Experts: Presidential Race Will Overshadow Down-Ballot Contests

“The presidential race,” N.C. State University political science professor Steven Greene said when asked what will affect the Nov. 8 general election in North Carolina the most. “It’s driving the bus. The other things will be at the margins.”

Many Republicans are “expressing concern that if [Donald] Trump is the nominee, that could really harm them down the ballot, and I haven’t really seen anyone expressing the opposite of that,” Greene said.

Texas Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s late-closing performance to finish within 3.5 percentage points of front-runner Trump in Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary was, for Greene, the biggest surprise of the day. Trump captured 29 delegates, and Cruz 27.

Trump consistently held a double-digit lead over Cruz in polling prior to the primary, but Cruz’s strong finish doesn’t mean Trump would be weak in the fall if he wins the Republican nomination.

Joe Stewart, executive director of the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, a business-oriented group that monitors state elections, agreed the presidential race “will cast a long shadow” over voter turnout in the general election.

He said Trump “has reinspired what once were Reagan Democrats,” and “it’s a foregone conclusion” that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. While some polling shows Trump losing to Clinton in North Carolina, he said that’s a premature call.

Stewart said the outcome of this year’s presidential contest should resemble the 2012 race in North Carolina. Republican Mitt Romney won 50.6 percent of the vote. President Obama garnered 48.8 percent.

But Clinton is likely to perform better if Trump is the nominee, Stewart said.

Greene anticipated most legislators with primary opponents would win Tuesday. “You don’t expect many incumbents to fall in primaries,” he said.

Passage of the $2 billion NC Connects bond was anticipated due to its bipartisan legislative support, he said.

Looking ahead, the governor’s race between incumbent Republican Pat McCrory and Democrat Roy Cooper, who is stepping down as attorney general to challenge him, will be a battle.

“I expect a lot of activity and spending for the gubernatorial race and the Senate. It’s kind of the trifecta” in a presidential election year that will energize voters and increase involvement, Greene said.

Signs of that were evident Tuesday. Statewide voter turnout was 2.3 million, compared to 2.2 million in the 2012 presidential primary. The turnout was 35.3 percent of registered voters, compared to 34.7 percent in 2012.

Greene said after four years of being tied closely to a conservative legislature, McCrory might find it difficult to retain unaffiliated and crossover Democratic voters who boosted him to victory in 2012.

Stewart said the gubernatorial election will be an economic referendum on McCrory. The governor has an advantage this year that past GOP gubernatorial candidates have not enjoyed because Republicans have the strongest slate of candidates for Council of State races — the nine executive branch officers elected statewide below the governor’s office — in a half-century.

Cooper could be hamstrung by campaign funding unless he persuades the Democratic National Committee that North Carolina is a must-win state to claim the presidency, and that cannot happen without electing a Democratic governor, Stewart said.

While incumbent U.S. Sen. Richard Burr won his Republican primary handily, Greene said Cary obstetrician Greg Brannon received “not an inconsiderable amount of the vote.” That could foreshadow a strong challenge by Democratic Senate candidate Deborah Ross, a former state lawmaker.

Democrats hope for a strong presidential turnout, and a Senate candidate that “can help put them over the top,” but whether Ross is that candidate remains to be seen, Greene said. “It would not shock me at all for Deborah Ross to defeat Richard Burr.”

Stewart was less optimistic about Ross’ chances, and said if the primary was supposed to be about voters’ anti-establishment anger, it didn’t manifest in Burr’s case.

He said Ross was known as “tenacious” and “aggressive” as a legislative campaigner, but she has low name recognition statewide. “I don’t think she’s prepared for the attention she’s going to get” on the magnified U.S. Senate stage.

“I don’t think Burr is as vulnerable as he was perceived to be at the beginning of the electoral cycle” because Ross does not appear to have the campaign funding that Burr does, Stewart said.

Sean Haugh, who’s running his second consecutive race for the U.S. Senate as a Libertarian, could get between 3 and 4 percent of the vote, and if the race is close, that could have an impact depending on whose votes he takes, Stewart said.

This year’s electoral cycle demonstrates that voters “are not going to align themselves with a political party the way they have historically,” Stewart said. There is an “American Idolization” of presidential campaigns — “it’s politics as entertainment,” with big events to be experienced and posted on social media.

“We also see some serious infighting among the parties,” with party insiders making “a lot of arguments about not very much,” while outsiders articulate broader visions, in touch with voters’ shifting interests, and advancing more innovative policy ideas.

The re-election race of state Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, “was the battleground” in North Carolina, Stewart said. Burr and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, have sparred publicly over policy and politics. Burr narrowly defeated challenger Lane Burris by 242 votes, mostly due to winning heavily in Montgomery County, which he represents but where he does not live.

“The [N.C.] Chamber came out, and a number of other groups came out in support of Lane Burris” while Moore was antagonistic to Burr, Stewart said.

“It’s not very clear what the implications of that might be,” Stewart said of the party infighting, but the political intrigue “will certainly make the short session more interesting.”

Regarding two state senators who won their party primaries for attorney general, Stewart said Republican nominee Buck Newton of Wilson “pulled away pretty considerably” from challenger Jim O’Neill in what was thought to be a closer race, and “I’m shocked that [Wake County Sen.] Josh Stein’s numbers weren’t higher” in his single-digit Democratic primary win over Marcus Williams.