Mike Robinson has conceded to Justice Cheri Beasley in the one Supreme Court race that was still outstanding. The final margin was 0.22%. Although Election Night was pretty good to Republicans in North Carolina, the losses in these Supreme Court races have to hurt. Sure, they picked up one seat on the Court of Appeals, but the Supreme Court is the big game.
If Democrats are ever going to take back power in NC, it’s probably going to be by obstructing the GOP agenda through the courts. There’s also the possibility that taking back the judicial branch will lead to the 2011 redistricting maps getting tossed. Right now the GOP still maintains a 1-seat majority on the Court, but there were three competitive races this time around and they went 0-3.
The least surprising of these was Sam Ervin’s defeat of Bob Hunter. The Ervin name is still golden in some parts of NC and Hunter was the underdog from the start. But the reelection of registered Democrats Hudson and Beasley have to hurt. The GOP will mainly be on defense in Supreme Court races for the rest of the decade, and the net loss of one seat in this cycle means there’s not going to be a whole lot of room for error for them going forward.
Why did the GOP lose? Interestingly, the repeal of straight-ticket voting may have harmed their chances in the Court races. Democrats who would have in the past marked “straight Democratic” and then gone home stuck around for the judicial races at the bottom of the ballot. But that can’t be the only reason, and the GOP needs to figure out what went wrong. My theory? Beasley and Hudson benefited from voters identifying them as female from their names. And there’s certainly other factors as well.
The most disheartening thing in all this? Robinson lost despite using almost the same “banjo” ad as Paul Newby did in 2012, along with a catchy “I Like Mike” song. A shame.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Beasley had no primary, stupid or otherwise. Only SC primary was for Hudson seat. Not certain review of contributions to judicial races – individual, party, pac and “dark money” will support advantage for Democrats but true that all reports not yet collated.
One of the reasons for the success of judicial candidates was the NC Democratic Party and the campaign which Chair Randy Voller and ED Casey Mann mounted for all of 2014 and the intense efforts they put in just prior to elections. This includes saving Cheri Beasley in the stupid primary to which she was subjected. All of the judges conveyed their thanks to the NCDP at the recent SEC meeting. If some folks were not so buried in despising Voller, they would have noticed the candidates themselves celebrating the fine and competent help they got from NCDP. You guys are just off snorting your brand of crap.
In my opinion, the main reason the judicial candidates didn’t do as well as the other candidates was the lack of party endorsement. I advocate that the GOP NC Party rules be changed to allow county executive committees be allowed to support candidates that are not supported at the state level. In our district, the judges cover four countiescountiesm. As a result, we at the county level were not able to endorse these candidates. If we had that ability, the outcome of these races might have been different.
In Buncombe County Democrats had an effective palm card for Democrat judges. The Republican card was not as evident.
Tom, as has been said we have little leadership here in Buncombe County.
Several weeks ago I was reviewing the election results on the State Board of Elections page and came across something interesting. I noticed that Mark Davis (a democratic) beat out the republican candidate in his Court of Appeals race in numerous counties that are typically overwhelmingly republican (two that really suprised me were Yadkin and Wilkes). I’m not sure if people voted for him b/c they didn’t realize he was a democrat or if he really has that positive of a reputation in NC…
Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about take Yadkin County…It has NEVER voted democratic for President, in this past election it gave Kay Hagan 20.86% of the vote, no democrats ran for any of the local or county partisan offices, and the democratic candidate for the NC House and Senate district seats got 23.29% in each of their respective races. Yet Mark Davis carried the county by just over 10 points in his race (55.26%). This didn’t happen in every deeply red county (although Davis did carry a lot of red rural counties) but even in Randolph he got almost 42% of the vote (the next closest democrat on the ballot in Randolph only got 24.47%)….Even the other non partisan judicial democrats fared worse than their republicans in those counties (although many of them did better than candidates with “D”s by their names)….It’s just kinda intriguing to me…
OR, the losses of the more conservative judicial candidates could have been due to growing awareness on the part of the electorate that the courts can temper/moderate the extreme ideology and agenda being forced on NC society and culture by regressive legislation. Court rulings that prevented (and/or at least delayed) (1) the public paying for private school vouchers, (2) the ending of teacher tenure, (3) the banning of same sex marriage, (4) the jailing/penalizing of Capitol protesters, (4) the issuance of “Choose Life” car tags, and (5) forcing doctors to show ultrasound fetal images to women seeking an abortion may have convinced a key number of voters that the checks & balances afforded by the courts was important.
A simpler answer can be found in the amount spent in judicial races. The Democrats killed the Republicans across the board.
Mike may have lost because of that stupid banjo ad, which he had no role in running. It demeaned him. He was an otherwise fine candidate, but that ad was beneath the dignity of any candidate for the court.