Democrats fared quite well. As of right now, Democrats have maintained control of the Senate, marking significant failure for what can only truly be described as a red ripple rather than an anticipated tsunami. Democrats have a very real chance of gaining a seat in the Senate this midterm cycle, a generally uncommon achievement for the party in control. The House meanwhile is still up for grabs and will very likely turn red, but it could possibly be the tightest it has ever been in American history.
Concerns remain as to the health of American democracy. Candidates in tight races like Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, are continuing Trump’s tradition of claiming fraud and questioning the correctness of longstanding electoral practices. For now, though, the surprising victories for Democrats both in North Carolina and across the country signal hope that our electorate has the resiliency to withstand increasingly hostile and authoritarian politicians.
