Beasley vs. Budd could decide U.S. Senate and define North Carolina

What was supposed to be a major North Carolina battle for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate never occurred, thanks to former President Donald Trump’s preemptive endorsement of U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and an avalanche of negative ads from the anti-tax group Club for Growth that undermined Budd’s chief rival, former Gov. Pat McCrory.

On the Democratic side, state Sen. Jeff Jackson gave up his bid for the Senate nomination in December and turned his attention to a run for the U.S. House, all but ceding the party’s nomination to former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley.

Now the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr begins with Beasley and Budd relatively untested and still to be defined. A High Point University poll at the end of March found that the percent answering “unsure/not familiar with this person” was 49 percent for Budd and 59 percent for Beasley.

But even if the candidates’ profiles are low, the stakes in the race are exceptionally high. The outcome could determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, ranks the Beasley-Budd race as “arguably the most hotly contested race in the country and inarguably in the top three.”

With that prominence will come a flood of money as both campaigns and outside groups seek to define the candidates.

Budd, 50, will ride his Trump endorsement and offer himself as an “America first” candidate. But his alliance with the former president could cut both ways. Trump’s margin of victory in North Carolina narrowed by half between 2016 and 2020 and the High Point poll showed Trump with a 50 percent unfavorable rating, compared to 44 percent favorable.

Budd, of course, will be helped by a midterm election pattern in which voters tend to go against the president’s party, an effect that could be especially pronounced this year given President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings. The High Point poll showed the president at 41 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable.

Beasley, 55, will try to unyoke her campaign from Biden and run as an independent-minded former jurist more interested in results than partisan victories. At a time when Democrats control Congress and hold the White House, she is appealing to discontent with her own party’s record.

On her website, Beasley says, “I know that families in our state are struggling — and Washington is not helping. I’m running for Senate to be an independent voice who stands up for North Carolina and what’s right for our state – regardless of the politics.”

Beasley, who would be North Carolina’s first Black senator, will try to inspire the kind of strong turnout by Black voters that put North Carolina in Barack Obama’s column in 2008.

State Sen. Gladys Robinson, a Greensboro Democrat and leader in the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus Foundation, said Beasley’s success will depend on persuading Black voters that their votes could be decisive in November. She said said, “It’s about time for an African-American woman to be in the U.S. Senate.”

Even as the candidates push to define themselves and their opponent, this race may also define North Carolina. Is it a conservative Southern state that twice went for President Trump, or is it a state of changing demographics where younger and minority voters will assert themselves? Republicans have won every North Carolina U.S. Senate race since 2008 and they dominate the General Assembly. But Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is popular and Beasley lost her 2020 statewide race for chief justice by a mere 401 votes out of more than 5.3 million ballots cast.

Faced with a choice between a white male Trump acolyte who champions the Second Amendment and low taxes and a Black woman who rose to the top of the state’s judicial system, North Carolinians – at least those who turn out – will decide which one best represents the state.

As Chris Cooper said, “It’s the kind of the matchup that will tell us a lot about where North Carolina is.”

And where it’s going.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com