North Carolina Republicans’ long, stormy summer

For North Carolina Republicans, 2020 started as a bright election year. But now, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, the political forecast for the next five months before Election Day is full of storms: scrambling to save the Republican National Convention, tough elections made even more challenging, and an insider trading scandal to top it off.

“Nobody's certain of where they are,” said veteran North Carolina Republican strategist Carter Wrenn. “The old logic no longer applies.”

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper will not guarantee that the RNC convention planned for August in Charlotte will go on as scheduled as the state slowly lifts coronavirus lockdowns, prompting threats from President Trump to move the convention to a different city.

Not only does Cooper have a hold over the convention, but the pandemic gave him boosts in publicity and favorability ratings while his Republican challenger, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, is left on the sidelines. What once had the potential to be a competitive, closely watched gubernatorial race now seems like a long shot for Republicans.

The other major state race in the fall is Republican Sen. Thom Tillis vying for reelection against Army veteran and former state Sen. Cal Cunningham. Despite having much lower statewide name recognition than Tillis and losing a Senate bid in 2010, Cunningham is neck-and-neck with Tillis in most polls.

Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating the state’s other Republican senator, Richard Burr, for insider trading, due to his offloading of as much as $1.72 million of his holdings just before the coronavirus pandemic sunk the stock market.

“There's some nerves just because I don't think any of us could have expected that this would happen,” Catherine Whiteford, chairwoman of the North Carolina Federation of Young Republicans, said of the setbacks. “It's kind of disparaging our party a little bit.”

At the forefront of the state’s political battles is Trump insisting on a fully attended, 50,000-person Republican National Convention in Charlotte, hampering Republicans’ ability to strike a deal with the Democrats in charge of whether the show will go on. Republicans accuse Cooper of moving reopening goalposts and failing to consult with elected officials before doing so. The state’s health department has flipped the burden to the party, asking the GOP to provide a convention plan that provides for adequate social distancing.

The convention fight is a test for larger political battles on reopening the economy and normal civic life by the November election, a problem dragging down Trump’s reelection chances and Republican candidates in the state.

Forest finds himself in a similar situation to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“Gov. Cooper gets a lot of attention because he does a coronavirus briefing every day. Dan Forest, unfortunately, doesn't have any podium or soapbox to match that,” Wrenn said.

Recent polls consistently show more than half of voters approving of Cooper’s job performance, and the RealClearPolitics average puts him 18 points ahead of Forest.

Some, though, point out that Forest’s problems are larger than the coronavirus. In mid-February, he had just $750,000 in his campaign account, while Cooper had $9.5 million. That is not enough to buy name recognition or run ads criticizing Cooper.

At larger risk is Tillis’s Senate seat. Republicans joke that Cunningham, his challenger, was a low-tier Democratic draft pick whose political career peaked either with one term in the state Senate in the early 2000s or when he was student body president of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1995. Yet Cunningham is still giving Tillis a run for his money in the polls.

Republicans, though, long expected the race to be a high-cost, close election no matter who the Democratic challenger was. In 2014, Tillis unseated Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan by just 1.5% of the vote.

But the outcome of the race could largely rest on Trump’s coronavirus response rather than ad spending or grassroots organizing.

“It'll go back to what people decide about coronavirus. If they think Trump did a good job, then Tillis probably wins. If they think Trump did a bad job, it's much tougher for Tillis to win,” Wrenn said.

Fortunately for Tillis, Burr’s insider trading investigation is more of a sideshow than an electoral hurdle for Republicans. “I don't think right now it's affecting the other races,” Wrenn said.

Republicans publicly distance themselves from Burr without condemning him, saying that they await the results from the investigation. But privately, those in the state party must consider their move for the worst-case scenario.

If Burr resigns before Sept. 4, the state would hold two U.S. Senate elections on Nov. 3. If he resigned later, the governor would appoint one of three people recommended by the state Republican Party for the remaining two years of the Senate term. Democrats could potentially use the investigation to paint Republicans as corrupt.

Wrenn added: “It's just a wild card.”

For some North Carolina insiders, the storm is just another dramatic election year. This is the state where a Republican ballot-stuffing scandal led to federal indictments and a 2019 special congressional election. And where Biden threatens to make North Carolina competitive against Trump. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump up by just 1 percentage point over his Democratic rival.

And the 2020 challenges it might even bring some welcome changes.

“If there's any sort of silver lining possible, it has forced a lot of people that wouldn't otherwise be technologically savvy to actually have to do more,” Whiteford said. “We're trying to do the best that we can with the situation that we're given.”