Writer: Joshua Andino
2 min read November 2022 — As the dust begins to settle after election night, North Carolina sees blue islands amidst a wider red sea as Republican Ted Budd secured a significant win over Democrat challenger Cheri Beasley.
Mirroring aspects of the urban-rural divide, North Carolina’s Senate election saw a strong performance from both candidates for the contested Senate seat, with Beasley securing strong wins around Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro and Fayetteville. Despite these wins, Budd outperformed Beasley across much of the rest of the state.
Beasley, a former state Supreme Court Judge who would have been the state’s first Black senator, secured the vote of 21 of North Carolina’s 100 counties. Budd, who has served as North Carolina’s Congressional Representative for District 13 since a surprise Donald Trump endorsement, and the ensuing blowout against former Gov. Pat McRory elevated him to the House, took the remaining 79 counties while working alongside the House Freedom Caucus.
With regards the the overall vote count, Budd received 1,891,342, votes, coming in at 50.7% of the total to Beasley’s 1,755,716, or 47.1%
Third party candidates, such as Libertarian Shannon Bray and Green Party Matthew Hoh, secured 79,975 votes between them both, for a total of 2.2%. While pundits are quick to note the potential spoiler effects of third party runs, had these votes gone to Beasley, it would have still proven insufficient to prevent Budd from securing the Senatorship.
North Carolina has become a key state for Republicans and Democrats alike, with Bloomberg noting its increasingly purple status as a result of the ongoing influx of finance and technology jobs streaming into the state and across a variety of regions within it. Despite the ongoing influx, however, Democrats have spent millions of dollars with little to show for it, having lost the state in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics, noted Beasley had raised $33,876,572 by Oct.19 compared to Budd’s $12,483,874. Toward the final leg of the race, outside PAC money associated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aired TV ads that aligned Beasley with President Biden, even as Beasley worked to distance herself from the President, saying at prior events that he and other Democrats should be working harder to address inflation, which has emerged as the key issue on voter’s minds this cycle.
Beasley has previously stated, “It’s wrong to align me with anybody unless I specifically say what my positions are.” Whereas Budd was quick to link Beasley to Biden throughout the campaign by saying, “Joe Biden is on the ballot on Nov. 8, and he goes by the name this year of Cheri Beasley,” ABC reports.
While key elections have yet to be called — and it seems apparent that Georgia will once again head to a runoff, this time with Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock against Heisman trophy winner Herschel Walker, races such as the one in North Carolina have become all the more important as control of Congress remains in the balance. While Republicans seem slated to seize the majority in the House, the Senate, which has been split 50-50 for the last two years, is the prize both parties are vying for. Should Republicans win — thanks to candidates such as Sen-Elect Budd, Republicans will be reliably able to grind President Biden’s agenda to a halt. If Democrats manage to maintain the 50-50 margin, with Vice President Harris serving as the tie-breaker, a fractious Republican House caucus will make it more difficult for Republicans to act as the roadblock they have promised to be.
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