The House Freedom Caucus member says he’ll be as independent as the state’s current two GOP senators. Democrats counter that his voting record tells another story.

North Carolina’s Republican senators are known for their independent streaks: Richard Burr voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection, and Thom Tillis clinched a flurry of bipartisan deals.

The man who wants to join their ranks cuts a different profile.

Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), the GOP nominee in North Carolina’s close Senate contest, is among the most conservative members of the House, with a voting record to show for it. And how a potential Senator Budd might operate in the upper chamber is one of the biggest questions facing Tar Heel State voters as the race comes down to the wire.

Since winning re-election in 2020, Tillis transformed into one of the Senate’s most active negotiators, working with Democrats on gun safety, infrastructure and even enshrining same-sex marriage protections. The retiring Burr supported both the guns and infrastructure bills after memorably voting to bar Trump from office. Tillis and Burr voted to certify Trump’s 2020 loss. On all of those votes, Budd broke the opposite way.

The race for North Carolina’s open Senate seat features two leading candidates who have taken opposing paths in their bids for higher office.

Democrat Cheri Beasley, the first Black woman to be a major-party Senate nominee in North Carolina, has served for two decades as a judge and state Supreme Court justice, positions she has used to distance herself from politics-as-usual. Her candidacy has given Democrats hope in a state that former President Donald Trump carried twice, though even the most upbeat members of her party acknowledge she faces long odds.

Republican Ted Budd, by comparison, has a familiar political résumé – going from owning a small business to winning a seat in the US House of Representatives to seeking statewide office. Aided by a Trump endorsement in the primary, Budd is now running what Republicans believe is a cautious campaign, largely relying on the state’s red tilt and a favorable national environment for his party.

Commissioners’ meetings in Surry County are a showcase of election conspiracy theories where distrust of the machines that count ballots plays a starring role  

This story is part of a project called Democracy Day, in which newsrooms across the country are shining a light on threats to democracy. 

The northwestern North Carolina county on the Virginia border is probably best known as the home of Mount Airy, the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry in his eponymous television show from the 1960s. This year, Surry County has been a stop on the circuit for prominent election deniers who falsely maintain that votes were engineered to have President Joe Biden win in 2020.  

The county devoted nearly an entire May meeting to election deniers that featured David Clements, a former assistant professor at New Mexico State University who travels the country preaching about fraud. Clements, who lost his university job last year because he refused to wear a mask in class, urged Surry to hand-count ballots.  

At the meeting’s end, Surry board Chairman Bill Goins told the crowd that commissioners were reviewing residents’ recommendations, but concerns about fraud should go to the local and state boards of elections.  Someone in the crowd yelled “Pontius Pilate.”

Goins could not be reached by telephone this week.  

The state Board of Elections runs a feature on its website and social media accounts called “Mythbuster Mondays” that took on the question about electronic tampering back in April.  

“North Carolina voting equipment does not contain modem chips, and state law prohibits voting machines from being connected wirelessly to any other device,” says this myth-buster answer.  

That didn’t end the rumors.  

David H. Diamont, a former state House member from Surry, said the search for election fraud reflects a deep distrust in government. 

“They just don’t trust government anymore,” Diamont said in an interview this week. “It’s a disease. It’s scary. It is so different from what it was when I was in politics.” 

Most North Carolina voters mark paper ballots that are fed into tabulators. With former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud came assertions of tabulator tampering via internet connections. These beliefs have taken hold even in places like Surry where Trump won 75% of the vote.  

Dominion Voting Systems is suing former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for her wild claims about its machines. In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Powell’s lawyers wrote last year that “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.” 

No North Carolina county uses Dominion equipment, yet Republicans have demanded to look inside the machines that get deployed to voting sites to search for modems or chips.  

In the counties, demands to scrap machines for hand-counting are intersecting with the distrust over voting equipment.  

Surry County GOP chairman Keith Senter told the Surry elections director she would lose her job or have her pay cut after she refused demands for access to voting equipment, Reuters reported.  

Senter did not return phone calls this week, but he’s a regular at “open forum” portion of commissioners’ meetings. 

“Were the machines in Surry County connected to the internet or do they have cell or internet capability?” he asked in April, invoking the names of nationally known election deniers, including ardent Trump backer My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell. 

“The only way you will know is to do a forensic analysis of the machines.,” Senter said.  

Senter’s appearances at commissioners’ meetings to rail about elections continued through the summer.  

Among the pages on the state Board of Elections website about cybersecurity, elections security and misinformation is a page on voting machine security that attempts to knock down rumors about modem-embedded machines. It includes a statement from Trump himself released ahead of a trip to North Carolina last summer praising his victory in the state “without a fraudulent outcome.” 

Election deniers have champions in the state legislature.  

Members of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the North Carolina House announced at a press conference last October that they intended to inspect Durham County voting machines for devices that would enable internet connections. That investigation didn’t happen after the state Board of Elections director said unauthorized people can’t have access to voting machines. 

In the lead up to October, correspondence between the office of Rep. Keith Kidwell, a Chocowinity Republican and chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and the Board of Elections in the summer of 2021 shows that caucus members had been trying to find a way to open active machines months before they announced they were going into Durham.  Elections board staff had been meeting with caucus members about elections processes and trying to convince them that none of the machines used in North Carolina can access the internet.  

“There are no mechanisms in place to send or receive data to or from any modem on certified voting equipment,” elections board spokesman Patrick Gannon told Kidwell in a June 8, 2021 email in answer to a question about modem capabilities.  

“And state law prohibits any county from using a modem connection in voting equipment,” Gannon added.  

The correspondence was obtained through a public records request.  

A “Trusted Elections” tour that plans to stop in each of the state’s 14 congressional districts devotes time in each 90-minute town hall for an explanation on how voting machines work.  

In addition to computer experts, the meetings feature county elections directors, Democratic and Republican elections lawyers, and Democratic and Republican members of county elections boards. The Carter Center, a nonprofit based in Atlanta, is sponsoring the tour. Bob Orr, a former Republican Supreme Court justice, and former Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts are leading the effort. 

At the Johnston County courthouse on Aug. 31, Brad Reaves, an expert in computer system privacy at NC State University told the audience that none of the state’s voting machines can be hacked because they’re never connected to a network.  

Mitch Kokai, senior political analyst at the John Locke Foundation, moderated the session and asked panelist questions the audience submitted.  The local elections officials got the challenging ones.  

Among the questions: Why can’t a county hand-count if that’s what the community wants to do? 

Johnston County elections board Chairman Gordon Woodruff said there are far too many ballots to count by hand. About 111,000 people voted in Johnston County in 2020.  

Recent recounts have found errors of one or two votes, representing a tiny fraction of 1%, he said. And the hand-eye audits that the state requires for selected precincts confirm the machines’ accuracy, he said.  

“The machines are so good, it’s really not a major issue,” Woodruff said.  

Nonetheless, interest in hand-counting is taking root. It’s become a theme for the half-dozen or so people who regularly attended Surry commissioners’ meetings this summer to complain about elections.  

One resident told Surry commissioners that school children should be given the task of counting ballots as part of civics instruction starting in sixth grade. 

In an interview this week, Orr said elections officials have appreciated the chance to talk about what they do. Participants aren’t there to challenge people’s beliefs, he said, but to let audiences hear from the local people who run elections about how it all works. 

Some of the same questions get asked at every stop, Orr said. He thinks members of groups challenging the elections go to the town halls to raise them.

The only real “vocal pushback” so far came in New Bern, where a video substituted for a live election security expert. People in the audience called it “propaganda” and “lies,” he said  

“It’s lack of information, or understanding, or confidence in technology,” Orr said. “I don’t’ know what you do about that, but we’re trying.” 

I should note that North Carolina has a very long early voting period. It’s no-excuse absentee ballot and you can get a mail-in ballot if you want it without a specific reason. So are the dangers you talked about — that we’re seeing in places like Arizona and Georgia in terms of voting rights — is that really something a Democratic governor can stave off or has to stave off here?

“I already have. I vetoed bad election laws in North Carolina and one of the reasons that they aren’t moving forward yet on these kinds of drastic changes is because they know that I will successfully veto this legislation. You will see this Republican legislature do whatever it can to curb people’s voting rights that they don’t think are going to vote for them. And we have seen this historically. We saw the Court of Appeals rule that this legislature discriminated against African Americans with surgical precision. Those kinds of things you will see, but I think you will see them ‘doubly’ if they have a super majority. And with this U.S. Supreme Court that Donald Trump now controls, I don’t think you’re going to see the backstop, from federal protections, that we’ve seen before. And that’s why these elections in North Carolina, to try to keep the number of Democrats that will sustain my veto, is so critical right now.”

The state Supreme Court in a 4-3 vote agreed with a central argument the North Carolina NAACP made in its challenge to controversial constitutional amendments, keeping alive the case against voter ID and an income tax cap. (Click here to read the majority and dissenting opinions.)

The Supreme Court’s Democratic majority wrote that proposed constitutional amendments aren’t automatically considered valid if they are proposed and put on the ballot by legislators elected from unlawful districts. The court’s three Republicans dissented.

The case will go back to the trial court for another hearing because the Democratic majority said there are still questions that need to be answered to determine whether the constitutional amendments stick.

With “go everywhere” strategy, Beasley breaks with Democratic playbook for statewide races

In her attempt to break the Democratic Party’s streak of loses in U.S. Senate races, Cheri Beasley has billed herself as a different kind of Democrat.

Over the past year, perhaps the most convincing case for that has been the stops on her itineraries.

As expected, on the list are the state’s burgeoning urban centers, the core of Democrats’ base. But there have been just as many town halls and meet and greets in small towns and rural zip codes not often visited by statewide candidates.

The former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court trails three-term congressman Ted Budd in the most recent polling, but remains within the margin of error, even in a year in which Democrats face strong headwinds.

She’s consistently raised more money than her opponent and, unlike Budd, faced little opposition in the primary. That’s allowed her to cover more ground this year. She spent much of the primary holding listening sessions around the state instead of rallies.

Last week, as part of her “Standing Up for North Carolina” tour Beasley started out in Winston-Salem and finished up Raleigh, two Democratic strongholds. But in between, she worked her way across several northeastern counties, including stops in places that went solidly Republican in 2020.

In June she did the same thing on the other side of the state, holding events in the 13 westernmost counties.

“Often candidates don’t go to the most remote areas of the state, but it really has been important to me,” Beasley said in an interview during a recent stop. “I mean, we are a people powered campaign.”

Beasley’s campaign insists the strategy has allowed her to build local networks and connect with voters and their concerns.

She’s made community colleges a regular part of each tour. Last Tuesday, she was at Halifax Community College in Weldon, walking the grounds with instructors and administrators in 90 degree heat as they detailed a list of needed upgrades and expansion plans.

“I’ve been a judge for a long time and I’ve been a statewide elected official for over a decade, having had two successful statewide elections and it is important to go to all communities across the state,” she said after the campus tour.

Kitchen table issues and the Supreme Court

Her pitch against Budd is effectiveness over partisanship.

“You know, I don’t really know that people are as divided as pundits would have us believe that we are,” she said. “Regardless of party affiliation, we are all committed to working hard for our families and for our communities and for the institutions around us.”

In the current climate, running against partisanship gets a good reception.

“We live in a really diverse state, and even contiguous counties have differences and I think it’s really important to respect those differences and to appreciate that one of the commonalities is that people are really tired of Washington.”

Beasley, who if elected would be the state’s first African-American senator, isn’t relying on the historic nature of her candidacy to carry her with Black voters. Lately, she’s canvassed in African-American neighborhoods and dropped in for talks at barbershops.

“That outreach is hugely important,” she said. “And it’s important that we’ve also been reaching out to Latino communities and AAPI communities as well. We want them to know that I really am listening to people in all communities about why this election is so important.”

At an event last week billed as a “community conversation” at the Northampton Memorial Library in Jackson, Beasley got an effusive welcome from local officials, most of whom still call her “Judge.”

While her introductory remarks were mainly focused on kitchen table issues she leaned into concerns about the future of civil rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Dobbs case that ended constitutional protection for abortion rights.

“This Supreme Court has been very clear,” she said. “For all the ways in which we and the people who have come before us have fought and literally put their lives on the line for civil rights in the broadest sense of that term, it is all at stake. This is the first time in this nation’s history that constitutionally protected rights have been taken away and if it can happen once, it can happen again.”

Looking for votes in all 100 counties

Northampton County turned out in support in her last statewide race, her 2020 re-election campaign for Chief Justice, which she lost by 401 votes out of more than 5 million cast.

Losing by the closest margin in state history, was cold comfort, she told the audience in Northampton.

African-American turnout will be crucial this year for Beasley. The high water mark for African-American turnout in North Carolina is 73% in Barack Obama’s first win in 2008. It has steadily drifted down since, but increased slightly in 2020 to 68%. In non-presidential years turnout statewide falls among all demographics. African-American turnout did rise in 2018 over 2014, but remained below 50%.

Charlotte-based political consultant Doug Wilson, who worked for the 2008 Obama campaign in South Carolina and Kay Hagan’s unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2014, sees a similarity between Beasley’s tours and Obama’s 2008 “go everywhere” strategy.

It’s a big divergence, he said, from a long held Democratic strategy of focusing on 25 key counties in the state’s urban core.

“What that did was a cause Democrats to over perform to a certain extent in these urban areas, but completely get crushed in rural areas,” he said. That’s ultimately hurt Democrats in statewide federal races, he said.

“What I think what the campaign is doing is realizing that despite the big cities, North Carolina at the end of the day is not New York.”

Wilson said it’s a similar to the playbook that put Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock over the top in 2020. Increasing Democratic turnout outside the major cities, won’t flip those rural counties, he said, but it will help build the statewide margin.

Beasley’s northeast sweep makes sense, he said, both because the area is rich in African-American voters, but also because it’s a region with a long-held grievance of been forgotten by both Raleigh and Washington. Getting out to those neglected places could make the difference.

“This is what the Obama campaign did in ’08,” he said. “That’s why at this point Obama has been the only Democratic presidential campaign to win North Carolina. He was going everywhere.”

State elections board to consider changing rules for partisan poll observers

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is contemplating a change to the rules for partisan poll watchers after more than a dozen violations by mostly GOP-appointed precinct observers during the May primaries. The state board will hold a second public hearing on the proposed revision this Thursday.

State elections board staff proposed amending the rules following a recent survey of county elections directors. The survey results show that during the May primaries local elections officials in 15 North Carolina counties witnessed poll observers violate rules of conduct by — among other things — talking to and intimidating voters, frequently exiting and re-entering the voting area to make phone calls to their party headquarters, and trying to enter restricted areas where voting tabulations and data were being uploaded.

Under state law, each major party may appoint precinct-specific and at-large observers to monitor polling sites from a designated area on Election Day and during one-stop early voting. But there are restrictions on what those observers may do.

NC Democrats appeal order to place Green Party candidates on state ballots

The North Carolina Democratic Party is appealing a decision by a federal judge who last week ordered state elections officials to place Green Party candidates on November ballots.

The Democratic party filed a notice of appeal Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, seeking to reverse the order that, if upheld, would enable U.S. Senate candidate Matthew Hoh and Wake County state Senate candidate Michael Trudeau to appear on North Carolina ballots alongside other parties’ candidates.

Hoh’s placement on the ballot could complicate the election for Democratic former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, who is competing for the seat against Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and Libertarian Shannon Bray. A far-left candidate could take liberal votes from the more moderate Beasley in a tight race.

Rep. Ted Budd, who was supported in the Republican primary by former President Donald Trump, will face off against Democrat Cheri Beasley in the closely watched North Carolina U.S. Senate election, according to race calls by The Associated Press.

In the GOP primary, Budd fended off opponents including former Gov. Pat McCrory.

Beasley, who was the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, faced light opposition for the Democratic nomination. She coasted to the top after her main primary competitor dropped out of the race in December.

The redistricting wars are shifting into a new arena: the courtroom.

Most states have finished their maps already, but state and federal courts will direct the drawing of some 75 congressional districts in at least seven states in the coming months, marking a new phase in the process before the first 2022 primaries begin. In the next few weeks alone, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania courts are likely to impose new maps blocking Republican legislators’ attempts to relegate Democrats to small slivers of those congressional delegations.

Taken together, the court interventions have eased Democratic fears about redistricting as they sweat over a tough midterm political environment. So far, the decisions have validated the party’s state-by-state legal strategy and, critically, offered a surprising reprieve from several Republican gerrymandering attempts before a single election could be held under the new lines.

About 6,500 people have been told to evacuate their homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina due to a fire at a fertilizer plant storing over 300 tons of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate, city officials said on Tuesday.

The blaze at the Weaver Fertilizer Plant on North Cherry Street started Monday evening. Residents within one mile of the plant were urged to evacuate and stay away from their homes for up to 48 hours.

“We abandoned the fire fighting operation because there’s a large volume of ammonium nitrate on site,” Winston-Salem fire chief Trey Mayo said.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review a challenge to the consideration of race in college admission decisions, often known as affirmative action. With three new conservative justices on the court since its last review, the practice may be facing its greatest threat yet.

The court said Monday it would consider a pair of lawsuits alleging that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina discriminate against Asian American applicants. The practice has been reviewed by the court several times over the past 40 years and has generally been upheld, but with limits.

A look at the case:

WHAT ARE RACE-CONSCIOUS ADMISSIONS POLICIES?

When colleges sort through their applicants deciding which ones to admit, some consider race along with grades and a host of other factors like athletics and community service. Some schools have used the practice for decades as a way to address racial discrimination against Black students and others who were long excluded from America’s colleges. Today, supporters say it’s an important tool that helps bring a diverse mix of students to campus, while opponents say it amounts to its own form of discrimination.

The state legislature marked “crossover” last week, the point at which most bills must pass at least one chamber to have a chance of becoming law this session.

House members had filed 969 bills by the end of last week, and senators had filed 721.

The House passed 336 bills by the crossover deadline — a little more than a third — and the Senate passed 156, about a quarter of those filed. About two dozen have already become law.

People on felony probation or parole can be prosecuted for voting illegally even if they don’t know they’re ineligible.

Fewer people were suspected of illegally voting while on probation or parole for a felony in the 2020 general election compared with 2016, according to a state review. However, the state Board of Elections found more possible cases of double voting.

As of early December, 33 people were suspected of voting while serving an active sentence for a felony, and 65 people were suspected of voting twice in the fall election. People with felony convictions can vote in North Carolina, but only after they have completed their probation or have left parole.