North Carolina voters reject down-ballot MAGA extremists, break up GOP’s legislative supermajority
On Tuesday, voters across the country, including here in North Carolina, chose to return Donald Trump to the presidency. Despite this punishing national environment, however, voters in North Carolina also resoundingly rejected MAGA extremism at the state level, delivering Democratic victories in several key Council of State positions and breaking the Republican supermajority in the legislature.
It’s far too early to make any “sense” of what happened on Election Day, but what we can do is acknowledge and celebrate the victories of qualified, sane and decent people like Josh Stein, Jeff Jackson, Maurice “Mo” Green, Rachel Hunt, Elaine Marshall and others. It was not a foregone conclusion that these candidates would win their races.
These are not small victories, these are not consolation prizes – these are big wins for the people of North Carolina. These are wins that will literally save lives because we will have leaders in place who believe in reproductive rights, wins that will protect our public schools from being defunded, and wins that will protect marginalized communities from hateful right-wing policies meant to target them.
Attorney General Josh Stein will soon be Gov. Josh Stein and, because voters broke the Republican supermajority in the House, he will take office with the ability to sustain vetoes, something that Gov. Roy Cooper has been unable to do over the last several years. Without a supermajority, Cooper’s vetoes of the abortion ban, the NC version of the “Don’t Say Gay” law, voter ID, private school vouchers and more would have been sustained and would not currently be state law, so this is a huge win for Democrats and North Carolinians.
Having Stein in office, along with new Attorney General Jeff Jackson and the non-supermajority legislature, North Carolina is poised to become a safe haven for those seeking relief from extreme laws and abortion bans in other southern states.
North Carolina Republicans nominated their most extreme slate of candidates in history – Mark Robinson for governor, Dan Bishop for attorney general, Hal Weatherman for lieutenant governor and Michele Morrow for public schools superintendent – and North Carolina voters rejected them all.
We have seen this all before – Trump finds success in a federal election but his MAGA underlings fail at the state level – and it’s something that bodes well for North Carolina. Trump cannot run for president again. He’s done after 2028. No other candidates have found much success echoing his disgusting and hateful rhetoric and we’ve seen at least four examples just this week of the failure of these candidates in North Carolina. Candidates with positive, progressive policies and messages can win in North Carolina. The Trump playbook only works for Trump here and he won’t be on the ballot again.
As disappointing as Tuesday was for many people, voters here still made some very good choices for some very important positions in our state government. North Carolina and its people will now be better off because of those decisions.
